James stared incredulously at the edge of the clearing, now devoid of creatures, and the foliage was the only thing receiving his stare.
She, Tarzan, had looked back at him, seeming a bit concerned, but followed at the urge of a gorilla.
The gorillas...
"You're one of them..." he murmured, having seen her friendly tussle with the beasts, and himself being confronted by that alpha male.
A silverback, bigger than Clayton, he'd never appreciated how huge they were...
And she'd defended him from the silverback, as its equal, and now he saw how she fit into the dynamics of the gorilla troop...
"She's one of them..." he repeated. Huh.
"James?! James!"
"Mum!" he reacted automatically, as his mother and Mr. Clayton barged into the clearing.
He suffered gladly if faintly the flustered embracing of Mrs. Porter while Clayton looked around the encampment.
"What happened here, Mr. Porter?" the hunter interrogated.
"We were looking everywhere for you! You're alright?" his mother protested.
"Yes, yes," he assured her, straightening up. He was glad to have inherited his father's height, though this at times never stopped his mother from psychologically towering over him, regardless, a silly grin was spreading across his face, "There were...monkeys..."
All at once everything just sort of spilled out, "I was right behind you, honest, there was—monkey! A little baby monkey, baboon! Wanted to draw it, you know, well, picture's gone now, as well as my sketchbook—"
"Thought there was a lot of paper fluttering around here, certainly not an indigenous phenomena..." Mrs. Porter muttered.
"But then, suddenly, the monkey starts crying," he sighed.
"Oh, poor thing..."
"And then there's a whole fleet of them!" he recalled in horror.
"Of what?!"
"Of monkeys, an army, a whole bloody tree! Screaming at me!" his arms waved wildly, doing a rather good reenactment, he thought.
"Oh, my!"
"It was a terror, and I'm running around without a machete and—there's a cliff, a bloody cliff of all things, and then I'm swinging on a vine—in the air!—I'm flying, swinging, in the air, and we were surrounded, pursued, and I lost my—they stole my boot, Mum!"
He showed her his bare foot.
"Oh, they stole your—? That pair was such a good bargain, too..."
"And I was rescued..." he continued, the recollection making him blink.
"By a woman... A flying wild woman dressed like a savage."
"Savage?"
"Er, well, loincloth..."
"Good heavens!"
"What is your son babbling about, Mrs. Porter?" Clayton growled.
"I haven't the faintest. Takes after his father you know, all those flights of fancy, stories, but well, hardly any about women in loincloths, or not to my hearing, that old badger, of course, but..." the old woman sighed.
"And there were gorillas!" James recounted suddenly.
"Gorillas?!" Clayton's fists caught him by the edges of his vest, "You saw them?! Where, James?!"
"She left with them..." he muttered, absently pushing the man away.
"Who did, dear?" his mother asked.
"Tarzan..." he repeated that strange, oddly fitting name.
"Tarzan?" Clayton repeated, with no little disgruntlement.
"The ape-woman." James concluded, smiling like a fool at the thick foliage where he'd last seen her.
When things were a bit more calmed down, and the camp a bit more straightened out, he set up a chalkboard.
"She didn't stand upright, understand," he mentioned, starting with the curve of the spine and the locks of wild hair, the basic shape and bearing of her, "But she sort...of...crouched, like that," she had strong, lean legs and arms, even when hunched like an animal, and he nearly drew everything but was quick to cover it up by drawing more hair. He coughed as his mother giggled, "Like this," he continued, "Supporting her weight on her knuckles."
"On the knuckles!" Mrs. Porter exclaimed.
"Exactly like a gorilla!" he finished triumphantly.
"Extraordinary!"
"Oh, it was fascinating! She'd bend her elbows out, like this," he crouched down to demonstrate, "And then she walks, like this, making sounds like a gorilla." this time the reenactment was probably rather shoddy, but his mother tried it herself, "Oh, I see! This is capital! Oh, Jamie, what a discovery! A woman with no developed language center, no behaviorisms of the homo sapiens—!"
"And no sense of personal boundaries..." James added wryly.
"How do you mean?" his mother asked, and he lurched towards her, "She was this close, this close, Mother, staring at me!"
He got up off the ground, turning thoughtfully to the chalk drawing, ". . . She'd seemed...confused at first, actually..."
He needed to add a finishing touch to the face, he picked up the chalk, "As if she'd never seen another human before..."
A few, sharpened ovals, open, slender shaping of the brow, "Her eyes were intense, focused... I'd never seen such eyes..."
He stepped back to look at it clearly. It was only a shadow to the flesh and blood, but the eyes seemed to stare.
"Shall I leave you and the chalkboard alone for a moment?" Mrs. Porter asked with a chuckle.
He whirled around to reproach her, "Mum, please! The point is, think of what we could learn from her! We must find her!"
"Oh, Mrs. Porter!" Clayton interrupted, "You're here to find the gorillas, not indulge some boy's fever fantasy!"
"Fantasy?!" James protested, could he have honestly drawn something like that from a fantasy?!
