By way of apology, the brachiosaur sniffed gently through the nostrils located atop its head. Will tapped the greenish snout and smiled to show that he was unharmed. Then he turned away quickly as the head shuddered and convulsed. The sneeze stripped half the leaves from the bush Will had been standing alongside. Once more the brachiosaur offered his apologies.
Sauropods were among the most polite of dinosaurs, a consequence of their enormous size. Unable to eschew an innate clumsiness, they compensated by moving with extreme care and precision when in the presence of those smaller than themselves ... which meant nearly everyone else. Will had been amazed the first time he’d seen one pacing prissily down a street in Waterfall City. It was something to see a thirty-ton Apatosaurus prance.
“No harm done,” Will told the giant. Raising his voice, he called to his fellow instructor. “Geina, you ready?”
She waved back enthusiastically, buoyed by shouts from
her covey of half a dozen teenagers. Will moved away from the bush to eye his own group.
“Everybody ready? We’re going to beat them, this time!” Cheers came from the six young men and women gathered nearby.
The elegiac little forest stream that separated the two groups could be cleared by a good leaper, the watery barrier being more metaphorical than real. Taking up a stance close to the creek edge, Will picked up the two-inch-thick rope in both hands and snugged it close to his left side.
“All set?” Half a dozen young voices responded eagerly. He raised his voice and directed it across the stream. “On three, Geina? One, two ... three!”
Immediately, Will’s team dug their heels into the ground and pulled ... and just as immediately found themselves being dragged toward the creek by the other group.
Each end of the rope was gripped in the mouth of a dinosaur. Shortfoot, a juvenile male brachiosaur, fortified Will’s team, while Gaptooth, a young Camarasaurus, pulled for Geina’s. Gaptooth was older and larger than Shortfoot, but it was an equal contest because brachiosaurs are especially good at tug-of-war since their front legs are longer than those behind.
As he was dragged toward the water, Will wondered if he’d judged the slope correctly. If it was much steeper than the one on Geina’s side, his team wouldn’t have a chance. Then his descent was arrested as Shortfoot’s resolve stiffened and the immense legs dug resolutely into the soil. Cheers rose from the youngsters hanging on to the rope behind him, while the two dinosaurs huffed and chuffed like idling locomotives.
To a cry of triumph from the other side, Will’s feet slid into the water. Shortfoot strained determinedly and pulled Will clear. The partial dunking didn’t bother him. The morning was hot and humid, unusually so for Treetown, and he was glad of the rinse.
He’d come to Treetown not only to further his education, for his father had insisted on it, but to give back in service some of the help and assistance that the citizenry of Dinotopia had shown to them both. He found that he enjoyed working with others. As a qualified apprentice skybax rider, he’d given some consideration to becoming a flying instructor under the master Oolu. That meant acquiring some practical teaching experience.
As wise Nallab had told him, “If you would become a teacher, you must be always a student. I have lived over a hundred years and read many thousands of books, yet each piece of knowledge I acquire only reminds me of my ignorance, because it invariably teases me with hints of a dozen new things I have no knowledge of.” When the opportunity to work at one of Treetown’s youth camps had been offered, Will had jumped at it.
It gave him great satisfaction to be able to help. In addition to his minding his own group, all the youngsters as well as their instructors and leaders found his tales of the contemporary outside world fascinating, if a bit unnerving. The concept of money was one they found particularly amusing.
Six years he and his father had dwelled in their new home, learning and prospering. Now Will found himself participating in a tug-of-war with a dozen youths slightly younger than himself, and twp creatures believed long extinct who in size and strength would have given pause to Hercules.
The participation of the twelve young humans was very much incidental to the game itself. Though well-intentioned, their exertions fooled no one, least of all themselves. Their combined body weight was a fraction of that of either the brachiosaur or Camarasaurus, and their most strenuous efforts could not affect the outcome. Which wasn’t the point. It was the participation that was important, the sharing and the learning that was taking place between human and human, human and dinosaur.
