Fabulous Creature

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  He was sitting on the sidelines when she came in and she saw him right away and waved her racket. His heart did a kind of lurch, but he stayed where he was, waiting to see what she would do. She stopped near the gate at first and looked around the court, and he was beginning to wonder, but then suddenly she whirled around and actually ran to meet him. For a moment he thought she was going to throw her arms around him right there in front of everyone. She didn’t, but she was smiling her most devastating smile as she pointed the handle of her racket at him and said, “Ka-pow.”

  “Ka-pow,” he said. “How are you?”

  She made a kissing face. “Right at this moment I’m A-1, dynamite, primo. How about you?”

  “More or less the same,” he said.

  Everything was right back the way it had been before, only better. For the next three days he saw Diane every day. They went swimming, played tennis and handball, sat around in the snack bar, or just hung out around the Parade Grounds together. Several times they went on short hikes into the woods. All of it was great, particularly the hikes, even though they were all very short.

  The hikes, as James told Max, weren’t primarily explorations of nature, unless you were referring to human nature. The only fauna involved was human, and the flora was only important because it provided privacy. And all forward progress tended to end at the first secluded spot on the trail. His letter to Max didn’t go on to specify the other places at which his forward progress always ended. He wouldn’t have told Max anyway, because it concerned Diane and was personal; but there was, he had to admit, another reason. Since most of the girls Max met seemed to have no set boundaries whatsoever, James wouldn’t have been eager to tell him that Diane definitely did. Outside of those boundaries, she could be wildly, recklessly, maddeningly passionate, but at certain places everything came to a stop. James told Max it was all wildly, recklessly passionate, and let it go at that.

  Every day seemed better and more exciting than the last, and the nights changed, too. Instead of lying awake brooding and sighing, he was now lying awake daydreaming and fantasizing. All of the fantasies were about Diane, and some of them weren’t even sexy, at least not very. Nearly all of them were about the future and concerned things that might happen in the fall, or in the next five or ten years. One of the most vivid was about what it would be like to have Diane as a girl friend when the summer was over and they were both back in school. There would be visits back and forth—Sacramento wasn’t all that far away; and perhaps if Charlotte got to know the Jarretts and offered to chaperone, Diane might even be allowed to stay for a weekend. The weekend visit fantasy always included the introduction of Diane to Max, and the comments he would make afterwards, and football games and dances to which James would take Diane and the sensation she would undoubtedly create.

  Of course, he realized that such daydreams were on a par with that old favorite—“the triumphant return to the old home town”—and as such not only egotistical, but also juvenile and unoriginal. But at least he was aware of it, and capable of kidding himself about it. It was the kind of thing he intended to outgrow in the near future, but in the meantime it was a lot more fun than counting sheep.

  There were other fantasies, too, that had to do with the future. Some distant, dimly seen future in which he and Diane would be living together in a tastefully funky apartment—old wicker furniture, huge floor pillows, Chagall prints and a jungle of hanging plants—and saying and doing sophisticatedly romantic things together. And when he got tired of that one, there was another about being world travelers, in which he pictured them walking hand in hand across picturesque bridges in ancient cities, stopping to look first at the view and then, passionately, at each other, and then hurrying back to make love until the first rays of morning sun crept through the wrought iron balcony beyond their window in the quaint seventeenth century hotel.

  It was during those days of wine and roses that Charlotte obviously stopped being concerned about the state of James’ emotions and William suddenly began to take an interest. Charlotte, it seemed, had told him about Diane, and it turned out that William knew something about the Jarretts. It figured. If there was one thing James had always been able to count on his father for, it was that he would know something about any subject that might happen to come up. In the case of the Jarretts, he’d learned about them from Dan Willowby, Ph.D., professor of environmental studies and author of several books on ecology and conservation, and of course, the present owner of the Willowby cabin. It seemed that Henry Jarrett, Diane’s father, had been one of the original backers of Major T. J. Mitchell’s plan to develop the whole southern shore of New Moon Lake and turn it into The Camp. And, in the course of the early negotiations, Jarrett and Dan had had several meetings, or more strictly speaking, confrontations. After that, William said, Dan had gone on taking a special interest in the affairs of Hank Jarrett and had collected quite a bit of information on him.

  “It would seem that as a contractor, Mr. Jarrett’s record on ecological matters has left something to be desired,” William said. “At least, according to Dan. But then Dan does tend to be a bit dogmatic where such things are concerned.”

  “Yes. I know,” James said. Dr. Willowby was the type who would advocate relocating a fairly large city in order to protect the breeding grounds of a fairly common species of earwig.

  “They met at a social function set up by Jarrett’s people to recruit support among New Moon landowners. Can’t you picture it? A doomed relationship, I’m afraid. It transpired that in addition to everything else, Jarrett is an avid hunter.” William’s smile invited James to enjoy the imagined scene—dedicated hunter meets dedicated conservationist.

