current

Flora & Fauna

by Leah Erickson

     It was the spring that wild animals began migrating to the cities in unheard of numbers. There was a sweet dampness in the late March air. As the melted snow ran into the gutters, and patches of grass sprouted wet and green, it wasn’t uncommon to see a black bear crossing traffic, or muskrats in the subways. There was a theory that the cause was something concerning magnetic fields and cell phone signals. That it confused the animals’ honing instincts.

     At first there were newspaper photos with cute captions. CITY LIFE IS A ZOO! But then people began to feel uneasy about it. It seemed unnatural. Portentous. No longer cute. Some religious groups called it the end of the world. People began to board up their windows and store their water in jugs.

     Phoebe was walking through the airport, crossing the great domed food court, when she saw a large cat-like animal run by. A bobcat? she wondered. It was swift, low to the ground, and she caught a flash of its intelligent golden eyes as it sped past the Sbarro’s. People retracted, scattered, there were screams.

     Faster than she could process what was happening, two uniformed National Guardsmen sprung out from opposite directions, holding rifles. “Stand clear!” yelled one of them. Two gunshots cracked out, and the animal fell dead. The airport was silent.

     After a paused moment’s catch of breath, people moved on their way again. All but Phoebe and a man with a long white beard, wearing layers of rags. She assumed he was one of the teeming homeless who populated the town. They were everywhere now. The two of them stood looking down at the dead animal.

     It was a lynx, pale brown with dark spotted legs. Phoebe had only ever seen them in photographs, or stuffed behind glass at the museum. It had long tufts of fur under its chin and above the eyes, and ears rather flat to its head. Beautiful in its unrealness. It looks like Genghis Khan, she thought, but didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

     She and the homeless man looked up at the same time, and locked eyes for a moment. There were a couple of people from the Earth Liberation Front shouting threats at the gunmen. There was also a church group passing out tracts. One carried a sign that said ASK THE ANIMALS AND THEY WILL TEACH YOU JOB 12:7.

     The bearded man had pale blue eyes. “A terrible thing,” he said.

     “Yes.”

     He looked at the man with the Bible sign, who was shouting at one of the Earth activists. He shook his head.

     “You know ... I’m retired military,” he muttered softly. “I remember the days of the one hundred yen dollar. The world was ending then, too.”

     She nodded. She was feeling a bit sick. The gunshots still rung in her ears.

     The man, like a father, patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, young lady. Somehow the world always manages to right itself.”

     She was disarmed by it, a little staggered. When was the last time she had been touched by a stranger?

     Phoebe had just been fired from her job. She was an artist. Under the new Public Art Ordinance, public art was a requirement for all major construction projects. Phoebe was commissioned to create art for the airport. At the age of twenty-two, not even out of college, she was considered to be the next great thing.

     She was known for her nature-based work, most of it large and abstract. Fig leaves, tree rings. Spider webs. All of these rendered hugely in limestone, plaster, mirrors, and glass.

     “I’m fascinated by repeat patterns, the things that connect us all. Plant and animal.” This was her quote, printed in a glossy magazine. She had also been invited to pose for a fashion spread, as she was young and slim and beautiful. “Like a Nordic queen!” the stylist said, delighted with her high cheekbones and long, cornhusk hair. They dressed her in bright silk butterfly wings, painted her lips a wet fuchsia. Posed her on a tree stump under sun-spangled leaves, her skirt hiked to reveal her slender thighs. Flora and Fauna, the article was titled. And in the corner of one of the pages was a small black and white photo of Phoebe working in her studio, hair tied in a rag, covered in plaster dust.

     There was grant money, lots of it. There were dinner parties in mansions. There were older, wealthier men who wanted to date her. It all moved very quickly. Phoebe wasn’t used to the attention, the validation. She had always been the quiet girl, the good girl, who flew under the radar. She attended public school and got good grades. She won a modest scholarship to the state university. Phoebe always worried that she was mediocre, not blessed with vision or greatness. But now ... sometimes she felt as though she would burst with goodwill. Life had become what she had always wished it to be. And maybe she had willed it so.

