Ancient, Strange, and Lovely

by Susan Fletcher

  After a while, the cave grew lighter. Quinn had said something about an opening back here. And egg fragments. When Josh caught a glint of something in the rocks at the side of the path, he stooped to look.

  Not an egg fragment. That was for sure. Josh set down his flashlight, dug down among the loose rocks, and pried the thing out. He brushed it off, held it to the light.

  A phone.

  What the hell?

  How did this get here?

  Twitch your feelers,

  Flap your gills,

  Give those flippers a clap.

  Shake your antlers, and

  All together now:

  Do the Chromosome Snap.

  —from “Chromosome Snap,” by Osmotic Creep

  You think you’re all that virtuous

  But you’re a pirate like the rest of us.

  Pirate,

  Biopirate,

  Plundering the Earth.

  —from “Biopirate,” by Radioactive Fish

  10

  WAY FUSED OUT

  EUGENE, OREGON

  “I think I’m sick,” I said.

  Aunt Pen looked down at me. I couldn’t grok her expression. She’d just shaken me awake. The clock said 6:30. Only an hour since I’d tucked in Piper and Stella and Luna.

  “Do you want to stay home?” Aunt Pen asked. She was wearing a blue linen pantsuit, one of about a thousand matching pantsuits she owned.

  I nodded. Made no move to get out of bed.

  She frowned. She’d never had kids herself, and I could practically see her processors blipping away, calling up images of things she’d heard about teenagers left alone in houses: of beer, of drugs, of sex, of wild parties trashing everything. Of little broken bird figurines scattered all over the floor.

  Sometimes it got me how different Aunt Pen was from Mom—wiry, quick-moving, frizzy-haired Mom, who never missed a chance to ken with a wild bird or dig in the dirt to unearth something strange. Though apparently, when they were little, Aunt Pen had had some serious kenning cred. She’d once called down a flock of herons from the sky—by accident. They’d scratched her up pretty bad, and a bunch of people had seen it, and she was the butt of some mean kids’ jokes for years after. The whole thing had messed her up. Her own bird had died young, and after that, she’d stopped kenning completely. Cold turkey. Denial of the gift, Mom called it.

  Mom says it means “to know,” the word “kenning” does. It’s not about power—calling your bird, sending her places. It’s about companionship. About knowing and being known. But, because it has to be secret, it winds up cutting you off from people.

  Ironically.

  “I’m going to take your temperature,” Aunt Pen said now.

  Oh, no. “Look, I don’t have pneumonia or anything. I just don’t feel so good. I didn’t sleep well. And I have a headache, and my throat feels kind of scratchy, and I just can’t face school today. I just need to sleep some more, okay?”

  All true. But I could feel the lie sitting there behind it.

  “Bryn,” she said, and her voice was softer now. She perched on the edge of the bed. Her hair was perfectly combed, like freeze-framed into position. But a speck of mascara had fallen on her cheek, and her lipstick wasn’t quite even. “Do you want me to stay with you?” she asked. “You’ll need to eat something. And if you’re sick, you’ll need me to take you to the doctor.”

  God, please no. But I swallowed, thinking, She’d do that? She’d actually miss a day at Bountiful for me? She loved her job doing paralegal stuff for the foundation. Of everyone in our family, Aunt Pen and Dad were the ones with the most friends. The ones most comfortable around other people.

  “Anyway,” Aunt Pen went on, “Piper looks kind of tired, too, this morning, and—”

  “Is Piper staying home?” I cringed. Even I could hear an unmistakable Note of Alarm in my voice. I’d blown it. I’m a terrible liar.

  Aunt Pen narrowed her eyes. Processors churning. “Piper actually wants to go to school,” she said.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. Unable to look Aunt Pen in the eye. “I can scrounge some food. I just need rest.”

  Aunt Pen studied me, then came to a decision. “Okay,” she said. “Call me at work if you need anything.”

  Not sure she believed me, but she was letting it go.

  She headed for the door. Looked back. “Anything at all, do you hear?”

  A case of strawberry ReliaVite, I thought. But I didn’t say it.