  James found himself beginning to feel a little bit defensive. He knew how Dr. Willowby felt about hunting, and he also knew how Dr. Fielding felt about it, and it wasn’t all that much different. Except that William didn’t quite go along with his friend’s proposal that all hunters should be given licenses to hunt a more dangerous and expendable species—namely, each other. James’ defensiveness increased when his father asked, “And your friend—Diane, I think your mother said her name was—how does she feel about her father’s interest in hunting.”

  James found himself saying, “I don’t see why people like you and Dr. Willowby take the attitude that all hunters are just bloodthirsty killers. There are some good reasons for hunting, you know.”

  “Oh?”

  James looked carefully for the sarcasm he felt must be lurking beneath his father’s smile. “Yes,” he said. “What about the species that have overbred because all their predators have been killed off, so that a lot of them would die of starvation if the hunters didn’t keep down the overpopulation?”

  William nodded. “Yes. It’s quite true that some species would overproduce without some kind of human interference. But wouldn’t it be better to have them harvested by teams of trained rangers? Professionals who would all be excellent marksmen and who would be less apt to be under the influence of extreme excitement and/or alcohol when they pulled the trigger. And who would take care to kill the weak and inferior specimens as nature does, rather than the most perfect, thus improving the species rather than weakening it as hunting does.”

  “But what about poor people who depend on hunting for part of their food supplies?” It didn’t have anything to do with the Jarretts, of course, but it seemed like a good point; and anyone who argued with William Fielding needed all the good points he could get.

  “Game killed by rangers could be given away; but even if it were sold, a great deal of it could be purchased for less money than most modern-day hunters spend on one hunting expedition.”

  James could feel his defensiveness turning into anger, or something fairly close to it. It wasn’t so much that he disagreed with what his father was saying. What he really resented was the way William always managed to back people into defending a position they didn’t really believe in, and then went on smiling calmly without even noticing how
the other person might be feeling.

  “But as I’ve often said, James,” William was going on, “the welfare of wildlife, as important as it is, is not my major concern in this matter. What I really worry about is the type of civilization that produces people who choose killing as a form of recreation.”

  James got up and went out on the veranda. He sat on the railing staring in the direction of the lake, but not seeing anything. He felt angry and uneasy, and the fact that he wasn’t sure who or what was to blame only seemed to make him angrier. After a while he got up, went to his room and, a few minutes later, came out wearing his hiking boots and with his pocket bulging with bread and apples. Vaulting over the railing, he started down the path toward the lake. When he came to where the west gate path branched off, he stopped for a moment and stood looking down it, thinking about the various things he might be able to do with the next three or four hours. But in the end he went on, straight down the hill to the lake and then up through the gullies that led to the Peter’s Creek crossing. He pushed himself, climbing at top speed, and in only a little over an hour he was sliding down the steep incline into the deer’s valley.

  The stag wasn’t in the first meadow so, without stopping, James went on through the wooded area, across the second meadow and into the small, dense grove at the end of the box canyon. As he approached the spring, the anxiety that had accompanied him since he left the cabin sharpened and tightened. By the time he reached the spot from which the deer’s favorite resting place was visible, he was actually holding his breath—and then stale air rushed out and in again, in a gasp of relief. He was there.

  In spite of James’ long absence, the deer seemed calmer, less tensely wary, than ever before. Getting to his feet without apparent haste, he tested the air for only a moment before he began to move slowly toward the spot where James was standing. At about twenty feet he stopped and waited until James had placed his offerings on the ground and begun to back away; and then he came on again, until he reached the food.

  Sleek, powerful and yet superbly graceful, the stag managed to make even the eating of an apple an act of dignity and grace. His antlers were smooth and burnished now, free of the last tatters of velvet, and his body seemed thicker and more muscular. The apples went down quickly, but the bread, rye this time, seemed to require discriminating inspection and thoughtful, head-tossing tasting. When the last bit of food was gone, he retreated a few steps and then stopped and half turned, presenting a magnificent silhouette.

  James wished he’d remembered his camera. He’d photographed the stag several times before, but not recently, not since he’d been coming so close. Raising his hands, he pressed an imaginary button, attempting to impress the scene on a mental camera so indelibly that it would never be lost.

  “You are really something, old man,” he whispered.

  The broad ears twitched, the crowned head tossed and one slender foreleg pawed the earth. “Okay. Okay, your majesty. I get it. The audience is over,” James said, retreating to the edge of the grove. Among the trees he stopped once more to look back, in time to see the deer, legs gathered, subsiding onto his soft bed of pine needles.

  Back at the flat boulder, James climbed up, stretched out and contemplated the sky. He thought briefly of his argument with William and of the hectic excitement of the last few days with Diane, but gradually as he lay quietly with his eyes wide open, the pure blue immensity above him seemed to flow down to fill his eyes and mind and seep through his veins, filling his whole body with peaceful calm. The silence was so complete that after a while it began to seem like a sound in itself, a pure, clear pulsing sound like the distant ringing of a great golden bell. Thoughts and feelings about people and events blurred and blended with the blue purity and the golden silence. And all of it, the silence and the calm and a strange whispering promise, began to seem like a mysterious gift that in some strange way came from the hidden valley and the stag sleeping quietly in his secret grove.