For their part, the two juvenile sauropods enjoyed the play as much as their human counterparts. The only difference was that they calculated their weight, as opposed to their maturity, in tons instead of pounds. Socially and intellectually, they were the equal of the dozen bipeds.
No adult supervisors were present. By the age of fifteen, one was supposed to act like a grown-up. Freedom and play were encouraged; irresponsibility was not.
Despite the steeper slope, Shortfoot succeeded in using her longer forelegs to back onto level ground. Once that had been achieved. Will’s team was able to pull Geina’s, laughing and squealing, into the creek. This accomplished, Will and his charges joined them in splashing and throwing water. So did the two sauropods, using their forefeet and long necks to send water flying in all directions. Gaptooth caught Will with a mouthful that, squirted between peglike teeth, sent him sprawling. A sheepish expression on his face, he came up thrashing energetically, much to the amusement of the others.
He wasn’t worried about catching cold. All of Treetown and the surrounding mountains seemed slightly wilted in the exceptional heat. Those not working lay in the sleeping baskets that dangled like wicker-wrapped fruit from branches fifty feet and more off the ground. There they did their best to catch the occasional breeze. It was much cooler up in the branches of the firs and redwoods, gingkoes and sequoias, than it was down on the ground.
Even the winds that normally flowed down the slopes of the Backbone Mountains had been affected. Uncharacteristic warm, moist breezes rose from the hot Northern Plains, making sleeping difficult and the inhabitants uncomfortable. This didn’t surprise those who had heard the official predictions of the weathercasters. The weather in Dinotopia was nearing the end of one of its regular six-year cycles, at which time strange things happened. Clouds dispersed over the Rainy Basin, and isolated thunderstorms raked the Great Desert. The prevailing winds shifted from the west to the north, and climatologically speaking, everything turned a little backward.
Those who lived in the mountains dealt with this temporary onslaught of tropical weather as best they could, changing from temperate attire to clothing more suited to the plains or the Hadro Swamp. Everyone knew it would pass. In any case, they suffered far less than the farmers of the Northern Plains, who temporarily had to change much more than just their clothing.
Though most had made Bent Root, Cornucopia, and the other lower towns their destination, Treetown, too, had received its share of evacuees. Will had studied these arrivals with interest, adding the details of their situation to his store of knowledge without becoming personally involved. After all, he called Waterfall City home, and it lay far away to the south, safe from any drastic changes or dangers.
Noticing that Shortfoot and Gaptooth were panting heavily, he and Geina guided the group downstream to deeper water so that the young sauropods could cool more than their feet. Exchanging their light clothing for swimming trunks, the youngsters plunged into the deep pool with abandon, improvising games of tag and hide-and-seek around the legs and under the bellies of their two gigantic companions. On request, dinosaurian tails became living springboards, sending competitive would-be divers flying through the air in intricate flips and curls.
Farther downstream they came to a waterfall perhaps twenty feet in height. The falling water had cut a deep plunge pool out of the surrounding granite. Shelves of polished gray and beige stone lined the pool, forming per
fect places on which to sit or lie while soaking up the sunshine. Redwoods and firs grew all around while smaller growths clung to the exposed rock walls and the rim of the falls, giving them a landscaped look.
Circling around through the forest, Shortfoot waded into the pool and contentedly placed the side of his head against the top of the falls, occasionally ducking it under the foaming white cascade. Those swimming in the gently churning water could climb onto the nearly submerged back and shinny up his neck all the way to the top of the falls. Cheered on by those below, the most accomplished among them would execute intricate dives into the pool, while others volunteered whoops and yells as they took running leaps off the precipice.
Those for whom formalized aerial acrobatics held no interest gathered around Gaptooth on the far side of the basin. The Camarasaurus obligingly lifted one swimmer after another out of the water, scooping them up on her head before flicking them skyward with a violent muscular contraction of her long neck. Screaming and squealing, the individual thus camarapulted would fly halfway across the pool before landing, sometimes in an incongruous position, with a satisfyingly loud splash.
