“It’s perfectly all right, Miss,” the man replies with a slight bow. Vesna smiles once more and sighs. It’s getting late; it’s time to go. She picks up her bag and portfolio. Laurels and oleanders and pines sink into the dark, night creeps into recessed corners of the shrubbery, and dinosaurs that are birds settle down and turn quiet. Lights come on along the promenade covered with gravel. Time to return to her cheap motel room, where she’ll probably cry some more.
“Excuse me, Miss.” Vesna feels a trace of urgency, almost a plea, in the man’s voice. She pauses. “It looks to me — correct me, if I’m wrong — that you’ve had a strenuous day. If you’ll allow me … Perhaps I could take you out for dinner somewhere?”
His offer takes Vesna by surprise. She doesn’t know what to answer: The man before her could easily be her grandfather. A dinosaur, she thinks wickedly, and is at once ashamed. Somehow, she feels that, like the dinosaurs, he doesn’t belong to this world and time, and maybe that’s exactly the reason why she suddenly finds herself attracted to him. And why the hell not, she asks herself after a brief consideration.
“Vesna.” She smiles as she introduces herself, offering the man her hand. He takes it in his and kisses it lightly, like a true gentleman. Vesna raises an eyebrow, surprised and amused by the man’s old-fashioned manners. She tries to remember if anybody else ever kissed her hand like that. No, nobody ever did.
“Šaric. Professor Šaric.” The man introduces himself with a slight bow. Something in that bow fills Vesna with confidence, and she allows him to take her arm under his and lead her down the path, some ten minutes’ walk to a restaurant with a cozy terrace. As soon as he’d suggested it, Vesna realized how hungry she was. Somewhere above them, in the dense pine crown, a small nocturnal dinosaur, brown-feathered, thickset, with large yellow eyes and a sharp beak — a little owl — calls at them from its roost before going out to hunt.
~~~
She reached the seashore on the fifth morning, following the stream She discovered the day after the megalosaurs attacked Her herd. The stream murmured through the forest, merging with other streams, widening after two days into a slow river. Clear water quenched Her thirst; clear water guided Her through strange, unknown country.
The sea spread before Her. For the first time in Her life, She saw plesiosaurs, their distant, small heads on long grayish necks high above the waves, bodies and fins paddling beneath them. Silhouetted against the clouds, large pterosaurs soared in circles, carried by rising thermals, their long wings motionless. Several smaller pterosaurs — with folded wings and long tails, bare red heads and yellow jaws filled with needle-like teeth — feasted on a dead fish on the beach.
She walked across the soft sand, pausing to sniff a large spiral ammonite shell washed ashore. The smell of decay from inside the shell was unfamiliar to Her. Curious, She nudged at the shell with Her nose, but nothing came from inside. Lifting Her gaze, She noticed a line of footprints going down the beach and then turning and disappearing among the cycads and araucarias. She looked more closely, only now seeing there were more footprints. Tiny ones, made by the swift-running feet of small dinosaurs. And large circular ones, impressed by a sauropod, a herd animal like herself She had once seen, with trunk-like legs supporting a massive body, long neck and a whip-like tail.
She looked back: She, too, impressed footprints. And then She saw another line of prints. Her nostrils flared as She inhaled their feeble, old scent, recognized the stench, and froze. A megalosaur had prowled here some time ago. Perhaps it was scavenging for carrion before it returned into the dark forest. Or maybe it was hunting. Teeth. Danger lurked here, too, She realized. She’d have to be cautious. Still, She was relatively safe as long as She was on the beach itself. It would be difficult for a carnivore to stalk Her and jump Her while She was in the open.
Then, a deep hooting call resounded across the beach, and the pterosaurs feeding on the fish raised their bare heads in alarm.
~~~
Vesna presses the green button and looks at the illuminated screen of her cellular. No new messages. She knows her hopes are vain; Slaven will not call back. He doesn’t have the guts for that. He doesn’t even care. Vesna makes a solemn promise never again to enter a relationship with the kind of guy who breaks up by cell phone.