  After a long time he rolled over on his stomach and with his chin on his fists, began to take a long last look around the valley, as he always did before starting back to the outside world. Everything was as it had always been—the meadow, the crouching boulders, the circling trees and behind them the sheer gray cliffs. But then, as he leaned forward to look down into the miniature jungle of meadow grass at the base of his boulder, he suddenly stiffened with amazement. Directly below his head a circular area had been cleared of grass and outlined by a ring of shiny pebbles, and in the midst of the cleared area, on a small pyramid of stones, there, stood a small bronze deer. Of course, he realized immediately who was responsible.

  CHAPTER 12

  IT WAS LATE afternoon and there was only one car in the driveway when he knocked at the side door of the Westmoreland’s A-frame. It was opened by a stranger, a young woman wearing a kerchief over her hair, a flowered smock over her slacks and a dust mop over her arm. Surprise rendered James momentarily speechless. There certainly wasn’t anything surprising about her appearance. In fact, it was her extreme ordinariness that created the shock, in the context of the Westmoreland’s pop-art super-trendy decor.

  With calm efficiency the young woman simultaneously looked James over, tucked the dust mop under her arm, adjusted her kerchief and chewed a cheekful of gum. “Yes?” she said at last without breaking the brisk rhythm of her jaws; and then, “The Westmorelands aren’t home, except for the kids.”

  “Oh—well—actually I came to see the kids,” James said. “That is, I came to see Griffin—Griffith, that is. I’m James Fielding.”

  “Oh, okay. I’ll see if I can find her. She’s around here someplace.” She started to close the door but after scrutinizing James again carefully, apparently decided he looked harmless. “Would you like to come in?”

  Seated on one of the transparent chairs, James had been waiting for several minutes when Griffin came into the room. She was wearing jeans, a faded cotton shirt and was, as usual, barefooted. But now that Charlotte had mentioned it, he could see a slight resemblance to her mother. What had seemed only odd before, from a different perspective could be seen as an unfinished version of exotic elegance. As she saw James, her surprising smile lit up her face.

  When the young woman, whom Griffin introduced as Cynthia-our-new-live-in, left the room, James got right to the point and Griffin admitted everything. Yes, she had been going to the valley since he’d taken her there. James was indignant. “I didn’t say you could go there by yourself,” he said.

  “Oh, I don’t go by myself,” she said. “Woody and Laurel go with me.“

  “Woody and Laurel!” He was not only indignant but aghast as well. “Look. That is very, very dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” She didn’t seem to know what he was talking about. “What’s dangerous about it?”

  “Well, the cliff trail in the first place. That whole stretch just before you get to the top. If you fell from there, you’d be lucky to live through it.”

  “But we’re very careful, all of us. I make sure the kids are very careful.”

  “And it’s not just the cliff. It’s the deer, too. He is a wild animal and a very powerful one, too. He’s never shown any sign of wanting to hurt me, but you never really know what a wild animal is going to do. Particularly around little kids. If they annoyed him or made him feel cornered—”

  She was shaking her head, smiling knowingly. “He won’t hurt them,” she said.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  He looked at her carefully. She was wrong, of course. There was no way anyone could be sure about a think like that. She obviously didn’t know what she was talking about, but she looked so calmly confident you could almost believe she did. He decided to change his approach.

  “And it’s dangerous for him, too, for the deer. You can’t count on kids that young keeping their mouths shut. I guess Woody’s fairly safe. At least, he’s usually around where you can keep your eye on him, but Laurel…” He
shook his head. “Around all those other Jarretts—and she must know how much they’d love to get their hands on him…”

  Griffin was almost laughing. “Laurel wouldn’t tell. Nothing in the whole world could make Laurel tell.”

  “I don’t see how you can be so sure.”

  She looked thoughtful. “I don’t know,” she said uncertainly. “I guess it’s just that I know her so well. I know what she’s thinking and how she feels about everything.”

  He shrugged impatiently. He supposed she thought she knew what the deer was thinking and how it felt about things, too. The thought angered him. He had been the one who had found the deer and who had slowly and patiently trained it to accept his presence.

  “How many times have you been there?” he asked.

  “To the stag’s valley?”

  “Yes. How many times have you taken the kids there?”

  “I’m not sure. Seven or eight times, or maybe nine. Every day but one, I think, since you took me there.”

  He shook his head letting his expression say that he wasn’t going to swallow that one. He was definitely getting the impression that Griffin was indulging in one of her creative narratives. “That would mean you’ve been gone three or four hours out of every day—more than that probably with little kids along, and nobody’s noticed? Don’t your parents ever check up on you? And how about Laurel’s parents?”

  “Laurel’s parents have gone to Europe. And Susie, that’s her sitter, has been very busy with a new boyfriend lately. She lets Laurel leave every day at nine o’clock because her boyfriend’s the new life guard, and that’s when she goes to meet him at the pool. So we meet at the Nymph’s Grove every day at nine thirty, and then we go to see the Stag. And it doesn’t matter about our parents. They don’t care how much time we spend in the woods. They know I’ll take good care of Woody.”