Enough part 2
Back to part 1
I still couldn’t bring myself to commit suicide.
That sounds harsh, doesn’t it? But I was being used as a tool, and I couldn’t see anything else to do. Of course, if I died, they’d just find someone else-but there was the chance that something would go wrong, or right, and it would fall through: it increased the odds of it, if nothing else. Maybe the Autobots would finally make an appearance, after they found out about this new plan, for whatever reason-
But I couldn’t convince myself that my death a few days or weeks earlier would make a difference. I couldn’t kill myself.
Instead, I threw myself into day-to-day life, trying to cling to the joy and the new sense of belief I’d made. I did a lot of bird watching, venturing a little further into the woods when I wasn’t reprimanded for wandering-although I never dared to go far. He wouldn’t kill me, yet, but I knew he was capable of hurting me…
He never did, but the threat was always there. There was nothing I could do to stop him: an unarmed human female, weak even by our standards? I was less than defenseless.
I investigated the shrubby plants growing in the woods even though botany has never been my primary love, taking some back to the cabin for rough dissection with a paring knife, the names of the parts-sepal, stamen, pistil, anther-and the names of their variations slowly coming back to me. I spent all of my days outside, avoiding the cabin. If the nights had been just a few degrees warmer, I would have slept outside, too. I started bathing in the stream-freezing cold but faster and easier than heating water-whenever I felt too foul to stand living with myself. Washing clothes was much easier with three sets. I saw a bear once, and deer several times, and each incident felt like a gift. Once I saw a lizard. I learned to ignore the bug bites, and not scratch-calamine lotion helped. So did the bug spray.
I wasn’t asked any more questions. Several times, the Decepticon disappeared-the longest time was for over a full day, maybe a day and a half. Those times were best.
I stopped filling in my life list once I realized how close the end I was. I still marked the date and place (Some Cabin in the Woods, day two or five or ten of my ‘stay’) next to the entries in my bird guide, though. And I cried at night, for my family and my friends and my dog, and because of what I was going to be used for.
I wondered what death would be like.
It was the most-intense period of my life. Emotions were stronger, both positive and negative. I threw myself into every experience, felt it with every inch of my body, because I knew that it might be the last time I would feel anything at all.
My grandfather had had Alzheimer’s. He’d been… Gone, by the end. Before the end. I’d always wanted to die with grace: those had been my mother’s words. “I want to die with grace; I don’t want it-I don’t want my last days to be like that. Your grandfather was a great man, and he deserved a better death. A little respect-”
It lasted for a week and a half. Then the Decepticon started talking to me-at me-again. Interrogating me.
This time, I noticed things were a little different. I assumed he’d started refining my biography-obituary.
And then he asked me about the birds.
“I like to bird-watch,” I said. “A while ago-a year, now-I started a life list. I’d hoped to at least get all the common birds in the region.” I didn’t say I won’t now, because it was obvious. “They-oh, they’re interesting. It’s a challenge, it’s something to do, it’s-It’s nice to see all the different species, even the little drab brown ones.” LBBs-Little Brown Birds-have always been some of my favorites, even if they’re hell to tell apart; I’ve always felt a certain kinship. Not everybody can be an eagle, or even a minor hawk, or at least a crow. Crows at least are easily recognizable, and there’s something sleek about their coloring. Nobody thinks that of sparrows, or wrens. “I had my list and my birding guide with me when I was-”
Abruptly, I changed subjects. I’d been heading onto unstable ground. “-I’ve never seen a pileated woodpecker before. Or a barn owl. And lots of little finches-Even though I had a feeder up. It was the city, though. I got starlings.” I bit down an utterly inappropriate laugh. Who didn’t get starlings? Even I had trouble appreciating them, especially before I’d fallen in love with the world again. The best you could say about them was that they had character.
He was silent a moment longer. I sat where I was, obediently. I always waited until he dismissed me. It was-safer.
“What birds have you seen?”
The question surprised me-I flinched a little, not because I was suddenly afraid (if anything, a question about birdwatching was a relief) but because it was unexpected. It was harder to deal with something if you didn’t know it was coming before it happened. If I’d had a hint that it wasn’t my car, before it had-transformed…
“A lot,” I said, softly and carefully this time. “I go out hiking pretty regularly. And there’s-I’ve seen a lot this past week. I’m glad I have my guide. I wish… I wish I’d had one for wildflowers or plants with me.” Like I said, they’d never interested me much outside of the ordinary before now, but I was learning to appreciate them.
“Show me,” he said, and something about his tone made me look up: it sounded like a request, not a demand or an order. That had never happened before.
I didn’t want to risk it, though. How did I know that I was interpreting giant alien robot tonal subtleties correctly? “I don’t have my guide,” I said, tone as blank as I could make it, and waited.
Even back then, I thought that he honestly didn’t realize what I was waiting for. That certainty’s only grown with time and distance. For the first time, my reaction, my reacting as what I was-a hostage-wasn’t expected.
He looked somehow-surprised, maybe even regretful, when he realized what it was. “Go,” he said, tone fierce and dark once more, when he realized I was waiting for permission.
I went.
He was as impassive as he’d ever been, since the day we’d ‘met,’ when I returned, my guides in hand. I had two: my old Audubon guide, marked and stained and beat-up with years of use, and a much newer copy of the Sibley field guide. Nervelessly, trying not to think, I opened the more familiar Audubon guide to a random page-dabbling ducks. Not something you find in the middle of the woods. I flipped again: woodpeckers. I had just seen a red-shafted flicker, and been disappointed I hadn’t been able to find a shed feather-
It’s easier to talk when you don’t think about what or who or why you’re talking. You just focus on the words, and whatever’s in front of you-the page, the lectern, the audience, your feet, some patch of empty air-and try not to think. Otherwise, you start to get panicky. Sometimes it’s better to just talk, and know that whatever happens, it’s out of your hands, now.
He’d started asking me questions almost regularly. I didn’t know how to react to that.
I didn’t have answers to some, or I only had partial answers, and that always made me edgy and nervous, almost panicky.
Now, I’ve realized that he didn’t like it when that happened.
I was always somewhat afraid, around him. And I was always afraid that that day would end up being the day it all ended-the day that I would die. It was… A lot of pressure. I tried not to think about it-not so much denial (well, it was, I suppose, but not in the ordinary sense) as a wish to live the rest of the time I had as happily as possible. There was nothing about it I could change, and so I didn’t want to dwell on it. There was a lot of that, during those weeks.
One day, I found a frog.
He was a cute little fellow, and I brought him home in a cleaned-out bottle (I think it was a peanut butter jar) to watch some more. We’d been working with frogs before I left-not this type, of course, although I didn’t know enough about local frogs to give a positive species identification-and they’d been nice to work with. I’ve always liked frogs, although my mother tells me that I tried to eat one once, when I was much younger. Raw, out of the garden-which works for vegetables, but not much else.
