Authors: Warren Dalzell
It held. He hung there for a moment, clinging to the branch, and rested. Finally, summoning what little strength he had left, Spencer clawed his way along the branch and up onto the bank. The cold, shivering fifteen-year-old lay in a mass of ferns and muck, spent from his labors, but aware, also, that he’d overcome a major hurdle on his trip to get back to Debbie and Marcie. Gone were his spear and his coveted Yankees cap, precious and valuable possessions now given up to the awesome natural forces that ruled this strange land. But once again, Spencer Bowen had prevailed. As he continued to win at this battle for survival, his confidence increased and his resolve strengthened.
A noise in the foliage startled him and he quickly drew his knife from his belt. A snout soon appeared, followed by a small squat body about the size of his neighbor, Mrs. Benavidez’s, beagle. To Spencer’s relief, its features were benign. It was a small, herbivorous cynodont. The two stared at one another, neither showing signs of either fear or aggression. The cynodont extended its whiskered face until they were nose to nose. It carefully sniffed and analyzed the scent of this odd interloper, this alien visitor to its realm. Spencer was likewise enthralled with the idea of interacting with a living fossil. Months earlier he had been reading about beasts such as this, imagining from pictures of their petrified remains what they might be like. Slowly he reached forward and ran his hand across the animal’s smooth, leathery head, and looked into its amphibian-like eye. The cynodont snuffled once before turning and waddling away.
Spencer watched the animal disappear into the shadows. Darkness was coming. The Sun, heavily muted by leaden cloud, was marching inexorably towards the high hills to the North and would soon be hidden for the hours that masqueraded as ‘night’ in this odd land high above the Arctic Circle. Cold, tired and wet, he realized he needed to find a tree in which to wait until morning. To continue his journey in darkness would be dangerous and foolhardy. It hurt to stand, but he forced himself onward, trudging toward a small, nearby grove of conifers. Tomorrow he’d get an early start and push himself over the last uphill stretch that, hopefully, would lead him to the cliff below the ridge where this whole ordeal had begun. He’d soon be reunited with Marcie and Debbie—unless Endicott got there first.
* * *
Where the heck were they? Endicott re-crossed the river at the place he’d expected Jocelyn and Jack to have forded. Again he carefully examined the muddy bank for footprints—none. He’d dispensed with Spencer quickly enough, and his pace along the trail had surely been sufficient to overtake the others prior to the river crossing. Confused, he stood still and pondered what must have happened. “They didn’t ford here,” he surmised. “That’s obvious. They must have gotten lost and crossed elsewhere.” For the life of him, Endicott couldn’t imagine a better place. Upstream the current in the river was just too swift. And downstream? He didn’t know this part of the valley well enough to answer that question. But along the lake and below, it was absolutely choked with vegetation and all but impassable. Unless they were to have stayed at higher elevation and wandered south, they couldn’t cross the valley for some distance. He finally concluded that they were still on this side of the river.
The sky was darkening. Searching for the two students would be difficult in the fading light. Morning would come soon enough. He’d find them then, and when he did, their unexpected visit would come to an end. Consideration would then shift to the other two, the injured woman, Debbie, and the young girl, Marcie. If Marcie hadn’t wandered too far from the cliff, might it be best to let them live? If she and Debbie knew nothing of the island’s prehistoric character, they might not pose a threat to him. “No,” he abruptly decided, they had to die too. Were they to make it back alive they would certainly report the disappearance of the other three students and a massive search would ensue. All evidence must be removed from the beach and cliff areas to keep rescuers from snooping around that ridge and stumbling into the island’s interior.
Hefting his spear, Endicott jogged back up the trail to find a place to pass the night. In the morning he had business to attend to, nasty business, but, in the end, it had to be done. This world and the treasures it contained, his treasures, had to be protected. He soon found a nice tree and settled into its lower branches. Unbeknownst to him, less than half a mile away, Endicott’s prey had just finished their evening meal.
XIII.
The platform in the gingko tree was littered with patches of blonde hair. Jack Malinowski sat back and closed his folding knife.
