Wuzzle Big Paws

By Thio Isobel Moss

Kenny - August 14th

I stared through the portal, biting my lip, trying to scrounge up some level of conviction, one way or the other, as the woman unloaded her groceries and carried them into the house.

“Kenny…?” Colt asked, his voice tentative.

I started, glancing over at my concerned apprentice. Right. Colt’s pop quiz. My eyes roved over to Oscar’s raised eyebrows. I had the distinct impression that I had missed something during my internal debate.

“Sorry. What?”

The healer rolled his eyes.

“If you don’t get over this preoccupation, you’re going to blow yourself up,” he grumbled, waving to a monstrous three-eyed, three-legged, three-eared, carnivorous white rabbit on a nearby plane. “Or eaten. The kid wants to know if there’s some way to help the kit.”

It was only then that I realized the dump-truck-sized creature was a baby and that it was terrified…of us. The unmoving wall of lilac fur behind it must be its mother. It was hard to tell, but I suspected that she was dead.

I grimaced, wishing there was an “easy” button, like in the commercials.

“Do you know what it eats? Is it tameable? Could it breathe our air? Does it carry some vicious disease that would exterminate mankind?” I asked in a monotone, feeling a bit vicious myself. “Seeing other planes and being a hedge witch means making some hard choices sometimes. I want to help it, but we don’t have the knowledge to do so.”

Colt nodded, but continued to stare at the animal.

Its ribs were showing, and its fur was matted. It was starving.

“Cycle of life,” Oscar coughed into his fist.

Yes…but, if we helped it and it still died, nothing had really changed. It just might be quicker…or take longer. If we helped it and it survived, though, it could continue terrorizing the prey animals of its world for the rest of its natural life.

Right.

How to do this…

“Don’t get your hopes up,” I told Colt. “I have only been successful in making a door across planes to a new location three times. Do not enter the portal; we don’t know if humans can survive there.”

“Is this dangerous?” he asked, looking like he half-regretted asking about it in the first place.

I didn’t reply; I’d already burrowed through six layers of reality, and the seventh was proving fractious.

“Yes, trans-planar doors can be dangerous. No, you shouldn’t feel guilty—even if she stupids herself to death,” my friend, one-time enemy, former apprentice, ex-boyfriend, healer, and défteros snarled, raising his voice. It was nice to know he still cared. “She’ll be fine, but this will take a while, and we can’t afford to waste time. What is Behlgrif’s Third Law of Dynamic Ley Displacement?”

“So….”

Oscar handed me a bottle of water and scowled at Colt in warning. Colt ignored him.

It had taken four hours, but I did manage to create a door and drop off some food and water for the…thing. The plane had drifted further away right when I was about to anchor things, doubling the time it should have taken. The greater existence had a cruel sense of humor. It was also an unauthorized working, so Padŭ would have plenty to say about it.

I glanced at the rabbit chowing down on the pile of flesh I’d delivered, the fur around its mouth stained red, and decided it was worth the fallout. I’d named it Wuzzle Big Paws.

I mopped the sweat from my face with a wadded-up paper towel and stretched. I needed a massage in the worst way.

“What is it eating?”

Oscar didn’t even try to disguise his snort.

“Did you think it was an herbivore?”

I smacked the healer’s shoulder.

“Don’t mislead him. I picked up a few useful bits while I tunneled. It’s not meat, but nutritionally, it gets the job done. To Wuzzle, it smells like meat and tastes like meat. And before you ask, I spelled it so it won’t go bad.”

I could feel Oscar’s sarcastic glare like the heat from a fire. He wasn’t a pet guy. He didn’t even have a familiar.

The healer mouthed the name, “Wuzzle,” shaking his head and putting supplies away.

The kid, on the other hand, grinned, finally losing the tension in his forehead and around his eyes that Wuzzle’s plight had evoked.

“Will it take another four hours to close the door?”

“No, closing is a lot easier.”

“And our other dilemma,” inquired Oscar, nodding toward the other door.

All the groceries had been taken in and, aside from two little girls on bikes and the wind shifting through the trees, all was still on the residential loop.

“If you assign someone to her and it becomes obvious that it was unnecessary, what have we lost?”

I closed my eyes and forced my mouth to smile, teeth bared in a puppet’s frozen grin.

“If a team operates while short one man and someone’s maimed or killed, I will have failed the very people I promised to protect.”

Oscar pursed his lips and nodded—the kind of agreement that came with a ‘but’ attached.

“But…,” he said, holding up a finger, demanding the benefit of a doubt, “if you don’t and it was necessary, the preternatural world has lost one of its favorite authors. An icon! An innocent. Someone who doesn’t even know we exist, yet died because we do.”

“You didn’t name her Wuzzle Big-Paws by any chance, did you?”

A flash from his dark eyes told me to get serious.

Colt watched the back-and-forth like a particularly fascinating pickleball game.

“Crowbait left six days ago, so yes, she’s being watched.”

I nibbled my lip again, staring at the house.

“Then what’s the issue?”

What was the issue? I didn’t even know.

I shrugged.

“I don’t know. I just have this feeling… Like I’ve missed something. Like that peaceful little world,” I pointed to the parade of updated ranches, “has secrets. I’m worried about Ms. Devereaux. I’m worried about Crowbait. I’m…just worried.”

Oscar patted my shoulder.

“It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”