Author's note: A quick explanation of the formatting for this chapter, and chapters to come. Wherever you see a bracketed number, like this(7), you will find a corresponding footnote at the bottom of the page, written by Professor Porter; these are probably best left to read after the rest of the chapter, in case they give away spoilers. I'll add my own additional author notes beneath that.

Without further ado, enjoy! ~ W.J.

Childhood

I was born to a good, respectable family in Knightsbridge, about as far removed from the wilds of Africa as one can get.

My father, Archimedes Q. Porter, is a brilliant naturalist and biological scientist. More specifically, Daddy is a leading zoological behaviourist. In all my time, I have never known anyone to approach any kind of research with as much steadfast commitment as he devotes to every aspect of his study; he is an exemplar, whom any scholar would do well to emulate.

Daddy's own father was an officer in the British navy. By the time Daddy was born, he had achieved some success in his career, risen through the ranks, and afforded his family a fairly comfortable position. In a momentary spate of rebelliousness, Daddy broke away from the family trade, becoming ordained in his youth; however, he soon tired of this theological bent and, relenting to hereditary pressures, served as a chaplain on a diplomatic mission to South Africa, as part of Sir Theophilus Shepstone's contingent. It was a voyage which forever changed the course of my father's life; and subsequently, mine as well. Though he and the rest of his party hardly ventured outside of Port Natal, Daddy was fascinated by what little of the local wildlife he saw. Inspired by his foreign sojourn, he returned to England with a new calling. The last time he took up the cloth, it was to officiate at my wedding; otherwise, he has been a devout man of scientific reasoning ever since. Though he started his academic pursuits rather later than most, he soon made up for lost time, completing his doctorate at record speed. Thus began his long and distinguished career as a researcher in the noblest, most sympathetic field of all the sciences.

Luckily, Daddy's own father was impressed enough by his brief military service to permit him a modest allowance, and so indirectly facilitated this new, somewhat eccentric preoccupation from afar. It was unfortunate that the maternal side of my family were rather less tolerant.

My mother, Annabelle, came from a dynasty of well-to-do haberdashers, who had enjoyed a thriving trade since the late 1700's and accumulated considerable wealth in that time. Though my mother hardly had to earn her own living, she had inherited the same talent with a needle, and was a first-rate millinery seamstress. By the age of fifteen, she was in demand to trim hats for half of fashionable London; within a year, creations of hers would sell for no less than five guineas apiece. This accomplishment aside, she was an astute, intelligent, utterly charming woman; or so my father insists. Though his opinion might be more than a little embellished by a husband's loyalty, I myself choose to take him at his word.

How was it that this simian savant should cross paths with a leading bastion of the sartorial set? It so happened that both of them were passing through Regents Park at the same time - he to observe the primates at the nearby zoo, she sketching the passersby in their well-hatted Sunday splendour. Seeing that they each carried a sketchbook, they struck up a conversation and compared artist's models. My father was so reticent back then, so he tells me; he used to dealing with subjects that did not talk back. He could barely get a word out, faced with my mother in her resplendent walking-outfit, her own silk-banded, feather-trimmed finery perched upon her head at the most fetching angle. Luckily, she was of a more forward disposition. She intimated that she might come to this same spot to sketch every subsequent Sunday, and if it was convenient, he might chose to make his field studies at the same time; a suggestion to which he hastily acquiesced. And so, they began to have weekly meetings of the utmost discretion, which gradually became bi-weekly, then every second day, until they could not bear to see each other on anything less than a daily basis.

Once the inevitable proposal took place, my maternal grandfather made his displeasure known. He was a good Christian of almost saintly devotions, and looked unkindly upon my father's association with the teachings of Darwin, that heretic who sought to replace the Creator with a slew of primitive chimps. He loudly opposed the marriage, and swore that he would not send a single shilling to the couple if their union went ahead.

Well, my mother immediately got to work. She made, so I am told, no less than twenty hats in the space of a fortnight; and every one of them sold for ten guineas or more. Monetary gain aside, she found a number of willing commiserators among her clientele. When it looked as though the family business might have its spotless reputation besmirched by their wretched treatment of their poor, besotted daughter, my esteemed grandpa decided to grudgingly provide her with an ample trousseau. My father was not badly lacking in funds himself; and so, the newly-weds were able to set up house in a desirable part of London, with Exhibition Road and Sloane Street both in close proximity, as suited the respective tastes of the eclectic couple.