It was nice to just sit in the sunshine and observe him. (He was in the shade, of course, because glass bottles-even ones without lids-and live animals in full sun is always a bad idea.) Frogs are very interesting: they just have four toes on their back legs, you know, but they have five each on the front ones. You can find their ears, if you know what you’re looking for, and they have very expressive eyes.
I was trying to get him to eat by dangling a stick with a spider hanging from the end on a piece of silk, but neither the frog nor the spider was cooperating. Did you know that frogs have to blink when they swallow?
It took me a long time to realize that the Decepticon-I still didn’t know his name-was leaning over my shoulder, watching me-and the frog, I suppose. I don’t know how long he’d been there before I noticed-I screamed once I did. That was almost unusual, now. I-I hadn’t gotten used to his presence, but I was-I suppose resigned, in a way, or accepting. The edge had been blunted off my fear. Your body can only hold on to adrenaline and panic so long, you know.
“What is it?” he said, and his voice-it still made me shiver. It was inhuman, and so low that you could almost feel it in your bones, vibrating.
“A frog,” I said. It was. “An amphibian.” I paused there-he’d had me talk about the five kingdoms already. I didn’t know why he hadn’t just looked it up online. It would have been easier, I guessed, and definitely more accurate and more thorough. Well, assuming he found a good reference site.
He kneeled, stooping so he could look more closely at the animal, but I’d stopped watching it-or her: I’d decided it was a girl frog, and privately named her Louise-in favor of watching him. I didn’t like being this close to him. I didn’t like being near him at all. I knew that knowing what he was doing, regardless of what it was, would have absolutely no bearing on what he did or didn’t do to me, but instinct made it hard to look away. I didn’t bother trying to. So what if it was a useless gesture? At least I’d have some warning.
After a while I looked partly away, although I kept him in the corner of my eye, to release the spider-still dangling from a piece of silk-onto the trunk of a tree, then dropped the stick. When I looked back, he was staring directly at me.
Subconsciously, I cowered, tucking myself in to look small, insignificant-not that that was hard. It was easy by virtue of my species.
He stood fully, towering above me, face inscrutable.
He left.
I’ve never figured out what happened there. But I think it was something.
I brought the frog back to the section of stream I’d found it in and released it. I wondered what it would do in the winter. Some species-I didn’t know how many-burrowed into the mud and slept, or hibernated. The little guy-gal-I’d just released couldn’t freeze solid. She couldn’t and survive, anyways.
I’d never liked the winter, but I’d probably be dead by then anyways.
I went to bed early that night.
If anybody had seen me then-
I was a filthy mess. It’s hard to live but to modern twentieth-or twenty-first, I suppose-century standards of hygiene without indoor plumbing, let alone hot water. I tried to make due.
But nobody did see me. There was nobody else out there. Just me, and the Decepticon. I wondered who the cabin had belonged to. Maybe it had just been abandoned, or it belonged to some couple happily living in suburbia, inherited from a crazy hermit uncle. Maybe they’d come out here one year, and find-who knew what.
Maybe they-the Decepticons, the Decepticon who’d captured me or another-had killed whoever it was.
I didn’t ask questions, but I had them. I have a sharp mind. I still remembered what he-the Decepticon-had said to me: “I want to kill you all, after what one of you squishy little things did to Megatron, our glorious leader, and the Allspark.”
Who was Megatron? (The name made me want to laugh, but I was too afraid of what he might be-the leader of the Decepticons?-to take it, and him, so lightly.) And the Allspark? What had a human done to them? What could a human do to them?
Maybe I’d find out in the eventual ‘broadcast’ I would feature in. Maybe I’d just die without knowing. That seemed pathetic: to have my life turned into a cog in some alien’s machine-cold plan and not even know why.
I hadn’t heard anything about either of them past the first few days. Well, until the second-to-last week of my stay in the cabin.
I’d been outside, feeding a camp robber-also called a gray jay, cousin to the Steller’s jay and blue jay and the most shameless bird to exist-bits of stale cracker when he approached. I tossed the last of what I had in my hands to the bird, hoping it would fly off-it didn’t, of course, camp robbers learned a long time ago that if they wait long enough, they can usually steal something on top of what they’re freely given-although it did back off a little, retreating to a small sapling nearby.
I looked down, meek, as he came up, then slowly sat down, facing me, as impassive and unreadable as the clouds, or stone. I waited, then. I always waited: it was safer. And I didn’t know his name, didn’t even know if this type of alien came with names at all. I didn’t want to say ‘hello’ to him, but I could have greeted him with his name, if I’d known it back then. A recognition. It felt-not disrespectful, but strange not to. But I didn’t want to risk anything.
I really didn’t want to die.
At last, he spoke. “When our plan has been fully realized, a short… documentary about your life will be played on all television and radio stations, on all frequencies, across the world. It will also be posted online. There will be a short explanation that will clearly show the Autobots will be to blame if you die. Megatron’s death and the destruction of the Allspark will not be included in this explanation.”
He stopped, almost as if waiting for me to respond. He did that, sometimes, and sometimes I was tempted to ask for clarifications, or just to ask a question at all. I never did, and I didn’t know what he meant by those pauses.
This time, his voice was almost frustrated when he finally replied, and that was enough to make me stiffen, make my heart race.
“…Megatron was once leader of the Decepticon cause. He was noble and a proud fighter, the Decepticon we all strive to emulate. His death was an… Unfortunate mistake. Humanity will pay for their coincidental murder of him.”
My head whipped up to stare at him, disbelieving. I was being given an explanation: it was incredible. I had given up hope-I had never really expected to be shown such mercy, such respect, at all. That much recognition. I was carbon, to them, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen, and then trace elements and nothing more.
“The Decepticons and Autobots once lived in harmony, but the pathetic Autobots and their foolish leader, the nauseating pacifist Optimus Prime, were weighing down our true glory. We parted ways, and the Great War began: Decepticons against Autobots. Both our causes needed the Allspark.
“The Allspark creates our life.” I was amazed by his tone, then, and I never heard anything like it from him again. It was faith, pure and simple: positive faith, like listening to a true believer talk about a loving God. His voice was still dark and hard and low enough that I felt it resonate through my bones, but it sounded joyful, just then. “Or it did.” And there-it was gone again. “It was lost to space, and presumed irretrievable by both sides. The birth of new Decepticons-and of new Autobots-was stopped. Our sparks, our souls, spring from the Allspark. Without it, we were-barren.
“Megatron found it, but was trapped in this planet’s ice. Your scientists-”
I flinched at the way he pronounced that word. I was a scientist. His voice had been hateful in a way it hadn’t been for weeks-in a way it hadn’t been since the very beginning. He paused at that, I think, but it’s very easy to imagine things, now that it happened so long ago. Well, six years is nothing, but it feels like an eternity. That time when I was a captive was an eternity away from my life a week after it finished: it is separate. It’s like I wasn’t living in reality.