“Oh, how I wish I had a mirror.” Jocelyn was carefully feeling the ends of her hair, trying to generate a mental image of how she must look.
“You look great, Jossy,” Jack assured her, “It’s the best haircut I’ve ever given.”
“Really? You’re kidding.”
“Nope,” he smiled, “It’s also the worst haircut I’ve ever given—it being the only one.” She pouted, but he added brightly, “You look great with short hair, honest.” In fact, Jack couldn’t stop staring at her. At that moment he thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She caught him looking and it made him blush. “Of course, you have to give enormous credit to your barber for that crazy cut. I can see it now. When we get back to civilization, people will see you and marvel at what henceforth will be called the ‘Malinowski Doo.’ All the finest salons will offer it. Hairdressers will be sharpening their pocket knives to give customers that ‘Tarzan-cuts-Jane’s-hair-in the-jungle’ look. I’ll make a ton of money to augment my meager salary as an astronomer.”
“Very impressive,” Jocelyn noted. “I didn’t realize you had such savoir-faire when it comes to style. So, are you gay?”
The question stunned poor Jack. “Aw, shoot. All I did was what you asked me to do. I mean, it’s not like I’m into, I don’t know, flower arranging or anything. You wanted me to cut your hair. It isn’t a big deal.”
She took his hand in both of hers and couldn’t resist a sly smile. She’d put him on the spot, insulted his masculinity, and it was making him squirm. “Sorry,” she swooned, “I guess it wasn’t fair to ask you that…but are you?”
“What?”
“Gay”
“Heck no.” He smiled when he saw the mischief in her eyes, eyes that were pale blue and tinted by the setting Sun, the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen. “But, what if I were? Would it make a difference?”
“Oh no, most certainly not, at least not when it comes to friendship.” Now it was her turn to feel uncomfortable. “You have to admit, however, that if there were to develop any sort of romance between us, then maybe it would be problematic…” She trailed off when she noticed Jack was no longer looking at her. Instead, he seemed fixated on something above them. She followed his gaze but didn’t see anything. What could be more important than her subtle hints about starting a romantic relationship? Maybe he really was as clueless as she’d believed earlier. “A penny for your thoughts,” she sighed.
He was doing his extended fist thing again, alternately measuring the sky and glancing at his watch. Pointing to a rare break in the clouds he said, “Yep, that’s Deneb. It was tough to identify without being able to see the surrounding stars in Cygnus, but, yeah, it’s him. It’s my favorite star.” Both of them watched as wisps of cloud moved in to gradually cover the faint sparkling image, turning the sky once again into a dull grey blanket. “I say it’s my favorite because it’s truly impressive.” Jack sounded as though he were speaking about an old friend.
“Really?” said Jocelyn in a tired voice. She admired Jack’s enthusiasm, but she herself didn’t think stars were such a big deal. Sure, it was nice to look up and see them on clear nights, kind of romantic even, but when you got right down to it, they were just faint spots of light.
“Yeah, really. It’s one of the largest, most luminous stars known. Even though it’s about two thousand light years away, it’s still one of the brightest stars in the sky, one of the three that make up the ‘summer triangle’ asterism. Think about it, Jossy, the light we just saw left Deneb around the time Christ was born! It puts out fifty to a hundred thousand times as much light as the Sun.”
“So it’s bigger than our Sun?”
“Bigger? I’d say! Try twenty solar masses. There’s a limit to how big stars can get, and Deneb’s right up there. When one gets to be that size it burns fuel at an enormous rate. Of course that means Deneb won’t live long. It’s maybe ten million years old, give or take, and it probably can’t last more than a few million more before it dies in a supernova explosion. It may already have exploded. If that happened today, we wouldn’t know about it for two millennia.”
