"Il faut tendre le jardin."
Voltaire, Candide.
I walk out to the garden in the morning, do my usual weeding. The tomatoes are
coming along quite nicely; I had to start them indoors, but the climate's warmed enough
that I got them out fairly early.
The carrots are really taking off this year; they look a little on the strange side, but what
else can you expect? There were some blue ones last year that were quite good.
And they draw the rabbits, of course. And the deer.
I took a deer down the other night; a juvenile, but still a deer.
Nothing but my teeth and my claws and I took down a deer.
It scares me, what I can do now.
Back when I used to be human I was a vegetarian. Now raw rabbit is my idea of a
delicacy.
You know the worst part is I'm not even sure what I am?
There's a guide to mammals in the house and I've pretty much narrowed it down between
mink and weasel, but beyond that...no clue.
I smell terrible, I can tell you that. Everything in the house stinks like musk.
I was ready for the end when my hair started falling out. I started hoping that I'd be able
to live long enough to bury Alanis and Jackie. We threw up and cried, and got weaker
and weaker as the days passed...and then we lost Jackie.
Alanis died a week later. I lost the last of my fingernails burying her.
I crawled into bed and got ready to die. But I didn't. I changed instead.
Slowly my hair started growing back. But it wasn't hair any more. It was fur, and it was
everywhere...my fingernails came back as claws. By the time my teeth started falling out
I knew what to expect.
Didn't stop me from feeling like Jeff Goldblum in "The Fly." Or maybe Gregor
Samsa...and I sensed deeper changes, things in my chemistry, my hormones, the skin
toughening under the fur...and then the cravings started, for meat, for blood...
Before we went on the camping trip I could have told you who I was. Helen Anderson.
Mother of two, recently divorced and trying to get her life back together...now I can't
even tell you what species I am. And I'm not the only one. Not by a long shot. When I
finally got the courage to try driving into what's left of Northampton, I realized that we
were all in it together...only a few humans left now. Mostly it's mutants, and most of
them used to be animals. Not like me. They have trouble speaking; language wasn't
within their grasp five years ago. Now every two weeks I go into town and teach an
English course. They get me gas for the van in return. Don't know where they get the
gas from; I try not to think about it.
There are a lot of things I try not to think about these days.
His name's Michaelangelo.
I found his journal in the old writing desk upstairs.
It was a year before I was brave enough to open it.
I felt like enough of a trespasser just walking through their house, poking through the
rooms, taking the woman's clothes so I'd have something to wear, to cover the extra
breasts I didn't want to acknowledge...
After the girls died, and I just wandered the house, lost, I started going through their
things. And I started finding his work, fragments and poems and stories, piecing their
lives together, and finally I found the journal.
I can almost hear his voice in my head sometimes, it's so clear.
The others are shadows, distant voices. Some of the others did some writing, the
scientist-- Don, that was his name-- and Leonardo wrote quite a bit...but it's
Michaelangelo's voice that is the strongest. It's hard to turn the pages with my claws, but
I manage.
I finished the journal the other night...four years of his life...the last entry said he was
going to Chicago. To find Sara.
She was in the journal for almost two years, and once in a while I'll find a love poem,
silly ones, romantic ones, sometimes close to erotic, sometimes so tender your heart
aches just reading the words.
I hope he found her, alive and whole.
I hope they're both out there now, in whatever's left of the Windy City. I hoped Sara
loves Mike just as much as he loves her.
But tenderness and love don't seem to count
for much these days.
--end prologue--
On to Chapter One