Thus, I arrived to what was, for the better part, a serene, secure, and loving household. I remember it as a happy time, despite the sorrows that were to come.

I suppose I was what one might call a 'spirited' child. Though I was well-behaved and obedient to the best of my ability, I confess that I must have been rather trying to bring up at times. I remember teaching Robbie, the neighbour's little boy, how to walk crouched on all fours, leaning on his knuckles; in so doing, I caught the heel of my shoe in the hem of my dress, tearing off the expensive lace flounces that my mother had sewn into it for me. Robbie and I got into even greater trouble when he attempted to swing from the branches of the trees that lined our avenue in the style of the grey-faced langur, with my coaching; his outstretched foot knocked the hat off a passing swell, who threatened to have us both arrested for committing a nuisance. My mother laughed heartily once the incident had been resolved; the hat in question was a seedy thing, its felt worn bald in places, which its owner had attempted to disguise by painting over it with lampblack.

You can see that even from a young age, my interests very much fell in line with my father's. He claims that at five years old, when asked what I wanted for my birthday, I inquired as to why teddy bears did not come in the shape of monkeys, which I would have very much preferred. He somehow managed to procure a wonderful stuffed gorilla for me, to which my mother stitched a little patch of soft grey velveteen, making it a proper silver-back.

Though I had several playmates my own age with whom I could happily pass the time, it was my parents' company that I enjoyed the best. I was quite lucky that they were both largely present in my life, for a time at least.

My father had created a most proficient laboratory for himself in the study of our house(1); he occupied it for the majority of hours in the day, entering this hallowed sanctum direct from the breakfast table, and only rarely emerging from it before suppertime. I would eagerly invade this sanctuary of his, pestering him with endless questions about this specimen or that diagram - what type of tree that lemur lived in, how high that bird could manage to fly; until, he says, I myself resembled a chattering little monkey. Then, he would suggest that I go and visit my mother.

I was permitted to impose upon her, so long as I behaved quietly and refrained from disturbing her too much. My mother, though formidable in many other ways, had long been of a delicate constitution, and since my birth, her health had dramatically worsened. Any kind of activity was greatly strenuous to her; as far back as I can remember, she seldom left her bed or ventured far from her couch. Her sickroom had once been her studio, and it was a veritable treasure-trove for a child like me. I loved to investigate her many drawers and boxes full of trims and trinkets; I would pile them on top of the blank hats that perched upon her old milliner's blocks, imagining that fashionable ladies would soon come to purchase my creations. I would take out her reels of ribbon and throw them about in tangled festoons, carefully sorting and re-winding them when I had finished my play. Even her brooches became my toys: I would push bejewelled tortoises, swallows and ladybirds - many of them past gifts from Father - across the cushions of the settee, setting the sparkling pieces in a rousing game of chasings.

Mother could not join in my wilder games, but we did spend some wonderful times together. Taking up a sketchbook, she would listen to my voluble descriptions of Daddy's latest work, sketching hats inspired by hornbills, toucans, or tamarins as I spoke. Sometimes she would let me have the paper first, and I would scrawl out childish figures of monkeys scampering through the branches of stick-and-scribble trees. She would then proceed to outfit them with her crisp, confident pencil-strokes: adding shirt sleeves, complete with cufflinks, to simian wrists, or adorning prehensile tails with an assortment of lavish jewels. Other times, we would carry out the process in reverse: I would draw pompous pelicans beneath her top hats, jaunty jackdaws beneath her straw boaters, and - what else? - actual ostriches beneath bonnets covered in rich plumes.

At times, she would protest that she did not feel quite strong enough to lift the pencil, and I would lie on the quilt beside her while she rested. This was how I invented my favourite game of all.

