Immortal Lycanthropes (27 page)

For a moment, the whale circled around in the deep water at the base of the cliff. Then it rose, and from its blowhole it fired one last salute. Perhaps that meant
good luck
among whales. And then off into the boundless ocean it disappeared.

The ermine had managed to slip away, but Alice tracked him through the low scrub and took care of him, too. And then she waited for the windstorm to end, so the navy would come above ground, and she could as a human feign shipwreck survivor and hitch a ride back to the mainland.

And that was the last we saw of Myron. I interviewed several seamen in the days after the storm, and many reported seeing an enormous whale, which some called a blue and some a sperm. One mariner, pleased with his own eloquence, called what he saw “the Moby Dick of whales”; but he was an idiot. Certainly they saw something huge, and then they stopped seeing it, as it made its way back to the deeps.

Years have passed, and years will pass, endlessly and eternally. Evelyn has vowed to bring some sort of order to the jungle, and has even gone so far as to put out a ban on murder. Gloria predictably is calling in response for assassination and keeps blowing her face off trying to make a pipe bomb with pushpins in it; once she masters the theory, she will fill the finished product, she vows, with her nail clippings. After putting it off for far too long, in my opinion, Alice fed a line to the tearful and confused Dr. and Mrs. Horowitz. And I still come down to the shores of both coasts, alternately every few months, and throw bottles into the sea. Sometimes jars, with paperback books I wrote in better days jammed inside, but sometimes just bottles with a curl of paper in each. Gloria calls it bourgeois sentimental and Alice calls it cruel, but all it says is:

Myron.—Wish you were here.

Ailurus fulgens
(Alice):
Do not listen
to what Alice says about
anything

Alces alces
(Spenser): Former legionnaire, former survivalist; mainly a cynic

Arctictis binturong
(Arthur Hong): Your humble narrator

Bison bison
(Benson): Head flunky; smart enough to know when he’s not smart enough

Canis latrans
(Angel Sanchez): Sorry about the car, chum

Connochaetes
taurinus: Flunky

Gorilla gorilla
(Gloria): Anarchist; in related news, kind of self-destructive

Gulo gulo
(Svipdag): Not even a proper cameo, really, but still a fan favorite

Hippopotamus amphibius:
Flunky

Lemur catta
(Florence): Last survivor of a dying race; shorter than me

Loxodonta africana
(Evelyn): Not a bad sort, all things considered

Macaca sylvanus
(Charles DeRudio): Assassin (failed); cavalry officer

Microtus californicus:
In the employ of the Nine Unknown Men

Mustela erminea:
Flunky; notoriously shifty

Panthera leo
(Marcus Lynch): Nature’s deadliest hunter; a bit of a reprobate, really

Panthera tigris
(Bima): The second deadliest, it turns out

Pteromys volans:
Assassinated Friedrich Nietzsche (?)

Pteropus scapulatus
(Allambee): Not really trustworthy; did he mention he’s from Australia?

Ursus arctos
(Mignon Emanuel): Despot of the Fortress of the Id

Hal Johnson
is the singer-songwriter Halifax Slasher. His music is folk-punk—folk because he has an acoustic guitar and punk because he doesn’t know how to play it. He lives in Astoria, New York.

Teagan White
is a designer and illustrator who is fascinated with natural history. She lives in Chicago, Illinois. Visit her at
www.teaganwhite.com
.