The turkey baster.
I grabbed it, ran halfway to the basement door, reversed back to the kitchen, snagged a drinking glass, then booked it down the stairs.
Everybody okay. The ladies still watching. Mr. Lizard still squeaking. Piper serenading them all with a song from Pixel Slippers, her favorite kinder-rock band.
I poured the rest of the Slendah into the glass. I squeezed the air out of the bulb at the end of the baster, then sucked up some pink liquid. The thing’s mouth, wide open when it squeaked, was lined with rows of tiny, needle-sharp teeth.
Teeth already? Don’t you guys, like, gum things for a while before you teethe?
I positioned the tip of the baster just outside the teeth. I squeezed.
The Slendah dribbled straight down into the box.
Not enough suction.
I sucked up more Slendah, angled the baster so the pink liquid rested in the bulb. I squeezed the bulb, really hard this time.
Splooge! A jet of Slendah hit the thing in one eye and splattered all over the box.
“You missed,” Piper said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.”
I filled the baster again. The thing wasn’t holding its head still. It was squeaking, stumbling around in circles. In full-out meltdown mode.
I was going to have to touch it.
I steeled myself, got a grip on the back of its flailing head and neck. I was stronger than it was; I forced it to stay still. Its skin/fur felt damp, but not exactly slimy.
I rested the tip of the baster on the thing’s teeth, squeezed the bulb again. This time, most of the Slendah jetted straight into its mouth.
Bull’s-eye.
The mouth shut. I could see a swallowing movement in the skinny throat. Then the tongue came out and licked all around, hunting for more.
Do it again: Suck up more Slendah. Tip back the baster. Nudge it between the teeth. Squirt.
The critter made blissful little moaning sounds. Its throat began to work again. Swallowing. I missed a few more times—got pink stuff on its head and chest and decorated its box with pink splotches and squiggles. But the critter downed maybe half the can. At last, it settled back into newspaper, leaned against the hot water bottle, curled up, and shut its eyes.
“I think Mr. Lizard was hungry,” Piper said.
Check.
Rain streaked down the windows, doing strange things to the early light, making it seem trembly and uncertain. The thing lay there with its sides bulging out, with its Slendah-spattered body rising and falling in the rhythms of sleep. In the wavery light, it seemed to alternate between bandwidths: between something from now, and something very, very old.
I blinked. Rubbed my eyes. Massaged my temples.
Stella fluffed her feathers, seeming to sigh. I could hear the faint sounds of cars on the boulevard—the early risers. I could hear the furnace’s hum.
“Piper,” I said. “You can’t tell anyone about this.”
She nodded.
“Seriously: no one. Not even McKenzie. Not unless I say it’s okay.”
“I won’t!”
But I knew she would. The kenning secret—that was drilled into her, practically from birth. But this was going to come out someday.
The lizard stirred, curled more tightly into itself, tucked its head under its birdy claws. I hesitated, then touched it, ran my fingers down its sides and back, avoiding the pink goo. I could feel the sharp little bumps along its spine, and assorted other nodes and lumps and knobs beneath the dampish layer of fuzz.
My fingers felt creamy, like they had hand lotion on them. I brought them to my nose.
Sort of like … licorice, maybe?
What are you into, Mom?
The critter began to knead the newspapers with its claws. I touched it again and could feel a vibration under its skin. A funny thrumming, like the purring of a cat.
9
SKULL AND CLAW
RESURRECTION PEAKS, ALASKA
Josh stepped into the cave and waited for his father to catch up. He breathed in the damp, mineral smell as his eyes adjusted to the dark. The cave roof rose higher than he would have guessed, and a long, sandy track snaked down into the gloom among heaps of scree and fallen boulders. Josh wondered how old the track was. Hundreds of years? Thousands? He wondered what kinds of animals had sheltered here over the eons, and if any of them were remotely like the things they’d come looking for.
It had been a long, hard climb to get here. Drifts of snow still covered parts of the trail, and Josh’s father—Cap, everyone called him—had been difficult the whole time. Withdrawn, and quick to criticize. Like always, when his knee slowed him down. Josh had stayed back with him, let the others go on ahead. Which seemed to annoy Cap even more.
