Wayward Creatures by Dayna Lorentz

Author:Dayna Lorentz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2021-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

Rill

THERE IT IS—the SCRITCH-SCRATCH OF Teeth’s humanlike paws clawing down my rock.

“Ho there, Scruffy!” he squeaks, sliding down in a shower of pebbles.

“Ho there, Teeth!” I yip. My fur trembles with excitement.

That’s weird—why am I excited to have my food stolen by this opossum? And Scruffy? I told him my name was Rill . . .

Teeth appears out of the shadows, the moonlight hitting his silver-white fur. “What’s for dinner?” he asks, rubbing his front paws together hungrily.

“Some kind of bird. Same as last night.” My heart’s pounding; under the rock, my tail thumps in a wag.

“And the night before, and the night before,” Teeth says, sniffing over his pile. “The human has to improve his variety. A coyote can’t live on bird alone.”

“You mean you can’t live on bird alone,” I yip.

He waves a paw at me. “What goes for the opossum, goes for the coyote.” He sniffs the pile over, selects a choice bit of bone with meat dangling off, and begins gnawing away.

I pant at this. What an odd guy Teeth is, even for an opossum. But funny. Wait—could it be that I actually enjoy the company of this not-rodent?

No way. It’s just that I’ve been stuck here with my own yips for too long. I’ve had no one else to talk with. That’s it.

It dawns on me that I’ve never yipped with another animal besides a coyote.

“Teeth,” I say, “how is it you understand me? No other animal I’ve met understands coyote.”

Teeth swallows a gigantic mouthful, shrugs his little shoulders. “A guy like me gets around in a lot of different circles. I pick up a little coyote here, a little porcupine there.”

“A guy like you?” I ask.

“A marsupial,” he squeaks. “We pouch-babies are kind of on our own in the forest, and that leads to us having to reach across species lines more than others.”

I’ve never spoken to anyone outside my family, not even another coyote pack. Could I learn marmot? No—it’d be weird to chat with a meal. But will I have to, now that I’m on my own?

“Do you miss them—your family, I mean?” I ask him to escape the sudden need I feel to hear Mother’s bark.

Teeth shakes his head. “What’s to miss? It was very crowded on my mom’s back. Didn’t smell so good.” He picks over his pile again, selects his next nibble. “Anyhoo, as I said, opossums don’t really get along with one another. My siblings were always fighting over every scrap of food. Mom seemed happy to be rid of every baby that fell off her.

“And I like being alone. I wander where I want to go. I eat when I’m hungry, not when some alpha tells me I’m allowed to eat. Speaking of eating . . .” He digs into the pile again, pulls out two fistfuls of meat, and shoves both into his pointy jaws.

His life is exactly what I wanted for myself. The freedom, the choices—no parent barking at you to put more effort into an attack, no burdensome pups sniffing around every meal you catch .

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