“-some human scientists-” I wondered what that revision meant “Some human scientists found him and took him with them to the dam they’d built over the Allspark. The humans had no idea what they held… They would have defiled it, too, if they’d been able to.
“The great Megatron was first found by a human, an Archibald Witwicky, and he was partially activated: he marked the location of the Allspark on the flesh-creature’s glasses. It was his great-grandson who came into possession of these glasses, which then came to be possessed by the Autobots. A battle took place, and in the end a human-a human-plunged the Allspark into Megatron’s chest, destroying them both-”
I tried to pull back, discreetly, but there was a tree in my way. I felt like a cornered rabbit. I probably looked like one, too. I almost wished I still didn’t know what had happened, but not quite.
The Decepticon grunted angrily, then stomped off. I relaxed by slow, steady increments, the adrenalin slowly fading.
Eventually I noticed the gray jay had flown off. I wished I could, too.
Then I found a bird.
Well, I’d found lots of birds, really, but this one, an undersized raven, had been injured: it was dying, I thought, although I wasn’t an expert. It broke my heart, even knowing that it was natural, and that there was nothing I could do. I’ve always been a softy for downed birds-I still am-but this was so much more intense than what I was used to. It wasn’t normal. I think it was a sympathetic reaction: I was also going to die, even though just one of the two of us-the bird and I-was visibly on the edge of death.
I took it home.
That sounds stupid: I took home the dying bird, even knowing there was nothing I could do for it. Nothing I could do to heal it, at least, but I could at least make it comfortable. I could make sure there was somebody sympathetic there while it died.
-I told you I was being influenced by my own situation. It was a bird. Ravens are smart, yes, but they are smart for birds. And while it was just dazed for most of the way there, it panicked about two thirds of the way back-just for a few minutes, but long enough for me to get several buffets around the head by those powerful wings. My nose started bleeding, and didn’t stop all the way back. I have no doubt I looked horrible, absolutely horrible: I barely bathed and when I did it was in a small creek, I had three sets of clothes, I lacked all modern hygiene items, such as hot water, an indoor bathroom and deodorant, and there were still all those mystery bug bites, some of which were getting infected. And my hair was not done any favors by the lack of conditioner it was facing. And then I was bleeding all over myself, on top of everything else…
I couldn’t pinch my nose to try and stop the flow of blood, because I still had a raven in my hands, although it stopped struggling after just a few minutes, thank God. Forget trying to block the flow with tissues-which I didn’t have-or cloth or something. (I did have cloth, from various things. My sheets wouldn’t have been ruined by a spot or two of blood: they were already so stained I wasn’t sure of the original color. That’s a slight exaggeration-they were light blue-but not too much of one.)
I’d gotten used to the Decepticon’s presence, to a certain extent, or at least I’d gotten used to him ignoring me, so I passed by him without a word-although still from a fair distance away. The edge had been blunted off my fear by virtue of forced contact, but it was still there, still heavy in my mind.
I was unprepared for the sudden sound of transformation-I don’t think I’ll ever forget that noise-behind me as I did so. I froze, hands tightening convulsively around the raven as I did so, out of simple fear. It panicked again, of course, starting to struggle once more, and I fought to hold on, while still remaining largely still-
The raven needed help I couldn’t give it. That wasn’t a surprise. It wasn’t like I could even help myself. I was fighting to give it the little comfort I could, in my own small, scared-spitless way.
“You are-leaking,” the Decepticon said, voice impassive. I flinched.
“Please don’t kill him,” I squeaked. I could sympathize with the bird. I’d figured I’d call him Edgar, because everything needs a name-
“Explain yourself.” I could hear the ‘pathetic human’ innate to that sentence: it was something in the tone.
“Uh-This is Edg-a raven. I found him. I think he’s going to die-I wanted to make him comfortable. At least make it so he’s not starving to death, and dehydrated…” It sounded incredibly stupid, when I said it out loud to a creature who could care less whether or not I lived or died, let alone a non-sentient avian. The Decepticon didn’t reply, and I eventually realized he wanted me to explain more fully. “-I’m bleeding because he got me in the nose with a wing and I get bloody noses easily, I used to get them at least once a week when I was kid, it’s nothing, it’s just something that happens-you bleed and then it stops, it doesn’t even hurt, really, the worst part is feeling the blood going down the back of your throat, which is nothing, really-”
I forced myself to shut up. I looked at the raven instead, preoccupied. It was panting, and it had what looked like little dark hairs around the base of its beak. It eyed me suspiciously back, but I’m not sure that ravens are capable of looking anything other than suspicious-mysteriously superior, maybe. And hungry.
I’ve always liked ravens, liked the shape of them and the deep beats of their wings, but I’ve loved them more, loved them fiercely, since that day. I suppose I fell in love with that bird, God-awfully stupid and inconvenient and wretched though he was-and oh, I’m sure this all sounds terribly deviant, but it’s nothing like that. It was the feel of his life in my hands, cupped between them, so very much like I was by the Decepticon, only less figuratively. And I could comfort him. I could be-benevolent, loving even. I could care for him, for both meanings of the word. I would be seeing him to death, like my nursemaid was to me, but for him, for Edgar, it was unchangeable, and for me it was because-
I suppose I’m getting all confused and mixed-up. I said I wasn’t good with words, didn’t I? I’m not. I used to want to be, but I’ve learned to just accept it. Anyways, the point is that I loved that bird, because we were so alike, even while our situations were total opposites-
“You are positive?”
I thought, dully, that it was odd how the Decepticon could sound almost worried about me. It would probably be an inconvenience to him to find a new subject for their plan at this point, but it couldn’t be anything more. He’d certainly had no trouble getting me, and keeping me. He’d have to redo the documentary.
It would be my epitaph. That felt-inappropriate, revealing. I didn’t want to die just for my life to be used to extort, to bring about the destruction of humanity.
I was just some puppet.
“Yes,” I said obediently. “I’m sure. It’s just a bloody nose. It’ll stop. I’d pinch it, but-” Of course he could tell that. Of course I couldn’t pinch it, because I had the bird in my hands. I wondered whether there were Decepticons-or Autobots?-who would help a dying bird, or help anyone at all. I suppose they had to help each other…
It would be hard for them, with their hands. It would be like a human trying to help an ant.
He found me again later that day, after I’d gone outside and sat in the shade, coaxing water down the bird and tempting him with bits of food. I wasn’t sure what he’d eat-I had the vague idea ravens were more carnivorous than their omnivorous cousins the crows but still not too picky-and I wished I had had eggs, so I could hard boil them and try little balls of the yolk. It’s good protein, and everything a bird needs. Clearly.