     She worked very hard on the new airport pieces. She was energized by her work, it flowed through her fingertips. It was kept secret until it was finished. And then she couldn’t wait to show it to the board and the public.

     The opening was celebrated with a lavish party. Phoebe was beaming in a dark blue kimono dress. She wore a large uncut ruby on a chain at her throat, a gift from the son of a state Supreme Court justice. The ruby was warm to the touch, like a living thing. Everyone took her picture, called her a genius, and christened her new work a raving success.

     But then, two weeks later, members of the committee called her in for a meeting at the airport.

     “There is a problem,” they said. “There are complaints about some of the new pieces.”

     The most prominent of these included a huge, magnified image of Phoebe’s left eye. Also there was her fingerprint, four feet high, superimposed on a mirror.

     The public didn’t like them. Were disturbed by them. There had been an increase in petty crime since the pieces were installed. There was fighting among the passengers. Graffiti in the bathrooms. And worse.

     “But ... I don’t understand. How is my work to blame?”

     “Well ...” an airport official, a middle aged man in a suit, looked down, then up again, “My guess is that the pieces inspire feelings of paranoia. Retinal scans, digitized fingerprints. You know? Biometric monitoring! Everything’s found, everything’s archived nowadays. And people just want to be anonymous. It’s all too close to the bone. People lash out. It’s all unconscious. It’s not your fault. But that eyeball ...”

     “But these pieces are supposed to be about what connects us all as living beings!”

     “But they're seeing Big Brother! They would have responded better, I think, to something such as your gingko leaves, your seashells. Pretty things. You know, nature.”

     “But the work is me! Am I not nature, too? And you? And you?”

     The art director interrupted, “Well, the art world is like an ecosystem! The artist, the work, the given space ... they’re all interactive. It’s all encompassing. I’m sorry, Phoebe. That's nature.”

     Phoebe was fired unceremoniously, her contract broken. Her head was already spinning when she walked through the food court and saw the lynx run by. Maybe, she thought, that’s why the scene had such significance for her. She couldn’t get it out of her head.

     One Wednesday evening, Phoebe sat at her computer, trying to update her resume. But she couldn’t focus. She looked out the window. Twilight was coming a little later now. The sky was a pale yellow. She had not left her apartment in days. Food was running out. She knew there were plans to make. There was action to be taken. But she hadn’t the energy.

     The phone rang.

     “Hello?”

     “Phoebe Edwards?”

     “Yes?”

     “Ellen Pierce. I am the head of the Claridge School. If you don’t know us, we are a private school, K through eight. We are very renowned.”

     “Yes?”

     “I’ll cut to the chase: I like you. I’m very sorry to hear how things are going for you. How terrible. The philistines. They don’t understand a talent like yours. Your work wasn’t meant to be consumed by the masses like fast food! “

     “How can I help you?” Her mind was sluggish, confused.

     “Well, I have an open position. Art instructor. Great benefits. Would you consider? At least for a while? I’d be proud to have you.“

     “Um, we could talk about it. ”

     They set up an interview for Friday afternoon. Phoebe could not see herself as a teacher of children, but at least her life would be taking some direction.

     Everyone knew the Claridge School. Celebrities, bankers, media moguls sent their children there. It was located in a large new building uptown. Phoebe stood for a moment outside, staring at the security camera over the door. It shamed her that she was feeling so intimidated by an elementary school.

     Someone buzzed her in. Instantly, she felt a sense of unreality. The place felt much larger on the inside then she would have guessed. The lobby was two stories high. The front desk was enormous and round, topped with rich brown granite flecked with mica. There was a pillar in the center of the room in the shape of a goddess, holding a globe above her head. A woman came out from the desk to greet her. She led Phoebe through a hallway lined floor to ceiling with huge bubbling aquariums. Finally, they entered an office with low graceful furniture and glass brick walls.

     The woman who waited for her was chic, starved looking, with dark lips, high cheekbones, and a swingy asymmetrical haircut.

     “I like the angelfish. In the tanks,” Phoebe said shyly. She was frankly overwhelmed.

     The woman smiled at her warmly, as though Phoebe were a cherished child. “I’m Ellen Pierce. I’m so glad you came.”

