“Me? I . . . ah . . . I thought that you . . . damn it, Mandi!”
“What?”
“I thought you left me. I know you promised you wouldn’t, but I thought that you got upset with me and walked.”
“No. I ah . . . it was . . .”
“Crazy.”
She nods.
“Weird.”
She nods again. “I didn’t know what to do. You . . . them . . . the stuff you told me . . . showed me . . . all of it scared the crap out of me. God! You could have broken it to me one piece at a time. Instead you dumped the entire enchilada on me. I mean . . . I was standing there freezing to death in the den of killer prehistoric animals and I couldn’t breathe. It was too much at one time.”
“Sorry.”
“There isn’t any more is there? I mean, like, you can’t levitate things or anything like that? Start fires? Make people blow up?”
I laugh. “No, but . . .”
She squints at me. “What?”
I shouldn’t have used the but. People’s buts can sure get them in trouble.
“But what?” she asks again.
“I can sort of read minds.”
“Oh. That’s it? I already assumed you could read minds seeing as you can talk to me in my head.”
“The two are independent of each other.”
“If you say so.”
“That’s it. That’s all of it. I talk to sabre-toothed cats. I can run a dialogue in your head. I read minds.”
“And you’re precognitive.”
“I am?”
“Or, ah . . .” She thinks for a few seconds and then points her finger at me. “Cryptaesthesia!”
“A what?”
“Cryptaesthesia. Comes from crypto, meaning secret, and aesthesia, meaning to perceive. Secret perception. It kind of says it all.”
“There is actually a word for me?”
She nods her head up and down and then says slowly, “Okee doekee. Can we do dinner now?”
“Love to.”
“Now that you dumped even more enchilada on me, I’m hungry. Let’s find something Mexican. I hear that La Parrilla is good.” She picks up her purse. “Oh, by the way! I’m staying in your room tonight, if you didn’t already notice, or read my mind.”
I punch her on the arm and give her a hug. “Thank you.”
Chapter 7
“Just to let you know, I’ve never read your mind. Last summer I figured out how to put it away, like lock it away so that I can’t accidentally use it. As a matter-of-fact, except for Christmas Day, I haven’t used any of my abilities since the day Dad, Matt and I flew out of the mountains.”
“And today.” She points with her cup. “Up there.”
Our mostly empty plates sit before us. Mandi is sipping coffee. I’m fooling with my La Parrilla napkin. It’s taken the entire dinner, and some, to tell her the entire story of my sabre-tooth adventure last summer. “You don’t have to worry. I’ve put it away again. It gets me in trouble.”
“I’m not worried.” She refills her coffee cup from the carafe left on the table. “Why didn’t you want to go back with your dad and sister to see where your mom died?”
I twist on my napkin and contemplate the edge of my water glass for a while before I answer. “I think there were two reasons. First, I wasn’t emotionally ready to face it again, face the place where it all happened, face Christi’s questions at the same time. Second, I wasn’t ready to deal with the cats. After I got home, the whole thing freaked me out. I tried to write about it but could never get past the explosion.”
“What about now?”
I drop the napkin and raise my eyes to her.
“You dealt with the cats today. Could you go back to the cave with your sister and help place a plaque or whatever it was she and your dad had in mind?”
“They already did it. What are you now, a psyche major?”
“Things have changed in a year, Reba. Maybe you should call your dad. Maybe it’s time for the three of you to get closure.”
“You’re doing a minor in psyche and haven’t told me.”
“You’re avoiding the issue.”
“No, I’m not. I just don’t want to talk or think about it.”
She snorts, but she doesn’t pursue it anymore. She’s playing psyche games with me. I’ll just ignore she ever said anything. “Let’s do a movie or something.”
“How about we do Wal-Mart? We’ve got a house and we don’t have anything like dishes and stuff.”
“That’s even better.”
By 8:30 Saturday morning we are moved into our new place, getting ready to head out on serious shopping. We had spent two hours at Wal-Mart the night before and left only with toilet paper, bubble bath and dish soap. In wandering around we came to the conclusion that we weren’t financially ready for new merchandise.
We take turns locking and checking the door with our keys and then go looking for garage sales. Garage sale merchandise is more within our budget. Fortunately the snow never appeared last night, and the rain was sparse. The morning is cool and sunny.
At 12:15 we stand in our little kitchen and admire the sparse cupboard of mismatched plates, bowls, saucers, cups, and mugs. We have enough to entertain eight if three people use saucers for plates. We did better on the silver. Most of it was similar in pattern to each other. We celebrate with a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and discuss how often we would entertain anyone, let alone eight.
There’s a long silence. I drink too much water and then burp. We both laugh and then let the silence settle in again.
“Why are they dying?” Mandi suddenly asks.
I analyze her face until I realize she is talking about the cats. “Something about old DNA. The original came from an animal that was already old when he was frozen in the obsidian. Subsequent births after that started out old when they were born. It kinda makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Mandi thinks for a moment. “But it kinda doesn’t either. Isn’t DNA a blueprint of our bodies?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s all it is. The blueprint. Good sabre-tooth DNA imbedded into a relatively new egg from a young, healthy Bengal tiger should give you a healthy newborn sabre-toothed kitten. Let’s face it; if I use a nineteenth century blueprint to build a house today, I still get a new house, not a two hundred year old house.”
