Starlight & Promises
Page 36
She scarcely saw him now, his image growing fainter and fainter until nothing was left other than two glowing green eyes touched by a melancholy that tore open her heart. Then they, too, faded away. The meadow grass, once so golden and bursting with life, grew withered and seared, leaving behind a dead, barren land.
She cried out, but her voice made no sound, except inside her head in the bleak landscape of a dying Earth.
Her cries woke Christian, and he tugged her close. “What’s wrong, tigrina?” he whispered. “A bad dream?”
Tears burned her eyes, the dream still very much with her. The words welled inside her, but she could not voice them. “Indeed,” she replied, snuffling against his chest, “merely a bad dream. Return to sleep. I shall be fine.” Wiping her face on his mat of chest hair, she laid her head on his comforting strength. Though he fell back asleep almost immediately, she lay awake for the remainder of the long night.
Morning came in the strident calls of circling gulls and terns and delicate pink light in a pastel wash in the eastern sky. Christian found Samantha on a hill above camp where she sat on a hummock of sea grass with her legs pulled up to her chest. Her arms wrapped around her legs, her chin resting on her knees, she stared out at the beach below, where a Smilodon in the distance stalked a young seal.
When he eased down beside her, she turned and gave him a watery smile. Moisture pearled on her lashes.
“Why the tears, tigrina?” he asked, moving behind her to pull her into the cradle of his knees. Her back met his chest, and he bent forward, dropping a kiss on the side of her neck and pressing his cheek against her hair.
“They are truly extinct, are they not?” Samantha asked while she watched the powerful cat stalk its prey.
“That appears to be the case unless we find a female or two.”
“You have no real expectation that we shall, do you?” She turned and looked into his eyes. Christian once said her eyes resembled the golden light of the sun. His reminded her of the mossy green Earth. Gold to green … sun to Earth … both were necessary for life. Unfortunately, so were male and female.
His breath echoed harshly. “No, I don’t. As I said, it makes no sense. Nevertheless, I have this gut feeling that all the females are gone. If they are, it’s merely a matter of time. These males are probably the final remnants of a dead species.”
“Let them go,” she said softly.
He scooted back, got to his feet, and pulled her up to face him. “You mean keep the secret? Not inform the scientific community?”
She grasped his hands and threaded her fingers through his. “That is precisely what I mean. Allow them to live out the remainder of their lives in peace. I have no wish to see them captured and put on display. They deserve a more dignified end. They are so very beautiful and have managed to exist for such a long time. Allow them to remain free now that their time is nearly over.”
He took on a serious expression. “Have you any notion what you’re asking? This could be the greatest discovery of the century. You’re suggesting I throw it all away.”
She returned his look. “Yes, I am.”
He smiled slowly, released a laugh. “Very well. I was having reservations, in any event. I agree with you, my feisty wife, the mother of my children, the love of my heart. They deserve to live in peace. I have no use for additional accolades or species bearing my name. The greatest thrill is in finding and studying them, not writing the damned papers. We shall keep the discovery strictly among our company.”
“Would that be a promise?”
Christian caught her face between his hands and brushed a kiss across her mouth. “Absolutely, Sam, and you know I always keep my promises.”
She threw her arms around his neck and tugged his head down for a real kiss. He cupped her bottom, lifting her. His cock grew hard as it always did when she wrapped her legs around his waist and pressed her heated center to him. With her head spinning, she pulled back. “Thank you, Chris. I truly believe you are the best of husbands, the best of fathers, and the best of scientists. I promise I shall love you forever with all my heart. And that promise is one I shall have no difficulty keeping.”
When they left Cat Island behind, Samantha also left behind her dreams of the Smilodon and its ultimate fate. Now she dreamt only of Christian.
EPILOGUE
Faint mewling came from the side of the cliff on Cat Island, causing the seabirds to take to wing in sudden flight. Deep inside the cave carved into the volcanic rock along a seemingly impassible ledge, a Smilodon curled up around her litter of kittens. They were an orange hue with white spots splattered across silky fur, and they had wide, padded feet with pointed little kitten claws that kneaded their mother’s side as they fastened onto her teats and sucked greedily.