  Taj showed up around one. He hadn’t liked the idea of sneaking over. Not at all. But when I’d called and told him the egg had hatched out something strange and lizardy, he’d changed his tune. Also, though I’d done my best to sound chill, possibly he could tell from something in my voice that I was right out there on the edge.

  I’d told him about the turkey baster, and that I needed some strawberry ReliaVite. I’d told him about the hot water bottle. I was going to ask him how the zoo deal was coming, but he hung up before I got a chance.

  “I come bearing gifts,” he said, when I opened the door. He set two bulging sacks full of stuff on the kitchen counter. “Now let me see this lizard of yours.”

  Ours, I corrected him silently. Don’t leave me all alone here, Taj.

  “What about the zoo?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell you in a minute. But I’m dying to see this thing.”

  In the basement, we knelt beside the box. The lizard was still dozing. “Whoa,” Taj said. Then again: “Whoa.” He reached out, ran a finger along the critter’s snout, then rubbed its side. “It’s like skin,” he said. “And it’s warm. Is that from the hot water bottle?”

  I shrugged. “I’m trying to keep it warm.”

  We watched the critter together, its eyes still shut, its sides rising and falling. Finally, Taj rocked back on his heels. “That is without a doubt the weirdest animal I’ve ever seen,” he said.

  “Can you tell what it is?”

  He shook his head. “I’m no herpetologist, but I’m pretty sure there’s nothing out there quite like it. Nothing known to the scientific community, anyway. I looked at some sites this morning. Unless …”

  Taj squinted at the critter.

  “Unless what?”

  “Well, I didn’t check fossils. It could be a Lazarus.”

  “A what?”

  “A Lazarus species. Disappears from the fossil record and shows up much later. After the guy in the Bible who was raised from the dead. Not to be confused with an Elvis species.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No. For real. An Elvis species: an impersonator. Looks like the other guy but isn’t. Anyway, I’d say Robin’s found herself an animal unknown to science: a cryptid. And it’s a dooze.”

  He pointed at the pink splotches on the lizard. I’d had to feed it again at about eleven. After I’d had a three-hour nap and two cups of instant coffee. “I thought you said you didn’t have any ReliaVite,” Taj said.

  “It’s Slendah.”

  “You fed it Slendah? Have you read the ingredients in that stuff? It’s not even food, it’s just chemicals in suspension.”

  “Like ReliaVite is any better! Anyway, it’s lucky I found anything to feed it. I can’t drive, you know. I can’t just go out and buy stuff. And I have no clue how to keep it alive. I’d kill it.” Taj didn’t get it. How hard it was. Like, impossible.

  “Yeah, well,” Taj said. “You don’t seem to have hurt it any. Whatever it is.” He picked up a piece of shell and studied it. “Can I have this?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t care. So what about those options you were looking into? The zoo? Can they take it?”

  Taj pulled a couple of plastic baggies out of his backpack. He put the shell in one, poked around in the newspaper for a lizard stool and dropped that, along with the damp paper, in another. “I’m not sure the zoo’s a good idea,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Well …” Taj stood, stretched his back, eyed the stack of boxe
s. “Mind if I rummage around in there?”

  “Go ahead. The zoo?”

  Taj pulled out a pocket knife, cut through the tape, opened a box. Rummaged. I watched. It was a bunch of paper, mostly. Folders, notebooks, books. “So, I did some research this morning,” Taj said. “I found out there’s a huge surge in the trade of rare and endangered animals. Huge. People are speculating in them as if they were real estate or stocks. Black-market animal-part shops are springing up all over the planet. Then there’s the Internet trade. Exponential.”

  “It’s illegal, though, right?” I said.

  “Oh yeah. But that doesn’t stop it.” He pulled out a stack of lab notebooks. “Mind if I take some of these? I’ll scan them and get them back.”

  He opened one. There were Mom’s little bird scratchings. So familiar. You had to strain to read when she left you a note. I stared at the page, swallowing against a sudden thickness in my throat.

  “Okay.” I trusted Taj—because Mom did. She’d want him to have whatever he needed. Anyway, the cat was already out of the bag, lizardwise.

