Oh?as I snuggled in closer. I liked it when he told stories. It reminded me of what he would have been in an intact worldas"a teacher. And it gave me something to think about other than food and Darkness.
The Jaguar is sacred to the Mayans. Heas's associated with a sort of dark star myth. On one hand, his coat is supposed to contain all the stars in the heavens.
I looked up at the plastic stars on the ceiling, faintly glowing, and smiled.
Jaguar Sun rises each day and paces across the heavens. He starts out as a young jaguar, a cub. He paces from east to west, chasing prey. He ages as he goes, and by the time he reaches the western horizon, heas's an old cat with gray in his muzzle.
He dies?as I asked.
No. Jaguar Sun doesnas't have it that easy. He falls into the darkness of the underworld and fights the lords of the underworld all night long. He emerges victorious in the east each morning, a young cub, ready to begin the fight again.
My eyes felt heavy. as Heas's strong.
He kissed my forehead. as Indeed. And he hunts and fights day and night, keeping us safe from the spirits of the underworld.
In the distance, I could hear a thin, eerie howling.
I smiled. I imagined that it was the wolves, chasing deer. And that Jaguar Sun was fighting the Darkness while we slept.
***
We canas't stay.
Alex was right. We all knew it.
For three nights, we had been at the Animal Farm. I called it that first, and Alex and Ginger began to laugh.
as˜Four legs bad, two legs good,as'as Alex said.
Or is it the other way around?as Ginger mused.
I donas't get it.
Animal Farm. Itas's a book by George Orwell. If we find a copy of it, Ias'll be interested to see what you think of it.
I wasnas't sure that there would be much time for reading in the future, but it was a pleasant thought.
We brought Horace outside for supervised grazing during the day, but never once saw any of the wild animals. We knew that they had been thereas"Ias'd found the remains of a deer in the middle of the field. The tuft of gray fur stuck to a rib bone seemed to indicate that it was not the work of the vampires. After dark, we heard the howling of the wolves. Each successive night, it seemed that they moved farther away.
The pain and swelling in my hand began to subside. I think that the sleep and aspirin from the convenience store had done it some good, as well as our relatively clean surroundings. I felt guilty about letting Horace poop in the living-room-turned-stable, but I was sure that no was one coming back. Ever.
We had fallen into a routine that felt relatively normal. We slept for more than twelve hours a night and ate the supplies from the convenience store. We found a few canned goods and cereal in the cupboards. Ias'd gathered rainwater in a bucket and had used it to wash our clothes. I learned to play Monopoly at the kitchen table with Alex and Ginger. Ginger always won.
Ginger had located a photo album of the family in the bottom of the china cabinet. I looked through it with interest. I saw wedding pictures of a man and a woman and pictures of many holidays and vacations with the two children. The girl looked a lot like Sarah when she was younger. There were also some pictures of the animals. I saw the jaguar as a cub and the wolves looking much smaller.
Why did they keep those animals?as I asked.
I donas't know,as Ginger said. as Maybe they thought they were helping, if the animals were abandoned by other owners and they took them in. Like a rescue. Maybe they had a thing for exotic animals.as She sighed. as Itas's hard to get into other peopleas's heads.
I stroked the edge of a picture of the girl who looked like Sarah holding a wolf pup. The photographs made me even more conscious that we were occupying someone elseas's home. And they made me miss my parents and my sister and my dogs.
So when Alex said it was time to leave, I was ready. We gathered up anything that would be of use to us. I realized, as I was packing kitchen knives into a backpack, that I had become inured to the idea of stealing. And that made me sad, that I had dropped that part of my moral compass in order to survive.
I found pencils and paper and wrote the family a note, just in case they ever returned. It was hard to find the words, but I felt that I needed to do it:
I hope that all your family is well. I am sorry to have used your house and your possessions in this way. I hope that you return and are able to put things back in order. I hope that we all can return home and put things back to rights.
We let the animals go.
as"Katie
I came to regret leaving later. We all did.
But that morning seemed cool and crisp and full of hope. My belly was full, my clothes were clean. I tugged the backpack high up on my shoulder and followed Alex out into the clear morning.
always, we moved north. Inexorably north.
I was certain that the sun had colored the left side of my face more than the right. But not enough to burn. It was growing too cold for that. Our feet made tracks in the grass where they wiped away the frost.
I knew that we wanted to get to Canada before snow. We needed to find Alexas's family before hard winter came. We had a long way to go; if we continued to go north and avoid densely populated areas to cross the border, we might have to go as far as Sault Ste. Marie, Alex said. I didnas't know how we were going to survive that without reliable shelter. Nor did I have any idea how the rest of humanity would.
I suspected my community had a good chance of surviving the hardships of winter. We Plain people were reasonably self-sufficient, growing our own food and raising our own cattle. One challenge would be getting enough heat; kerosene stores would be bound to dwindle. But theyas'd figure something out, cut firewood, tolerate the elements as our forefathers had.
But the vampires . . . I didnas't know how they would survive them. The Darkness had been let in, and the Elders were in denial. The Hexenmeister had the power to protect them, if only they would listen.
But, always, my horizon was todayas"the next sunrise or sunset. And then . . . I couldnas't see beyond and then. I hoped that somehow a cure to the contagion would be found, that we could return to our homes and that life would return to some semblance of normalas"if we still remembered what that felt like.
I wrapped my coat tightly around my neck. I could feel the cold air creeping in. I had kept my Plain clothes, but Ginger and Alex had taken clothing from the Animal Farm, changed into jeans and heavy sweaters. Alex had found a replacement for his old jacket among the fatheras's clothes, a jacket made of green oilskin. Ginger was wearing the motheras's navy blue sweatshirt embroidered with kittens. I felt even more out of step with them than when we had started.