Attracted by the noise, a party of strolling hypacrosaurs and corythosaurs stopped by to chat. Though they preferred the country around the Hadro Swamp far to the southwest, they were as comfortable elsewhere in Dinotopia as any of
their cousins. Settling themselves in the shallow end of the lake, they entertained the gamboling youngsters and sauropods with their sonorous, reverberant singing.
As evening crept timorously into the hills, the youth groups unpacked their personal gear. Having attended first to their own needs, they then proceeded to assemble long-handled, stiff-bristled brushes and devices that resembled garden rakes more than hygienic accoutrements.
With these they commenced to scrub and groom the two sauropods, who lolled luxuriously in the shallows as the young humans attended them. Rather than a reward for services rendered, the grooming was a sign of mutual affection and respect. It was not regarded as work by the youngsters, but a joint activity to be enjoyed.
As for the sauropods, a brachiosaur can do many things, but there are plenty of places it can’t scratch. The Backbone Mountains were notoriously deficient in rolling hollows, and it was forbidden to scratch against a tree because such activity, if done repeatedly, would wear away the bark and kill the growth.
It was this comfort gap that a dozen energetic young humans filled admirably.
Necks and backs were scrubbed clean, tails raked, parasites located and removed. Using a compact, specially designed two-handed saw, a pair of sixteen-year-olds neatly trimmed toenails the size of half dinner plates. Peglike teeth were polished until they shone.
A person hasn’t heard contentment, Will decided, until they’ve heard a brachiosaur purr.
Once the youngsters had dried and dressed themselves, the entire party bid the recently arrived duckbills farewell and started back toward Treetown. Some chose to walk, examining and trying to identify the many plants they encountered. Others rode communal backsaddles secured to broad sauropodian spines while Will and Geina occupied the observer’s seats located just back of each head, in Will’s case some thirty feet above the ground. The saddle shifted back and forth with the gentle, swaying movement of Shortfoot’s muscular neck.
Treetown was a unique community, even for Dinotopia. It
was one of the few places where the human inhabitants could peer out their windows and always be sure of looking down on dinosaurs. This was because every human structure in Treetown was literally up a tree, the buildings resting on broad branches and connected to one another by an intricate system of ladders, bridges, ropes, and cables. Even the marketplace sat nearly eighty feet aboveground, each stall occupying its own niche or branch.
The dinosaurian portion of the citizenry spent the nights in huge barns that had been constructed in special clearings. Sturdy sequoias were used to buttress the walls. Though much higher, Treetown was close to the Rainy Basin, and it was not unknown for an occasional ambitious or addled carnosaur to make the climb in search of fresh food.
Besides, sauropods enjoyed being indoors. It was a novelty supplied by human ingenuity, and allowed the great creatures to survive chillier climes than they would otherwise have been inclined to tolerate.
Bidding good day to his young charges and to Geina (who was nice, but not as nice, he thought, as his Sylvia), Will made his way toward the tree in which the guesthouse where he was staying was located. Ascending a huge Douglas fir by means of a spiral stairway that encircled the trunk, he crossed via a rope suspension bridge to a redwood, climbed a series of ladders, and paused on a viewing platform.
Most of the buildings in Treetown had open sides that could be covered with canvas flies in the event of bad weather or to provide privacy. These were open now, their flaps furled to reveal the activity inside as well as to allow cooling breezes to pass through. A pair of oropendula flashed by beneath Will’s platform, warbling like drunken flutes.
Except for such avian visitors, the human population of Treetown had the treetops largely to themselves. Only some of the smaller dinosaurs, like the ornithopod and dro-maeosaurs, felt comfortable more than a few feet above the ground. The lack of an opposable thumb with which to grip branches and bark was responsible for some of this reticence, an inherent psychological disinclination to climb for much of the rest.
sauropods quite liked Treetown. The weather was usually comfortable, there was ample space between trees for them to walk, and they enjoyed browsing the lower branches of those growths that had not yet evolved out of their reach. In turn, humans could sit in baskets or on the lower branches and look eye-to-eye with the tallest dinosaur. This had the added benefit of keeping them out of the sauropods’ way, which meant that a wandering Saltasaurus could be less concerned with where it was stepping.