Now, waiting, Josh felt the familiar dragging sensation in his gut. His brother Zack seemed to love these expeditions, but they bothered Josh. True, he always felt the tiny flare of excitement at the possibility of finding something amazing. But after the excitement came the dread.
Far ahead, in the darker regions of the cave, Josh could see two flashlight beams. One raked across the sand and boulders on either side of the track, heading steadily deeper. That would be Zack. Needing to be first, like always. He’d been born first, eleven months before Josh, and ever since, he’d had to be first in everything. When, last year, Josh had made varsity soccer as a freshman, Zack had gotten more competitive than ever.
If that was even possible.
The second light jittered from Zack to the cave mouth and back again to Zack. That would be the college guy, Quinn, who had found the things last fall. At least, that was the story he’d told.
Josh didn’t know Quinn well, but he could pretty much guess what was happening now. Quinn didn’t want some high school kid getting ahead of him; he wanted to point out his find himself. On the other hand, he wanted Cap to be there when he did it.
Everybody wanted to impress the Captain.
The lights disappeared around a bend.
“Did you get the coordinates?”
Josh jumped. Cap always managed to do that to him. Josh had missed something, something he should have been doing, something Cap had to point out to him. Again.
Josh pulled out the GPS and captured the coordinates. Quinn had claimed he didn’t have coordinates, but that was probably because he didn’t want people coming up here without him. You couldn’t trust Quinn, couldn’t tell what he was really thinking. He reminded Josh of a fox: sharp-faced, ruddy-haired, and sly.
Now Cap edged past Josh and into the cave. His limp, Josh saw, was more noticeable than before. He was tired, but he’d never admit it.
Josh followed. Roof and walls closed around him, muting the sounds of seabirds and wind, dimming the brightness of the day. Josh clicked on his flashlight and headed down into the dark. The crunch of his boots on sand sounded loud. The dread came crawling in again.
Josh knew it was impossible for Cap to make a living as a hunting guide anymore. Too little wildlife. Too much regulation. And the knee. Cap had had to find another way, and there were worse ways than this.
But what they’d come for now was illegal. They were poaching. Not live animals, which would have been worse. Cap wouldn’t do that. Yeah, he got testy about all the permits and tags. But he’d spent hours in the field patiently teaching Zack and Josh how to tell a legal kill from an illegal one. Josh knew by heart the difference between cow and bull caribou; he could recite in his sleep the exact antler spread and bow tine count of a legal moose. Josh had never, ever seen Cap hunt out of season or go over limit.
But still. This was taking things they had no right to. And if they were caught, there’d be a fine for Cap. Maybe even jail time. Cap had told Josh that he had it handled. Told him he shouldn’t come if he was scared.
He was scared. A little. And admitting he was scared was not an option. So Josh had to go.
But everyone could tell he wasn’t happy.
Rounding the first curve,
Josh saw Zack’s and Quinn’s light beams crisscrossing, probing the surface of a field of rock debris ahead.
“They’re here, Cap.” Zack’s voice echoed in the dark.
“Wait,” Cap said.
They’re here.
Josh shivered—wanting to rush forward, wanting to hold back.
By the time he and Cap caught up, Zack had unpacked his tools and turned on the lantern.
“Spawn, eh?” Quinn said. He spread his arms wide, taking in the expanse of rocky floor, casting a cartoon-monster shadow in the blue light of the lantern.
“Spawn?” Cap muttered.
Josh translated: “Cool.” He looked, but he couldn’t see what Quinn was talking about.
Cap grunted, shrugged off his backpack. He took out the hammer, the whisk broom, the chisels, the picks, the trowels. He brushed aside a top layer of fragments and debris. Now Josh could see that some of the rocks were different, lighter colored. They humped out of the surrounding stone, about the size and shape of half-buried soccer balls. Rough and jagged soccer balls. And not quite round, exactly. Ovoid? Was that a word? And flattish. Sort of dark gray, flattened ovals.
Josh drew in a sharp breath. Couldn’t help himself. In all the time they’d gone hunting for fossils, he’d never seen anything like this.