     Ellen Pierce explained to her the responsibilities of the job. She had only to teach one or two classes a day. The responsibilities were typical of any art teacher’s job. But there was one thing: the art teacher was to choose each child’s best work at the year’s end, and then write a blurb for it, in a style such as you’d find in a catalogue for the Guggenheim.

     “Critical essays? On the work of five year olds?”

     “Well, not so much as an essay per se ... It’s a cute thing, really. Just a couple of paragraphs. We mount it and frame it next to the work. A keepsake. The parents love it!”

     “But ... I just ... the decadence! This is like pre-revolutionary France!”

     Ellen Pierce let out a guffaw. So was it a joke then?

     When Phoebe got up to leave, she told the woman that she would think over the offer. But she already knew that she would take it. For a teaching job, it paid an exorbitant amount. Plus she would live for free in the faculty housing on the top floor. At least it would give her a place to go until she figured out what to do next.

     And as Phoebe walked back through the lobby, the bell rang to let the children out for the afternoon. Here they came down a marble and glass staircase, the boys in button down shirts and khakis, the girls all in pink uniform jumpers. They lined up straight and tall by class, in row after row. Her pupils. They looked unworldly, golden. Full of promise and the future. These were the children who would one day take the reins of this world.

     She had a heavy, sinking feeling as she pushed open the door. How did it come to this? The life that she thought was hers was gone. All the promise that she held, squandered. Was she a victim of negative forces? Or just bad luck?

     Anyhow, she thought, it would not be forever.

     For three years, Phoebe taught at the school, living on the top floor and rarely leaving.

     The school, at least, was safe. Because the outside world seemed crazier than ever. A training camp for activists for left wing causes had sprung up in the warehouse down the street. The activists fought with the evangelists who fought with the Earth Liberation Front. The National Guard kept an uneasy presence.

     Meanwhile, the animals still in fluxed into the city. A group of guerilla engineers were determined to find ways to understand why. They created robotic swans with cameras in them. They put them into the lakes to interact with the real, wild swans so that their behavior could be studied. ROBOSWAN! screamed the newspapers.

     Nothing seemed real.

     Phoebe was happy to live shut away, quiet, like a sponge in the sea. Her hair grew long, and she kept it plaited in a single braid down her back. She loved the children in a way she would never have thought possible. They were such pure, innocent spirits, and they loved Phoebe, too. They did artwork with paint and wood and sand. She even had fun writing the vanity critiques. Matthew’s self portrait in oils is bright and bold, reminiscent of the better American Impressionists of the late period. Phoebe’s comments were mounted handsomely alongside the work, and framed with dark wood. And everyone was happy.

     “We’re lucky to be here, aren’t we?” asked one of her colleagues, a pale languid man with a blonde ponytail who taught history. “I mean, true academic jobs are tough to break into. And besides, the world is such a rotten place nowadays. I honestly feel better in here. I mean, at least we’re safe.”

     “I suppose we are.”

     But at night sometimes, she thought about her art, her old life. She wasn’t creating. What if her gift was gone? After all, it had now been three years.

     It was only on these nights that she felt real fear, her heart beating, her skin damp.

     It was in the fall of that third year that a new student was brought to her. The girl was a genius, an artistic prodigy, she was told. But she was very sad. Her father, a venture capitalist, had gone missing. The story was that he had gone to a travel agency that catered only to the very wealthy. The agency didn’t even have a name, it was so exclusive. People called it “The Black Box,” and it specialized in the unattainable, adventures that even the regular well-to-do couldn’t have. The girl’s father, and a group of three other men, had requested to be dropped into the Amazon with nothing but their knives.

     Months passed by, and no one could find the men, though there were expeditions into the rainforest to find them. It was feared that they were killed or kidnapped by the indigenous people. The only trace was a monogrammed Rolex, now worn by a brilliantly painted and feathered Indian man. And he would not speak.

     Bettina, the little girl, was eleven. She, too, was silent, but had been lashing out in other ways. She wouldn’t do her schoolwork. She ran away from home twice. She’d gotten in trouble most recently for stealing ammonium nitrate from a neighbor’s garage. Her mother thought it was a good time to move out of the suburbs and make a new start in the city.

