Leopard's Kin

by Becky Norman

  Noel turned his head to look at the Senegalese and nodded. “Yes, but maybe that means Iftakar is a test of our own abilities. We will never grow, after all, if we don’t have a mix of experiences to draw from.”

  “Well, he still gives me the creeps,” Jeret interjected. “There’s something not right about that guy.”

  “Let’s not talk about him anymore tonight,” Lori suggested. “I want to welcome the New Year in with a positive conversation.”

  Lynta pointed at the TV, where the Times Square celebration was being televised. “They’re only a few minutes away now – I guess we should grab a glass and get ready to celebrate ourselves.”

  Lori checked to make sure everybody had a glass of something and they all stood, preparing to toast when the ball had dropped. Noel brushed his arm against Lori’s as he stood next to her and she glanced over at him, anticipation flooding her eyes.

  “This is one year I won’t be sorry to see end,” she murmured. “On to new beginnings,” she added softly for his ears alone.

  His eyes warmed as he smiled tenderly at her.

  Noel wrapped an arm around her waist and they watched the TV as Jeret and Lynta clinked glasses prematurely.

  “Ten...nine...eight...” the two began chanting as Noel drew Lori even closer against his side.

  “Just get me through December,” Lori said quietly next to him and he looked over at her, puzzled. She didn’t seem bitter, though – instead she seemed to find an ironic humour in what she’d said but he clearly missed the joke.

  “Seven...six...five...” Lynta continued.

  “Let’s make it the best year ever, gang!” Jeret called out.

  “Four...three...two...one! Happy New Year!” the entire group rang out together.

  Noel and Lori touched glasses and were on their way to touching lips, as well, when Noel caught the unusual movement out of the corner of his eye.

  When he realized what was happening, he shouted with urgency.

  “Jeret – she’s falling!”

  “I see her – I’ve got her!” he called, scooping to catch Lynta as she began to drop to the floor in a dead faint.

  Chapter 23

  Noel sprang to help and the two men managed to grab Lynta’s tall frame as she crumpled. Luckily, she had been standing in front of the loveseat at the time, so they backed her up and laid her gently down on the cushions.

  Lori was there, too, cradling Lynta’s head and grabbing pillows to prop her up.

  “What do we do?” she asked, panic-stricken.

  “Just hang on,” Noel soothed. “She’s been having more of these episodes lately. Check to see that she’s breathing, Jeret.”

  “She is,” he confirmed, breathing heavily himself from the exertion of moving Lynta to the loveseat. “Should I put her feet up, Noel?”

  “That seemed to help last time, didn’t it?”

  “I think so.”

  “Here – let me help you,” Noel offered as he joined his roommate at the foot of the loveseat. They gently moved Lynta’s feet to the top of the armrest and watched her prone form, uncertain what to do next.

  All of their expressions were anxious as they watched Lynta’s face. Noel noticed her eyes were flickering wildly, as though she were in a dramatic dream state. Jeret had moved to kneel down next to her and had a finger on the pulse at her wrist.

  “How is she?” Noel asked quietly.

  “Her pulse is fast,” Jeret answered, “but it’s been worse. I guess we just ride it out.”

  “How long do these usually last?” Lori asked from the back of the loveseat.

  Noel looked up at her, assuming an air of authority and competence to settle everyone down, even though his heart was still hammering in his chest.

  “She should be coming around soon,” he said. “They usually only last a few seconds.”

  But this one didn’t. At the two-minute mark, Jeret looked up at Noel with searching eyes.

  “Should we call an ambulance, do you think?” he inquired.

  “I don’t think so – not yet, anyway,” Noel responded. “She’s still breathing okay and her pulse isn’t any faster, is it?”

  Jeret shook his head in the negative.

  “To all intents and purposes, she just looks like she’s having a vivid dream – let’s give it a few more minutes.”

  They waited in agony – each of them glued to the prone form before them, and Noel began praying fervently that wherever Lynta was, she was safe and at peace.

