The Pterodactyl's Egg

by Annie Besant

  Her mother suggested knitting. ‘It always calms me,’ she said. Dr POX agreed over the phone and enrolled herself for a course in palaeontology – the study of prehistoric life. This calmed her so much that she actually smiled at the teacher in class (which immediately caused him to stammer and lose his grip on the lesson). She later had to assure him that he had got his facts about the Triassic period right.

  If Dr POX smiled in class, she actually chuckled during field trips to unearth fossils. One day, when she was preparing fossilized bones for DNA extraction, an idea fell into place. She argued and debated with herself about the idea. Could she do it? Would she succeed? It wasn’t that it had never been attempted before; it was just that the right person hadn’t attempted it before. And without another thought, Dr POX had done what other scientists only doodled about on the margins of their research papers – she had resurrected the dinosaur.

  6

  Mom in the Middle

  ‘A pterodactyl? A PTERODACTYL?’ Priya screeched.

  Sam shushed her. ‘Be quiet, you’ll wake Mom up.’

  ‘I think she’s already awake,’ Priya said, eyeing the prehistoric creature nervously. It swung its gaze from Priya to Sam as they spoke. She wet her lips. ‘I think her door is opening.’

  The announcement jolted them out of shock. If there was one thing Sam trusted, it was his sister’s ability to hear a pencil drop in a room full of screaming children. If their mom found them awake, she would have them clean the bathrooms for weeks. Of course, she might just see the dinosaur and faint. But when she awoke, she would have them cleaning their neighbours’ bathrooms too, dinosaur or no dinosaur.

  ‘Pipi, what do we do?’ he asked, using her least favourite nickname.

  Priya looked around and her eyes fell on the laundry basket next to Sam’s keyboard piano. She quickly reached around Sam and grabbed his bedsheet from the floor. Priya bundled the squeaking pterodactyl into the sheet and buried it under Sam’s stinky clothes, praying that it wouldn’t suffocate from the smell.

  Grabbing her brother, she pushed him onto the small stool that stood in front of the piano and knelt down beside him. Priya played the first note just as her mother pushed open the door.

  ‘What are the two of you doing out of bed?’ their mother asked, hands on her hips.

  Sam and Priya grinned sweetly. ‘Helping Sam with his piano lessons,’ Priya said, her face the picture of innocence.

  ‘In the middle of the night?’ Mom asked, eyebrows flying to meet her hairline.

  Sam and Priya grinned again.

  Mom glared. Priya never volunteered to help Sam with anything. Usually there was a lot of bribing, shouting and finger-wagging involved before her daughter would agree to help anyone.

  ‘This is not the time for pianos or sneaking around,’ Mom said, suspicion dripping from her voice. ‘I want you kids in bed. NOW.’

  Priya and Sam nodded their heads like docile sheep. Mom’s suspicion levels went up by a few degrees.

  ‘All right!’ she said, hands on her hips. ‘What is going on here? And don’t you dare lie to me.’

  Priya and Sam looked at each other. In the silence that stretched like a tortured violin string, a sharp cry broke out of the laundry basket.

  Mom gasped. ‘What was that?’ she asked, now really alarmed.

  ‘NOTHING,’ the siblings shouted in unison. The shriek sounded again, rising with their voices as they tried to drown it out with their babbling.

  ‘Shut up!’ Mom hissed. Sam and Priya were shocked. Mom had never ever asked them to shut up. ‘Be quiet!’ and ‘Silence!’ were usually her words of choice.

  ‘You kids tell me right now what is happening here,’ Mom said through clenched teeth. ‘Or I’m calling your father.’

  The word father worked better than any torture chamber. Priya and Sam tripped over each other trying to get their side of the story out.

  ‘He—’

  ‘No, she—’

  ‘Brought it—’

  ‘Hid it—’

  ‘I heard something—’

  ‘She asked me to hide it—’

  ‘I told him to tell you—’

  ‘SHE DID NOT!’

  ‘I DID TOO!’

  Mom held up her hands and shushed them. ‘I want you to decide who is going to tell me what story. I’m giving you thirty seconds.’

  Priya and Sam looked at each other.

  ‘Let’s just tell her,’ Priya muttered.

  ‘Nooo!’ Sam cried and lunged for her as she got up to go to the laundry basket.

