Airborn (20 page)

“I resent that!” said Kate.

“You know,” Bruce said, looking over at me,
“this really is an amazing thing she’s discovered here.”

“Yes, and with your father’s help, she’ll come back again. You’ll come again. I’ll come again so I can serve you all lemonade. But right now, we need to go.”

“I need a photograph,” said Kate. “I need the proof.”

“When all this started, you were happy with the bones and the photographs of the skeleton!”

“Yes, but if I get pictures of her, I can get into any university I want; I can head an expedition.”

“I thought you just wanted to see what your grandfather saw. Beautiful creatures. Now you want to be famous.”

“That’s not fair,” she said hotly. “You think I’m being selfish, don’t you? That I’m rich and have nothing but choices. I’m a girl, and girls don’t get choices. No one’s going to give me a chance unless I force them to. It’s not enough to be smart and curious. It’s just like you, being poor. You and I have to try harder and be better to get ahead. I have to have something amazing like this before they’ll pay attention to me.”

No one said anything for a moment.

“She’s right, you know,” said Bruce.

“Terrific,” I said. “So touching when the rich stick together.”

“It is a huge scientific breakthrough,” Bruce said again.

“I suppose disobeying orders means nothing to you,” I said. “Why would it? Lose this job and you can always just get your father to find you another. Don’t mind that you’re getting me in trouble too.”

“You go back, then,” he said. “I’ll stay with Miss de Vries.”

That made me even angrier, the thought of her alone with Bruce while they took their pictures of the cloud cat. My cloud cat. Not just Kate’s.

“Stay, Matt, please,” said Kate. She looked anxious, but I wasn’t sure if it was genuine or simply a face she put on to keep me here. “I promise it won’t take long. I’ve got a bit of a plan.”

“What’s that?”

“To lure her out into the open. Up here I’ll never get a clear shot, especially with her moving around the way she does. But if I could get her on the ground, it might be easier. She’d be slower, and the camera would be steady. I’ve brought a tripod.”

“How would you lure her out?”

“I brought some food.”

“You brought some food?”

“A fish, actually. The cooks set their catch out on the beach, and I nabbed one as I was heading off. There was no way I could get anything out of the kitchen. There were too many people around. But I didn’t think they’d miss just one fish. It’s a nice big one,” she said enthusiastically. “I left some money for it.”

“They’ll appreciate that. Where’s this fish?”

“All wrapped up in the carpetbag.” That explained the smell. “I wrapped it up in leaves as well as I could. It’s probably good and stinky by now. She’ll smell it instantly.”

“You’re going to lure her out into the open with the fish?”

She nodded.

“And you’ll be hiding nearby with your camera, ready to take her photograph.”

“I won’t use the flash this time. That would just scare her off. We take a picture or two, and then it’s back to the ship, lickety-split!”

She was a planner, you couldn’t fault her there.

“Seems sound to me,” Bruce agreed.

“I don’t like it,” I said. “What if she sees us? She might be dangerous.”

Kate looked amazed. “Her? She ran from us, remember?”

“She’s a wild animal.”

“She’s gentle as anything, isn’t it obvious? She’s shy.”

“Why not just set a little saucer of milk out for her?”

Kate looked at me. “I’d like to get on with this if you don’t mind, Mr. Cruse. We are expected back at the ship.”

“Sorry to hold you back,” I said, and saw that her eyes were smiling at me.

“Half an hour, that’s all,” she promised.

I nodded. “Let’s get down from here and find a good place to take this photograph.”

The fish stank. And in the middle of the small clearing, under the noonday sun, it was certain to stink even more soon. Any living creature with or without nostrils would sniff it out before long.

“Won’t she be suspicious?” I asked. “Oh, look, a dead fish in the middle of the forest.”

“I don’t think she’ll ask too many questions,” Kate said.

Bruce stank too. He was the one who’d taken the fish from the carpetbag, unwrapped it, and placed it on the ground. He kept rubbing his hands on the grass, but the smell was stubborn and clung to him.

Trees and stacks of fern grew thickly all around the clearing. We crouched down, hidden. Kate found a narrow gap in the fronds and set up her camera in front of it. She peered through the viewfinder.

“This will be perfect,” she said. “I’ve got a good
wide shot through here. If she comes to the fish, I’ve got her.”