The Decepticon stared inscrutably at the bird. I tried not to flinch.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I squeaked my reply. “Trying to get him to eat, that is, uhm-”
“Give it to me.”
I flinched, I’m pretty sure. Regardless, I ended up squeezing the bird, or startling him somehow: it was enough that he pecked me-and have you seen the beak on a raven?
“Please don’t kill him,” I pleaded, eyes welling up with tears: it was a combination of pain and irrational emotional connections to a sickly, dying, ungrateful mop of feathers.
“Give it to me,” the Decepticon demanded again, and my breath caught in my throat-his tone had changed, the threat no longer a simple undertone to the words. I didn’t dare disobey. I handed the bird over, lifting it up in my outstretched hands.
It was an undersized thing, and even a regular raven, a healthy adult-and ravens are not small birds-would have been dwarfed in the Decepticon’s hands. Edgar (the name I’d chosen, had stuck; he was named after Edgar Allen Poe-obvious, I know, but there is a reason why I’m a biologist, not an English major) was tiny, miniscule. My captor’s hands were surprisingly deft, but they were still far out of scale. It made me wince, to see the raven in such obvious danger.
Ridiculous, I know. I think being under severe emotional distress gives me at least part of an excuse, though.
“It is dying,” the Decepticon said flatly.
“I know.” I wondered if he’d meant to say ‘it’s going to die’-I could see no reason for him to take the thing, except to kill it, for whatever reason he had. Because he hated earth and everything else on it.
He just sat there, looking at the wretched creature awkwardly perched on his hand. I wanted to yell at him: Just do it! You don’t need to torture me like this- Stop drawing it out! Oh, I hated him just then, with a passion. It was a far cry from the quiet, resigned hate that had become usual and familiar to me, something that verged on both disgust and sorrow while being neither. No, this was pure and strong, the sort of thing that presses against your skin and seeps into your eyes and mouth, uncontrollable and savage.
Edgar tried to escape as the mech brought a fingertip up to touch him, scrambling for the far edge of the palm he was being held in. His wings beat frantically at the air-one of them had broken a while ago, and healed wrong. Edgar wasn’t going to fly again.
He fluttered to the ground. I closed my eyes and waited for the sounds of his death.
“Are you going to… Continue your pointless efforts?”
My eyes popped open and I snapped around to look at the Decepticon. The bird, still alive, was sitting on the ground, as calm as you please.
“Am… Am I allowed to?”
“Yes,” he said, voice cool and remote, disinterested and unattached. I still wonder if he was faking it…
“Then yes.” I didn’t move.
The Decepticon made a noise, not a human one. It sounded frustrated and I huddled in on myself, afraid.
“You may tend to it now.”
I waited thirty seconds, to see if the Transformer was planning on leaving. I hoped so. I wanted nothing more, just that second, because I’d stopped planning for, thinking off, allowing me to have any hope for the future at all.
Then, unable to put it off any longer, I scrambled to my feet and stumbled over to Edgar, acutely-almost painfully so-aware of who was watching me.
It took some coaxing, but I calmed the bird down: he was strangely comfortable with me, I guess because he was almost dead already. Maybe he’d been someone’s pet, once upon a time.
The featherball firmly in hand, I walked slowly back to the tree I’d been sitting against. It was far closer than I wanted to be to the Decepticon, but it was also where I had the bits of food I’d been feeding the bird.
He refused beef jerky soaked in water twice; it wasn’t a surprise. I didn’t have any raw meat, which I also didn’t know if he’d eat, and I drew the line at trying to find carrion. Crackers were similarly refused. He pecked at a bit of cheese, but nothing more.
I trickled more water down his throat, slowly starting to relax. I wondered if maybe some kind of bug or worm would work-and they were a kind of protein, right?
I tried cracker again. This time, it worked-Edgar snapped hungrily at small pieces I tossed to him, wary of that murderous beak, after he dubiously accepted the first morsel. I was very careful; I’d already been given an idea of what sort of damage a raven could inflict.
“May I-try?”
I jerked with surprise when my captor spoke, and then stared up at him with dumb shock as his words began to resister. He’d asked me for permission to do something. He had asked me for permission. It was-mind-boggling.
And what he had asked me to do. That was almost even more incredible: it could almost seem like he was taking an interesting in the carbon-based life he so detested. But I knew better, of course. I couldn’t guess his motives (he was a dangerous, unpredictable, impossible-to-understand enigma, to me) but I knew it couldn’t be that.
“Yes,” I said, unnecessarily. What else was I going to say? No?
He waited until I held up one shaking hand, picking up a bit of cracker with some little tool that came out of the tip of one finger. He was surprisingly delicate, but I still had to force myself to hold still. I was trembling with fear.
He tossed a few pieces to the raven, who took them, indiscriminate. He nodded, sharply, to me when he finished, then stood and strode away, returning to the other side of the house and the driveway before transforming.
I quickly gathered up everything I’d brought outside, and then retreated to the hut for the rest of the day. It was something I never did.
Edgar died, of course.
I think the Decepticon watched me while I buried him, but I’m not sure.
Three days after that, another Decepticon appeared. I had been outside, doing laundry, when he flew in overhead, circling lower and lower until he transformed and fell-although it was almost more like jumping-the rest of the way to the ground. I could feel the vibrations, hear my windows ratting in their panes, and every bird for what looked like a mile rose up into the air, startled, wheeling frantically overhead in huge muddled flocks. I had frozen when I’d realized what had to be happening, and I remained motionless, cowering.
He ignored me. I was grateful for that.
My captor transformed, rising up to meet him, and it was a startling moment, for me. Fear made the Decepticon, the one I was used to, even bigger than he was in reality, and a constant threat. He didn’t even come up to the new Decepticon’s elbows, and he stood deferentially. It was horrifying because, while my captor filled me with terror, it and he were familiar by then. This stranger was unexpected, a complete unknown-
They started talking. I didn’t understand a word of it, so I could only guess, but I couldn’t think of many reasons another Decepticon, after all this time, would suddenly show up to play messenger. The best reason, of course, was that it had finally come time, that I was going to die soon, even sooner than I’d already known. Hours, days, I didn’t know, but why else had the new Decepticon arrived?
The matter was finished quickly. My captor returned to his alt form, not so much as looking at me, as the other flew off again. I couldn’t sleep at all that night.
It turned out that I was right. That that visit had been the order to finally finish through with their plan.
Three days later, we left that cabin for good. I haven’t been back since. I don’t know if it’s still there, but I’d guess not. I don’t see the Decepticons being so sloppy with their loose ends. I imagine everything I left-clothes, the remains of the food I’d bought, the half-finished romance novel I hadn’t been able to stomach my way through-was burnt, to cover our tracks. I don’t know, though.
Either way, the waiting was over. I finally knew, then, that I was facing the end of it all.