My mother was a woman of peerless good taste; the chamber that had been set aside for her convalescence was made both extremely comfortable, and extraordinarily pleasing to the eye. She often had Miriam, her trusted ladies' maid, go out and buy new furnishings for her, to freshen up the room and replace the old. Other times, when he was obliged to venture over to Oxford or to one of the museums for his work, Daddy would obtain things for her as gifts, though his choices tended to have a decidedly organic theme about them. In particular, there was a brocade coverlet he got for her, which I absolutely adored. It was embroidered all over with a seemingly endless array of different foliages. When Mumsy was too tired to entertain me, she would spread this blanket over us both, and while she slept, I would be busily forming the satin folds into miniature landscapes, which I would then populate with my make-believe menagerie. In this wooded hollow, a congress of baboons would live; among the hibiscuses, hummingbirds would be found, while a pride of lions stalked the intricately-stitched grasses nearby; and here, at the foot of this chasm, which to my mind was actually the silken drape of a flowing waterfall, a family of gorillas made their home within the bamboo thicket.

Thus I would occupy myself, manipulating the sumptuous cloth into little hills and dales, making quiet animal noises to myself as I imagined each species occupying the environs I had built for it. When my mother woke, she would ask me what kind of animals there were in the bed today; and I would tell her all about the little family groups that inhabited the sheets between us. I liked it best when my father would come in during these recitals. Mumsy would always come up with the most ingenious stories to tell him.

She would say: "Oh, Archie, a stampede of rhinos just came through this valley on their way to the watering hole. If you had only come sooner, we could have ridden them together; we were using that good lace ribbon there for bridles, wreathed around their horns."

Or: "We were just wandering the savannahs of Kenya, darling, in the company of the director of the Marrakech Express. I am sure he and Lady Blixen would love to hear all about that new species of canna lily that you recently helped classify. What colour did you say its flowers were again?"

Years later, my father would declare that I myself had the exact same propensity for telling tales(2). However, I cannot claim to have my mother's incredible powers of invention. Soon after we arrived in Africa, I did narrate to him my own fantastical account of my solo adventures; the major difference being that, in my case, every word of it was true.

Those were idyllic, carefree days; and would come to seem even more so when I look back at them, in light of what was soon to come.

I was not aware at the time that my parents' occupations were anything out of the ordinary. Well, I knew that Daddy did some very important work, which not just anybody's father could manage to do. However, I did not realize at the time how peculiar my mother's weak condition was; I did not know anything different, and considered her conduct to be perfectly normal. It was only when I grew older and attended boarding school that I discover this was somehow out of the ordinary. Listening to the other girls gossip about their own relations, that I realized mothers were supposed to do so many things: keep house, oversee the weekly laundry and the baking, attend or give impressive parties and balls, conduct fundraisers, coordinate the weekly shopping, and countless other domestic duties which, in our household, were either relegated to the faithful Miriam's care, or omitted altogether. Some mothers even went so far as to become suffragists. I wasn't quite sure I wanted my mother to stand on a soapbox and hold up a placard, as they did; but it would have been nice if she was able to.

I remember feeling mildly appalled and disappointed that she did none of these things which other mothers regularly performed, as if such tasks were simply their accepted marital obligation. To think that for all these years, my own mother had been so shirking her responsibilities! I had always thought her to be a prime example of what the ideal modern woman should be: an absolute paragon of intelligence, taste and class, which was what I understood, at the time, a true woman of worth to be. Now, with the enlightenment that my sister students provided, it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps she was a less-than-adequate a mother.

I felt so ashamed as I arrived at such a denouncement - as if her deficiencies were somehow a poor reflection upon myself. I regret to have to admit it now, but I began to rather begrudge my mother for her illness, as though it were somehow her fault. Before my reader condemns me as a selfish, insensitive girl, please understand that at this impressionable age, a young lady's sense of self-worth is entirely reliant upon how well she conforms to the standards of her peers. All my schoolmates had mothers like the ones I have described, and they expected mine to be the same; so when I perceived myself to have failed their expectations, I was mortified. It pains me now to relate all of this now - I was too young then to fully understand just how ill she was. It is probably just as well, or I would have worried about her so very much.