The mother Smilodon sighed and lay back on her side, giving the kittens greater access to the rich nourishment. A deep purr rumbled from her throat, her brood pushing and pulling and suckling. Rounded bellies soon stretched tight with milk.
The litter was large for a Smilodon, six healthy kittens. And, as Mother Nature somehow managed to find a solution in times of adversity, all six were female.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barker, Francis, Peter Hulme & Margaret Iversen. 1988. Cannibalism and the Colonial World. University Press: Cambridge.
Bier, James A. 2003. Reference Map of Oceania. University of Hawaii Press: Hawaii.
Bjerre, Jens. 1974. The Last Cannibals. Drake Pub.: New York.
Goldman, Irving. 1970. Ancient Polynesian Society. University of Chicago Press: Chicago. Kirch, Patrick Vinton & Roger C. Green. 2001. Hawaiki, Ancestral Polynesia. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
Krieger, Michael. 1994. Conversations with the Cannibals. Ecco Press: New Jersey.
Markham, Clements R. 1878. William Hawkins, Voyage into the South Seas. Hakluyt Society: London.
McGaurr, Lyn. 1999. Tasmania. Lonely Planet: Melbourne.
Mead, Margaret. 1970. People and Places. Bantam: New York.
Mytinger, Caroline. 1942. Head Hunting in the Solomon Islands. The Macmillan Company: New York. Oliver, Douglas. 2002. Polynesia in Early Historic Times. Pizzey, Graham. 1980. A Field Guide to the Birds of Bess Press: Honolulu.
Walker, James Blackhouse. 1914. Early Tasmania. John Australia. Princeton University Press: New Jersey. Watts, Dave. 2000. Field Guide to Tasmanian Birds. Vail, Government Printer: Hobart. New Holland Pub.: London.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dear Reader,
In my books, I pull from many inspirations. The idea of a living Smilodon is one that particularly appealed to me because of my zoological background and my research with wild cats. When I first conceived of Starlight & Promises, my animal of choice was the Tasmanian tiger, a marsupial from Australia and Tasmania, thought to be extinct, that filled the same niche as the lion in Africa and the tiger in Asia. However, as I began the book, a small group of living Tasmanian tigers was found in Australia. As a scientist I was thrilled by the discovery, but it ruined my story. Therefore, I shifted gears to the Smilodon, a less likely candidate for sudden rediscovery.
Steven’s scientific hoax was based on a true incident. In 1912, workmen discovered skull fragments in a gravel pit in Piltdown, England, during a time when English anthropology had suffered a decline in popularity and success. The workmen first unearthed a large skull, and soon after, uncovered an apelike jaw. Scientists, ecstatic with the discovery and its anthropological implications, named the fossil “Piltdown Man” and touted it as the “missing link” between apes and men they had sought for so long. Scientists even assigned the fossil to a genus, Eoanthropus (dawn man), and a species, dawsoni, after Charles Darwin. Forty years later, in 1953, Piltdown Man was exposed as an ingenious hoax, the juxtaposition of a modern human skull with the jaw of an orangutan.
My hero, Christian Badia, is a lover of basketball (as am I), and it gave me great pleasure to introduce this sport in its infancy. James Naismith, a Canadian instructor at the Young Men’s
Christian Association Training School (now Springfield College) in Springfield, Massachusetts, invented the game of basketball in 1891. His superior, Dr. Luther H. Gulick, had challenged him to develop a vigorous athletic sport suitable for indoor winter play. Using a soccer ball (known then as a football) as his inspiration, Naismith incorporated elements from football, soccer, and hockey. The original teams had nine players, and peach baskets were nailed to the walls as goals.
The Bornean Bay Cat (Catopuma badia), formerly Felis badia, was not (unfortunately) named after my hero, Christian Badia. It was first described by Gray in 1874, but no photograph was taken of the species until 1988, and no live specimen captured for examination until 1992. Until then, only a few skulls and skins, which were collected in the late 1880s, existed in museums. To date, it is one of the rarest and least known of the wild cats.
I hope you enjoyed reading about Sam’s and Chris’s adventures as much as I enjoyed writing about them.
May you always have romance. I love to hear from readers. You can reach me at my Web site, http://catlindler.com.
Cat Lindler
CATLINDLER
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