On to part 3
I still couldn’t bring myself to commit suicide.
That sounds harsh, doesn’t it? But I was being used as a tool, and I couldn’t see anything else to do. Of course, if I died, they’d just find someone else-but there was the chance that something would go wrong, or right, and it would fall through: it increased the odds of it, if nothing else. Maybe the Autobots would finally make an appearance, after they found out about this new plan, for whatever reason-
But I couldn’t convince myself that my death a few days or weeks earlier would make a difference. I couldn’t kill myself.
Instead, I threw myself into day-to-day life, trying to cling to the joy and the new sense of belief I’d made. I did a lot of bird watching, venturing a little further into the woods when I wasn’t reprimanded for wandering-although I never dared to go far. He wouldn’t kill me, yet, but I knew he was capable of hurting me…
He never did, but the threat was always there. There was nothing I could do to stop him: an unarmed human female, weak even by our standards? I was less than defenseless.
I investigated the shrubby plants growing in the woods even though botany has never been my primary love, taking some back to the cabin for rough dissection with a paring knife, the names of the parts-sepal, stamen, pistil, anther-and the names of their variations slowly coming back to me. I spent all of my days outside, avoiding the cabin. If the nights had been just a few degrees warmer, I would have slept outside, too. I started bathing in the stream-freezing cold but faster and easier than heating water-whenever I felt too foul to stand living with myself. Washing clothes was much easier with three sets. I saw a bear once, and deer several times, and each incident felt like a gift. Once I saw a lizard. I learned to ignore the bug bites, and not scratch-calamine lotion helped. So did the bug spray.
I wasn’t asked any more questions. Several times, the Decepticon disappeared-the longest time was for over a full day, maybe a day and a half. Those times were best.
I stopped filling in my life list once I realized how close the end I was. I still marked the date and place (Some Cabin in the Woods, day two or five or ten of my ‘stay’) next to the entries in my bird guide, though. And I cried at night, for my family and my friends and my dog, and because of what I was going to be used for.
I wondered what death would be like.
It was the most-intense period of my life. Emotions were stronger, both positive and negative. I threw myself into every experience, felt it with every inch of my body, because I knew that it might be the last time I would feel anything at all.
My grandfather had had Alzheimer’s. He’d been… Gone, by the end. Before the end. I’d always wanted to die with grace: those had been my mother’s words. “I want to die with grace; I don’t want it-I don’t want my last days to be like that. Your grandfather was a great man, and he deserved a better death. A little respect-”
It lasted for a week and a half. Then the Decepticon started talking to me-at me-again. Interrogating me.
This time, I noticed things were a little different. I assumed he’d started refining my biography-obituary.
And then he asked me about the birds.
“I like to bird-watch,” I said. “A while ago-a year, now-I started a life list. I’d hoped to at least get all the common birds in the region.” I didn’t say I won’t now, because it was obvious. “They-oh, they’re interesting. It’s a challenge, it’s something to do, it’s-It’s nice to see all the different species, even the little drab brown ones.” LBBs-Little Brown Birds-have always been some of my favorites, even if they’re hell to tell apart; I’ve always felt a certain kinship. Not everybody can be an eagle, or even a minor hawk, or at least a crow. Crows at least are easily recognizable, and there’s something sleek about their coloring. Nobody thinks that of sparrows, or wrens. “I had my list and my birding guide with me when I was-”
Abruptly, I changed subjects. I’d been heading onto unstable ground. “-I’ve never seen a pileated woodpecker before. Or a barn owl. And lots of little finches-Even though I had a feeder up. It was the city, though. I got starlings.” I bit down an utterly inappropriate laugh. Who didn’t get starlings? Even I had trouble appreciating them, especially before I’d fallen in love with the world again. The best you could say about them was that they had character.
He was silent a moment longer. I sat where I was, obediently. I always waited until he dismissed me. It was-safer.
“What birds have you seen?”
The question surprised me-I flinched a little, not because I was suddenly afraid (if anything, a question about birdwatching was a relief) but because it was unexpected. It was harder to deal with something if you didn’t know it was coming before it happened. If I’d had a hint that it wasn’t my car, before it had-transformed…
“A lot,” I said, softly and carefully this time. “I go out hiking pretty regularly. And there’s-I’ve seen a lot this past week. I’m glad I have my guide. I wish… I wish I’d had one for wildflowers or plants with me.” Like I said, they’d never interested me much outside of the ordinary before now, but I was learning to appreciate them.
“Show me,” he said, and something about his tone made me look up: it sounded like a request, not a demand or an order. That had never happened before.
I didn’t want to risk it, though. How did I know that I was interpreting giant alien robot tonal subtleties correctly? “I don’t have my guide,” I said, tone as blank as I could make it, and waited.
Even back then, I thought that he honestly didn’t realize what I was waiting for. That certainty’s only grown with time and distance. For the first time, my reaction, my reacting as what I was-a hostage-wasn’t expected.
He looked somehow-surprised, maybe even regretful, when he realized what it was. “Go,” he said, tone fierce and dark once more, when he realized I was waiting for permission.
I went.
He was as impassive as he’d ever been, since the day we’d ‘met,’ when I returned, my guides in hand. I had two: my old Audubon guide, marked and stained and beat-up with years of use, and a much newer copy of the Sibley field guide. Nervelessly, trying not to think, I opened the more familiar Audubon guide to a random page-dabbling ducks. Not something you find in the middle of the woods. I flipped again: woodpeckers. I had just seen a red-shafted flicker, and been disappointed I hadn’t been able to find a shed feather-
It’s easier to talk when you don’t think about what or who or why you’re talking. You just focus on the words, and whatever’s in front of you-the page, the lectern, the audience, your feet, some patch of empty air-and try not to think. Otherwise, you start to get panicky. Sometimes it’s better to just talk, and know that whatever happens, it’s out of your hands, now.
He’d started asking me questions almost regularly. I didn’t know how to react to that.
I didn’t have answers to some, or I only had partial answers, and that always made me edgy and nervous, almost panicky.
Now, I’ve realized that he didn’t like it when that happened.
I was always somewhat afraid, around him. And I was always afraid that that day would end up being the day it all ended-the day that I would die. It was… A lot of pressure. I tried not to think about it-not so much denial (well, it was, I suppose, but not in the ordinary sense) as a wish to live the rest of the time I had as happily as possible. There was nothing about it I could change, and so I didn’t want to dwell on it. There was a lot of that, during those weeks.
One day, I found a frog.
He was a cute little fellow, and I brought him home in a cleaned-out bottle (I think it was a peanut butter jar) to watch some more. We’d been working with frogs before I left-not this type, of course, although I didn’t know enough about local frogs to give a positive species identification-and they’d been nice to work with. I’ve always liked frogs, although my mother tells me that I tried to eat one once, when I was much younger. Raw, out of the garden-which works for vegetables, but not much else.