If there was anything positive to come of my childish delusion, there is the fact that it went some way towards furthering my personal development. Since my mother was unable to do so many things, I became determined to excel at as many of them as possible. I participated in all kinds of school-based activities: the walking society, croquet club, bird-watching association, embroiderer's group. I had a go at everything, from badminton to poetry recitation. I even, in a moment of sheer recklessness, applied myself to the diving team, even though I have always been something of a clumsy Clara, and had only the barest mastery of the basic swim strokes. It later turned out to be a most astute decision: years later, leaping head-first into the pool would serve as terrific preparation for swinging on vines and sliding down branches.

All this I did, in a misguided effort to somehow prove myself more proficient than my poor, ailing mother. How I wish I could go back and talk some sense into my foolish past self. I cannot believe that I was able to feel such disdain towards her, while she, through no fault of her own, had suffered so terribly, and for so long. Now I fully recognize what true strength she had, to have borne her affliction with an incredible outward fortitude. My incessant presence in her sickroom must have been very wearing on her; yet she never showed it, giving me as much of her time and attention as her health would allow.

What time we had was not nearly close to enough. Daddy and I lost her all too soon.

To my childish mind, it seemed natural that my mother would go on existing for years to come. When you are that young, and so comfortably brought up, death seemed like a foreign entity that visited other unfortunate families, not ours. I had lost both sets of grandparents very early in life, but since I was too young to remember them, they had never quite seemed like real people to me, and I did not really mourn them.

When I was suddenly called home early from school, I was more than a little annoyed. Even then, they tried to hide the truth from me, in an effort to protect me; I was simply told that my parents wished to grant me an early vacation. The reason for my requested absence became a talking point among the other girls, and I was highly embarrassed to find myself the subject of idle gossip. If I had known what dreadful news would await me when I did arrive home, I wouldn't have paid any mind at all.

Mumsy passed away before I could get there. At the time, Daddy was working in his room, just down the hall. Miriam discovered her when she came to administer her daily medicines. She went while everyone she loved was so close to her - Daddy and Miriam in the same house, I speeding through the countryside not ten miles away - and yet, she died so utterly alone. The thought of it is near unbearable, even after all these years(3).

Life lost most of its lustre after that, for both Daddy and I. The spectre of her passing lay heavily on us, and would not dissipate for some time to come.

Trying though my loss undoubtedly was, it was nothing compared to that which my husband was forced to suffer, far earlier in his life. You will learn as much once you have read his own, highly singular account of his boyhood years.

I never knew my birth-parents. They were killed by Sabor the leopard, when I was still too young to remember them.

What little I know of them, I know from the things they left behind in the tree house, which Jane and I now make our home. In the bottom drawer of an old dresser, wrapped in an oilskin, we found the log book of the SS Fuwalda, a ship that left Dover more than twenty years ago and never arrived at port. My parents managed to get hold of the ship's records before it sank, and they wrote down what happened to it: caught in a violent storm, its mast was struck by a bolt of lightning, sparking a blaze that soon destroyed the entire ship.

Almost everyone on board at the time was killed. There were only three survivors.

My father, my mother, and I were the Fuwalda's passengers. My father was called John. My mother's name was Alice. I do not know what name they gave me, for they never wrote it down in the logbook, which they made into their own journal; any reference to me was just 'the baby' or 'our boy'.

Documents with the name 'Greystoke' written on them were folded inside the journal. I do not know whether this was the title of their clan, or the place that they came from. If 'Greystoke' means anything to anyone who reads this, I ask you to please not share what you know with us. All my life, I have regarded myself as one of the apes. Whoever else I may have been when I was born, I am now only Tarzan. If I have some other human kin somewhere, I wish them well, but I do not want to be associated with them. I have led an isolated life, and the matters of places beyond my home do not interest me; everything that I could possibly need is here. I am more than happy with my lot, and do not wish to complicate this happiness by speculating over what could have been(4).

My parents must have both been very brave, and very strong. They managed to escape the burning ship with me, and came to shore on the nearby coast.

It is, apparently, because of me that we now live on this very spot. As my parents explored the fringes of the jungle closest to the shore, looking for some form of shelter, I, then no more than a few months old, pointed towards a large tree that stood beside a freshwater stream, overlooking the beach. My parents, taking this as a favourable sign, used timber salvaged from the wrecked ship to build a house, high up in the tree's branches. Raised more than thirty feet off the ground, with a clear view of the approach on all sides and plentiful water nearby, they felt secure enough here to begin a new life.

