“It’s a thrill working with you.”
“Mmmmpft!”
31
The roar of a city coming to life in the morning overwhelmed her senses, and she was fidgety by the time she left the harbour to cross a short footbridge over a spillway. This was where the Crosstown Creek exited, pushing her away from the shore the previous night. The stream wasn’t a threat now; it was once again the allure it had been when Mother took her family through it to visit Aunt Pawsense – a thoroughfare for animals under the City.
She rested on a grassy lawn of a hotel beside the lakefront and looked for her next seagull. Always there was a seagull to guide her. Looking north, she saw one standing on a lamp post. She couldn’t be sure if it was her friend or one of his colleagues leading her in this lap of the relay. Funny how one gull will perch on a vantage point, then a second seagull will come along and the first will dutifully yield its place to the newcomer according to a tacit time-sharing agreement. Respect for each other’s spaces comes easily to creatures without a territory. Born sentinels, they survey a frontier in time, not space.
The gull led her to the northern end of the hotel where the railway bridge crossed the river. Her den was on the other side, just up from the tracks. How often she’d stayed awake while her brothers slept, listening to the train clanging through. But it was forbidden to cross this bridge without supervision – her mom had made that clear. It was long, and she could be caught out in the open by a primate cart or a bicycle. She felt nervous, just crossing the tracks.
Now, a reward for her effort – a long pathway overhung by trees extending north beside the river. The elegant tunnel of greenery meant a park. No threats here except a primate jogger. Where did they run to? She could never understand where they went with such determination. Yet it was easeful here. The bushes in the park had been arranged by Primates so as to recall the kinds of growth found in the wild. This was intriguing too – that they fashioned an experience of wilderness for themselves in this park.
A restaurant overlooking the river. No cooking smells. Must be too early in the day for Primates to have breakfast. But Mallard Ducks already busy in the water. The next gull wanted her to follow a single rusty railway track that ran north behind scrub bushes alongside the park, dividing it from the city. Safer here because she could avoid an open lawn behind the restaurant, evidently a meeting place for primates. Then the park again – and what was this? She crouched; her hackles shot up. But it was only the semblance of a human child beside a beautiful forest pool. A Making! Here was a natural resting place, and she let her fear subside to the comforting chirping of birds flying in and out of a wall of foliage overlooking the park. It stretched to the sky. The Primates had covered an entire building with vines and shrubs!
Just beyond the living building the park ended, and she was left on the railway track. It led towards a noisy traffic bridge in front of the factory of sugary scents. Her mouth immediately started to water. Stop it! – you’re too smart to be a lush. Concentrate. Under the bridge and up the bank – old trodden dirt and garbage. Where’s the next gull?
The next guide stood on a fire hydrant at the top of a short, steep hill beyond the traffic bridge. Why don’t seagulls perch in trees like normal birds? Because trees don’t grow on lakes and oceans. The hill turned out to have a large stone building at the top overlooking a park with ancient trees, flanked by old brick residences. The guide gave a goodbye squawk and flew across the river. Now she was alone in broad daylight in unknown terrain. This was scary. From now on, she was going to be a dedicated Nightsider, like the gentleman she was seeking.
A polite call. A new gull stood stiffly beside the door to a cellar of one of the houses. Could it be? Yes, it was her friend.
“The one you’re seeking is in there. There are colleagues with him. Don’t be afraid. The Raccoons in this city are discovering something from Seagulls. They are learning to flock together.”
She sniffed the cellar door curiously. Old musty, soil smells. Root vegetables. A gust of warm raccoon scents. And another … what was it? A Groundhog. It was probably his root cellar. She looked questioningly at the gull.
“The one you want sniffed your Making when I dropped it at his feet. He examined the knots. You certainly made him puzzled.”
Puzzled? Why would he be puzzled? Was she being too pushy introducing herself through her Making? Makings aren’t aggressive. Not if they are good Makings.
“He carried it into the meeting.”
“Thank you, dear colleague. I owe you a gift.”
“You owe a colleague nothing, except respect. However if you were to snatch a bag of French fries someday, I wouldn’t turn my beak at it.” The seagull lifted into the air and soon became a speck of freedom.
Inside, an excitement of attentive bodies. Blessed relief of darkness – warm, dry darkness. No one noticed her come in. Take this place at the back in this old cellar. Listen to who is speaking. A senior male artist who speaks with the wisdom of Procyonides.
“We are creatures of the Wild, and we carry Wilderness in our bodies. But we are at the end of a slim branch because there is so little Wilderness left to nourish our Wildness. We are forced to survive under porches and in chimneys, scrounging the garbage of Primates and losing our nobility. So is it any surprise that we find ourselves at the feet of a so-called Protector, who is about to extend his Wildness-hating impulses to this already barren habitat?”
