The rest of the beasts joined in. They howled loudly, crazily. They howled until they were hoarse. When they were unable to howl any more, Max heard a giggling coming from the side of the group.
He turned to see Katherine, the stringy-haired one, smiling at him in a smirky, knowing sort of way.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
Her voice was that of a scruffy young woman. It was low and gravelly, but appealing, even musical.
Max looked at her, not understanding. He was intimidated by her smirk. “What?”
“Nothing. You’re having fun,” she said.
“What does that mean?” Max asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Nothing?” Max asked.
“It means what it means,” she said. “It’s nice.”
Just then Max heard a loud thump coming from the forest. He looked through the trees, what was left of them, to find Carol jumping high in the air, like a kangaroo but far more powerful. Each jump sent Carol forty feet in the air, and he landed each time with a thunderous thump.
Katherine seemed to know that Max wanted to follow Carol. “You go ahead,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”
“Okay,” Max said, and chased into the forest after Carol, trying to get his attention. “Hey!” he yelled. “Hey!”
Carol slowed down and finally stopped. Max caught up. Carol grinned, breathing heavily through his nostrils.
“You’re a good jumper,” Max said.
“Yeah, I know!” Carol said. “I’m better than you think. I’m even better than I think I am!”
Max had noticed a great straight branch above them, and had an idea. “Can you jump up into that tree and catch yourself with your teeth?”
Carol made a face. “Of course I can,” he said.
He jumped up, about twenty feet high, with his great mouth open, and when he got to the branch overhead, he timed it wrong. Instead of gripping the branch with his teeth, he hit it with his nose, and then fell to the ground awkwardly. The earth shook.
“Ow,” he said.
Max was about to apologize and call off the experiment, but Carol was determined to do what Max had asked. He jumped again, growling on the way up, and this time caught the branch with his teeth. He hung from the branch, and looked down at Max proudly.
“Like this?” he asked. With the tree in his mouth, it sounded like “Ike gish?”
“Yeah, that’s good,” Max said, truly impressed.
Neither Max nor Carol was sure what to do next. Carol didn’t want to jump down too soon, and Max was entertained by looking up at Carol, hanging there by his mouth.
“How’s the weather up there?” Max asked.
“Fine,” Carol tried to say.
Max laughed. “How much do you weigh?”
Carol tried to say “I don’t know” but it came out in a barky muffle. Max laughed harder.
“How’s it taste, that tree? Like pâté?” he said.
Carol had no idea what pâté was, but the ridiculous-sounding word caused him to laugh, and when he laughed, his teeth lost their grip, and he came plummeting down again. “Gow!” he yelled.
“Sorry,” Max said. He felt awful about the idea, and about causing Carol to fall.
“No, no!” Carol said, doing a quick dance of pain, spinning around, holding his mouth and stomping his foot. “Not your fault. It was fun. It’s just that something’s caught in my tooth or something.”
Douglas and Ira appeared. Douglas was dragging Ira by his feet, like a caveman with a bride, but backwards. Ira seemed exceedingly relaxed while being dragged, as if he were reclining on a hammock.
“Hey you guys,” Carol said, standing in front of them. “Look at this. Do I have a piece of bark in here?”
Carol approached Douglas and Ira and opened his giant wet mouth, revealing two hundred or so huge, extremely sharp teeth in three concentric rows. Douglas leaned slightly away from Carol.
“I don’t see anything,” he said. “Clean as a whistle.”
Carol looked down to Ira — who was still laying on the ground — searching for an answer.
“Nope. Clean as a whistle,” Ira said, though there was no possible way Ira could see anything from his angle. He looked up to Max and extended his hand. “We haven’t formally met. I’m Ira. I put the holes in the trees. Maybe you saw them? Or maybe not, I don’t know. Anyway, it’s what I do. It doesn’t really help anyone, like you do. It’s not crucial to the future of the world, like you are. And you probably already met Douglas. He’s the one who gets the work done around here. Indispensible. Builder. Maker. Steadier of the unsteady—”
“Hey. Focus here,” Carol said, pointing to his mouth again. “You gotta get closer.”
“Heh heh. Looks good,” Ira said. “All clear. Clean as a …”
“Yep, as a whistle,” Douglas finished. The two of them seemed to be in a terrible hurry to get away from Carol’s open mouth. “Come on, Ira, we have to go over there and … put some rocks in a pile.”
Douglas led Ira away. Watching them leave, Carol’s face hardened. Max saw all of this, concerned for Carol and the way Douglas and Ira didn’t seem to trust Carol not to eat them. As Max was trying to figure out why Carol’s good friends wouldn’t want to get close to Carol’s mouth, Carol turned to Max.
“Hey King, do I have something stuck in my teeth?” he said. He squatted down toward Max and opened his mouth.
Max peered into Carol’s mouth. “I don’t see anything.”
Carol opened his mouth wider. “Maybe you need to look farther in?”
Max, before he could think better of it, put his knee on Carol’s gum and ventured inside Carol’s mouth.
“No, no. Even farther,” Carol said.
Max went farther still, putting his knee onto the ridge of Carol’s mouth. It was wet inside, and the smell was astounding. “Whoo. You’ve got bad breath!”
“Watch it,” Carol said, laughing. “I could take your head off in one chomp.”
And now Max could see the problem. There was a piece of bark, as big as a baseball mitt, stuck between two of Carol’s back teeth. “It’s a big piece,” Max noted as he gently dislodged it. He emerged from Carol’s mouth and presented the bark like a trophy fish.
Carol looked at it, amazed at its size. “Oh wow, thanks,” he said. He held it in his hand for a while, staring at it. “Thanks, King. Really. I can’t tell you how much that means to me,” he said, and looked up to Max as if seeing him for the first time.
They were interrupted by Judith and the Bull and Alexander, who were running toward them, each of them blindfolded and carrying a dozen or so tiny cats. They were giggling like lunatics, and ran past Max and Carol and on down the hill, toward the remains of the forest. Max knew he had to follow, had to get himself a blindfold and some tiny cats, so follow he did.
CHAPTER XXII
There was a good deal more rumpusing done over the course of the night, all the way until the night paled into dawn and dawn tipped toward morning.
Max was becoming tired, at last, when he saw Katherine, the one who had given him the knowing smirk. She was alone, observing the mayhem from afar. Max watched her as she took everything in, processing it, a bit dismissively.
Then Max did the obvious thing: he ran up a tilted tree-trunk until he was above her, and then jumped onto her back, growling like a wolf.
Surprised, she stumbled back and fell to the ground, giggling. “I’m eating you for breakfast!” he yelled, as he pretended her stomach was oatmeal and his thumb was a spoon.
“Okay, okay,” she sighed. “Just don’t use any spices. I’m good enough as is.”
This made Max laugh, and it caused in Katherine a full-throated laugh, and the laughing aroused the attention of the rest of the beasts.