Finding Creatures
by
Casey June Wolf
Copyright 2014 Casey June Wolf
978-0-9810658-7-8
“Finding Creatures” by Casey June Wolf is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
We have grown so used to having characters who are not religious, or having characters whose religion either makes them a good guy or a bad guy, depending on the author's bias, that it can be hard to wrap our minds around someone who just sees the world in a certain way, and know that that's only part of their story.
This tale is about loneliness, and letting go, and leaving loneliness behind. It is also about the dense and vivid imagination of childhood.
Finding Creatures
OTHER KIDS MIGHT HAVE been having fun hunting dinosaurs and solving mysteries or going to the farm with their brother Dick and sister Jane. But I was pretty much on my own with my Mom, my Dad, my little green soldiers, and my baby-dolls. I was their special little girl, and I knew that, but even special girls can have an awful lot of time on their hands when they're six and don't know a soul.
We'd moved to a side of Winnipeg that was just about finished being woodland, and rented a huge old house from the Sisters of Mary and Joseph. Mom was busy with the house, Dad was away at work, and I wandered the property on my own. There weren't any neighbours nearby, so I didn't get to know any kids.
But there was a river below the house that we'd be able to cross in winter, after it had hardened up, and a ravine running next to us that was lush as a Jurassic jungle. There were outbuildings, too, that used to house horses and chickens and pigs. Now they stood, paint peeling, empty but for dirt and the coarse hairs snagged here and there on nails.
With all the time in the world and not another child in sight, I made my own adventures.
The house we moved into was so big we couldn't use it all. Impressive as it was to my young eye, the woods and unplanted gardens were of greater interest. I searched for those dinosaurs, for herds of elephants and packs of wolves. I watched spiders waiting motionless on their webs.
But I wanted an animal that would stay with me. A friend that would play and love me like I loved it. So I went in search of one.
Kneeling in the garden, I dug up worms and dropped them into a tobacco tin, then brought them to my room. When I dumped them on the bed they were all knotted together. I pulled on one, gingerly, then a little harder; it broke in half and I dropped the ball in horror, then put it back in the tin and, holding it tight, ran with it to find Mom.
"Don't worry, Bernadette,” she said. “Their tails will grow back. But they don't like living in the house. They'll dry up and die if you keep them here. Put them in the garden, dear.”
I trudged sadly away and let the worms go.
Next I found a soft black creature when I was wading in the river. I peeled him off my leg, brought him home and made him a nice house, then took it to show to Mom. She said, “It's a leech—they drink blood,” with a disgusted expression, but I still wanted to keep him Ignoring my pleas, she threw him in the toilet, adding, “I did tell you not to go in the river, Bernadette. It's dangerous—remember that.You could have drowned.”
I found baby birds in their nests and was told to leave them or their parents would abandon them. A turtle trudged across the
driveway, and Mom released him on the riverbank. I even found a dog and tried to hide her in the basement, but Mom found her anyway, and that was the end of that. It seemed that every friend I found was doomed to be sent away.
Time passed and I kept my eyes peeled for fresh opportunities. Then one day I found the mare. Only by then, I had figured out not to say a word.
She was glossy, huge and reddy-black.
I was making my way to the ravine to play dinosaurs. (The big-leafed plants down there seemed like something a triceratops might eat.) I stopped in amazement when I saw her. She made a kind of chuckly snort, and tossed her head and shivered her long, great neck as I stared open-mouthed and dangly-armed. She was grazing at the end of the overgrown garden as normal as can be.
I glanced at the house to make sure Mom wasn't watching and then turned back to the horse. She watched me calmly, munching clover, her jaw moving purposefully, a foot shifting now and then. There was a quiet wonderfulness about her. I knew she wasn't afraid, and for some reason, I wasn't scared of her, either.
Not that long before I'd had an experience, and I wondered if—no, I was pretty sure—this was connected to it.
I can't remember exactly how old I was when all this happened. I'd say I was seven or eight when I met the reddy-black mare. Sometime before, when we'd lived across the river, I'd heard something that really surprised me.
I'd heard all about God. I prayed every night with Mom and Dad, and we all went to church every Sunday. My first school when I finally went was a Catholic school so I knew pretty well where things stood. I had a guardian angel and every night I sing¬songed prayers to her. I could say the whole rosary. I liked holy cards, hymns, and the incense they burned at Mass. I liked looking at pictures of all the neat habits different kinds of nuns wore.
I knew I could keep out of trouble by praying and doing what I was told, and that the angels and saints and God and Mary
would keep their ends of the deal. I absolutely, unquestionably, and enthusiastically believed.
But one day I heard something that made me stop still and wonder.
"If you have enough faith, you can move mountains.”
If you have enough faith, you can move mountains.
Several things were revealed to me. There were degrees of faith. Just believing might not be enough. And it was possible, on the other hand, to have so much faith you could perform miracles.
But what would be the point in moving mountains?
And how much faith was enough? I thought my faith was good—but was it enough for a miracle?
I began to strategize. What would be worth doing a miracle about? Something I would really, really like, of course, or why bother, but—I realized this in a flash—not something that could be seen as simply for me.
What I wanted was a horse. My very own wonderful beautiful horse. But what would be the goodness in that wish? It would just be selfish. So I changed the focus to other people and not me and set about testing my faith.
I prayed to God to turn me into a horse. Just for a day. I could carry kids around all afternoon—maybe my cousins. Then I would go away and turn back into me. No one would ever know or thank me, and I wouldn't even get a ride. I'd even be willing, if God insisted, to forget everything. Though I would rather keep the memory.
That seemed selfless enough. Give joy to other children. Every time we visited my cousins I ended up confessing the next Sunday that I'd fought with them. There must be something good about giving kids happiness if fighting with them was a sin. As a side benefit, for one tiny day I would have the strength and beauty of a horse. And friends.
My prayers went unanswered. Maybe my faith was not as good as I'd thought. Or God had more important things to do.
Gradually, I lost a little happiness, and some of my once perfect belief.
But I had gotten on with life. I'd finished Grade One and gone on to Grade Two and learned what I could. I went to catechism and studied hard, and I had my first communion in a pretty, bouncy white dress. I prayed by my bed each night for Gramma and Grampa, Mom and Dad, Auntie Trish and Uncle Bill, the dinosaurs and baby birds and worms and turtles and everyone I could think of. Even, because Mom said it was okay, for me.
So here I was, having persevered
in my faith despite learning of its limitations, standing in the unused garden out front, far from the road and surrounded by trees, and seeing, like an angel before me, a beautiful vision of a horse. And I knew—well, I hoped—no, I knew … she had to be the answer to my prayers.
The first order of business was to get her out of the garden to somewhere Mom wouldn't see her. At first I thought of luring her into the ravine, but then I remembered, way across the yard near the footbridge to the zoo, the stables that could have been built just for her.
Hiding a big mare in a stable and making sure no one sees her forever afterward isn't an easy thing to do. I made the decision without thinking about how it could possibly work out. I knew nothing about horses, except that they were beautiful and they ate grass. But how to take care of them? How to make them move? No. I wasn't really clear about that.
I went over to her quietly, holding out a dandelion in one hand and talking politely.
"Hi, horsey. Hi, horsey, horsey. Do you want a dandelion? Do you want a dandelion, horsey?”
She twitched her ears forward and listened to me, then shook her neck and went back to pulling at the weeds.
Pretty soon I was right next to