She leans back on the bench, letting the breeze from the sea cool her. White dinosaurs glide across the sky, jubilant in the freedom they enjoy high up. On a nearby rock, a brown juvenile gull quarrels with an adult over a morsel, a piece of bread. The adult wins, and the juvenile spreads his wings, takes off and flies low above the waves to look for his fortune elsewhere down the coast.
Vesna spreads her portfolio open. She leafs absently through the drawings of petrified footprint impressions. A grid of squares is drawn neatly across them. On the dig, the same grid is laid down in taut ropes. This morning, the crew has been busy clearing another thirty square meters, uprooting bushes, removing earth and stones. The newly exposed part is not pegged off yet for Vesna to scale down.
A sense of presence snaps Vesna from her reverie. Professor Šaric stands politely by the bench, trying not to show that he’s interested in the contents of her portfolio. “Curiosity is a reflection of intelligence, Professor,” Vesna teases, looking back at the drawings.
“Thank you.” The professor blushes.
Vesna smiles and moves aside, an unspoken invitation that he accepts with relief. Today, the walk felt more strenuous than usual. Age … “May I?”
“Sure.” Vesna passes him the drawings. The professor realizes they’re a series, continuing one after another.
“This is what people are talking about?”
Vesna nods. All of Istria has been buzzing about the new find: hundreds of footprints frozen in stone. At least five dinosaur species and countless individual animals: iguanodons, a huge sauropod next to numerous small herbivores — some of them probably hypsilophodons — and a meat-eater.
“They’re from early Cretaceous.” Vesna points to the main map. “This one is a sauropod. See here, it just strolled by. It was a big one — notice the diameter of the prints! Twenty meters long, maybe more. And this is a large carnivore, possibly a megalosaur or something similar. We can’t yet determine the exact species of carnosaur based on footprints alone … And these are the iguanodons —” Vesna pauses when she notices the professor’s confused stare.
“I’m in a different field, you know. English, German, Italian … Dinosaurs … I only know they existed.”
“I’m sorry.” Vesna smiles as she apologizes. “Sometimes I forget myself. Here.” She pulls out several reconstructions drawn between her careful copying of the footprints in the grid. Professor Šaric nods, impressed by her skill for making long-extinct beasts come alive in detailed pencil drawings.
“So, these are the footprints of iguanodons?”
“Yes, we’re quite certain of it. But we don’t know what these ones mean. Nobody ever found anything like this before! Look how the soil was trampled.” Vesna takes the drawing and points excitedly. The professor follows her finger as it skims across the paper. “This was one animal. It approached the second one, a smaller one. See — it’s this trail. And look here—” Vesna leafs through several sheets. “They faced each other. Nothing in itself, right? But look more closely! As if they were turning around that way, but still facing each other…”
“Perhaps fighting?” Professor Šaric suggests.
“No, we don’t think so.” Vesna looks at the drawing. “It looks too neat for that. For a week now, the entire crew has been trying to figure it out. But we can’t. Maybe we’ll never know,” she sighs.
The professor studies the drawing more closely, frowning in concentration. The layout of the footprints seems somehow familiar to him. Until—
Damn, it can only be … But it’s impossible!
Still, if they were human feet, there would be no trace of doubt, not for a moment. He starts humming a melody, barely audible, as Vesna look
s at him, perplexed.
Yes, that’s it! It can be nothing else, say what they may. And the poor child doesn’t see it. Of course, she doesn’t, this modern youth …
Finally, the professor returns the drawing to Vesna, thoughtful, saying nothing, merely smiling enigmatically.
~~~
Her heart shivered! Immediately She recognized the call of a male of Her own species. She replied, paused to listen, was answered at once. Splashing through waves washing the shore, She rushed across the wet sand, scattering several pterosaurs into a flurry of flapping wings and protesting cries. Where was He? Why couldn’t She see Him? Frantic, She stopped and called once again.
He stepped out from beneath the tree ferns. While He was motionless, the play of sunlight and shadows cast by leaves on His strong brown body with its narrow white stripes made Him almost invisible. He was watching Her intently.