  Priya shook him off and fished inside the basket.

  ‘Here, Mom,’ she said, turning around. ‘We found this.’

  Mom rubbed her eyes. Priya seemed to be holding a bird. Or was it a grasshopper – an extremely large grasshopper? No, maybe her kids had found a cat, a strange, mutated cat.

  ‘Is that a cat?’ Mom asked, clearly unable to believe her eyes.

  ‘No, Mom!’ Priya and Sam hissed together. The pterodactyl wriggled and tried to flap its wings.

  ‘Oh my god!’ Mom shrieked. ‘It’s a bat. You brought home a bat!’

  ‘It’s not a bat,’ Sam cried, annoyed. It was a pterodactyl. Why wasn’t that clear to Mom?

  Mom went to the stool by the piano and sat down. She rubbed her forehead. This was too much, just too much. She had had a long day and had been unable to fall sleep. Now, her kids were playing tricks on her.

  ‘Mom,’ Priya said urgently. ‘It’s not a cat or a bat. It’s a—’

  ‘Pterodactyl,’ Sam finished for her.

  7

  Bringing in BENO

  Dr POX looked at the papers laid out in front of her. Then she looked up at the woman sitting opposite her. The woman was dressed in a crisp red suit and wore large glasses that gave her a very owlish look. Dr POX almost expected her head to turn around a full 360 degrees.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ Dr POX asked.

  The woman nodded. ‘If the egg hatches, the creature will experience a growth rate three times the normal growth rate of such creatures.’

  Dr POX looked down at the papers again. She sighed, leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. ‘Are you telling me that in less than a week the creature will go from being the size of an apple to the size of a … er … fully grown giant?’

  The woman swallowed. Dr POX sighed again. ‘Thank you, professor. Now get out.’

  The woman in the red suit blinked, but obeyed hastily.

  ‘Send in BENO,’ Dr POX snapped as the woman reached the door. She blinked, quickly covered a gasp and ran.

  Dr POX had never understood the Latin mottos that scientists liked to float around. She simply dismissed them as silly proverbs made up by even sillier men running around in togas long ago. But as she sat watching the afternoon sun sulk behind wispy white clouds, she whispered, ‘Extremis malis extrema remedia …’ – desperate times called for desperate measures.

  Fifteen minutes later, BENO was standing in attention in front of her boss. Dr POX tapped a pencil on the desk as she calmly studied the woman in front of her. Short and whip-thin, BENO stood with her shoulder pulled back like a soldier. She had a small, oval face and eyes that tilted upwards. If you tried to guess her age, you would put her between twenty and twenty-five. You would have been wrong.

  ‘We have lost one of our eggs.’

  ‘Lost?’ BENO murmured.

  ‘It was stolen,’ Dr POX snapped.

  BENO was silent.

  ‘The thief has been dealt with,’ Dr POX continued, irritated about having to explain.

  ‘So you know where the egg is?’ BENO murmured again.

  ‘We don’t,’ Dr POX admitted grudgingly. ‘That’s why you’re here. I want you to find the egg. You have two days.’

  ‘Only two?’ BENO raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Two,’ Dr POX said, ‘or you could make it four and try and drag home a fully grown pterodactyl.’

  BENO nodded curtly.

&n
bsp; Dr POX slid a file across the table. ‘Everything we know is in this.’

  BENO took the file, opened it, scanned the pages and gave it back.

  ‘Everything is ready for you to leave in the next five minutes,’ Dr POX said, looking at her watch. ‘Oh, and you’re going solo on this mission.’

  BENO blinked, the only indication that she was surprised.

  ‘The fewer the people who know about this, the better.’

  BENO saluted, turned on her heel smartly and left the room.

  Five minutes later, as she made her way to the helicopter pad, she noticed a woman in a red suit being carried away on a stretcher. They were carrying her in the direction of the incinerator.

  BENO looked away, checked her watch and climbed into the helicopter.

  8

  The Gender Debate

  ‘What do you think it eats?’ Priya asked.

  ‘It’s a bird. What do birds eat?’ Sam replied, still turning the pages of his dinosaur book.

  ‘Seeds, I guess. Maybe fruit.’

  ‘Unless you’re a vulture,’ Sam observed. ‘Then you want to eat older sisters.’