     She was pointed out to Phoebe, a tall little girl with white blonde hair, standing in the line with the other girls in their pink jumpers. Phoebe studied her fragile, narrow shoulders, and was struck with overwhelming pity. Then the girl turned around. And her pale grey eyes, with their transparent lashes, startled Phoebe with a flash of knowing directness, and her thoughts went scattered.

     “Just wait until you see how this girl can paint,” they said. “Like an angel.”

     “I notice that a some of your work has a religious theme, Bettina.”

     The detail was incredible. Phoebe had never seen a religious painting with such an intimate feel. Jesus was bathed in clear crystalline light, and gazing straight into the eyes of the viewer. He looked like a carpenter, a working class hero. A real person.

     “Yes. The only thing I read besides mathematical texts is the Holy Bible.”

     They were alone in the art room, with Bettina’s canvases spread about the room. Phoebe came upon the next one, a skyscape of flaring light.

     “It’s beautiful!”

     “It’s called Aurora Borealis.

     “I don’t even know what to say! It’s remarkable.”

     “Don’t worry. You don’t have to say anything.” Bettina gave a small, one-shouldered shrug.

     The painting of the sky stirred something in Phoebe, a mix of wonder and regret. “I used to do nature paintings, too. My first was a sea anemone. I spent months on the details ...” It didn’t seem fair that this young girl had so much talent. Again, Phoebe felt as though she’d wasted her life. At Bettina’s age, she had certainly shown talent. But maybe she had just not lived enough. All that carefully honed solitude, the good grades and the people pleasing. Maybe she should have gone wild, done drugs. She’d been such a good girl all her life. Too good.

     Phoebe then felt guilty for her jealousy. This was a child, after all. A child genius who had just lost her father, and was now trotted around on all the talk shows. “How are you liking school? How are you feeling?”

     “You know, I’ve been in so many greenroom therapy lessons, I don’t know how to talk about my feelings anymore. “ She grimaced. “I just like to do my art. Focus, total focus, is the only the thing that makes me feel free. Things would not be so good for me otherwise.”

     “I can’t imagine growing up nowadays.” Phoebe rarely left the school anymore. She didn’t like going past the homeless, always lined up and waiting for the motorcades to come by. She always looked for her friend, the man with the white beard, but he was never among them.

     The worst new thing to happen was the return of the funeral pyres. At least in the school you couldn’t smell them. How could people eat and breathe, with the smell of death everywhere?

     “Well,” the girl said, “the world may seem very confusing now. It’s a building up. A rising tide. The hive mind building upon itself. It’s OK. Things are just changing into something else. Patterns will become apparent. Connections that you can’t see now.”

     The world always manages to right itself. “But how do you know?”

     “My father was a powerful man. He had access to information that regular people don’t. I miss him. He would talk to me like an adult. We would have the best conversations. I miss him.”

     There were paintings of the cosmos, paintings of the girl’s baby brother. Then Phoebe saw the one that stopped her heart.

     It was a painting of a lynx. Majestic in profile, it’s eyes scanning the horizon. Its black tipped ear tufts, its intelligent golden eyes. It was gloriously alive, with a halo of light around its head.

     She had no words. She felt herself brimming with emotion that she couldn’t name.

     Finally, the child said, “I painted that from a vision, you know.”

     “Oh?”

     “I know they’re not real, but I have these animal visions. Animals that come to me. My grandmother could read flames of the fire, and tell you what they meant. I’ve got a little of that.”

     “The lynx came to you in a vision?”

     “He started coming to me when my father went missing. I was angry. I was hating the world. The lynx started coming to me at night in my room. He would come, lick my hand, and disappear. I don’t know why he came, but he gave me strength. Then some nights after the lynx, a white dove came and landed on my bedpost. And I knew I’d be alright.”

     At that point, the child’s mother came in to take the girl home. She was tall, blonde and beautiful, with a Hermes scarf tied around her shoulders. Phoebe recognized her from the talk shows, her tear stained visage now composed, resigned, and down to business. She started to gather up the canvases. As she and Bettina started out the door with arms loaded, the little girl said, “Goodbye, teacher.” The mother turned, and over her shoulder, gave a sad, but knowing, smile.