She stopped in Her tracks. As much as She wanted to greet Him, as much as She rejoiced in seeing Him, She paused, cautious, not approaching any closer. She knew She was unfamiliar to Him, a stranger. He might consider Her an intruder. Maybe He was guarding His herd; if that were the case, He could attack Her to drive Her away from His territory.
Standing almost motionless, they studied each other for a long, long time. No other iguanodon stepped out of the shadows. She heard no other herd members. The male was alone, just as She was. Both alone, both diffident. Any sudden move could be understood as an act of aggression. Therefore, diffidence. Suspicion. Solitude.
And then She decided She couldn’t be lonely anymore.
~~~
Vesna descends the stony stairs. The professor sits on a rock beneath the wall rising above a small cove. Sea washes the sandy shore gently. It’s late afternoon and several strollers on the promenade above talk loudly and laugh at a joke one of them has just made. Above them, a small dinosaur calls in a ringing voice, methodically searching the crown of a downy oak for an insect or two. It has a greenish back, a yellow breast and belly with a central black stripe, black crown and throat, and white cheeks: a great tit.
When he sees Vesna coming down the stairs, Professor Šaric loses his breath. He freezes, petrified, speechless.
“Something wrong?” Vesna asks, worried at the sight of him. She wears a simple cream dress with a white cardigan thrown across her shoulders and a white shawl wound about her neck. Nothing special, nothing calculated; autumn afternoons and evenings have begun turning cool.
“Did it ever—” The professor pauses, not taking his eyes off Vesna. “Did it ever happen to you that you saw something — someone — so beautiful it’s painful? So painful it squeezes your heart and…”
For an awkward moment or two, Vesna doesn’t know what to reply. If it weren’t for the pain in the professor’s eyes, she’d take his words for simple flattery or teasing. But now … Somehow, she’s not sure things are going the way she expected them to go. How and why did something that was to be just a harmless, pleasant company — meant merely to wash away the bitterness left after weeks of fights and tears — catch her completely unawares? And does she have the right to play with an old man like that? Should she excuse herself and turn and leave?
No, that would make things even worse, hurt even more. Should she—
“Forgive me.” Professor Šaric takes Vesna by her hand and leads her from the stairs to the shore. Her feet sink, shallowly, into the soft moist sand. “I didn’t mean to worry you or anything. I do sometimes prattle. This is why I invited you here.”
Only now does Vesna notice the CD player that the professor has placed beneath the wall, safely away from the waves. “Maybe it will be somewhat of a disappointment to you, but a phonograph with a horn was really a bit too heavy to carry.” Vesna laughs at the professor’s joke while he presses the play key. Music spills from under the wall. A waltz. Vesna doesn’t recall ever having heard it before; certainly, it’s nothing she’s heard played in clubs or on the radio.
“Tchaikovsky. Some find it saccharine, but honestly, Strauss became boring to me ages ago. May I?” The professor offers Vesna his hand. She hesitates, not really knowing what to do next.
“I’m afraid I’ve never danced to this,” she admits, blushing.
“It’s easy — just let go.” The professor smiles as Vesna takes his hand. Warmth of times past streams through her palms. Times not as past as the ones in her portfolio, but nevertheless, gone forever. Times neither better nor worse than present, but lost, never to return. The professor takes Vesna around her waist and leads her across the shore. After several clumsy steps, Vesna’s feet catch their own rhythm and she and he begin flying across the sand, in harmony to the melody of the waltz, enthralled in the whirlwind of dance. The world around the professor and Vesna is no more. Gone are the warm afternoon and the chuckling white dinosaurs in the sky, the sea and the whispering trees. Only the two of them remain, dancers cocooned in a time of their own that will never pass…
But then the waltz does come to an end and the merry-go-round winds down and stops. Vesna staggers, flushed, breathless, but remaining on her feet, steadied by the professor’s hands. She bursts into joyous laughter; it’s been ages since she’s had such a good time.
“Now, take a look at the footprints, Vesna.” The professor smiles knowingly, like a teacher happy at the sight of his pupil about to grasp new knowledge, reach new levels of understanding.
