As his bolt pierced the deer’s flesh, Nathan felt himself reduce, his body contracting into a dark, wet mass. He clenched against the blinding light, choking on snorts as he plopped onto a leafy patch of moss and lay feeble and disoriented. Something licked him, eyes darting. Liquid warmth filled his mouth, his belly. He drifted off to sleep.
His mother (but that wasn’t his mother! His mother was a chain smoker with Betty White hair) nudged him to stand. And he found that he could, although he didn’t want to. He preferred his leafy bed, the green smell of damp earth mounded around him. He liked it when she went away and left him there alone with his thoughts, and he could huff that florid vegetal perfume and stare at the stars. He wondered if every other deer he saw had formerly been human. Even the ants in the ground could be former humans. He wondered if this transformation had been a cosmic punishment or a cosmic reward.
Time passed slowly in this body. He could spend all day contemplating the texture of an acorn between his teeth, the way it snaps at first bite, the residual cap crunch, the meaty center. And trying to remember his human life, that took up a lot of his time, too. Most of it was foggy, fleeting, and he wanted to pin the memories so they’d stay put. “Son, deer are prey,” his father had said. “They’re born to be prey.” This was one memory that kept landing. When he was feasting on the greenest grass, he thought: prey. What is prey? He couldn’t remember the whole of it, only that prey means run.
Prey. Once the concept began to take hold, it entered his mind day and night. The rustle of a chipmunk skittering through leaves. Prey. A crow fluttering between clackety branches. Prey. Every gust of wind, even the shudder of a dragonfly landing on the surface of a puddle, triggered Nathan into flight. He made up his mind to find the most remote and unknown forest in which to start fresh, to rid himself of this anxiety forever. Never before had a deer been so stealthy. Sometimes he stood for hours just listening, barely breathing, not moving a muscle, sorting familiars from threats. He bedded down in late afternoons and traveled in the early morning hours when the world’s creatures still slumbered. When he finally found a tranquil and secluded patch of trees, he could barely contain his triumph.
But his secluded patch of trees didn’t fix it. Every night came the terrors. Sometimes he dreamed he was the prey and sometimes he dreamed he was the predator, hungry and quiet in the dark, and what he wanted to be was a secret third thing that was neither hunter nor hunted. There must be a place, he thought, unspoiled by the laws of consumption, where such creatures existed. That was the place he needed to find.
He searched and searched, not knowing exactly what he was looking for but knowing he would recognize it when he found it. Along the way he met many creatures, most of them kind but all of them bound to the same old truth. Prey. Actually, they seemed resigned to it, unbothered as they went about their daily business, and he grew furious as he watched them. They were complicit, every skitter and scatter contributing to this vicious cycle. Sometimes as he made his way through a copse he stepped a heavy hoof on the occasional toad or baby bunny just to teach them a lesson.
He had no way of knowing how much ground he covered or what part of the world he was in at any given time, but after traversing what felt like endless forests, highways, rivers, streams, fences, groves, thickets, and farms, he entered a woodland that looked vaguely familiar. Of course, most woodlands were a bit similar, but this one had a smell that reminded him pleasantly of the place where he’d been born. The grass here was so luscious and green, the acorns so plentiful, he decided to stop for a snack and rest.
That’s when he saw him.
It was the moment he’d most feared, and yet he could do nothing but stare, catching flickers of the vicious nonchalance with which his human self had extinguished this body he now inhabited. He saw the crossbow, the bolt aimed at his face by this Nathan whose features he’d seen in every mirror for 33 years. As the bolt pierced his flesh, he felt himself reduce, his body contracting into a dark, wet mass.