It was nice to just sit in the sunshine and observe him. (He was in the shade, of course, because glass bottles-even ones without lids-and live animals in full sun is always a bad idea.) Frogs are very interesting: they just have four toes on their back legs, you know, but they have five each on the front ones. You can find their ears, if you know what you’re looking for, and they have very expressive eyes.
I was trying to get him to eat by dangling a stick with a spider hanging from the end on a piece of silk, but neither the frog nor the spider was cooperating. Did you know that frogs have to blink when they swallow?
It took me a long time to realize that the Decepticon-I still didn’t know his name-was leaning over my shoulder, watching me-and the frog, I suppose. I don’t know how long he’d been there before I noticed-I screamed once I did. That was almost unusual, now. I-I hadn’t gotten used to his presence, but I was-I suppose resigned, in a way, or accepting. The edge had been blunted off my fear. Your body can only hold on to adrenaline and panic so long, you know.
“What is it?” he said, and his voice-it still made me shiver. It was inhuman, and so low that you could almost feel it in your bones, vibrating.
“A frog,” I said. It was. “An amphibian.” I paused there-he’d had me talk about the five kingdoms already. I didn’t know why he hadn’t just looked it up online. It would have been easier, I guessed, and definitely more accurate and more thorough. Well, assuming he found a good reference site.
He kneeled, stooping so he could look more closely at the animal, but I’d stopped watching it-or her: I’d decided it was a girl frog, and privately named her Louise-in favor of watching him. I didn’t like being this close to him. I didn’t like being near him at all. I knew that knowing what he was doing, regardless of what it was, would have absolutely no bearing on what he did or didn’t do to me, but instinct made it hard to look away. I didn’t bother trying to. So what if it was a useless gesture? At least I’d have some warning.
After a while I looked partly away, although I kept him in the corner of my eye, to release the spider-still dangling from a piece of silk-onto the trunk of a tree, then dropped the stick. When I looked back, he was staring directly at me.
Subconsciously, I cowered, tucking myself in to look small, insignificant-not that that was hard. It was easy by virtue of my species.
He stood fully, towering above me, face inscrutable.
He left.
I’ve never figured out what happened there. But I think it was something.
I brought the frog back to the section of stream I’d found it in and released it. I wondered what it would do in the winter. Some species-I didn’t know how many-burrowed into the mud and slept, or hibernated. The little guy-gal-I’d just released couldn’t freeze solid. She couldn’t and survive, anyways.
I’d never liked the winter, but I’d probably be dead by then anyways.
I went to bed early that night.
If anybody had seen me then-
I was a filthy mess. It’s hard to live but to modern twentieth-or twenty-first, I suppose-century standards of hygiene without indoor plumbing, let alone hot water. I tried to make due.
But nobody did see me. There was nobody else out there. Just me, and the Decepticon. I wondered who the cabin had belonged to. Maybe it had just been abandoned, or it belonged to some couple happily living in suburbia, inherited from a crazy hermit uncle. Maybe they’d come out here one year, and find-who knew what.
Maybe they-the Decepticons, the Decepticon who’d captured me or another-had killed whoever it was.
I didn’t ask questions, but I had them. I have a sharp mind. I still remembered what he-the Decepticon-had said to me: “I want to kill you all, after what one of you squishy little things did to Megatron, our glorious leader, and the Allspark.”
Who was Megatron? (The name made me want to laugh, but I was too afraid of what he might be-the leader of the Decepticons?-to take it, and him, so lightly.) And the Allspark? What had a human done to them? What could a human do to them?
Maybe I’d find out in the eventual ‘broadcast’ I would feature in. Maybe I’d just die without knowing. That seemed pathetic: to have my life turned into a cog in some alien’s machine-cold plan and not even know why.
I hadn’t heard anything about either of them past the first few days. Well, until the second-to-last week of my stay in the cabin.
I’d been outside, feeding a camp robber-also called a gray jay, cousin to the Steller’s jay and blue jay and the most shameless bird to exist-bits of stale cracker when he approached. I tossed the last of what I had in my hands to the bird, hoping it would fly off-it didn’t, of course, camp robbers learned a long time ago that if they wait long enough, they can usually steal something on top of what they’re freely given-although it did back off a little, retreating to a small sapling nearby.
I looked down, meek, as he came up, then slowly sat down, facing me, as impassive and unreadable as the clouds, or stone. I waited, then. I always waited: it was safer. And I didn’t know his name, didn’t even know if this type of alien came with names at all. I didn’t want to say ‘hello’ to him, but I could have greeted him with his name, if I’d known it back then. A recognition. It felt-not disrespectful, but strange not to. But I didn’t want to risk anything.
I really didn’t want to die.
At last, he spoke. “When our plan has been fully realized, a short… documentary about your life will be played on all television and radio stations, on all frequencies, across the world. It will also be posted online. There will be a short explanation that will clearly show the Autobots will be to blame if you die. Megatron’s death and the destruction of the Allspark will not be included in this explanation.”
He stopped, almost as if waiting for me to respond. He did that, sometimes, and sometimes I was tempted to ask for clarifications, or just to ask a question at all. I never did, and I didn’t know what he meant by those pauses.
This time, his voice was almost frustrated when he finally replied, and that was enough to make me stiffen, make my heart race.
“…Megatron was once leader of the Decepticon cause. He was noble and a proud fighter, the Decepticon we all strive to emulate. His death was an… Unfortunate mistake. Humanity will pay for their coincidental murder of him.”
My head whipped up to stare at him, disbelieving. I was being given an explanation: it was incredible. I had given up hope-I had never really expected to be shown such mercy, such respect, at all. That much recognition. I was carbon, to them, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen, and then trace elements and nothing more.
“The Decepticons and Autobots once lived in harmony, but the pathetic Autobots and their foolish leader, the nauseating pacifist Optimus Prime, were weighing down our true glory. We parted ways, and the Great War began: Decepticons against Autobots. Both our causes needed the Allspark.
“The Allspark creates our life.” I was amazed by his tone, then, and I never heard anything like it from him again. It was faith, pure and simple: positive faith, like listening to a true believer talk about a loving God. His voice was still dark and hard and low enough that I felt it resonate through my bones, but it sounded joyful, just then. “Or it did.” And there-it was gone again. “It was lost to space, and presumed irretrievable by both sides. The birth of new Decepticons-and of new Autobots-was stopped. Our sparks, our souls, spring from the Allspark. Without it, we were-barren.
“Megatron found it, but was trapped in this planet’s ice. Your scientists-”
I flinched at the way he pronounced that word. I was a scientist. His voice had been hateful in a way it hadn’t been for weeks-in a way it hadn’t been since the very beginning. He paused at that, I think, but it’s very easy to imagine things, now that it happened so long ago. Well, six years is nothing, but it feels like an eternity. That time when I was a captive was an eternity away from my life a week after it finished: it is separate. It’s like I wasn’t living in reality.