~~~
They spent that entire day together, She and He, touring the coast and the forest, feeding on plentiful juicy shoots, drinking in the cool river. Occasionally, between morsels, shy at first and then becoming bolder and bolder, He’d touch Her neck with His beak. Then He tried to lick Her cheek — just one fleeting, flickering touch of His long tongue. At first, She wiggled away, waving Her powerful tail in mock warning, as if driving a boring insect away. But He was persistent. She kept evading Him, feigning annoyance. She even tried to bite Him with Her beak once, and spur Him with Her thumb spike, but She didn’t really mean it. He jumped aside and then approached Her again, licking Her and rubbing His strong body against Her side.
She moved away from Him and eyed Him from a distance, measuring Him. Then She turned away from Him, acting disinterested. She took a step deeper into the fresh forest, looking for something juicy to nibble on. And He followed close on Her heels; wherever She bit, He bit, too. As the day grew warmer, they grew closer, body next to body, feasting together.
Then He took Her even deeper into the green shade of the old forest. She let Him lead Her. She followed Him up the river, until they reached a sunny clearing among the tall sequoias: a remote and secret place only He knew about. She stopped at the edge of the clearing, as if waiting for Him to invite Her in.
The place was well-hidden from prying eyes; away from hungry jaws filled with sharp, serrated teeth. It was quiet, too. Buzzing of insects and flapping of pterosaurs’ wings were all the sounds She heard. It felt like just the spot to scrape a nest in the soft ground and fill it with dry leaves. It looked like just the perfect place to lay eggs and guard them closely until they hatched. He watched Her as She decided it was indeed an ideal place to raise offspring, to watch over them as they grew to a size when it would be safe to lead them into the hostile outside world.
That whole day, He introduced Her to His domain, in the forest by the sea, until the shadows grew long and the forest started sinking into dark.
And then She stopped and turned, following the river back to the seashore. When She heard the breaking waves, She ran through the shadows. And He ran after Her, the ground shaking as they went.
On the beach, on the very edge of the sea, She stopped and waited for Him to come to Her. Then She reared on Her hind legs. She looked at Him, a male in his prime, and He looked at Her, a young female ready to start a herd with Him. He reared, too, and they touched their forelimbs and started turning, instinctively, in slow circles. They turned and turned, in an ancient ritual whose meaning they didn’t understand, but that would fo
rever seal the bond between them. They kept turning around each other, led by something primeval within them, their powerful legs leaving footprints in the sand.
They kept on turning as the large pterosaurs glided through the dusk, tracing circles above the dancing lovers, before returning to their night roosts far out on the cliffs. She and He danced, and the sea was all the music they needed. The waves sung to them, the wind fluted, the pterosaurs clapped their leathery wings. They danced the way they would dance for decades to come, the way their parents had danced, the way their children would dance as well.
The hungry roar of a meat-eater broke through the forest, but they didn’t heed it, not stopping for a moment. They were together, inseparable, strong. No predator could touch them. They danced for new generations, in harmony, as if they’d been dancing together their whole lives, as if they hadn’t met only that morning. They danced in slow, heavy-legged rhythm, two dark shapes against the sunset sky burning bright in reds and oranges and fiery gold.
And then, as night fell, under the twinkling stars, they stopped dancing, She and He, and surrendered to each other. Under his panting weight, She forgot Her old herd, and teeth and death and horror. Instinct led Her into the future, towards a large nest, with eggs and little ones that would one day grow and dance themselves to the rhythm of life.
~~~
Vesna snuggles against the professor’s chest. His gentle hand rests on her breast. The autumn nights are chilly, but the professor’s warmth spills comfortably across Vesna’s back, and she enjoys his quiet breath on her hair.
That afternoon, it had taken her time to understand. Time to take the proportions of the animals into account, their anatomy and how they moved. Time to accept the obvious, no matter how impossible it seemed. But as much as her mind resisted, as much as the scientist inside whispered it could not be, in the end, there could be no doubt. Her and Šaric’s footprints on the beach, in the sand, the impressions left by their shoes … Vesna substituted them for the prints of the iguanodons’ feet in her drawings.
Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever Page 3