The Wild Ones

Sometimes I like to stand with my feet pressed to the pavement of a city and feel it breathe. And sometimes I wait till midnight to eat mangoes because mangoes taste the freshest then. Valentina refuses to indulge in my profundities, but she, whom I found on a bridge in Paris, is a star that commands its own planets and disdains mere immortals like me.
I have been a Wild One for a very long time. Too long, my bones grumble, and sometimes there’s an ache in me for green things. Not that I would know what to do with a forest if I found myself inside one, but still, I like dreaming.
I look at the faces of my sisters when we leave the sugar shop. and they look as jittery as I feel. The unnamed he has struck a chord of familiar terror in all of us. This certainly won’t do. We cannot afford fear; we have paid far too much to it already. So, I lead them back to the apartment where we pick up the rest of our mismatched crew, and we make our way to Marine Drive.
I insist on buying ice blocks from a corner store and make short work of the sweet, milky treats that taste a little like heaven if the place was a flavor. Not that I have any hope of gaining entrance there. I lick my fingers when I am done until Daraja stuffs a wet wipe in my hands. We walk, unseen by humans and ignored by the infrequent middle worlders, through the city toward Marine Drive.
Like everything else that doesn’t fit within their boundaries of normal, we, too, are naturally invisible to human beings. To become visible, we have to bring together intention and energy. This is not difficult, usually, but it does get annoying, so mostly we don’t bother. Everything we touch becomes invisible as well. We pretend it’s a superpower, and in some ways, it might as well be.
Ghufran walks next to me, her footsteps still uncertain, as if she’s unsure of her right to the ground upon which she walks. She has been with us for a while now, but fear still sets daily in her eyes like the sunset we have come to see. We sit in a line on the seawall, legs dangling on the seaside. The sky is readying itself to perform for us and we, well, we have always been willing spectators.
You would think, considering the transient nature of a Wild One, I would grow inured to the comings and goings of those I call my sisters, but, and you can ask Valentina this, they all leave a bit of themselves within me. Right now, there are eleven of us: Ligaya, Kamboja, Daraja, Widad, Talei, Sevda, Areum, Ghufran, Etsuko, Valentina, and me. Five years ago, there were twenty. The sky is soon painted in the crimson shades of a broken.
heart; it demands all our attention. Sunsets and sunrises are perhaps the only things that still command our reverence. One announces an end to pain and the other indicates a new beginning: two things that are invaluable to us.
“What Josefa said….” Valentina says suddenly, and I look at
her. She catches my eyes and becomes quiet. But of course, it’s
far too late.
“What did Josefa say?” Areum asks.
“He warned us of a new danger,” Daraja replies, shivering even
though it’s a hot day.
Now everyone is looking at me. I glare at Valentina and pre tend I have all the answers. I am really good at pretending, in case you’re wondering.
“We have no information yet, so there’s no use panicking. There’ll be plenty of time for that once we know exactly what shape this monster takes,” I say. I understand why the girls are spooked. Thus far, we have lived, skirting the peripheries of the human world and the middle world, slipping under the radar of the magical heavyweights. We don’t like the idea of having tar gets painted on us.
“Let’s go back to the apartment. We still have a festival to go to! We’ll find out more about this person later. All right?” stinky Valentina says, trying to make up for placing her foot in every one’s mouth earlier.
I jump off the wall and wobble. Ghufran steadies me without a word. I beam at her before I start walking. I wonder if they will have mangoes at the festival. “Are you really not worried about this new threat?” Valentina.
says in my ear.. “I’ll worry about it after the festival,” I tell her, and walk faster.