  Taj cut into the second box. Supplies: cotton swabs, rags, latex gloves, baggies, sterile wipes. Spade, flashlight, pH paper, scale. “So,” he said, “you’ve got your poachers, most of them trying to get by, some of them trying to get rich. You’ve got your rich people, collecting rare animal artifacts the way they collect art. You’ve got your tribal medicine men, using exotic-animal body parts for so-called medicinal purposes. You’ve got your high-end restauranteurs, if you can believe it, serving up exotic animals for the cachet. You’ve got your cryptid hunters, because they want their name on a new species. You’ve got your speculators, stockpiling rare stuff of any kind whatsoever to sell later when it’s even rarer. You’ve got your biopirates, collecting for the genetic resource….”

  “But …” I said.

  Taj looked up. He seemed uncomfortable. “Your mom gets clearance,” he said. “There’s a difference.”

  “Does she have clearance for …” I nodded toward the lizard.

  “Uh, I’m looking into it.”

  “Like the zoo.”

  “Already did that. Not sure it’ll work.” He cut open another box. Rummaged. It was full of crumpled advertising flyers and paper-wrapped jars full of dirt. “Mind if I borrow a couple of these?”

  “No. What’s wrong with the zoo?”

  Taj slit open the fourth box. More dirt. “Turns out,” he said, “rare animals are disappearing from zoos right now. They think there might be a black-market syndicate, with some people in zoos getting paid off. The FBI is working on it, but just last week another blue-tongued lizard went missing from the Oregon Zoo.”

  “Then what am I supposed to do? How can I feed it all the time? I have to go to school. I have to sleep. And it squeaks. If Aunt Pen hears it—just once—she’s gonna go full-out seismic orbital; you have no idea what she’s like. She exterminates squirrels.” I took a breath. I could hear myself—over-the-edge, way fused out—but I didn’t care. “There were squirrels in her attic last spring—squirrels raising their babies—and she called in the exterminator and had them all murdered. All of them, Taj. Every single one.”

  “Whoa there,” he said. “There might be a zoo somewhere that’s okay. I’ll find out—”

  “What about you? Why can’t you take it? Why is it all my responsibility?”

  “Bryn,” Taj said. “I can’t. I live in married student housing—”

  “But it’s Mom’s, Taj. It’s Mom’s. It’s her work. Am I the only one who cares?”

  “—in a tiny apartment with my very pregnant wife. Who is having trouble with the pregnancy, thank you very much, and has been sent to bed on doctor’s orders. The last thing she needs is some needy cryptid baby to take care of, when she ought to be taking care of herself.”

  Oh, God. I’d had no idea.

  “Look,” Taj said. He closed up the box, set it back on the stack. “Seems to me there’s a short-term problem and a long-term problem. I can do some quiet calling to people I trust. But it’s going to take a while. Meantime, there’s your Aunt Pen to deal with. You’re going to have to do that.”

  I’d wanted Taj to take care of it. Just take it off my hands. If not today, tomorrow. But I could see that wasn’t going to happen. Taj’s idea of short-term was way too long for me. Hopefully, Dad would come up with something.

  “Can you think of a place where you could keep the lizard for a little while?” Taj asked. “Like maybe at your house? The garage? Some kind of outbuilding? Someplace you could get to easily, and where nobody could hear?”

  Dad’s ceramics studio. It was far enough from Aunt Pen’s that you probably wouldn’t hear the lizard squeaking from there.

  It might work for a few days.

  I told Taj. “Perfect!” he said. “You take the lizard, I’ll get everything else.”

  “But what about the feedings? I can’t stay home from school every day.”

  “It’s a short-term problem,” he said. “Maybe I can help.”

  11

  CRYPTID, DORMANT

  EUGENE, OREGON

  We made our way across Aunt Pen’s back deck, along her tidy stone path, and through the gate that led to my backyard. Whole different ecosystem, this side of the fence. I led Taj through tall, wet grass dotted with clumps of weeds and scattered with bird-houses and bird feeders mounted on poles. Mom and Dad called our yard “natural”; Aunt Pen called it “the jungle.” She was always complaining about the dandelion fluff that supposedly wafted over the fence and took root in her lawn. Though I’d never seen a dandelion in Aunt Pen’s yard. Not once.