“Yes, it’s very impressive,” Jocelyn said with a yawn, “but I think all the technical talk detracts from the charm of camping out on the beach, or sitting in a smelly gingko tree and looking at tiny lights twinkling against a black void.” The Sun was now lost behind the hills and the air was noticeably cooler. She snuggled up to him. “Sometimes I wish we lived in the past, Jack. Not the 250 million years ago past, but long enough ago to where the stars were a mystery to mankind. The majesty of the heavens has been lost to some degree, now that we know so much about them.”
Jack put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. “When I was young, maybe ten years old or so, my dad took me camping. We went to some park up in Canada, somewhere in northern Ontario. What I remember most about the trip is the view of the sky at night.” He shifted so that he could see her face. “You have to understand that I was a kid from the city. From my house I’d seen the moon, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn and a few bright stars, but didn’t think much about them. Up there in Canada, my dad pointed out a bunch of stars, the same ones that are above us right now hidden from view, and he told me about the Milky Way and the constellation Cygnus, ‘The Swan.’ And you’re absolutely right, Jossy. As a kid I was awed by the majesty of what I saw and fascinated by what was then a mystery to me. Now that I’ve learned more about stars, they continue to fascinate me, but much of the mystique isn’t there anymore.
“Now, in ancient Greece the sky was the realm of the Gods. Nothing could surpass the grandeur of what they saw in the heavens, and numerous explanations arose about how the constellations like Cygnus came to be. In fact, Cygnus is one whose lore I know something about because Deneb is one of its defining stars, representing the swan’s tail.
“One account says that the Gods were so enamored with the poet Orpheus that, upon his death, he was turned into a swan and placed amongst the other constellations. Another claim is that Cygnus was the pet bird of the Nubian princess Cassiopeia. But the predominant Greek myth holds that Cygnus is the image of the form taken by Zeus when he fell in love with the mortal woman Leda, wife of Tyndareus, the King of Sparta.”
“Zeus was more or less the number one God of the Greeks, wasn’t he?” Jocelyn interjected. “What could possibly have made him fall in love with a mortal?”
“I would presume,” Jack said after a moment of mock contemplation, “that Leda was a great botanist and swimmer. I can definitely see him falling for someone like that. Also, as a young swan Zeus could have needed swimming lessons. That would have given him the excuse he needed to approach her.”
“Right, right, that must have been it,” she rejoined sarcastically.
“So, Zeus, who’s now a swan, seduces her and she lays two eggs…”
“Yuk! You mean she had sex with a bird?”
Jack again thought for a moment. “Maybe they did things differently back then?”
“I doubt it.”
“Yeah, me too, but anyway, as the legend goes, Leda bore four offspring, two sired by Zeus; Pollux and Helen of Troy, and two others, Castor and Clytemnestra, fathered by her husband. You probably know the story about Helen, about how beautiful she was. She married the King of Corpus Christi but was terribly unhappy and ran off with her true love, Paris, a stud from Cleveland. Of course things got really ugly at that point. Her husband assembled an army to get her back, and the resulting conflict became known as the Trojan War.”
Jocelyn gave him a disapproving look. “I remember studying the Trojan War in my World History class and I believe you’re mistaken about a few of the place names. Although I don’t care much for that legend, it would be nice if you would point out the constellation Cygnus to me—once we get somewhere where we can see the darn thing. This eternally grey sky is depressing.”
“I can’t argue with you. This place isn’t exactly an astronomer’s paradise. As long as we’re on the subject of Cygnus, would you care to hear the Chinese explanation of how it got there?”
“Does it involve a hunk from Cleveland?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, let’s hear it.”
Jack lay back and covered both of them with his windbreaker. A gentle breeze had come up carrying with it cool air from the mountains and the strange nocturnal songs of thousands of prehistoric insects. “Long, long ago,” he began, “there was this hot guy from Cleveland, or maybe he was a shepherd from China; I can’t remember. His name was Niu Lang which I suppose supports the notion that he was Chinese. Of course he still could have been from Cleveland. Anyway, Niu fell in love with a beautiful fairy princess named Zhi Na. They were happy until the Goddess of Heaven found out about their relationship. It seems that Niu, although he was quite the hunk, was a mere mortal, and fairies are forbidden to consort with mortals. The Goddess got mad and banished them to heaven. Zhi is now the star Vega, in the constellation Lyra, and Niu, the mortal stud, became Altair, the brightest star in Aguila, ‘The Eagle.’ To keep them apart, she separated them by a river of stars that we now call the Milky Way.”