  Five torturous minutes went by and Noel was just about to tell Lori to phone an ambulance when Lynta’s eyes began fluttering as she came back to consciousness.

  “Hey,” she whispered, looking around at her friends, “How long was I out?”

  The group collectively breathed a sigh of relief and nervous laughter accompanied it.

  “About five minutes,” Jeret said tenderly by her ear. “Are you okay? This one seemed different.”

  “It was different,” Lynta said, struggling to rise. Jeret pushed her back down firmly with a head shake.

  “Stay put for now,” he advised. “Tell us what happened – do you remember something this time?”

  Lynta nodded, thinking back. “Usually I wake up and have no idea what’s happened but this time...”

  The group waited anxiously for her to talk, but she licked her lips and stared dazedly at the ceiling.

  Noel looked up at Lori, on the other end of the loveseat. “Lori, could you get her some water, please?”

  “Oh! Yes, of course,” Lori responded, brought out of her trance as she waited for Lynta to speak. “I’ll be right back,” she said as she headed to the kitchen.

  When she returned and handed the glass to the Senegalese, Lynta took a deep drink and settled back on the cushions again. “I saw the lynx again,” she started. “My lynx. She told me she wanted to be called Tuft. That’s fitting, don’t you think?” Lynta asked of the three standing around her. She smiled. “She has such lovely long tufts on her ears.”

  “She told you this?” Noel asked.

  Lynta nodded. “Yes, she said hello to me, using my name and said she was called Tuft. The strangest thing was, when she spoke she was using my voice.”

  Lori gasped and Noel looked up sharply at her. “What is it?”

  “In my dream,” Lori said, breathless. “The one with the jaguar...Mist was using my voice to speak to him, as well.”

  Jeret made a quiet sound of awe then tapped Lynta lightly on the shoulder.

  “What happened then?”

  Lynta licked her lips again, thinking. “She asked me to follow her. So I did. We were walking...but it was incredibly fast...like we were skimming over the earth. And we stopped in a very foreign place, someplace I’d never seen before. And there was a sick child and Tuft said, ‘help her.’ So I knelt down, not knowing what to do...and put my hands on either side of the little girl’s face and breathed into her nostrils. I don’t know why I did...it just felt like the thing to do.”

  Noel moved to sit on a coffee table behind Jeret, astounded by what he was hearing.

  “And she opened her eyes and looked at me,” Lynta continued, her gaze following Noel to where he was seated. “And she said in a frail little voice, ‘I want to stay.’ And then she took a deep breath and started calling for her mother...and suddenly, the door to her room burst open and a large family was there. They were crying and laughing in joy, touching the girl and hugging her...and then Tuft said ‘we go now’ and the next thing I knew I was waking up on Lori’s couch.”

  Lynta took another long drink of water then put her head back on the pillow with a deep sigh.

  “That’s incredible,” Lori said softly from above Lynta’s head. “Lynta, you saved that little girl.”

  Lynta shook her head. “I don’t know that. I don’t even know what I did!”

  “It’s almost like she was answering a question,” Jeret mused. “Like y
ou gave her a choice and she chose to stay.”

  Lynta looked wildly at him. “A choice? Are you saying I offered her life or death? That can’t be! Nobody has that type of power – Noel’s even said so!”

  Jeret shrugged, scratching his spiky blond hair. “Doesn’t it sound that way to the rest of you? That she looked at Lynta, saw the opportunities before her and chose what she wanted to do?”

  Lori nodded mutely.

  “I’ve heard of this thing before,” Jeret continued. “Where some people have doors opened to them and they can choose which way they go. And that others are there to help them decide.”

  “Yes,” Noel slipped in, “but usually the ones helping them decide are doing so from the other side, Jeret. Not from here.”

  Noel turned to Lynta, his brows furrowed in thought. “Lynta, you’ve never remembered what’s happened to you during these black-outs?”

  She shook her head vehemently in the negative.

  “Have you kept track of when they’ve happened?”