If only I had been older and wiser, knowing what I do now. Perhaps I would have advised them to find a safer nest, or warned them of the dangers that, unbeknownst to them, were rapidly approaching.

But I am getting too far ahead in my tale. My wife told me that writing things down would help me to organize my thoughts. Let me try to tell things in their proper order.

If my parents saved me from the sinking ship in the first instance, my adopted mother saved me in the second.

Kala is a female ape, and a beautiful one. She has thick, rich brown fur, a well-shaped snout, clean limbs, and kind grey eyes. She is very gentle, caring, patient and wise. I do not think it would be possible to find a better-suited parent, among the apes or anywhere. Having not been aware of my birth-parents until fairly recently, I have always referred to her as my mother, and will continue to do so in these writings.

Mother had also been through a tragedy of her own. A few days before she found me, hers and her mate Kerchak's son, Korak, had been hunted and killed by a leopard - the same leopard, Sabor, who would slay my birth-parents. It very nearly broke her heart, she has told me; she could barely raise her head from the weight of her sorrow. The pain of it only began to ease after we found each other. In our loss, we were the greatest comfort either of us could have.

I am getting ahead again. I am about to write of unpleasant things, which I have never talked about with anyone, except for my family. I will try to get their telling over with as quickly as I can.

After Sabor took his son, Kerchak, the head of the family, led the gorillas to the nest area that they used during the dry season. It was nearer to the coast; the leopards lived in caves beneath Mount Indigo, and did not often venture so far from their dens. Mother says that she was walking at the back of the group, still thinking about the death of her son. It was only because she lingered behind that she happened to hear me crying, the sound echoing across the valley to her. If the other gorillas heard it, she was the only one that heeded it. She says that to this day, she cannot explain why she followed my cries. The voice of a human child does not sound at all like a gorilla's. The professor says that science has proven that apes and humans have a lot in common, in body and in mind(5); perhaps it is true, for the sound of my crying called to the mother's instinct in her. She thinks that perhaps she simply recognized the sound of a baby in distress. Since she so missed her own child, she was determined to do for this other what she hadn't been able to do for hers.

She had never seen a den like this one before. It was made of dead foliage that had somehow been fastened together, with a swinging curtain of loose wood through which to enter. At the time, she didn't really understand what it was that she looked at; all of the objects were as foreign to her as the contents of the Porters' tents would be to me, many years later. What she could see was this: a broken window, through which something could have easily gotten in; a loaded gun dropped upon the floor, having fired several rounds into the wooden wall; and the bodies of my parents, surrounded by the prints of a leopard.

In the final minutes before their deaths, they must have overturned the furniture to form one last barricade, and tried to drive Sabor away with gunfire from behind it. Such an obstacle would never deter a proficient hunter - a killer - like Sabor. My father protected my mother until the end. They died clinging together, in each other's arms.

If their defence of themselves had failed, their protection of me was far better. They had turned over an open sea chest and propped it on top of my cradle, then flung a blanket over me, shielding me from view. It was just as well I began to cry, or I might have suffocated, after a time. Before that could happen, my mother found me.

Imagine her surprise at the sight of me; she had never seen a creature like me before, so small and pale and hairless. I must have been the ugliest baby she had ever seen, by ape standards. When I ask her what could have possibly convinced her to take me in, she tells me that it was the way I seemed to welcome her - I reached up my hands to her and gurgled, as though in my delight to see her, I couldn't help but laugh. Curious to find out what I was, she lifted me out of my nest. Once I was in her arms, I nestled in the crook of her elbow and quickly went to sleep, as though I was meant to be there all along.

By then, she says, she couldn't bear to leave me. Here was a baby who obviously needed a mother, and it had chosen her as its own. For the first time since she had lost her child, she felt her life had a purpose again; I re-taught her what it was like to feel happiness.

That joy was fleeting; Sabor, following my cries for a very different purpose, had returned to the site of her kill. Having already claimed both my parents as her prey, I do not know why she was so determined to finish me as well(6). Perhaps she thought that a thing that could cry so loudly must have been a threat; maybe she feared that my ape-mother was attempting to steal her kill. The way things would turn out years later, it would have served her well to have killed me then.