Geina had retired to her parents’ home and the various youngsters to their respective dormitories. It was early suppertime, but despite the day’s activities Will wasn’t hungry yet. He preferred to linger on the platform and await the sunset.
Had he done well today? He always felt that he could set a better example. At least he’d taken the lead in the tug-of-war. Already he’d learned that being a good teacher required patience even more than knowledge. He’d also learned that he couldn’t be first at everything. His father had warned him about that.
Still, being such a recent immigrant to Dinotopia, he felt compelled to excel, if only to prove that he belonged. His ambition was to be certified the youngest master skybax rider ever.
As he left the platform and entered the guesthouse, a sudden sharp wind, chill and unpleasant, rocked the branch and forced him to grab a hammock to steady himself. Slicing through the mugginess like a sword, it was unexpected and disturbing.
Reaching his own sleeping hammock, he turned to watch Lyra Aurelius. Across the open room, the laundress was making up a fresh, unoccupied hammock in anticipation of guests yet to arrive. Not far away her four-year-old, flaxen-haired Tlinka, played on the edge of a sheer sixty-foot drop. The children of Treetown quickly learned to tolerate open spaces. Even so, a padded babyline was snugged tight around the little girl’s waist. If she stumbled off, she’d fall no more than ten or fifteen feet before the line brought her up short, bobbing like a tadpole on a string. A few such tumbles were sufficient to teach local children to mind their step.
Since his arrival Will had marveled at the skill displayed by local youngsters in swinging from branch to branch and tree to
tree. The boldest among them made such leaps without the aid of ropes, or walked fearlessly two hundred and more feet above the ground along branches no more than an arm’s width across. They were startled and admiring when Will joined them. As a skybax rider, he had absolutely no fear of heights.
He didn’t worry about the hundred-foot plunge he’d sustain if the boards beneath him gave way. Like every structure in Dinotopia, the buildings of Treetown were de
signed to last. (“The Roman influence,” Nallab had told him. “Very demanding, those Romans.”)
Slipping into his hammock, he rolled onto his left side and found himself gazing in the direction of the weather station. Located atop the tallest trunk in Treetown, on the crown of an ancient redwood, it looked out over the surrounding temperate forest and the mountaintops beyond.
Sited among the uppermost branches were devices designed to measure rainfall, wind, even changes in atmospheric pressure. To reach the station, an instrument reader would have to ascend a series of ladders and ropes that put the mainmast rigging on the largest clipper to shame. Normally such readings were taken every few days, but with a six-year storm threatening to break, careful measurements were being taken every morning and evening.
“Monsoonlike,” Arthur Denison had declared when explaining the condition to Will, “only at once more extreme and unique to Dinotopia. I think it might have something to do with temperature changes in the sea.”
Dinotopia was probably located somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean, Will knew. A watery expanse where nothing was supposed to exist, home to great mysteries. Perhaps even to a contra-monsoon, if his father’s suppositions were correct. Arthur Denison had told his son of how the Indian monsoon periodically devastated the southern shores of many countries. It was hard to imagine any such catastrophe striking peaceful Dinotopia.
Yet the commerce of Dinotopia was turned inland, away from the sea, and the Northern Plains in particular were devoid of large coastal communities. This was not the consequence of someone’s whim.
Will had watched along with everyone else as refugees from that fecund coast had begun to flood into town, filling the guesthouses and spare bedrooms of friends and relatives. These travelers had been told to leave their homes and farms. Only temporarily, to be sure, but such periodic mass exoduses suggested a potential for devastation on a scale hitherto unknown to Will. What was going to happen, if anything? He hadn’t taken the time to look into it very deeply, and those involved seemed too busy to pause and talk.
Dinotopia - Dinotopia Lost Page 2