A rustle of approval. Clutch would approve too, if he were here. He puts his trust in the Wild and its natural customs. But the approval comes from the front of the cellar only; the younger raccoons at the back are restless. They must like cities. The speaker clearly doesn’t.
“And forced to be refugees surviving in cities, the best thing, the only thing, we can do as Makers is memorialize our ancient Customs in our Artifacts so that the few survivors who come after us will know what Wildness is, and will seek it out, and be nurtured by it. Our task is to show them our grace as a species. And the grounding of that grace, which is Wilderness.”
Audible stirrings. This is a call to die nobly in the face of a catastrophe. But where’s the catastrophe? She doesn’t see any catastrophe. Only the world changing. It’s something a world does.
“Then our descendants will take note that we faced extinction with a high heart and noses to the wind. You ask: what are our Customs? Remember Procyonides, the great Raccoon sage. First, Inventiveness, the mark of a true raccoon given to each of us by the Raccoon Ancestor, to hold an object in our eye, separate it from its surrounding objects, and understand its essence – what is proper to it and nothing else. Second: Beauty, the sense of Proportion in an object and in its relationships with other objects. Hapticia herself bestowed this virtue on us at the beginning of time when she put her mind in our fingers. We handle the balances of life, know them, respect them, and relinquish them …”
An easing of rapt bodies, expressed as a sigh. Raccoons are being called to remember the old ways. The ways of antiquity. But her body isn’t relaxing. She’s taut with questions. What’s troubling these lovely Makers? It’s not extinction. If raccoons were really about to go extinct, she’d be having a Big Nothing Attack. Like Clutch.
A reticent clearing of a throat near the door where she came in. It’s the Groundhog who owns this cellar. A male. He wants to speak, but like all of his kind he’s shy and doesn’t enjoy attention. Crowded bodies shuffle to fasten their noses on him. Ears rise. What is the wisdom of a Groundhog?
“Earth gives us every breath we take. Earth takes back every breath we give. And that is true in every habitat we live in, whether it has Primates or not. Take it from one who lives in the margins, on the edges of paths and roads. There is no pure, wild nature – there never was: it is always already parceled up into territories and regulated by all the species who created and inhabit it. Wilderness teems with civility; cities are pregnant with wilderness …”
This is interesting, but if he keeps talking in his gentle way he’s going to stop anyone from having a point of view whatsoever. Is having a viewpoint aggressive? A Spider who has descended from the ceiling to listen strolls back up her thread. There are woman raccoons in this room. Why aren’t they speaking? They’re Makers too. Are females not allowed to speak as Makers? The wilderness gentleman is in this room somewhere. Probably in a corner where he can’t be noticed.
A raccoon at the front of the room comes to the rescue of the reluctant host whose den this is. He seems to be the leader of this Guild of Makers. His front paws are clutched together as if he’s taking the pulse of the universe in his wrists.
“Dear people, our distinguished colleagues have called on us as Makers to honour our history as a species.” (Colleague – she likes this word more and more.) “Their Makings show how Earth lives its life to the full in us. However, we might be living in the early years of a better civilization. And to make our way to that future we must confront a threat – a figure who dares to be unnameable, as if he were the very incarnation of Being. I ask my fellow Makers to consider how to take the measure of his empire and prevent him from forcing it on our City.”
Agitation. Everyone wants to speak. She does too, though she’s not sure what she’s going to say. The cellar has a lot more raccoons than she thought. All these Makers!
“Imagine being told what we can Make and not Make …”
“And eating the food he provides …”
“And not being allowed to choose mates …”
“We need some facts. Something we can grasp.”
A body that has been lying without movement or expression, a long, slender body, unfurls like a banner. Could it be …? Yes! Her Stranger! He has the mark of a leader. And leadership starts to pour out of him with a boyish enthusiasm.
“This is what we know as of daybreak. The scent-net shows signs of Creekers sneaking into the city. We guess they’re High Guard because they’re travelling in pairs. They smell like young adult males of the same father. The word is that they are advance agents of this self-made leader of the River Clan Families at Creek Town. He’s coming this way. There is messaging that he’s going to do something dramatic, and because this news is repeated like drumming on a hollow log, we think it’s planted on the net by his agents. Maybe somebody has hard information …”
What commanding relevance! A young male beside her speaks: “I have something.”
“Go ahead.”
So many eyes and ears turn in her direction, it feels like the room itself turns.