But she didn't. For the second time in my short life, I was saved - this time by Kala, who would continue to mother and protect me for the rest of my life. She managed to keep me away from Sabor's claws, until the hunter, accidently caught in a snared rope, could no longer threaten us. With a last snarl at she who had ruined both our families, Mother carried me away in her arms, to the gorilla's new nesting grounds.

I can only imagine the reactions of the rest of the family when they first saw me. As I grew older, I would have to put up with many critical whispers and distrustful stares; I must have had it even worse when I arrived, luckily still too young to take any notice of it.

Of all the family, Kerchak was the least impressed. All my life, I never understood why he seemed to disapprove of me so much. It was only far later, when I learned that I had taken the place of his son, that I fully realized how he must have felt - no wonder he hated me so much. That aside, he had no idea what I was; nor did Kala, or any of the apes. For all he knew, I could have grown up into a leopard - or something worse - that would someday threaten them all.

I suppose that, in some way, he was right.

From the moment he saw me, Kerchak wanted nothing to do with me. But he loved Kala; I seemed to make her happy, and he knew that she could not bear to leave me in the jungle alone, to surely die. So he allowed me to stay; but I was never regarded as one of the family, in his eyes at least.

Other members of the family were a little more accepting. My cousin, Terkina - known by all of us as Terk - at least found me entertaining. When I first arrived, like the other gorillas, she didn't think much of my looks. However, unlike the other gorillas, she wasn't overawed by my strange appearance. Her mother, Keri, is my mother's sister, so to her I was always just 'Aunty Kala's freaky-looking kid'. When we were both very young, I think she only had anything to do with me because Aunty Keri told her she had to be nice to me. As we got older, we were drawn together more and more. Terk has always been a rough and tumble girl, more like one of the boys than a 'proper' female. When we were little, none of us took any notice of it; but as we got older, the boys started leaving her out of their fighting games, and she didn't want to sit around grooming all day with the other girls (not that they would let her join in). Since both of us were outsiders, we would hang out together a lot, wrestling and playing tricks on each other, or anyone else who was around (except Kerchak). At first, Flynt and Mungo would play with us as well, but they started to have less to do us. This could be because they are twins, and prefer their own company to any other. Also, after a certain incident down at the river, Mother warned me to keep away from them, and they started avoiding me. I guess that their mother had told them I was a bad influence, just as mine had told me about them.

That same incident at the waterhole did, however, bring us a new friend. Usually, different species in the jungle don't have much to do with each other. Gorillas might occasionally chat with baboons and mandrills, if they have gossip worth sharing; but they associate with other beasts, like rhinos or hippos, far less. We didn't know any of the elephants very well back then - not until we became friends with Tantor. I guess he was a bit of a misfit as well; unlike others of his kind, he hates mud, and will never eat a berry without washing it first. For such a strong and powerful animal, he is very cautious, but he can be very courageous when he needs to be. Growing up, Terk and Tantor were my best friends - they still are, to this day.

I needed every friend I could get back then. Since Kerchak had allowed me to stay, the rest of the family had more or less accepted me; but they also knew how much he resented my presence, so they kept their distance. It was often a very lonely, frustrating childhood. I tried my best to fit in, but it never seemed to be enough. It didn't help that I looked so different from the others.

I'll never forget how, in a particularly low moment, I sat gazing at my appearance, reflected back at me in the surface of a stream. It was only then that I realized how hideous I looked: so pale, so hairless, with a snub nose, wide mouth, spindly legs, and blunt teeth. I looked more like some kind of scrawny, sun-bleached lizard than an ape; and even most lizards had better fangs than I did.

I might have lost heart and given up on myself, if not for my mother. No matter how much I despaired of ever fitting in, she never gave up on me. When I felt rejected and hurt, she would tell me to look away from my reflection, to forget what everyone else could see. Making me close my eyes, she would have me touch my chest, feeling the beat of my own heart; then she would let me press my ear to her breast, listening to hers beat in time.

"We are just the same," she would say, taking my hands in hers. It's true that while my hands were white and hairless, hers were dark and beautifully furred; yet they were made in the same shape, and touched with the same gesture. It was as though our joined hands forged the bond that already lay between our hearts; it strengthen it, soothing away any doubts I had about belonging. I belonged with her, and that was all that mattered. I never felt anything but loved by her. Through all those long, hard years, she was all the family I had, and all I ever needed. All the best memories I have from that time are of her.