We waited. We were not far from the tree that held the cloud cat’s nest. Surely it couldn’t be long before she smelled the fish. I could smell it—or maybe that was Bruce. I wished he’d move a little farther away. On Kate’s instruction, we stopped speaking altogether. Part of me wanted the cloud cat to hurry up and come; the other part was afraid it would. I was not so sure of Kate’s assumption it had a gentle soul. Why should it, any more than an eagle or panther?

The day gathered heat. Even sitting in the shade of the trees and ferns, my body was filmed with sweat. The air was so filled with moisture it was hard to imagine there was any room for oxygen. My heart ran hard. I leaned back against the tree trunk, closed my eyes, listened to the heat. I listened to the symphony of birds and bugs. I listened to the breeze high up in the treetops. For a moment I thought I could hear the ocean, but that was probably my imagination. And then, most strange, I thought I heard the sound of propellers. I opened my eyes.

“Did you hear that?” I whispered to Bruce. “Sounded like propellers.”

His eyes lifted to the sky and he listened and
shook his head. “No.”

“Shhh,” said Kate.

A branch creaked. Something brushed leaves.

The cloud cat was coming.

Kate held up her hand.

Very slowly I moved my head so I could see through the ferns. At the far side of the clearing, trees rose up in a solid wall. Suddenly, there she was on a low branch in full view. I blinked. She must have dropped down from on high. It was the first time I’d seen her tip to tail, the whole glorious length of her, and she was truly beautiful, sleek and regal and exquisite, her fur silvery-gray and soft looking. You could imagine exactly how it would feel if you stroked it. She was no more than four feet in length. She was like a princess robed in a fur mantle, bunched around her shoulders. With her wings furled, she didn’t seem so large. She was like a strange cat. Her eyes were flecked green. I wanted to look at her forever.

She gingerly paced along the branch to its skinny end, and still it didn’t bow—she was that light. Nimbly she pounced into the clearing, landing several yards back from the fish. She crouched, frozen on the earth, and then took a single step closer.

She wasn’t meant for walking, I could tell right
away. Her wings were her front legs, and she had a funny hunched way of moving on the ground, shoulders swinging, face closer to the earth than her rump. She was a bit like a cat when it’s stalking a bird in the grass, ready to pounce, but on the ground she had nothing of her feline grace as when soaring from tree to tree. Her legs were all wrong for walking, even though she’d strengthened them through her life in the forest. I hated seeing her walk. She slouched, she slunk, as if revolted by the feel of the earth beneath her feet. I wished I could help her. I knew what it was like to have your wings clipped.

Closer she came to the center of the clearing, where the stinking fish shimmered in the sun’s gaze. Before now, we’d only seen her from a distance, veiled by leaves and branches and moving quickly. The cloud cat took one more step and then stopped. I could see her ears twitching. She was listening. Could she hear our breathing, the creak of our bones as we tried not to move? The cat, I noticed, had never once put her back to us. She approached on the far side of the fish, her head pointed toward us. Surely she couldn’t see us. Not for the first time I wondered at the wisdom of coming so close to her home. I’d seen crows attack people when they innocently
walked beneath a tree holding the birds’ nests. But that was because there were hatchlings, and the parents were protective. Our cloud cat had nothing to protect—but herself.

Then, in three abrupt, slinking steps, she was upon the fish. With her curved front claws she impaled the fish at both ends, tail and gills. Her jaws opened, and we saw her teeth—and everything changed.

We saw her teeth, and suddenly she was no longer a sleek shy cat.

We heard her wet panting sounds as she ravenously tore into the meat with her fangs, and she was full of threat and power. I’d seen the teeth on the skeleton, but it was impossible to imagine them in motion, powered by massive jaws, ripping into the fish. Now that she was so close, I could smell her, a rank chicken-coop heat of fur and sweat and fish and old meat and excrement. I swallowed, but my mouth was so dry I almost gagged. I glanced over at Bruce. He was shaking. Kate’s face had gone very pale. Her hands trembled atop the camera.

We’d made a terrible mistake.

The creature was no more than twelve feet in front of us, and I felt a tremendous fear in me. I could see the fish’s broken spine on the ground, its severed head and dead eye jerking with every pull
from the creature’s jaws.

She ate the fish. She could eat us.

The picture was not important. All that mattered now was getting away safely.

The cat finished with the fish and looked up. Her nostrils flared. I looked at Bruce’s hands, could practically see the smell of the spoiling fish, rising like steam.

Kate had put her eye to the camera’s viewfinder. Her finger was on the plunger. I reached out to try to stop her, but too late.

The camera clicked as its shutter contracted and opened.