  Priya stuck her tongue out at him.

  They were in the living room with the pterodactyl perched on the coffee table. Their mother was having a lie-down. The revelation that there was a strange creature in her son’s room had shocked her into silence. This had surprised Sam and Priya. They had expected her to shout and bring the building down; instead she had weakly flapped her hands at them, told them to ‘put that thing away’ and stumbled off to her room.

  When Priya and Sam woke up in the morning – they had slept in Sam’s room with the pterodactyl dozing between them – Mom was still sleeping off her shock. They were hungry and so was the pterodactyl. It had been crying in short, shrill bursts and pecked Priya every so often to get her attention.

  ‘Find something for it to eat, Sam!’ Priya had said, rubbing the angry red marks on her arm. Then, bundling the bird into a pillow case, they had migrated to the living room.

  They watched as the pterodactyl sized them up with beady eyes. It was a dirty shade of green and it was small – the size of an apple – with fragile bat-like wings that folded into its body. When it flapped its wings, they could see veins crisscrossing the delicate membrane. It waddled on its hind legs, using its pointed wings for support so that it looked like it was walking on all fours.

  It looked around the room and then seemed to spot something because it jumped off the coffee table, waddled to the dining table and screeched.

  ‘What do you think it wants?’ Sam asked, covering his ears.

  Priya shrugged. ‘I think it wants to climb the table.’

  So, she scooped it up and put it on the flat surface. To their surprise, it happily began rifling through the fruit bowl on the table. It pecked at the fruits, stopping every now and then to make strange noises. Then, it proceeded to eat five bananas, three apples and one guava. It didn’t seem to like the guava much because it spat out more than it ate.

  Having eaten its fill, it shrieked for Priya to carry it. When she scooped it up again, it hopped on to her arm, found its way to her shoulder and fell asleep.

  ‘What do you think? Is it a he or a she?’ Sam asked, stroking the pterodactyl.

  Priya scratched her head. How did you check if an animal was a he or a she? Then she remembered her aunt telling her how she checked the gender of the stray kittens she rescued from the streets. However, that involved doing something that made Priya go red just thinking of it. But it had to be done.

  She cleared her throat. ‘Ummm … Sam, do you remember how Kirthi Aunty checks her stray kittens?’

  Sam blinked and nodded, his ears beginning to burn with embarrassment. ‘Umm … well, we could try that.’

  She lifted the pterodactyl carefully from her shoulder and flipped it over to reveal its underside. It snorted and shifted as it tried to turn in Priya’s hands.

  Priya gently but firmly grasped the base of its head with one hand. With the other hand, she balanced its rump. Sam leaned in closer and the siblings peered at what they thought were the pterodactyl’s privates.

  Seconds trickled into minutes.

  ‘I think it’s a he,’ Priya said finally, lifting the pterodactyl and setting it gently on the arm of the sofa.

  ‘I think it’s a she,’ Sam countered.

  ‘It’s a he!’ Priya said firmly.

  Sam countered, ‘We should call it a she.’

  ‘No, let’s just call it a he.’

  ‘No, we really don’t know if it is a he or it is a she. But if we were to call it a she, she would be a she and also a he because he is a part of she. See, one word to solve our problems,’ Sam finished with a grin. Priya didn’t see.

  ‘I told you to get rid of it!’ Mom stood in the doorway, hands on her hips

  The children gulped.

  ‘But, Mom,’ Priya cajoled. ‘It’s so cute.’

  Mom rubbed her forehead. ‘Cute? It looks like a reptile!’

  ‘No, no,’ Priya coaxed. ‘It’s a bird, Mom … just like bats.’

  Mom blinked and Sam cleared his throat. ‘Umm … Pipi, it says here in the book that the pterodactyl is a flying reptile.’

  ‘Reptile?’ Priya echoed. ‘Like a … a … snake?’

  Sam nodded. ‘Like a lizard also.’

  Priya exclaimed and tried to shake the pterodactyl off the arm of the sofa. Angry at being woken up, it simply clung to Priya’s arm and flapped its wings.

  ‘Calm down, Priya!’ Mom yelled. ‘Sit down and stop hopping. God knows what that creature will do. It will probably peck your eyes out.’

