The Boy and the Beast.

The Boy and the Beast.

The beetle at the edge of the road was huge. When it skittered into the woods, the boy skittered after. Through shrubs and ferns, around young trees and old, over boulders and across little creeks. It was lively for a beetle, the boy thought as he carefully placed his feet on the little log that acted as a bridge over a trickling stream. He wasn’t sure, he had to admit, if the beetle was leading him on an adventure or doing its best to run away. It surely couldn’t hide, this hulking thing. A leaf would sit on its back like a child’s blanket would on an elephant. It was far too big for the cracks in the trees or the spaces between the rocks. In the end, the boy didn’t care one way or the other. They raced through the woods, leaving the sounds of cars and picnics far behind them. The boy decided to call the beetle Fred. Because he seemed like a Fred.

           Around the boy, the woods grew thick. The trees were old and grizzled. Their leaves reached out for the sky, more and more as the boy followed Fred, until they had blocked it from view. There were no footprints but the boys’, that squiggled through the twigs and leaves. And still he ran, he hopped, he crawled, as he chased that huge beetle.

           He was getting tired, as Fred led him through the wooded hills. The boy struggled up a steep and mucky slope, jealous of the speed and confidence that took Fred up so much faster. When the boy finally scrabbled over the edge and into the clearing, he panicked because he didn’t see Fred. But the huge beetle slid on some leaves and the boy ran towards him. He tripped, his feet tangled in a root near a boulder in the ferns and bushes. The boy huffed and reached out to the rock, mumbling angrily at his feet. And then he was silent. On that shadowy little flat the only sound that cut the forest came from the scrambling beetle as it climbed and slid and climbed and slid.

           The boys hand was on the rock. But he wished it wasn’t. He had spent most of his short life in the outside world. He knew about rocks. There were big ones and small ones, shiny ones and rough ones, heavy ones and light ones, there were even crumbly ones. But one thing seemed absolutely certain, as far as his mind could grasp, there were not any furry rocks. But even if, in the whole of reality there was, somewhere, a rock that had fur, there simply couldn’t be a rock that breathed. And this one did. Which meant, it wasn’t a rock.

           The thing that could have been a rock but wasn’t didn’t move, other than the soft rise and fall of its breath. And the boy, unsure of the right course of action, followed suit. He didn’t look at the thing, but he could feel it through his hand. A hand that was absolutely, positively, without a doubt, not shaking just a little. It was warm, he realized. Not just fuzzy, but very warm, at least compared to the cool earth he was laying in. The long fur was strange, light and soft, but with a hint of hardness and edge. For a moment he felt a trembling and he thought it was going to move, to pounce, to leap upon him. But it wasn’t muscles that he felt, or not the ones that he had worried about. It was the thing’s heart, racing as fast as his own. The boy had to look.

           Slowly, so slowly that the leaves and dirt tangled in his hair barely wiggled, he turned his head towards the thing he was touching. It was half buried in the dirt and the same color and pattern of the dozen big rocks he had passed by on his way here. And it was big. Not as big as a car, but definitely bigger than his cousins golden retriever. Which was, the boy decided, too big.

He waited for movement, for the thing to react, but nothing happened. He looked for eyes, or a mouth, or a tail, or legs, but even now he only saw a boulder. Only his hand told him it wasn’t. His hand, and his fear. Because the boy was afraid.

This was not something that happened in real life. Not here, in the woods so close to home. Not to the boy or anyone he had ever talked to. And as he thought he realized that it was in fact the ‘not’ that made him the most frightened. So many ‘nots’ crowded his mind that little else had room to wiggle in. Not a rock, not a dog, not a cat, not little, not good. And then something did manage to get through, and he did not like it at all. If it’s not all of those things, then what is left?

           Carefully, the boy pulled his hand off of the thing. He didn’t want to see it shaking as he moved. He didn’t want it to move at all, but especially when he was looking as he stood slowly up. He started cautiously stepping back, crunching slightly on leaves and twigs and wincing with every sound. The thing didn’t move. And if it wanted to be a rock, the boy thought, let it be a rock. Another step and he knew he was getting closer to the edge; he would slide down on his butt and be halfway to China before anything else could happen. Except…

           Except it wasn’t a rock. That was a problem for the boy. As scared as he was, as certain that the world had suddenly become strange and dangerous, it wasn’t a rock. The boy stood still for a long time, looking at the thing in the bushes. He saw the way the ground was pushed up around it, like a rock thrown into mud. He saw that it didn’t react, as he reached down and grabbed a long stick.