"She was no fantasy, Mr. Clayton! I did not imagine her! Tarzan is—"
She dropped in front of him in all her savage, half-clothed splendor.
"Real!" James squawked as she smiled up at him, and with remarkable speed slung off his vest and managed to somewhat put it on her.
"Tarzan! It's her! It's-it's Tarzan!" Mrs. Porter stuttered, pointing excitedly.
"Both of you, stand back!" Clayton shouted, shoving between him and Tarzan while levelling his gun.
"Wait!" his mother shouted.
"No!" James roared, quickly shoving up the gun barrel before it shot her, the blast echoing into the sky.
"Clayton!" a young female voice rasped.
". . . What?" Mrs. Porter blinked.
"Clayton!" the wild woman repeated, smiling as if she hadn't just nearly had her face shot off.
"Have we met? How does she know my name?" Clayton asked, quickly cooling off. Bloody hunter.
"She thinks it means the sound of a gunshot." James explained briskly, quickly reaching down to button the vest a little.
"James." she continued happily, leaning in, a knuckle briefly brushing his cheek, and he coughed.
"Yes, hello, um, Tarzan."
She quickly left him to inspect the others when his mother had leaned in to get a closer look.
"Oh, I see what you meant about those personal boundaries, James!" she laughed, letting the younger woman fiddle with her hat and the curls of her hair, seeming to sniff at her while doing so, curiously.
"What is she doing?" Clayton asked, a bit indignant as Tarzan circled him, the vest slightly tightening over her shoulders as she moved.
"Look at her, James," Mrs. Porter said, clearly delighted, as Tarzan mimicked Clayton's stance, "She moves like an ape yet looks like a human!
James, this could be the missing link!"
"Or our link to the gorillas..." Clayton reminded them suddenly, and Mrs. Porter nodded absently, "Ah, yes, that too!"
Clayton turned back to Tarzan, "Where are the gorillas?" he asked, and glared when she squinted at his nose, "GO-RILL-AS!" he shouted.
"GO-RILL-AS!" she shouted back, making Mrs. Porter burst out laughing as the woman tried, and failed, to emulate Clayton's baritone.
James chuckled a bit hopelessly, "It's no use shouting, Mr. Clayton, she doesn't understand English."
"Well, then, I'll make her understand." Clayton decided, striding to the chalkboard.
"If I can teach a parrot to sing 'God Save the Queen'," he said as he wiped the board clean with a swipe of his forearm.
"Then I can certainly teach a savage a thing or two, and a female, no less!" Tarzan was watching as he stood back.
"Gorilla!" Clayton proclaimed, gesturing with the chalk piece to the most hideous drawing of the specie to make James wince.
Tarzan snatched the chalk out of his hand, turning it over in her own, "Gorilla..." she repeated, glancing at the chalkboard.
"Oh, she's got it!" his mother said happily.
Tarzan jumped on top of the chalkboard, and began scribbling all over it, "Gorilla, gorilla, gorilla, go-o-o-rill-a!"
"Oh, well, perhaps not..." his mum continued with a shrug.
"No, no, no, no, no!" the hunter protested, shooing at her.
"No, no, no, no, no!" she said back, waving the chalk in his face, and scrambling over Clayton when he took it from her.
"No—no, aargh!"
Clayton was unsuccessfully trying to shove her off while keeping hold of the chalk, and she was quite determined.
"Mr. Clayton!" James interceded, shoving them apart, if gently to Tarzan.
He let out a breath, "I'll take it from here."
Later, as James was making a list of things he anticipated needing to teach his new pupil, his mother sidled over.
"James?" she questioned, and he was listening, if absently, "Yes, mum?"
"Do you suppose our Mr. Clayton...tills in other fields?"
He frowned, looking up from his list to look at her.
"What are you talking about?"
"Well," she adjusted her vest a bit, "It's easy to see that Tarzan is quite an attractive young woman, if exotic, in such attire, no less. And she'd been literally climbing all over the man, you'd think he might have, well, you know, taken a bit of a cop, unless...?"
A flush he'd thought he'd banished since he got Tarzan to keep the vest immediately was reborn.
"Good Lord, Mother!"
She back-pedaled, "Or I might be wrong, don't mind me!" she laughed, a bit embarrassed, and went off to work with more of her contraptions.
James stared at nothing in particular, and proceeded to briefly bash his forehead against his desk.
He was seeing the appeals of 'going savage'.
"Okay," Terk asked, staring at her friend, "What is that thing, and why is it on ya?"
"It's called a vest," Tarzan replied, tugging at it, a bit uncomfortable, but interesting. "James gave it to me." she added, smiling a bit.
"Tuh, James, again?" Terk scowled, "Ya better not let Kerchak see ya wearin' that. He'll go all 'strange creature bad' on ya."
"I'll change it." she admitted, already working on tearing off the strange stone that hooked it together. "Make it look like I made it."
"Good, 'cause it looks stupid." the female gorilla snorted, munching on some fruit.
Tarzan looked from Terk back down to the vest, frowning, it looked a bit silly maybe, but it might be a good thing.
When it was a bit looser, it already felt more comfortable. She'd just have to break it in.