Yeah, it could just be the way the rocks had formed. Some kind of crystallization pattern.
But they sure looked like eggs to him.
So maybe Quinn’s story was true.
On his first trip to the cave, Quinn had told them, he’d found a different kind of egg, an egg that seemed newer than these. Bigger. Rounder. Leathery—not made of stone. Shattered pieces of other newer eggs lay nearby. Quinn had carried the whole egg down the mountain and shown it to one of his professors, who had talked Quinn into turning it over to him.
A couple of weeks later, the professor had asked Quinn to lead a woman, another professor, to the cave. For pay. She’d found these things. Petrified eggs, Quinn claimed. Fossils. She’d chipped out one and had taken it for herself, but had refused to chip one out for Quinn.
Quinn had come back up alone with a hammer and chisel, but he’d wrecked everything he’d tried to pry out. Then winter had set in, and snow blocked the trail to the cave. In the meantime, Quinn heard about Cap and his skill with fossils.
“Think you can get them out whole?” Quinn asked now.
Cap bent down, eyed the eggs. If they really were eggs. “Think so,” he said. “You saw the one she extracted. Was it the same as the new one? Except older, turned to stone?”
Quinn shrugged. “These are smaller. Kind of squashed. But the woman seemed to think they were the same. Said she could tell by the ridge patterns.”
Cap shook his head. “You’d think there’d be some intermediate stages, between the fossilized eggs and the new ones. You sure you didn’t see anything like that?”
“No, nothing.”
“Did you look?” Zack asked.
“Yeah, I looked! I—”
“We should check it out,” Zack said. “In case he missed something.” He turned to Quinn. “Where are those fragments you told us about?”
Quinn looked torqued, like he didn’t want to answer. His eyes flicked to Cap. “I found a way out, at the other end,” Quinn said. “Hard to get to from outside. They’re inside the edge of the opening.”
“Well, they aren’t going anywhere,” Cap said. “We’ll open up one egg to see what we’ve got, but we’ll keep the others whole. Worth more that way.”
“How will people know what they’re buying?” Quinn asked.
“We’ll get them X-rayed and certified.” Cap knelt, examined the ground around one of the flattened spheres. He brushed away the broken rocks and gravel, then took off his gloves and probed with bare fingers at the places where the sphere intersected with the ground. “Ah,” he said. “A nice fracture.” He set the chisel into the crack and tapped it with the rock hammer. Bent down for a closer look. Tapped again. Moved to another place and tapped some more.
The dry chink of steel on steel echoed through the cavern. Josh’s breath came out in frozen puffs, stained blue by the lantern’s light. He stamped his feet, trying to thaw his toes.
He missed the actual moment when the chunk of rock broke loose because Zack had gradually shouldered in between Josh and Cap, until Josh couldn’t see what Cap was doing. Wasn’t it enough that Zack was with Cap every day? Since Mom and Cap’s divorce, Josh had lived with Mom, in Haines. “Would you move?” Josh said.
“You move.”
Josh sighed. I always move, he thought. He moved.
The thing rested in Cap’s hands now. It hadn’t come out completely clean, but, where the lantern light was strongest, Josh could make out a pattern of bumps and ridges on the surface, a pattern that didn’t look like any rock he’d ever seen.
“Josh,” Cap said. “Want to hold?”
“Yeah!”
Cap set the thing in Josh’s cupped hands, then tapped it lightly with the blunt end of the rock hammer. He tapped it again, a little harder. On the third try, with an echoing chink, the rock split into two clean halves.
“Ah,” Cap said. As if everything was now perfectly clear. Josh looked down at the shallow ridges, pits, and folds in the rock. In one of the halves, he thought he saw something that looked like a curled-up claw, but he couldn’t make out anything like a skull. Cap glanced at him. “Here,” he said. He took both halves from Josh and set them on the ground, placing one right beside the lantern. Josh squatted to look. Cap moved a finger along the surface of the rock. “Here are the jaw and the teeth. Here’s the top of the skull, and the back. Here’s the base of the spine. Legs here. Tail here. Do you see?”