“Okay. Then why are they getting old so fast?”
“Are they getting old or is it that they can’t survive in this world. There are probably diseases—germs or whatever—that they had no immunity to at first, what, nine years ago?”
“Ten for Tricia, I think. She’s the only one still alive of those first seven.”
“The others didn’t look all that old to me, or sick, or anything. I think only those that came from the original DNA had a short life span. Their offspring are probably building immunities to this new environment. The two kittens are what, third generation now? Samantha could have been wrong.”
I have to admit that she has a point. “So, what are you getting at?”
“I guess what I’m thinking is that these sabre-toothed cats aren’t going extinct again. It looks to me like they’re making forward progress. Take Tricia out of the picture and there are six very healthy cats up there, maybe two more someplace else, poised to continue repopulating their species.”
“Hmm.” We’ve moved into our living room and are lounged back on the beat up sofa that came with the furnished duplex, sipping on hot cocoa. “Maybe. Why do you think they traveled to here? I would have thought they were safer and had better game up where they were.”
“I don’t know. Did you ask them?”
I look at Mandi like she’s nuts. “I can talk to them. They can’t talk to me.”
“Oh! I assumed it was like a two-way thing.”
“No, it’s not.”
“You said that you can give them instructions. How do you do that? Do you say, ‘Roll over,’ and they immediat
ely drop to the ground and roll over?”
I laugh. “No. They don’t understand my words. I make pictures and then fill their minds with them.”
Mandi makes a face. “That’s got to be hard.”
“Not really.”
“Okay, then. They came here for a reason. We have to assume that, right?”
“Yes.”
“Probably not a vacation down to Yellowstone to sample a little buffalo.”
“Ah . . . probably not.”
“Probably not to partake in the university culture.”
“No.”
“They’ve come to see you, then.”
“That’s sort of what I figured.”
“Why?”
“That’s the big question, isn’t it?”
“You’re their, what? Queen? Is that what you said?”
“That was a figure of speech. I was trying to make a point at the time. I don’t know what I am. Leader of some sort.”
“Their God.”
I nearly choke on a mouthful of cocoa. “Excuse me?”
“Do they worship you?”
“Hell, I don’t know.”
“Would they give their lives for you?”
I have to think about that. “Probably, yeah. They’d protect me at all costs.”
She empties her mug and carries it into the kitchen, then returns, crosses her arms and leans against the door jam. “So . . . they’ve come here for guidance from their leader, their goddess.”
I roll my eyes until I fall over backwards on the sofa.
“You who have almighty power over them.”
“What kind of power do I have over them? They outweigh me by five times at least. They have bigger teeth. What do they think I can do to them; zap them back twenty thousand years? Sometimes this whole thing weirds me out.”
“Tell me about it!”
There is a gap of dead air. I look up at her. She’s looking at me. “What?”
“Are you ready to go back up there?” she says.
“I . . . ah . . . no. Why?”
“To ask them why they’re here. It might be as simple as wanting to be near their goddess.”
“Give me a break!”
“But I don’t think so. We need to go back up there and you need to ask them.”
Chapter 8
We stand outside the car looking up into the trees. There are two trucks in the parking area, which means there are hikers somewhere up the trail; maybe at Grotto Falls, maybe farther up. Way up I hope. This time we wear proper footwear for the terrain and the snow. The weather is perfect, however Mandi has a larger pack that holds jackets, gloves, and extra socks. We wear long-sleeved t-shirts under our sweatshirts. I wear a vest with pockets. In one pocket is my new compact camera. In others go my keys and several trail bars. She has a water bottle in each side pocket of her pack. I carry my daypack with my hydrator; cleaned and filled. We have sandwiches. We have the trail bars. We’re ready.
“I never thought about hikers up here,” Mandi says. “What happens if . . ?”
“Nothing will happen,” I say. “I’ve given them instructions not to eat people, or horses, or cows, or pigs, or sheep, or dogs.”
“What if someone sees their tracks like we did?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s bound to happen. If not today, eventually, especially if they’re going to go traipsing across the country like they just did.”
“They didn’t traipse. This was a purposeful journey.”
“Whatever you want to call it.” Mandi takes off up the trail. “Let’s go find out the purpose.”
I rush to catch up.
Forty minutes into the hike we arrive at the sign reading Silken Skein Falls. “We’ve come too far,” I say.
“You sure?”
“Yes. It was right after the bridge on our way back.” We turn around and walk back across the bridge. Another fifty feet and Mandi says, “Yeah, you’re right. This is it. This is where I lost my bladder.”
“You did?”
“You didn’t notice?”
“No. I did the same thing the first time I saw one last summer, so don’t worry; your secret’s safe with me.”
We turn off the trail and start trudging up through the trees. I’m not sure we’re heading in the exact right direction until we start hitting the snow where our tracks appear, along with the cats’. No problem finding our way now. We both pause to drink water.