  Lynta shook her head, more gently this time. “No, they happened frequently when I was a child and I didn’t think to log them. In the last few years, yes – I started to write about them when I noticed a pattern. I do know that I had several of them during that string of earthquakes and tsunamis they had in the Pacific a few years ago, though.”

  Jeret leaned forward, growing excited. “Lynta, didn’t you tell me you were terribly sick after 9/11, too? That you were running high fevers and hallucinating and fainting a lot?”

  She nodded, with a haunted look growing in her eyes. “Yes. You don’t think...?”

  Jeret spun to look at Noel. “Is it possible she’s helping them cross over?”

  Noel felt the small hairs on the back of his neck stand erect. “I don’t know...I mean, of course it’s possible, but she hasn’t been able to remember any of it, so we won’t know for sure.”

  “Not unless they keep happening,” Lori put in. “If you can remember them now, Lynta, you’ll have to write them down when you wake up and see if it really does have something to do with life or death situations.”

  “Yes,” Lynta said quietly. “But if it never happens again it will be too soon.”

  **********

  “Lori, I do believe you’re starting to look like you have black spots in your grey!” Shannon observed as she brushed through her friend’s hair two days’ later at Lori’s kitchen table. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Shannon continued, dragging the brush through the long strands. “Do you want me to try dyeing it again before you start school tomorrow?”

  Lori shook her head, resulting in a “tsk” from Shannon and sudden pain as she pulled her own hair. “No,” she opted to answer instead of moving again, “that’s clearly not helping any. It just washes out the next time I shower.”

  She dragged the pedestal mirror over closer to where she was sitting and looked into it. “I don’t know...do you think I should maybe cut it and just wrap a bandana around it while in class? I don’t want to look like a freak.”

  Shannon uttered a small laugh. “Well, I’d hardly call you that. But it certainly is unusual. You don’t know what’s causing it?”

  Lori was careful not to look at her friend as she answered. “I’m baffled,” she said as truthfully as she could. “Didn’t you think it might be brought on by stress?”

  Shannon lifted a mass of it, the silver-grey clearly dominant over the black splotches now. “Well, that’s what I thought at first, but I don’t know...there’s such an odd pattern in it....”

  She spun it up into a quick ponytail. “What if you just put it up while you’re at school?” she suggested, wrapping a rubber band around it and setting it on top of Lori’s head. The black was heavier underneath and disguised the dappling slightly, but it was still obviously grey around Lori’s temples.

  “Or a braid, maybe?” she said, deftly removing the rubber band, separating three strands and weaving them back and forth until there was a loose braid running down Lori’s spine.

  “That’s not too bad, actually,” Shannon offered. “That looks the most natural, anyway. Disguises some of the spots.”

  Lori turned her head back and forth in the mirror’s reflection. “I guess. Why don’t you just cut it off for me, though? It would be a lot easier to take care of and wouldn’t get in the way of my riding helmet that way.”

  Shannon smiled at her friend through the mirror. “Have you asked Noel about cutting it off yet?”

  Lori frowned, puzzled. “Why would I?”

  “Because, my dear,” Shannon replied as she redid the braid so it was snug against Lori’s scalp, “Men are very particular about their women’s hair and you shouldn’t just go changing it without giving him some warning. Best to leave it as it is until he gives his blessing.”

  Lori felt herself blushing a soft tomato-red; she noticed with chagrin that the hue complimented her black-and-silver hair quite nicely.

  **********

  Her first day of school was as nerve-wracking as junior high had been. With the legal settlement from the plane crash, Lori had opted to attend full-time courses during the day instead of night courses. She didn’t realize in the impulsiveness of that gesture how much more stress she was inviting into her life. She clutched her campus map fiercely to her chest, referring to it frantically between classes and praying she wouldn’t be late and make a spectacle of herself as she tried to sneak in before the professor started speaking.

  She soon discovered that university was all about the professors and their personalities. Regardless of the subject matter, how well the class was taught lent itself directly to how much Lori enjoyed it.