The boy told himself he was brave, fearless, tough, and powerful. And when that didn’t work he told it to himself again. But they were just words, and the fear was real. Too real to be chased away by letters and sounds. So, the boy admitted, I’m not those things. But, I still need to know.

The boy took a trembling step forward. The rock didn’t move. He took another step, ready to run away, but the rock didn’t move. One more step and he would be close enough. A branch cracked beneath his feet and the rock wobbled. The boy was very still. But the rock didn’t move. So, the boy did what he had too. His heart was racing and mind buzzing with a thousand screaming thoughts, but he did it anyways. He poked the rock that wasn’t a rock. He poked it with a stick. And this time, it moved.

It blew up. Not like an explosion but like a balloon. As soon as the stick touched it, it burst into a giant boulder colored blob. The ferns and bushes around it swished and snapped out of the way, the ones that didn’t were reaching out from beneath it in surprise. Huge and round, the thing loomed over the boy far more than he would have liked. Still not a car, the boy thought in spite of his fear, but a big round tent.

The boy didn’t run. Even he wouldn’t say it was courage that made him stand there and stare. It wasn’t fear, either, he would be quick to add. But right now, in this moment, it was shock. It was more than he could process, this rock that wasn’t a rock that blew up like puffer fish. It was all the boy could do to stand there and gawk. At least, until he saw its face.

Two huge eyes had appeared. They weren’t up high, but halfway down the huge furry thing. The eyes were big, bigger than a baseball, bigger than a grapefruit, bigger than any other eyes he had ever seen. And they were looking straight at him. Huge and dark, with pupils like a cat’s that bled into stony blue-green around them like tie dye. Fingernail sized flecks of fools gold were scattered amidst the blue, glinting like sparks in the shadows of the forest. Stumpy little legs were smooshed underneath it, stretched as tall as they would go and looking like they were at risk of sinking into the thing’s now very poofy stomach. If it weren’t for those ridiculous legs the boy would have screamed when he saw its mouth.

           Wide, is the word that comes to mind first. It was wide. Nearly as wide as the boy was tall. The line of its mouth traced across the front of it from end to end. Because it was standing tall, its mouth was tilted up, giving it something of a huge grumpy frown. Teeth jutted out from the mouth. Not that it was open. The boy immediately thought of crocodiles, with their teeth sliding outside their mouth instead of in it. But the thing’s teeth weren’t close together. They sprouted out every couple of inches or so in a line along the mouth, alternating between up and down. They were as big as the boy’s longest finger, maybe longer. An animal then? It stared at him, and his mind went blank, nothing came to his rescue in there, so all he could do was stand there and be stared at. And he did. Until it roared.

           It’s puffed out glare bobbed as it tried to stand taller and failed. Its stubby little feet shifted a little, so that one eye could glare harder than the other. But the boy stood still. Suddenly it’s front ballooned, sending its huge fluffy chest jutting out below its mouth, and it roared. Or at least, that’s the best word for it the boy could come up with. It didn’t open its mouth but rumbled deep and loud. It sounded like wheels on a bad road, with an undercurrent of thrumming rubberbands. The boy felt the rumble in his chest and remembered to be afraid. A fuzzy rock was one thing, a fuzzy rock that roared and had a mouth big enough to swallow him whole was a different matter entirely. Not a rock, not an animal, but a beast.

Something rustled in the trees above with a burst of chattering from squirrels and the wail of a crow, and something cracked. The snap was loud, and the falling crash of the branch sounded like something rushing down the tree at him. It happened so suddenly he didn’t even get to think about running. So the boy dropped down, made himself small, covered his head with his hands and waited for disaster.

           The branch hit the ground in a muffled slush of leaves and dirt. When the boy realized he had not been eaten, he still stayed small and quiet. It would be his luck, he thought, if he moved and only then got eaten. But moments stretched on, and the woods were silent, except for Fred and his desperate eternal struggle up. At last, the boy peeked. A large new stick complete with fresh brown crunchy leaves sat behind him. And that was all. Relief pushed him to stand up and huff ‘phwew’. But he ran cold as he remembered the thing behind him. Slowly, he turned. It was gone.

           Well, not quiet. It took a moment for the boy to see it. It had been big when he found it, huge when it had puffed up, and now it was all but flat. It looked a bit like an enormous pancake. Its body had squeezed all the way down, its sides rolling over and between the little bushes and rocks. Its eyes were shut and as the boy watched, its chest popped out like a tiny bubble, and it squeaked. The sound was so completely different from the rumbling roar from before that the boy laughed. Which led the thing to tremble even flatter.