I do not think I can remember anything about my birth-parents; although, sometimes, I wonder. Years later, when Kala took me back to the tree house and explained where I came from, I picked up the small blanket I had once used, still lying where it had lain for twenty years, protected from jungle rot by the high sides of my cradle. For some reason, I was immediately drawn to it; I do not know what prompted me to take hold of it. Looking at its colour, breathing in its smell, feeling its texture between my fingers, something welled up inside of me. The exact same thing happens, sometimes, when my wife ruffles my hair. Members of my ape family have groomed what fur I have a thousand times over; but somehow, it is never quite the same as when she does it. It feels as though she has done it before, a long time ago, though that is not possible. Perhaps I am remembering how my mother did it, without even realizing.

Whenever I feel something like that, I find it very strange. It is almost like a memory, yet I cannot grasp the exact image. It is like a glimpse of something at the bottom of a pool, but the water's surface will not clear, obscured by too many ripples.

My wife has explained to me that this feeling is called 'deja vu'. At first the sensation of it worried me; I was troubled that I could not recall whatever it was, no matter how I tried. When it happens to me now, it still tends to surprise me; but I am growing used to it. It makes me feel as though my parents are still here, watching over me. I am glad that, in some small way, I can feel close to them.

Editor:

I would humbly contribute a few additional anecdotes, if I may.

(1) By special arrangement with the Oxford board of studies, I was allowed to have my own private laboratory within my house, in order to be close to my ailing wife as much as possible.

(2) In my defence, I came to believe Jane's words very quickly, as you will find out further through this recollection. Admittedly, her story seemed so far-fetched, it was a little hard to take at first. But I am a scientist, and empirical evidence always trumps even the most persistent doubt. Besides all that, my dear girl sells herself short; she inherited all her mother's creativity in abundance. She certainly didn't inherit any from me; for anything beyond a rudimentary diagram of the basal rosette on a dionaea muscipula, my artistic talents are strictly limited to stick figures.

(3) The thought pains me very much as well, Janey dear - though unlike you, I could have done something to make it otherwise, wish to God that I had. We had been aware of the seriousness of my wife's condition for some time, though I had no idea that her illness would run its course in such an abrupt and untimely fashion. I suppose that because she had outlived every specialist's prediction, I became complacent; it really started to seem as though she would just keep going, growing old alongside me, remaining for Janey's sake. Unfortunately, such things were quite out of our control. I confess that though I was certainly present in the house for all that time, I was largely an absent husband and father; I selfishly gave my work first priority, when my family should have always come before it. I hope that readers will not think me too callous upon reading this account, nor judge poor Jane for her girlish sentiments. She is too harsh on herself; we purposely kept such things from her, so as not to worry her. It was Annabelle's greatest wish that Jane should not live in the shadow of her illness, as she herself had to. She was the bravest, strongest, most remarkable woman I have ever had the pleasure to have known. My dear Janey is so very like her, in so many ways.

(4) When I first read the word 'Greystoke' among the papers that belonged to Tarzan's parents, I seemed to recall the name as being that of a wealthy peerage who most generously donated a substantial grant to the Faculty of Sociology some years ago, before Jane was born. It is likely, however, that I am mistaken; without access to the university's archives, I cannot verify my supposition, and when it comes to anything besides the phylum of the homindae homininae, my ability to remember names is not the finest. Since Tarzan has expressed no desire to learn more about his human ancestry, we must respect his wishes; to us, he will always simply be 'Tarzan of the Apes'.

(5) In fact, prevalent research theory suggests that gorillas are the most closely-related species that humans have on this earth; only chimpanzees, particularly the pan paniscus, or bonobo, perhaps resembles homo sapiens slightly more. The comparative anatomy of humans and gorillas is strikingly similar, particularly in the development of their respective pentadactyl limbs. Gorillas are also thought to possess senses of hearing, sight and smell that are comparable with human levels. Physicality aside, gorillas are remarkably intelligent, with various cultural conventions and social structures which correspond with ours. But I am likely boring my readers; perhaps these scintillating examples would be better relegated to the paper I am planning to submit at the next primatology conference.

