I took a shot at my homework – mostly just busy work and things that didn't interest me in the least. That's no excuse of course. You have to do a share of busy work just to stay where you need to be to get to the interesting stuff.
I heard the doorbell but didn't really respond to it. Then mom was at the door of the dining room saying, "It's for you, honey."
Not even excited about company, I drug myself to the door and found Will there looking like I felt. Down.
"Hi. Come in," I said.
"I'm bored," he said. "How about a walk." I shrugged and went in and told Molly I was leaving for a while before going to the door and out. It was pretty nice really with the remaining, still fall day. You could feel the end of the summer coming but it was still warm enough for the shorts and tank top I was wearing.
"So how are you?" he said as we walked down the sidewalk with no destination at all. I told him I was okay and shrugged. Our mood were so closely matched that it was frightening and not really all that pleasant since we were both down.
It did feel pretty nice when he picked up my hand and as we walked hand in hand that way for a while. And as we walked, I started seeing things I hadn't seen for a while.
A flight of birds flew very high overhead, heading south.
"Their internal clocks tell them when it's time," he noted rather pointlessly. "I feel like that sometimes. Like I ought to fly on to somewhere – I don't know – more comfortable or where the bugs get bigger or something."
I knew exactly what he meant.
"Or like maybe I should finish my cocoon," he said, reaching for a little wooly worm that had just finishing tying up to begin the process I was familiar with.
"Yeah. But that's not all that fun anyway. Just the blankness of sleep and then unthinking search for a mate. You can't even enjoy the flight or the mating."
He was looking at me strangely and I sort of realized I was spouting some fairly inside information.
"I had to do a report on butterflies once," I tried to explain but it came out a little apologetic or weak. The fact that I'd lived for a year as a similar species of butterfly assured my facts, of course.
"I'd think that staying away from birds would be a lot of work," he said. I just nodded. Agreeing but not saying more. It had been half the effort. Just surviving long enough to live and even with human intelligence it had been hard.
We walked in silence for a while. I didn't think he'd noticed when, as we walked along beside a field, I surreptitiously noticed that the small red fox had her kits almost ready to go out on their own. That would wait, of course, until after their winter sleep together but that time would not really be like it had been during that first summer when she'd showed them all they needed to know and they played and practiced their living skills together.
I remembered this as a very loving time, full of the pure enjoyment of life. I'm sure that my face reflected my thoughts.
"She's very good with her kits," he said, following my gaze. I stumbled as I realized he knew what I was looking at even though I really didn't think anyone who didn't know exactly what to look for would even know they were there.
"What?"
"The red fox there. She's very good…" He stopped as if realizing he said something he shouldn't have.
"How did you…" Then I realized that I'd overstepped. If he shouldn't have known they were there, then how should I?
"I, ah, saw them earlier this year. When they were little and, ah, didn't hide so well. I've been watching them on and off all summer."
"Oh," I said.
"How did you know?" I thought hard. I didn't want to lie to him but I didn't want to tell him that I'd found them a long time ago. When I was a dog it had been easy. Actually, I'd known they were there within hours of their moving in when the little fox had been an adolescent out on her first experience at life on her own. Her mother, I knew, was in a woods not too far away. I'd found her two summers ago.
"Don't answer," he said then and my mind flashed from trying to think of an answer, any answer, to looking at him. He looked very serious and then led me over to the side of the field and sat down on a fallen log. I sat down next to him.
He grinned to himself and shook his head.
"Sue. I'm going to say something. Either you're going to think I'm crazy or you're going to lie to me because you're afraid or you're going to tell me the truth." I didn't like this at all. "I just hope you'll trust me and tell me the truth."
He looked at his hands as he leaned far over and took a handful of the wheatgrass that grew in the field.
"I think you're hiding something." I started to protest but he just held up a hand. "I think you're not really what you seem to be."
"What do you think I am?" He shook his head slowly.
"I don't have a name for it any more than you do. But you're much much more than a pretty young girl who lives with a nice family in this little podunk town."
"It's a nice town. Nicer than any place I've ever been."
"Anywhere? Even soaring through the skies?" He looked up at another wing of soaring geese overhead. I started to say something. Maybe to deny it. But he held up a hand and stopped me. I wondered why he'd said that.
"I think " he started. "I think you're a very special kind of being. A beautiful girl now." He stopped again for long enough for that statement to sink in. "But more. Much much more." This time he didn't pause but looked into my eyes.
"We're very secretive sorts, aren't we. We never tell anyone our secret. We never let anyone see. Oh, we get close to them sometimes. We love and live and die. But we don't tell our secret to anyone."
He paused again and slowly turned to look into my eyes.
"Maybe that's why we never find each other." He stared into my eyes and, I know, I just sat there with my mouth open, ready to deny everything. Ready to run. "But Sue. Don't you ever wish you had someone to do the dance of the skies with?" He looked up at the blue sky and, though I'd never heard it called that, I knew what he meant. It was that wonderful, free flight of the hawk or eagle. Soaring up with the thermals and dropping toward the Earth in ecstasy. Perhaps it was my happiest memory from all my transformations.
"Come with me now, Sue," he said very softly and slowly stood up and offered his hand. I took it and followed him through a corner of the field and into the edge of the trees. I wondered if it wasn't just a close call. A seduction that happened to touch on my secret as he stripped off his tee-shirt, kicked off his sneakers, and dropped his shorts. He wasn't wearing anything else and I thought he looked magnificent naked. I didn't care now if it was just a seduction. I was ready to be seduced. And if it was something else, I'd know that in another minute.
"I know that I am most vulnerable in the few seconds afterward. But I don't care. If you want to stomp my head in to keep your secret well, maybe that's the way it was meant to be."
I was sure it was something else when, instead of coming to me, he moved a few steps away and sat down on the ground. Then, in an eyeblink, he disappeared completely. In another, a beautiful hawk, one I recognized as a male red-tailed hawk in English, lay on the ground where he'd been. It struggled on its side briefly before fluttering and finding its feet. Then it sat, its reticulating eyes looking at me with its sharp beak opened, and spread its wings wide on the ground as if to dry them.
I smiled and kicked off my sneakers, pulled the tee-shirt over my head and dropped my own shorts to the ground. I took one look around myself to see no one was watching before I disappeared into my short incarnation as a microbe. The image of the red-tailed hawk firmly in mind, I opened my eyes to the acute vision of the bird and felt the wave of disorientation overcome me for a few seconds.
I reacted in fear as the larger male flapped once and took some steps so he was beside me. I'm sure that no human would have seen or understood his look of encouragement and something else. Love? He turned and rose into the air with powerful wingbeats that took him only a few inches off the ground but a hundred yards to the fallen log we'd left from a few minutes before.