“-some human scientists-” I wondered what that revision meant “Some human scientists found him and took him with them to the dam they’d built over the Allspark. The humans had no idea what they held… They would have defiled it, too, if they’d been able to.
“The great Megatron was first found by a human, an Archibald Witwicky, and he was partially activated: he marked the location of the Allspark on the flesh-creature’s glasses. It was his great-grandson who came into possession of these glasses, which then came to be possessed by the Autobots. A battle took place, and in the end a human-a human-plunged the Allspark into Megatron’s chest, destroying them both-”
I tried to pull back, discreetly, but there was a tree in my way. I felt like a cornered rabbit. I probably looked like one, too. I almost wished I still didn’t know what had happened, but not quite.
The Decepticon grunted angrily, then stomped off. I relaxed by slow, steady increments, the adrenalin slowly fading.
Eventually I noticed the gray jay had flown off. I wished I could, too.
Then I found a bird.
Well, I’d found lots of birds, really, but this one, an undersized raven, had been injured: it was dying, I thought, although I wasn’t an expert. It broke my heart, even knowing that it was natural, and that there was nothing I could do. I’ve always been a softy for downed birds-I still am-but this was so much more intense than what I was used to. It wasn’t normal. I think it was a sympathetic reaction: I was also going to die, even though just one of the two of us-the bird and I-was visibly on the edge of death.
I took it home.
That sounds stupid: I took home the dying bird, even knowing there was nothing I could do for it. Nothing I could do to heal it, at least, but I could at least make it comfortable. I could make sure there was somebody sympathetic there while it died.
-I told you I was being influenced by my own situation. It was a bird. Ravens are smart, yes, but they are smart for birds. And while it was just dazed for most of the way there, it panicked about two thirds of the way back-just for a few minutes, but long enough for me to get several buffets around the head by those powerful wings. My nose started bleeding, and didn’t stop all the way back. I have no doubt I looked horrible, absolutely horrible: I barely bathed and when I did it was in a small creek, I had three sets of clothes, I lacked all modern hygiene items, such as hot water, an indoor bathroom and deodorant, and there were still all those mystery bug bites, some of which were getting infected. And my hair was not done any favors by the lack of conditioner it was facing. And then I was bleeding all over myself, on top of everything else…
I couldn’t pinch my nose to try and stop the flow of blood, because I still had a raven in my hands, although it stopped struggling after just a few minutes, thank God. Forget trying to block the flow with tissues-which I didn’t have-or cloth or something. (I did have cloth, from various things. My sheets wouldn’t have been ruined by a spot or two of blood: they were already so stained I wasn’t sure of the original color. That’s a slight exaggeration-they were light blue-but not too much of one.)
I’d gotten used to the Decepticon’s presence, to a certain extent, or at least I’d gotten used to him ignoring me, so I passed by him without a word-although still from a fair distance away. The edge had been blunted off my fear by virtue of forced contact, but it was still there, still heavy in my mind.
I was unprepared for the sudden sound of transformation-I don’t think I’ll ever forget that noise-behind me as I did so. I froze, hands tightening convulsively around the raven as I did so, out of simple fear. It panicked again, of course, starting to struggle once more, and I fought to hold on, while still remaining largely still-
The raven needed help I couldn’t give it. That wasn’t a surprise. It wasn’t like I could even help myself. I was fighting to give it the little comfort I could, in my own small, scared-spitless way.
“You are-leaking,” the Decepticon said, voice impassive. I flinched.
“Please don’t kill him,” I squeaked. I could sympathize with the bird. I’d figured I’d call him Edgar, because everything needs a name-
“Explain yourself.” I could hear the ‘pathetic human’ innate to that sentence: it was something in the tone.
“Uh-This is Edg-a raven. I found him. I think he’s going to die-I wanted to make him comfortable. At least make it so he’s not starving to death, and dehydrated…” It sounded incredibly stupid, when I said it out loud to a creature who could care less whether or not I lived or died, let alone a non-sentient avian. The Decepticon didn’t reply, and I eventually realized he wanted me to explain more fully. “-I’m bleeding because he got me in the nose with a wing and I get bloody noses easily, I used to get them at least once a week when I was kid, it’s nothing, it’s just something that happens-you bleed and then it stops, it doesn’t even hurt, really, the worst part is feeling the blood going down the back of your throat, which is nothing, really-”
I forced myself to shut up. I looked at the raven instead, preoccupied. It was panting, and it had what looked like little dark hairs around the base of its beak. It eyed me suspiciously back, but I’m not sure that ravens are capable of looking anything other than suspicious-mysteriously superior, maybe. And hungry.
I’ve always liked ravens, liked the shape of them and the deep beats of their wings, but I’ve loved them more, loved them fiercely, since that day. I suppose I fell in love with that bird, God-awfully stupid and inconvenient and wretched though he was-and oh, I’m sure this all sounds terribly deviant, but it’s nothing like that. It was the feel of his life in my hands, cupped between them, so very much like I was by the Decepticon, only less figuratively. And I could comfort him. I could be-benevolent, loving even. I could care for him, for both meanings of the word. I would be seeing him to death, like my nursemaid was to me, but for him, for Edgar, it was unchangeable, and for me it was because-
I suppose I’m getting all confused and mixed-up. I said I wasn’t good with words, didn’t I? I’m not. I used to want to be, but I’ve learned to just accept it. Anyways, the point is that I loved that bird, because we were so alike, even while our situations were total opposites-
“You are positive?”
I thought, dully, that it was odd how the Decepticon could sound almost worried about me. It would probably be an inconvenience to him to find a new subject for their plan at this point, but it couldn’t be anything more. He’d certainly had no trouble getting me, and keeping me. He’d have to redo the documentary.
It would be my epitaph. That felt-inappropriate, revealing. I didn’t want to die just for my life to be used to extort, to bring about the destruction of humanity.
I was just some puppet.
“Yes,” I said obediently. “I’m sure. It’s just a bloody nose. It’ll stop. I’d pinch it, but-” Of course he could tell that. Of course I couldn’t pinch it, because I had the bird in my hands. I wondered whether there were Decepticons-or Autobots?-who would help a dying bird, or help anyone at all. I suppose they had to help each other…
It would be hard for them, with their hands. It would be like a human trying to help an ant.
He found me again later that day, after I’d gone outside and sat in the shade, coaxing water down the bird and tempting him with bits of food. I wasn’t sure what he’d eat-I had the vague idea ravens were more carnivorous than their omnivorous cousins the crows but still not too picky-and I wished I had had eggs, so I could hard boil them and try little balls of the yolk. It’s good protein, and everything a bird needs. Clearly.