     The little girl said something as they walked down the hall, then laughed. It was a lovely, carefree child’s laugh, ringing like tinkling crystal.

     Phoebe woke up in the middle of the night, feeling hot and panicked. It was three AM, and she felt unable to lay still. She went to the bathroom to wet her face. Then she turned on a lamp so she could read for a while.

     But her mind couldn’t follow the words. She was distracted by memories of the dream that had woken her. In the stillness the dream was coming back, piece by piece: she was sitting in a darkened theatre, watching her own life unfold in a series of small, well-lit scenes, each in its own bubble of light: Phoebe the little girl, staring at a fuzzy moth in a jar. Then Phoebe at fifteen, her first kiss. It was a sun burnt blonde boy, at night in a parking lot: she’d anticipated this first kiss for so long, that now she couldn’t feel it at all. Next Phoebe, quietly ecstatic, chiseling plaster at twenty-one. Finally, Phoebe in the airport, and the gunshots, and the comforting touch of a homeless ex-military man.

     If all these selves could see her now, what would they say?

     The dream had gone on for hours, it felt.

     I’ve got to move before I jump out of my skin. She needed a change of scene. Putting on a robe and slippers, she left her dormitory room to walk downstairs.

     The front lobby of the school was huge and cold. She thought of the first time she had walked into the school, how confused and vulnerable she’d been, what a fool you had been! said a voice unbidden. Maybe, she thought. But what was I supposed to do? And anyway, the children. There they were in a framed photograph on the wall, all of the grades gathered together. Their faces like little petals that could scatter in the wind. Who could say they’re not worth it all? She looked for Bettina’s face but didn’t see it.

     There were sirens outside, and shouts in the distance. But the sky was beautiful. Tinged with just enough morning light so it burned cobalt. It made her racing mind go quiet. Staring at that sky, with her face pressed to the glass, Phoebe felt expansive. As though she could float in that sky, grow enormous, lose her edges completely.

     I could open this door, she thought. This one door, this one security code, stands between me and out there. All at once she was aware of her own youth, her strong beating heart, her clear lungs, the light in her veins. If she could only leave this place, there is something that can be reclaimed. Something noble and good. I can start again. I can start with this sky. I can start with this silence. I can start with a single blade of grass. With a single human hello. Then I’ll work from there.

     Suddenly, there was a single loud gunshot. She saw an animal limping quickly by. It was a wounded coyote. It darted off into the night, trailing blood. Seeing the blood, Phoebe felt as though there were a mute explosion inside her body. In an almost detached way, she observed the anger and grief that were overwhelming her; a howling inside growing louder, stronger, until she felt carried away by its flow. It sent her out the door, into the night, her own blood pounding in her ears. Pounding a rhythm that sounded like no more no more no more. Because she would find the gunman, and this time she would stop him.

     The gunman was not a man at all, but a boy of seventeen. A boy who did not like killing, so he told himself that killing the animals was not a personal act, that he was performing the work of nature.

     He was startled to see a white robed woman in the moonlight, coming straight toward him. At first he thought it was an apparition. The feeling was ancient, bigger than himself. The woman immediately called to mind stories of mythology that he loved. He had studied it in school. Stories of gods and goddesses, shape shifters, animal messengers. Always there was drama, retribution. He had been reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses when they took him out of school and told him he would learn to shoot a gun. He wondered if he would ever go to school again. He hoped very much that he would. Because he was tired, he was lonely. Tired of wandering alone with his gun, only to sleep in the corner on a bare mattress with all the other sad boys. It wasn’t the life he wanted. Frankly, he had been thinking of strapping a bomb to himself. He’d walk to his parents’ house or his old school and blow himself up.

     The woman was running now, and she was shouting something. But what was she saying? Her eyes trained right on his, fierce and unwavering. It was the first time anyone had looked him in the eye in a very long time. It felt unsettling, but good. He lowered his gun to the ground. If this was a goddess, then her message was for him alone.

Leah Erickson has had work published most recently in Indigenous Fiction, Pennsylvania English, The Saint Ann's Review, Sub-Lit, and Unlikely Stories. She lives in Rhode Island with her husband and young daughter.