  Priya sat down heavily. ‘Serves you right,’ said Sam coolly, reaching out to stroke the soft fuzz of fur on the pterodactyl’s neck.

  Mom flopped down on one of the chairs. ‘I need an explanation as to how that thing got here,’ she said, her voice like ice.

  Sam shifted. ‘I … I found an egg, Mom,’ he said, knowing that his mother would know if he even thought about lying. ‘It was in the sandpit. I thought it was a fossil. But last night, it hatched.’

  Mom shook her head. ‘That is impossible. You know that may not be a pterodactyl; it could just be a strange mutated bird.’

  Sam shook his head doubtfully. ‘See this picture,’ he said, giving his mother his dinosaur book.

  Mom looked at the picture carefully and then at the creature. She did this a few times and then sighed. ‘It’s simply not a dinosauric creature. We are going to have to show it to your father when he gets back from his trip.’

  The children looked miserable. Their father would take it from them and give it to a zoo. That was just the sort of thing he would do.

  Sam was close to tears. ‘Please, Mom, can we keep it with us till Dad comes back?’

  Mom looked like she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want Sam to cry, but she didn’t know if the creature was dangerous either. She shook her head; it couldn’t be a pterodactyl. Her children just had an overactive imagination.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, coming to a decision. ‘You can keep it till your father gets back, but I want you to be very careful with it. One scratch, one single scratch, and I’m taking you to the doctor for a tetanus shot.’

  9

  How to Train Your Pterodactyl

  ‘No, no! Bad Biscuit!’ Sam shouted, wagging his finger. The pterodactyl hung its head and hopped on one foot.

  He and Priya had named the pterodactyl after much Googling and arguing. The final shortlisted names had been Buck Beak, Ben and Biscuit. Since they weren’t decided on the gender of the pterodactyl and thought Buck Beak was too long a name, they settled for Biscuit.

  That was when the pterodactyl had still been the size of an apple. Now, it was the size of a large dog. Sam was hard at work trying to teach it tricks as well as good toilet manners.

  They were in Priya’s room. The pterodactyl had latched on to Priya and refused to stay anywhere but in her room. Sam
was annoyed; he had found the egg after all and now it was in love with his sister.

  He sighed. ‘Biscuit, you cannot pee on Priya’s floor.’ He paused, mischief lighting up his face. He dragged Biscuit to the pink mat lying in front of the bathroom door. It was his sister’s favourite mat and said something about girls being smart and boys being stupid in glittery lettering. ‘You can pee here, Biscuit,’ he said brightly. He was rewarded with a flapping of the wings, which Sam thought was Biscuit’s way of being friendly.

  Biscuit waddled to the mat, sat on it and pooped instead. Sam cackled as Priya walked in.

  ‘Oof, what is that smell?’ she asked, just as Biscuit flew to her and tried to sit on her shoulder.

  ‘No, Biscuit!’ Priya exclaimed, ‘You’re getting too big to sit on my shoulder, and heavy too.’

  Biscuit’s head drooped.

  ‘Bisscuitt,’ Sam called, but the pterodactyl ignored him, trying to sit on Priya’s shoulder again.

  Unable to disappoint it, Priya picked it up and carried it to her bed.

  ‘Mom will shout if you let it get into your bed,’ Sam said sourly.

  Priya rolled her eyes. ‘What are you trying to teach Biscuit anyway?’

  She saw the book in his hand, ‘101 dog tricks?’ She frowned. ‘Why are you trying to teach Biscuit dog tricks? That’s only for dogs.’

  ‘I couldn’t find a book for training your pet pterodactyl,’ Sam said saucily.

  Priya narrowed her eyes, ‘You are getting cheekier every day, flowerpot.’

  Sam smiled sweetly. ‘Mom says I remind her of you.’

  Priya threw a pillow at him. Sam ducked neatly and threw the book at her. Priya dodged and grabbed another pillow from her bed only to find her brother armed with the one she had already sent his way.

  Shrieking and screaming, brother and sister engaged in a fight while Biscuit observed them curiously. It then flapped its wings and flew to Priya’s aid. Sam howled with laughter as Biscuit tried to pull the pillow from Sam’s hands. He pulled back and a tug of war followed, which ended when the pillow ripped in two and spilling its stuffing everywhere.