The Decepticon stared inscrutably at the bird. I tried not to flinch.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I squeaked my reply. “Trying to get him to eat, that is, uhm-”
“Give it to me.”
I flinched, I’m pretty sure. Regardless, I ended up squeezing the bird, or startling him somehow: it was enough that he pecked me-and have you seen the beak on a raven?
“Please don’t kill him,” I pleaded, eyes welling up with tears: it was a combination of pain and irrational emotional connections to a sickly, dying, ungrateful mop of feathers.
“Give it to me,” the Decepticon demanded again, and my breath caught in my throat-his tone had changed, the threat no longer a simple undertone to the words. I didn’t dare disobey. I handed the bird over, lifting it up in my outstretched hands.
It was an undersized thing, and even a regular raven, a healthy adult-and ravens are not small birds-would have been dwarfed in the Decepticon’s hands. Edgar (the name I’d chosen, had stuck; he was named after Edgar Allen Poe-obvious, I know, but there is a reason why I’m a biologist, not an English major) was tiny, miniscule. My captor’s hands were surprisingly deft, but they were still far out of scale. It made me wince, to see the raven in such obvious danger.
Ridiculous, I know. I think being under severe emotional distress gives me at least part of an excuse, though.
“It is dying,” the Decepticon said flatly.
“I know.” I wondered if he’d meant to say ‘it’s going to die’-I could see no reason for him to take the thing, except to kill it, for whatever reason he had. Because he hated earth and everything else on it.
He just sat there, looking at the wretched creature awkwardly perched on his hand. I wanted to yell at him: Just do it! You don’t need to torture me like this- Stop drawing it out! Oh, I hated him just then, with a passion. It was a far cry from the quiet, resigned hate that had become usual and familiar to me, something that verged on both disgust and sorrow while being neither. No, this was pure and strong, the sort of thing that presses against your skin and seeps into your eyes and mouth, uncontrollable and savage.
Edgar tried to escape as the mech brought a fingertip up to touch him, scrambling for the far edge of the palm he was being held in. His wings beat frantically at the air-one of them had broken a while ago, and healed wrong. Edgar wasn’t going to fly again.
He fluttered to the ground. I closed my eyes and waited for the sounds of his death.
“Are you going to… Continue your pointless efforts?”
My eyes popped open and I snapped around to look at the Decepticon. The bird, still alive, was sitting on the ground, as calm as you please.
“Am… Am I allowed to?”
“Yes,” he said, voice cool and remote, disinterested and unattached. I still wonder if he was faking it…
“Then yes.” I didn’t move.
The Decepticon made a noise, not a human one. It sounded frustrated and I huddled in on myself, afraid.
“You may tend to it now.”
I waited thirty seconds, to see if the Transformer was planning on leaving. I hoped so. I wanted nothing more, just that second, because I’d stopped planning for, thinking off, allowing me to have any hope for the future at all.
Then, unable to put it off any longer, I scrambled to my feet and stumbled over to Edgar, acutely-almost painfully so-aware of who was watching me.
It took some coaxing, but I calmed the bird down: he was strangely comfortable with me, I guess because he was almost dead already. Maybe he’d been someone’s pet, once upon a time.
The featherball firmly in hand, I walked slowly back to the tree I’d been sitting against. It was far closer than I wanted to be to the Decepticon, but it was also where I had the bits of food I’d been feeding the bird.
He refused beef jerky soaked in water twice; it wasn’t a surprise. I didn’t have any raw meat, which I also didn’t know if he’d eat, and I drew the line at trying to find carrion. Crackers were similarly refused. He pecked at a bit of cheese, but nothing more.
I trickled more water down his throat, slowly starting to relax. I wondered if maybe some kind of bug or worm would work-and they were a kind of protein, right?
I tried cracker again. This time, it worked-Edgar snapped hungrily at small pieces I tossed to him, wary of that murderous beak, after he dubiously accepted the first morsel. I was very careful; I’d already been given an idea of what sort of damage a raven could inflict.
“May I-try?”
I jerked with surprise when my captor spoke, and then stared up at him with dumb shock as his words began to resister. He’d asked me for permission to do something. He had asked me for permission. It was-mind-boggling.
And what he had asked me to do. That was almost even more incredible: it could almost seem like he was taking an interesting in the carbon-based life he so detested. But I knew better, of course. I couldn’t guess his motives (he was a dangerous, unpredictable, impossible-to-understand enigma, to me) but I knew it couldn’t be that.
“Yes,” I said, unnecessarily. What else was I going to say? No?
He waited until I held up one shaking hand, picking up a bit of cracker with some little tool that came out of the tip of one finger. He was surprisingly delicate, but I still had to force myself to hold still. I was trembling with fear.
He tossed a few pieces to the raven, who took them, indiscriminate. He nodded, sharply, to me when he finished, then stood and strode away, returning to the other side of the house and the driveway before transforming.
I quickly gathered up everything I’d brought outside, and then retreated to the hut for the rest of the day. It was something I never did.
Edgar died, of course.
I think the Decepticon watched me while I buried him, but I’m not sure.
Three days after that, another Decepticon appeared. I had been outside, doing laundry, when he flew in overhead, circling lower and lower until he transformed and fell-although it was almost more like jumping-the rest of the way to the ground. I could feel the vibrations, hear my windows ratting in their panes, and every bird for what looked like a mile rose up into the air, startled, wheeling frantically overhead in huge muddled flocks. I had frozen when I’d realized what had to be happening, and I remained motionless, cowering.
He ignored me. I was grateful for that.
My captor transformed, rising up to meet him, and it was a startling moment, for me. Fear made the Decepticon, the one I was used to, even bigger than he was in reality, and a constant threat. He didn’t even come up to the new Decepticon’s elbows, and he stood deferentially. It was horrifying because, while my captor filled me with terror, it and he were familiar by then. This stranger was unexpected, a complete unknown-
They started talking. I didn’t understand a word of it, so I could only guess, but I couldn’t think of many reasons another Decepticon, after all this time, would suddenly show up to play messenger. The best reason, of course, was that it had finally come time, that I was going to die soon, even sooner than I’d already known. Hours, days, I didn’t know, but why else had the new Decepticon arrived?
The matter was finished quickly. My captor returned to his alt form, not so much as looking at me, as the other flew off again. I couldn’t sleep at all that night.
It turned out that I was right. That that visit had been the order to finally finish through with their plan.
Three days later, we left that cabin for good. I haven’t been back since. I don’t know if it’s still there, but I’d guess not. I don’t see the Decepticons being so sloppy with their loose ends. I imagine everything I left-clothes, the remains of the food I’d bought, the half-finished romance novel I hadn’t been able to stomach my way through-was burnt, to cover our tracks. I don’t know, though.
Either way, the waiting was over. I finally knew, then, that I was facing the end of it all.
On to part 3