Amberville by Tim Davys

Road, but from the hill in the schoolyard at the back the forest could be glimpsed beyond the city limits.
    For Father the job was a calling. Between the present day and the future there were some animals who made a difference, and he counted himself among them. He was bringing up the coming generations. If he succeeded, the city we’d known until now would be a pale prototype of that which was to come. Father was careful about describing his visions concretely, but I sensed that what he especially disliked about his own time was its lack of order.
    He wanted to sort things out.
    The barbarous by themselves, and the civilized by themselves.
    The reliable here, and the unreliable there.
    The heart knew which was which, even if the brain confused the issue with doubts.
    Whatever happened, we could rely on Father keeping his promises. The ministry responsible for the Cub List had inquired as to whether our parents were really ready for a set of twins; wouldn’t it be difficult to treat the cubs alike?
    Father guaranteed that on that point there was no danger. We cubs could always rely on a promise from Boxer Bloom. And by cubs, Boxer Bloom meant all the cubs that went to his school. Eric and I would start there eventually. In that respect we were no exception.
    Eric’s and my room on the fourth floor was a perfect boys’ room. Our beds with their tall, white headboards, our nightstands with cute soccer lamps, and our little desks with their wheeled stools, were just about identical, exactly like us.
    At first glance.
    If you looked, there were differences. Small, hardly noticeable, but nonetheless undeniable differences.
    I’m describing outward appearances.
    Inside, an abyss was growing between us.
     
    It happened late one evening when we were six months old; it became one of Mother’s most important memories. Mother and Father had invited some friends to dinner. It was later asserted that their many dinner parties were one of the reasons for Mother’s career. Thanks to her cooking skills, the dinner guests became eternally loyal to her. The network she created was wide-branching. Two or three evenings a week we had animals in our home. While others in the neighborhood were pottering in the garden, reading books, or being consumed by their careers, Mother prepared food for her dinner guests.
    Eric and I grew up in the kitchen. In the heat from the oven that never cooled, in a throng of bubbling kettles, un-washed saucepans and bowls, recently used cutting boards and graters that smelled of garlic, parmesan, and horseradish left standing on benches and tables where we often discovered a lamb filet or a sliced eggplant when we picked up a plate or decided to rinse out a cup in order to fill it with hot chocolate. In the midst of this chaos stood our mother, Rhinoceros Edda, like a commander on her captain’s bridge, careful not to stir the béarnaise sauce with the wooden spoon she’d just fished out of the cauliflower pan.
    Mother made no mistakes.
    That evening baked cod was being served with puréed almond potatoes. The gravy was served in the gravy boat that we’d inherited from Grandmother. A silver gravy boat that was very valuable.
    At the table, besides Mother and Father, sat their best friends, Mouse Weiss and her husband, Cat Jones. Penguin Odenrick was there—at that time still a deacon in the church on Hillville Road, unaware that he would soon be made a prodeacon—along with Jack Pig, whom Mother would later succeed as head of the Environmental Ministry.
    It was Odenrick who heard it first.
    “Excuse me,” he said in a loud voice, “but did I just hear a scream?”
    Conversation ceased. Odenrick had been right. In the silence a screaming cub was heard. From up on the fourth floor a howl forced its way down to the dining room. Boxer Bloom got up. There was still explosive force in his legs after many years of soccer-playing in his younger days.
    “It’s the cubs,” he said, his face pale.
    He ran out