“How mean,” Jocelyn said. “It’s amazing how we humans use prejudice to deny happiness to others. People can be so cruel.”
“I totally agree, but the myth has a happy ending…sort of. You see, the constellation Cygnus lies in the Milky Way and the swan’s wings span the ‘river.’ Once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month—according to some old Chinese calendar—all the magpies of the world fly up into the sky and form a bridge, the Magpie Bridge, ‘Que Qiao,’ across the Celestial River, right where the swan lies. They do it so that the lovers might spend one night together. Legend has it that if it rains that night, it’s because the magpies couldn’t make the trip and the raindrops are the tears of Zhi and Niu who know it will be another year before they can possibly be together again.”
Jocelyn lay quietly beside him, so quietly that Jack assumed she’d fallen asleep. He knew how tired she was, how she hadn’t slept the night before, and how physically drained she must be after hiking all day in stifling heat. It wasn’t long, though, before he felt her shaking. He sensed something was wrong and touched her shoulder. “Jossy, are you all right? You cold?”
She sat up and looked at him. Tears streaked her cheeks; she’d been sobbing. Jocelyn wasn’t just tired, she was emotionally spent. The ordeal they were going through was taking a heavy toll. Reaching out to him she cupped his face in her hands and looked deeply into his eyes. “Jack, I just want to…” She choked-up, desperately searching her tired and foggy mind for words to express her feelings. She finally wiped away her tears and took a deep, cleansing breath. “I want to thank you for being such a good friend, and for cutting my hair, and for telling me that wonderful story. I liked it a lot better than the Greek one.” She smiled, leaned forward and kissed him gently on the lips. Then she snuggled up against his chest and fell into a deep sleep.
* * *
“Wiggle your toes for me, Debbie,” commanded Marcie. There was movement there, but not much. Debbie had had a horrible night. The previous two nights had been difficult, but this had been worse: much, much worse. Her leg was throbbing, and her moans prohibited both of them from getting any real rest. Finally, partly because of the cold, but mainly out of concern, ‘Doc’ had decided to thoroughly examine her patient. Something was very wrong. When she donned her LED headlamp and unzipped Debbie’s sleeping bag, the problem was apparent. The injured leg had become badly swollen; taut skin and fluid pressure were squeezing the fracture, causing intense pain.
Marcie bit her lip in the characteristic way she always did when she really concentrated on something. Of one thing she was certain: action on her part was required. There were several things she could do to help alleviate some of Debbie’s suffering, but each carried consequences.
Throughout this ordeal, Marcie had carefully regimented the pain medications she had in her pack. What were supposed to have been enough pills to relieve the occasional headache or back pain afflicting one person over a three month period, had become needed therapy for a major injury. The supply was now nearly exhausted; only two ibuprofen tablets remained. Debbie wasn’t due for another dose for at least two hours, but Marcie quickly decided to administer them immediately in a prompt attempt to arrest the swelling. She also decided to elevate the limb by several more inches, and then do something she had been trying to avoid.
Because of the intense cold, Marcie had refrained from icing the injury. Now she felt she had little choice. No snow or ice existed on the shelf where they were camped, so Marcie improvised by soaking one of her T-shirts with cold water. Easing Debbie’s leg out of the sleeping bag, she wrapped the compress around it and then closed the bag around the rest of Debbie’s body as best she could. The risk here was from hypothermia. Using cold to stop the terrible swelling would suck heat from Debbie’s body at an alarming rate. Both women already shivered constantly through the short but miserable nights when the Sun passed behind the mountains, and this therapy might push Debbie’s body temperature to a dangerously low level. To combat this inevitable heat loss, Marcie activated her last remaining chemical heat pack and tucked it between the two of them.