The Captive (30 page)

Mina nodded and said, "The Big Pussy Cat gave the man a terrible bite, and then the lights went on." She paused, trying to remember.

"Did you see Barry anywhere?" Renee prompted.

"He was over beside you, killing Mr. Lowden," she said, looking at Barry wonderingly. "How did you do that?"

"I couldn't have," Barry said, his eyes looking from wife to daughter and back again. "It couldn't be."

"It was," Renee said. "I saw you both. The beast was over by Mina, at least twenty or thirty feet away, and you were right beside me."

"That's right," Barry said. "I remember hitting Lowden, but it was at the same time ..." His face looked down into Renee's, an incredulous expression growing as he began to believe it. "Separate," he said slowly. "We were separate."

Later, when Mina was asleep and they had renewed their love in spite of supernatural creatures or hell itself, Barry said, "If I'd told you this long ago, we might have begun working on it together."

"That's what wives are for, among other things," Renee said. She sounded sleepy, but there was something else she wanted to say. Barry could feel her wanting to say it and waited.

"Besides," she said and yawned a long yawn, "you've got to be a real human because I think I'm about to miss my third period in a row, and that's going to make you a daddy."

***

The house is quiet again. I shift and lie beside the woman for a moment, sensing her fully. The glow of life vibrations envelops me, the honey scent of her body after making love. It is a full life to be human, I realize, thinking of these three people whose lives I share. I slip from the bed and hobble outside where I can think in the cool air. At the edge of the Rio Grande I lie down on the sand and consider what these people have discovered, the inexplicable shifting out of my Person into a separate space. The woman is right. I remember.

I know also that my love for Mina has in some way obliterated the need to compel other creatures to my will. It is not that I might not do this thing, but that I no longer want to. She has filled some space I did not know was empty. But what of Barry? And what of this human situation, the woman's pregnancy? I feel a great compassion now for these people who are indeed my family, for I wish to help them if I can. That is the change I feel. There must be a fourth lesson that I could not learn until I reached it: love gives meaning.

As I hobble back to the house under the cottonwoods, I feel a quickening of my heart even before my spatial sense picks out her presence. Mina waits for me by the swing in the darkness. She is like my own cub, I think, hurrying into the dark yard to greet her.

"I don't want to ride tonight," she says, pulling at my neck to make me lie beside her. I feel her breath in my ear, her little arm around my neck in the fur. She nuzzles me for a time.

"I bet I'm the only girl in the whole world with a man daddy and a Big Pussy Cat daddy," she says at last.

We borh love you, Mina
, I say to her, half-knowing what she will ask of me now.

"And I clon't want you to go away," she says, caressing my ears. "But Mommy and Barry are my really true family, especially now that I'm going to have a brother or sister."

You want me to be part of your family?
(I feel a sinking sensation inside as I realize what I am about to do for the sake of this little child.)

"Couldn't you let Barry be my only daddy now?" she says, sitting back and trying to look into my eyes. I feel her mind probing my own. She has great undeveloped power in her mind. "And then you could be real at the same time and run and hunt and play whenever you wanted to."

Your daddy and I cannot be separated.
(Was it an illusion?)
I don't know how it can be done, Mina. But I love you, Mina, and will help you and Barry and Renee to be a real family.

She understands what I mean, for her mind is almost one with my own. She sighs, and I feel her body relax against my side. After a time I sense she is going to sleep and I rise, pick her up in my arms and carry her in to her own bed. She rolls over and sleeps soundly without a word.

Outside again in the cooling dust of the ditch bank I lie like a tired housecat and watch the late moon rise. It is on the wane, and I feel no particular fascination with its mottled face as I usually do. I have agreed to subdue myself for the sake of my family. With that thought I feel somewhere the soft closing of a portal. Something is slipping away from me, perhaps the wildness; perhaps this is what it means to grow up, to take on responsibility for loved ones. This is my family. I have saved them from death. As the resolve makes itself in my mind, I recall Aunt Cat who thought I was a demon, and Charles who called me The Beast. But I have only wanted to learn human love, to learn what they seem to do withont effort. It seems to me now that I have made that transition, taken the step from heedless beast to awareness and compassion. Yes, I will do this thing, for love.

I rise and hobble into the house where my family sleeps.

THE ORPHAN OF ANOTHER TIME  AND SPACE HAS COME TO LIVE  WITHIN US.

THE BEAST...

Listen - you'll hear him chasing the  frightened night creatures; breathe - you'll smell the musk of his scent. You know what he is not... but not what he is. A golden bear. A great cat. A more-than-human being who can bend your will to his.

ASSUMES HUMAN FORM...

He becomes a man who knows not what he is, but still he fights for an identity - while the Beast within uses him, drives him in a search that may kill them both.

AND BECOMES A CAPTIVE!

But the Man-Beast has broken the rule of Solitude... and now he will become a prisoner of a force even greater than his own - a force all too human for bestial understanding.

The Second Book of the Beast