           “No, I’m sorry,” said the boy, feeling ashamed as he looked down on its now sadly frowning face. The thing’s eyes closed as he walked towards it and he stopped. It squeaked again. “It’s ok,” the boy said softly. “It’s ok, it scared me too.” The boy crouched down where he was, and held out his hand like he had done a thousand times to new cats or dogs. He held it there and waited, smiling and patient. One of the eyes blooped open. First, huge and black, then, slowly, it narrowed and filled in with that stony blue-green and gold. It eyed the boys hand, and wiggled a little. It inched towards it. Just a hair at first. And then a little more. Then it waddled, which is the only word for it, closer. It hesitated, its eyes darting from the outstretched hand to the boy’s face and back, before it bumped its huge furry head into his hand and stood back on its stumpy legs and waited.

“See, its ok. I’m not going to hurt you,” the boy said softly. “I would very much appreciate it if you returned the favor.” It was puffing back up, not like before, but more so than when it was a pancake. The boy reached out slowly, and it didn’t flinch. His fingers grazed its fur and the beast stood still, watching, waiting. The boy gently scratched the beast’s head. It squeaked, but didn’t deflate. So the boy scratched it again. and after a moment, its stomach puffed and it started to purr, a shallow closed mouth rumbling broken only when the boy pulled his hand away and stood back up.

           A pile of leaves shuffled loudly and the boy and the beast turned towards the sound. But it was only Fred, sliding into his growing nest of leaves and twigs. The beast blinked at the huge beetle before waddling around, awkward and proud like a bulldog, until it could stare straight at it. “That’s just Fred,” the boy said, laughing in relief.

A great wad of bubble gum the size of the boy’s lunchbox at home shot through the air, gooped around the huge beetle and drug it back to its source. The boy stood horrified, as the beast turned and looked at him. Its wide mouth crunching happily at the last of Fred, grinning like a large furry Venus Flytrap.

“No,” the boy shouted, throwing his arms in the air. The beast half deflated and looked up at the boy with huge eyes, occasionally sneaking a haphazard crunch between the passing seconds. The boy looked down at its half-puddled form and said as sternly as he could, “you ate Fred, that is not ok. We do not eat things with names.” The beast sat in its puddle and looked up at the boy with its huge sad eyes. It was slurping up the last leg of the beetle as slowly as it could, as though it hoped the boy wouldn’t notice. “No,” the boy shouted, pretending his voice hadn’t faltered. “No, I’m so mad I can’t even look at you,” and he turned away and crossed his arms and glared into the woods. He glared and glared until he realized he couldn’t see the road beyond the trees, mostly because there were just more trees behind the trees. The boy’s anger left him like the drink from a spilled cup. He was lost, and alone.

The beast nudged the boy’s leg with its great furry head and squeaked behind him. The boy turned, and the beast went a little flat. Its huge blue-green eyes looked up at him and it squeaked again. And what was the boy to do? After all, it wasn’t the beast’s fault that it was hungry, and how could it have known that it shouldn’t eat named things? It simply didn’t know the rules. The boy reached down and scratched the beast’s head, and it purred and puffed out in delight. In the distance, he heard his parents yelling his name. They sounded scared, or angry, or both. And the boy thought to himself that parents worry too much and braced himself for the lectures to come.

“Sorry, I have to go now,” he said to the beast and started to walk away. Behind him, the beast squeaked. He turned and saw it puddle again, shivering as its eyes darted around the woods. It looked straight at him and squeaked. “Do you want to come with me,” the boy asked, surprised and suddenly hopeful. The boy nodded his head towards his parent’s distant voices and the beast waddled toward him. The boy sat down on the edge of the hill and slid all the way to the bottom. He stood up and looked back, and the beast spread its stumpy legs and slid down after. The boy couldn’t help but laugh, but the beast didn’t mind. The boy knew his parents’ thoughts on pets, and when he’d said he wanted a dog like his cousin’s they had shook their heads and said no. They had said no, the boy thought and smiled, to dogs and cats. But they had said he could have a pet rock, and then they had laughed.

The boy’s smile was as wide as the beast’s as he headed towards the shouting voices. “Come on then,” the boy called, and felt a strange joy at the sound of the beast’s waddling hurry behind him. “I think I’ll call you Rocky,” the boy said. Because he seemed like a Rocky.