Josh nodded. Yes. He did.
Quinn was looking too, but Zack eyed Josh in that annoying way he had—he didn’t need anyone to point that stuff out to him. Josh didn’t care. He sat there, letting his gaze move across the shadowed hollows and lighted crests in the rock, memorizing the shape of the little animal. He pulled off a glove. Touched it with a bare finger. It was cold and smooth. Ancient. Who knew how old? He felt the grooves of the tiny, curled claw, then traced the bumpy curve of spine and neck back up and over the skull.
Some kind of dinosaur. Had to be.
This felt different from the fossils from the other expeditions. It wasn’t just that Josh had never seen a dinosaur egg before—he hadn’t—but he’d also never found anything whole. Before, it was just fragments, bits of tooth and bone and claw. Like pieces from different puzzles, all jumbled in together. But this one, its every vertebra finely etched in stone, felt somehow real in a way the others hadn’t.
Josh’s finger pricked on something sharp, high on the fossil’s back. He looked at Cap, questioning.
Cap nodded. “Good eye, son. I caught that, too. Could be a lot of things, but maybe … it could be a wing bud.”
“A wing bud?”
“Maybe the wings hadn’t formed yet on the embryo. Or it could be a vestigial wing from an animal that used to fly but evolved out of it.”
Josh drew his finger across the little spur again. Wings! “Have you ever found anything like this before?” he asked. “Or parts of one, this kind of animal? Do you know what it is?”
“Hard to tell,” Cap said. “We have plenty of unidentified fragments. And I’ve heard stories about flying lizards for years. Some people trace the rumors to those rock carvings they found up there in the Klondike. As to fossils, though … no. Nothing like this.”
“Hey,” Quinn said. “My professor has a bunch of old sketches of flying lizards framed in his office.”
Cap looked up, interested. “Really?” he said. “The professor with the egg?”
“He has all kinds of stuff like that.”
“So,” Josh said, “this could be a new find? Some kind of winged dinosaur nobody knows about yet?”
Cap smiled. “Yeah. Just might.”
Josh felt something expanding inside him, grow
ing huge and calm, forcing little cracks and fissures in the brittle crust of his everyday self. He’d felt this way sometimes, lying on his back and watching the stars at night. Suddenly knowing for absolute certain that the universe was vaster and stranger and more amazing than anyone could ever imagine.
“It should be in a museum,” he said.
“What?” A dangerous note in Cap’s voice.
Josh blinked. He hadn’t quite meant to say it aloud. But now that he had, he didn’t want to take it back. “It should be in a museum. People should be able to see it. It doesn’t belong on some rich guy’s coffee table. And the scientists … they should be here, not us. They can figure out stuff from how it’s positioned. They should study it, find out what it is.”
Cap stood. “I’ve about had it with you, Josh. You’ve never been with the program, always dragging your feet.”
“But—”
“I can feel your moral indignation, and I’m up to here with it. We’re not hurting anything. Whatever these things are, they’re already dead. And I don’t know where you get off feeling so damn superior when this is paying for the clothes on your back. So just … go off somewhere. I don’t care where. Zack, come here and help.”
Josh’s face burned. He got up, turned around, and stumbled toward the path.
It was wrong. Cap wouldn’t admit it, but it was. Not just illegal. Wrong.
Behind him, Josh heard Cap and Zack murmuring, and then the chink of a hammer. Go off somewhere. Okay. He would. Josh clicked on his flashlight and headed back, deeper into the cave. He pushed down hard on his anger, tried to keep it in control.
When he was little, he’d pretty much thought Cap walked on water. But now … well, things had changed. Even Cap’s nickname sometimes set Josh’s teeth on edge. Most people assumed he’d been a captain in the navy, and Cap was happy to have them think it. Josh himself had thought so until a couple of years ago, when it slipped out that Cap had been a chief petty officer.
Which was fine. Nothing wrong with it. Just don’t pretend to be something you aren’t.
Josh kept going. He swept his flashlight beam over the ground, keeping an eye out for those intermediate-stage eggs.
Ancient, Strange, and Lovely Page 5