It was a precise little metallic click, but it was a sound completely foreign to the forest, and it might as well have been thunder. The cloud cat’s head snapped up as if yanked by a chain. Her gaze was leveled at the ferns. That was all there was between us, a few inches of soft, drooping leaves.

Be very, very still.

I heard a low, dangerous, liquid purr. I crouched frozen, floating outside my body, just staring at the cloud cat’s face. It was not a cat’s face, really. It had altogether more intelligence and intent.

She will not see us she will not smell us she will not hear us.

Bruce ran.

He did it suddenly, and there was no hope of holding him back.

“C’mon!” he hissed.

He pivoted and ran straight back from the ferns, bent low, hoping he would not be seen. I could see the cloud cat’s ears flare and swivel, her chin tilt up. Her rump dropped, and then she sprang. Kate and I fell flat, my hand raised across my face to ward off a blow, but the cat was not interested in us, perhaps didn’t even see us. Bruce was her prey. The cat sailed toward us, wings flaring immensely. She landed on a thick branch above me and Kate. In the brief second she touched down, I saw the way her claws gripped the bark, and smelled the pungent odor of her belly and breath and wings as they folded and flexed. The creature’s nostrils flared again as she sniffed, and then she launched herself after Bruce, leaping from tree to tree. Bruce ran headlong, but he would not be able to outrun it. The cloud cat pounced onto a branch directly over Bruce and then sprang down at him. It made a terrible shriek and caught him in the legs. Bruce fell.

I looked frantically round for a stick or a rock, some kind of weapon, but saw nothing. My eyes flicked over Kate’s spyglass, and suddenly her grand
father’s scribbled words burst from my memory:
the sight of my spyglass makes them scatter in an instant.
I snatched it up and ran.

“Stay here!” I shouted at Kate.

Bruce had rolled over onto his back, kicking with his feet to keep the cloud cat at bay. The cat squealed, her jaws wide, feinting with her head. Bruce shouted; I shouted, too. I scooped up a stone and hurled it. It struck her flank, and the creature turned clumsily. Bruce scrambled back, and I caught a glimpse of his torn trousers, ragged with blood. I stood, a few yards from the cat, my arms spread wide, brandishing the spyglass like a sword and cursing to clear a Tasmanian pub. The cloud cat froze, her eyes following the frenzied motion of the spyglass.

“Go on! Get out of here!” I bellowed, churning my arms, trying to look big and to make enough noise to scare her off.

But she did not flee. She stood her ground, watching me, fur bristling.

Bruce was slowly crawling backward. Shakily, he stood.

“Run, Bruce!” I shouted. “Go!”

He ran. He was injured, but he could still run. The cat kept her eyes fixed on me. The spyglass
wasn’t as terrifying as I’d hoped. The creature was spitting and hissing. Her rump kept dropping, and I flinched every time, waiting for her to pounce. I stepped backward, never taking my eyes from the cat, slashing the spyglass through the air. The cloud cat stayed put. Back I went another step.

“Kate!” I shouted, without turning.

“Here,” she said.

“Stand up slowly.”

“I’m standing.”

I hoped Bruce was good and far away by now. I hoped he had the sense to keep running and not stop until he reached the ship. He had his compass. Kate had mine. We wouldn’t get lost.

“Don’t move suddenly,” I said, still walking backward. I felt Kate’s icy hand take mine. The cloud cat was still in sight, hunched on the ground, making an unearthly growling sound.

“Leave your camera behind.”

“But—”

“Leave it.” My eyes did not stray from the cat. “You’ll need to run.”

“Yes.”

“Walk slowly backward with me. We’re just going to disappear nice and easy into the forest.”

We took two steps, and I tripped. I landed heav
ily on my rump, and the spyglass leapt from my hand and disappeared in the dense undergrowth. When I looked back up, the cloud cat was gone. Then I saw a cloudy flash overhead in the trees, and she was leaping toward us, clawed wings flared, jaws parted, shrieking.

I grabbed Kate’s hand and we ran, hurtling through the trees. We didn’t have long. The cloud cat would outrun us in less than a minute and we’d have to face her, try to scare her off somehow. We were bigger and heavier, but she was stronger and faster. And her teeth…

I risked a look back and saw the creature crackling from tree to tree like flame through a parched forest.

I wanted to scream. Kate did. Up ahead I saw the trees thinning and what looked like an open field on the far side. I tugged at Kate’s hand, leading her toward it. That was our chance. The cat liked trees. She felt safe in them. If we could get free of the forest, we would be out of danger.