  Consequently, her Canadian History class, which she had anticipated to be a dry hour of torture, was enthralling from the start. The professor was animated, talkative and used a variety of different mediums – PowerPoint presentations, videos, audio recordings and timelines – to demonstrate the colourful characters they would be studying. Conversely, the biology course she had signed up for in the hopes of learning more about mammals, the environment and ecosystems turned out to be as dull as could be imagined. The entire class literally groaned when the professor announced their marks would be based on how well they sketched the various amoebas and protozoa they would be studying this semester.

  As Lori left that class she giggled at a classmate’s imitation of the prof’s monotonous voice then ducked into the bathroom quickly to check on her appearance before heading to her Nature Lit class down the hall.

  On Shannon’s advice, Lori had actually asked Noel how he felt about her cutting her hair the night before when she had called him. He had tried to make it seem like he didn’t care one way or the other, but she knew better. When he started his response with “Why do you want to do that?” she knew it did matter. It had been easy enough to back down, easy enough to change the subject and think no more about it. She did, in fact, like the way her hair looked – now that it resembled Mist’s coat – and the braid suitably disguised the black rosettes. For added measure, she’d also wrapped a decorative teal scarf around her head this morning – it complimented her shirt and furthered the camouflage. But she was glad she had kept the length, especially when Mist had visited her again the night previous before bed. The big cat had walked into the bedroom, done a quick tour of the vicinity to make sure all was well, and then had promptly fallen asleep on the floor beside Lori’s side of the bed. If she was there to protect Lori and calm her nerves before starting school, the least Lori could do was honour the cat by leaving her hair alone. It would have felt like a betrayal to do otherwise.

  Lori made sure the bandana was still even on both sides with a quick check in the bathroom mirror, wiped away a smudge of mascara at the corner of her eye, popped a mint in her mouth and headed to Nature Lit.

  The prof was an older woman of medium height, sporting rimless glasses and a long, flowing grey dre
ss that complimented her salt-and-pepper hair perfectly. Lori instantly felt a kindred spirit. She had a lilting voice that Lori discovered later could drip with irony, and eyes that were the colour of blueberries. Her skin was just dark enough that she could have been non-Caucasian...or she could have stayed out in the sun too long through her formative years. Regardless, Dr. Emily Robertson looked worldly, refined and brimming with class.

  She handed out the syllabus and initial set of questions as she recited Robert Frost, causing a slow smile to spread across Lori’s face.

  The way a crow

  Shook down on me

  She began, heading first to the row Lori was seated in and depositing the papers on the first desk.

  The dust of snow

  From a hemlock tree

  She moved to the next row and so on down the line, stepping and speaking in tandem.

  Has given my heart

  A change of mood

  And saved some part

  Of a day I had rued.

  “Let’s talk about that,” she said, moving to the chalkboard and writing the poem down quickly in an elegant script that matched her personality to a tee.

  It was that day that Lori entered a whole new world, one filled with the likes of Cather, Carson, Thoreau, Lewis & Clark, Skelton and Roethke. Her mind would be expanded in ways she wouldn’t have even thought possible the day before...and she had as a guide on this new, fantastic path a woman who would have a profound influence on her life.

  But on this day – the first day – Lori simply smiled at the image of a crow shaking snow on a poet. How understated those first steps on a journey can be.

  Chapter 24

  They were only into the first week of January when Noel was stopped by Iftakar again on his rounds through the zoo.

  Noel noticed immediately that the East Indian was beginning to develop a white line around his eyes – a hauntingly familiar image echoed by the caracal behind him. It was dramatic and disturbing; Noel knew immediately it had begun for him.

  “There was another one,” Iftakar said without preamble. “It was waiting for me in my apartment. How did it get in there?” he demanded.

  Noel took a step back, trying to regain his equilibrium and avoid the tense, angry energy that pulsed around the other man. “You can call it to you. We’ve all been able to summon our cats with our thoughts,” he offered.