(6) According to a recent paper by a leading pantherologist, of the 92 jungle animals that leopards are known to prey upon, their second most-preferable species on which to dine are primates, surpassed only by ungulates as an ideal source of sustenance. Past case studies have shown that leopards are opportunistic hunters; therefore, I would surmise that Kala and Tarzan were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever the reason for Sabor's rampage, I am extremely sorry that John and Alice perished - while equally elated that Tarzan and Kala survived.

- A.Q.P.

Author's note:

(7) Not a footnote, just a few things to add : )

Pretty much all of Jane's back story was invented by me, with a few exceptions. In the 'Legend of Tarzan' episode 'Tublat's Revenge', Jane draws a portrait of her mother; she is wearing a hat that called Eliza Doolittle to my mind, so I gave her the milliner's profession, just to make things interesting. In the 'Flying Ace' ep, Jane's former neighbour Robbie Canler, who lived next door to her in Knightsbridge, is introduced. I'm really keen to tackle the aftermath of Canler's appearance in the tv series; however, that won't be for many chapters to come. Then, in the 'Lost Cub' episode, Jane mentions that she was 'quite the diver at finishing school'. She demonstrates this by doing a spectacular dive off a cliff into a lagoon, with Tarzan evaluating her effort as 'very nice' (where have we heard that before?). And, in the episode 'Giant Beetles', Jane refers to her mother as 'Mumsy'; a habit I incorporated into my version.

In the 'All-Seeing Elephant' ep, Mount Indigo is mentioned as the titular character's home; I also made it the site of the leopards' dens (these are seen in the 'Lost Cub' episode, and the 'Valley of the Leopards' features prominently in the 'Lost Treasure' ep; these could all be the same place).

The names of the Fuwalda ship, and Tarzan's parents, are taken directly from the original Tarzan novel by Edgar Rice-Burroughs. Since their original surname of 'Clayton' was given to- well, Clayton, I omitted it from this retelling, making Greystoke their family name (though Tarzan doesn't know that). Since the name of Tarzan's son in the later novels was 'Korak', I decided I'd give Kerchak and Kala's son the same name; I thought the Disney character might eventually name his own child after the foster-brother he never knew. I elaborated on the scene where Tarzan looks at his reflection, taking some of it from the novel; in the Rice-Burroughs version, he thinks he looks ugly, like some sort of snake (poor thing!).

I probably won't include anything else from the Rice-Burroughs novels in this story; the Disney version is different, so mine will be different, too. Also, I haven't read the first novel (or any of them) all the way through; just enough to serve as research for this story. To tell the truth, I prefer the Disney interpretation of the character (sorry!).

The Professor's footnotes are hard to write. Lots of fancy Latin names, lots of Googling to find the ones I need. However, all the things I wrote for him are correct, as far as I know - trying to be a bit educational, in the spirit of the source material!

I'm not sure what will happen in the next chapter. Obviously, an account of Tarzan and Jane's adolescence should follow; I also want to include something written from Terk's and Tantor's points of view (to the reviewer who asked me to write about Tarzan and Terk's first meeting: Tarzan was too young to remember it, so I thought I'd write it from Terk's perspective). One of those options will be up next - I guess we'll both be surprised by which it is!

Also, if you like this fic, please consider following it so you don't miss an update - I'll try to add chapters whenever I can, but I won't be able to keep up this pace for long (I'm good at starting fics, bad at finishing them, I'm afraid). Each chapter could potentially be as long as this one, and with the film, plus 39 tv episodes, I potentially have a lot to get through!

Thanks for reading!

~ W.J.

Edit: forgot to mention, I wanted to give Professor Porter a taste of Africa in his youth, to serve as inspiration for his career and explain why he and Jane later made the journey. In the original novels, Porter had been ordained in his youth (thus allowing him to officiate at Jane and Tarzan's wedding), so I thought he might serve in the army/navy in some theological capacity, taking him overseas. I researched British activity in Africa during the Victorian period, and decided to make him part of Theophilus Shepstone's party, during his negotiations with the Zulu people near Port Natal.