“You sure you want to do this?” I ask Mandi.
She looks at me long enough that it is obvious she is having second thoughts. “I’m sure.” She’s drawn toward them and scared of them at the same time. “As long as you’re with me.”
“You have a lot of faith.”
“Yeah, I do, don’t I?”
We step into the trampled snow; some of our previous day’s trail is already melting away. A quarter hour passes and suddenly Mandi comes up short.
“Oh, jeez!”
I nearly run into her. We are looking directly into the eyes of Gosha. I had already known they were around us. Guess I should have said something. One cannot sneak up on a den of sabre-toothed cats. Roma appears from Mandi’s right, startling her once again. He crosses only five feet in front of where she stands, stiff-as-a-board, and comes around to me. I touch his head. I could almost swear that he bows. I take Mandi’s hand and, despite her reluctance, place it on his forehead. “Friend,” I say. Mandi’s eyes are almost as big as his. He is okay with her. He turns away, and with Gosha, leads on. I know that Yulya is behind us, though I don’t see him.
Just before the shelter we come upon an animal carcass. It wasn’t there the day before. Mandi says it’s an elk. I agree with her. We skirt around it and go part way into the shelter. It is dark so we crouch, waiting for our eyes to adjust so that we don’t have to use our light sticks. Gradually the shapes of the cats come into view. “Now what?” I ask the stillness around us.
“Ask them why they’re here,” Mandi says. “You said that there are two others. Where are they?”
“That’s easier said than done. My way of communicating to them is to give them images. How do I ask a question, and then how do they answer me?”
Mandi shrugs. “Beats me. You’re the queen.”
I’m becoming sorry I said that word. One of the kittens bites the other’s paw. A playful fight ensues. Mandi and I watch with the same delight as we would a couple of domestic kittens. Nadia pays them no attention, her focus on me.
“Fine. I’ll start with a simple question. I’m not going to get anything.”
“Maybe.”
I look at Roma who is slowly pacing back and forth. Why did you come here? He stops for a second and then continues slowly pacing. I try Tricia with the same question. She simply turns her head toward me, and then away. I could think or say anything and they’d just hear noises coming from the human animal that for some reason has control over them. Where are the others? Where are Edik and Vadik?
“Nothing,” I say out loud. “I don’t know what else to do.”
“What about pictures? You said you could send them pictures.”
“What kind of pictures?”
“I don’t know. Try something and see what you get back. Try something like that elk out there, only alive.”
“Okay.” I close my eyes this time, think of the elk I saw last summer, the ones I thought were deer before Matt corrected me and then made fun. I focus the memory and send it.
Gosha leaps to his feet, followed by Nadia and then Yulya. The kittens stop playing. Roma dashes out of the shelter. Gosha and Yulya race right behind him. Mandi falls against me trying to get out of the way. The kittens take off after them. Nadia lets forth a combination hiss and growl that sends a shutter down my spine, and the kittens suddenly halt.
“Holy cow!” Mandi pushes herself upright. “What was that?”
“I think my picture of the elk was too real. They took off after it.”
“Unbelievable!”
“Yeah.” One of the kittens goes back to its mother. “I still don’t know how to find out why they’re here. I can talk to them but they only understand pictures. They can’t talk to me or send me pictures.”
“How do you know they can’t send you pictures? Maybe they can but they don’t know it.” The other kitten sits on its haunches and stares at Mandi.
“Comes to the same thing.”
“Yeah. Guess it does.” She reaches her hand out for the kitten.
“No! Don’t!” I scream. Nadia rises to her feet. Mandi yanks her hand back.
“Sorry,” Mandi says. The kitten walks away and Nadia settles. “Wow.”
“I don’t know what she’d do if she thought her kitten was being harmed.”
“I can imagine.” Mandi pulls her jacket from her pack, puts it on and then sits down against the stone wall and wraps her arms around her knees. “You realize what you’re calling a kitten is the size of a big dog.”
I laugh. “Does sound kind of funny, doesn’t it? They play like kittens, though.”
“Now what?”
“I don’t know. You were the one who talked me into coming back up here.”
“Now I’m not so sure. Between nearly being stampeded by them and then threatened by Nadia, I’m getting nervous.”
Gosha comes back in and lies down. I pull out my camera and take a picture of Tricia. The flash doesn’t seem to bother any of them so I get more pictures, especially of the kittens. They are so cute with their two-inch sabre teeth. After about two dozen shots I put the camera away. “Let’s go,” I say. “I’m hungry and I don’t want to pull out the food in front of them. They might think we ought to share.”
“Good point.”
Yulya lies just outside. Roma is pacing back and forth. He nudges me with his head. I scratch his ears. He’s the one who would talk to me if he could. “You have something to tell me, don’t you?” I can feel his frustration.
We start back down the mountain. Roma walks with us.
“It feels like we’re giving up too easy,” Mandi says.
“Yeah.” I pull out a trail bar and open it.
“I thought you said you didn’t want to eat around them?”
Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy Page 93