  The shed stood a little way off from our house, behind the garage. I balanced the lizard box on one hip, then, on tiptoe, reached up and felt along the top of the doorjamb. Found the key. Let us in.

  Daylight leaked in through the smudgy windows; ancient spiderwebs sagged from the ceiling. I wiped my shoes on the mat, then set down the lizard box on the marble-topped work-table, beside the tools for cutting and shaping clay. The studio smelled of clay dust, like Dad. I breathed it in, absurdly hoping to find him sitting at the wheel, where darkness thickened at the far side of the room.

  I flipped the light switch. The lone compact flo on the ceiling pushed the shadows back into the corners and deep into the shelves, behind the rows of pots, glazed and unglazed, waiting for the kiln. The potter’s wheel stood empty in the light.

  Taj set the shopping bags on the floor. “This is your Dad’s place? Where he works?”

  I nodded. “He left Intel, when Mom—”

  I stopped. So many sentences did that to me—ambushed me in the middle and headed straight for Mom. Dad had taken an indefinite leave of absence to look for Mom. He’d grown a beard, which made him look like a big, old gentle bear.

  “Yeah,” Taj said. Sounding uncomfortable. “Yeah, well, look. Your dad wouldn’t mind if we cleared off a shelf, would he? Doesn’t feel right to have the lizard out in the open, unprotected. We could find another place for some of the pots and fit the box here.”

  We moved the pieces carefully, shifting some to the shelf with the glazes and others to the top of the kiln. Clay dust silted the air and twinkled in the sideways shafts of sunlight that cut through the window grime.

  It was kind of spooky, looking over Dad’s work. Like scanning some deep, secret part of him. When he’d first taken up pottery, he’d turned out plain, geometric vases, urns, and bowls. Form follows function. Like that.

  But after Mom disappeared, his work had gotten darker, even bizarre. Goblets with huge, prickly thistles winding up their stems. A set of mugs shaped like a family of gargoyles. An urn with a crocodile growing out of its side. And here on the unglazed shelf were mostly things that had no function at all. A seated harpy. A yawning troll. A prancing dragon. Three griffins—one rearing up on its hind legs, one sleeping, one laughing. Dad had penciled in titles on slips of paper tucked underneath each of the griffins. Heraldry terms. Rearing: G
riffin Rampant. Sleeping: Griffin Dormant. Laughing: Griffin Riant.

  “Is that a refrigerator?” Taj asked.

  I nodded. Dad liked to have cold drinks while he was working. He was a fiend for Dr Pepper.

  “So if it doesn’t drink a whole can of ReliaVite at a single sitting, you can save what’s left over in the can,” Taj said. “It’ll last longer that way.”

  That you again. “If it’ll drink it cold,” I said.

  “Ah, yeah. You’re going to have to try that.”

  What’s with the you, Taj? I thought you said you were going to help.

  Taj pulled a bunch of stuff out of the shopping bags. He ripped the cellophane wrapping off a litter box, lined it with plastic, and poured in a bunch of sawdust pellets. “This is what they do in pet stores,” he said. “Put pellets on the bottoms of the lizards’ cages. They keep their lizards in aquariums, but the litter box’ll be fine for now. Your guy’s not going anywhere for a while.” He brandished a blue pooper scooper. “Pretty soon you’ll be a pro with this.”

  Superb. I’d been blocking out that part.

  “Look what else I got.” He pulled out a little bag with an REI logo. “I’m brilliant,” he said. “They’re not going to call me ‘doctor’ for nothing.”

  “Uh-huh.” I’d known a lot of people called “doctor” who didn’t seem all that brilliant to me. “What is it?”

  Taj opened the bag and pulled out two pairs of socks.

  “Socks?” I said. “This is brilliant?”

  “SolarSox. Charge one pair while you’re using the other. No cords required. Say good-bye to the hot water bottle.”

  Okay. Good call.

  It occurred to me that Taj must have spent a significant amount of money on this. His own money, since old Reynolds sure wasn’t going to pay for it. And grad students are notoriously poor.

  “Do you think it’s okay?” I asked him, suddenly insecure. “The Slendah? The ReliaVite and the socks? I mean, we don’t know what it is. What if we’re, like, killing it?”