Well, it's been two months since I last uploaded a chapter for this story, and I bet you good readers have been wondering if either I died or gave up on this tale. Rumors of both are highly exaggerated. There are reasons for this however. I had a heck of a time for one thing getting the parting scene between our leads and the painted dogs just right. I'm not and never will be good at partings in my writing, but I think I've finally hammered something decent out. Also-well, it's just too nice out in summer to sit at your computer all day long. Last of all, I'm going even deeper into a "quality not quantity" philosophy.
I deeply regret saying this, but as frustrating as it is to everyone, NO, Nala and Simba are still not in this chapter. It just got too long for its own good I'm afraid, and I knew you all wanted to read something, anything too. One of the wonderful things about doing fanfiction is that it allows you to freely experiment with different styles of writing, and this is why I've chosen to do a "stream of consciousness" from Jack's point of view in the middle section. These experiments can and will happen at any time, so look sharp.
As always, profuse thank yous to my reviewers. You all give me the will to keep at it. This chapter has been revised for more romance.
"And the Woman said 'His name is not Wild Dog anymore, but the First Friend, for he will be our friend for always and always and always.'" Rudyard Kipling, The Cat Who Walked By Himself.
"I wonder/ as I wander/" Refrain from a children's song.
Doublecrossed. That brutal word was what immediately popped into Jack Driscoll's head, accompanied by a rising sense of disappointed fury towards the pack. In the same instant, he understood quite well that the feeling made absolutely no sense. They were wild animals after all; sentient wild animals at that, with lives and agendas totally separate from theirs. To expect the painted dogs to make some sort of lasting covenant with him and Ann was absurd, to say the least.
Still, he had selfishly, and probably naively hoped on the faint possibility that for once after these two terrible last days, he could stop having to constantly be the resilient bulwark, the hard-boiled champion who'd taken on the mantle of Baxter's ultimately pathetically faux hero image-then at the swamp as now, he'd felt and strangled the sudden, exotic, frightening desire to just punch someone. His dog namesake, Zuri, and their pack would protect, provide for, and help guide them safely back to sweet civilization as they knew it, and Jack could take at least part of the load off his shoulders at last.
But self-interested fantasies usually never came true in the end, despite how much the public liked to hear it, or the individual liked to believe it, and he'd known that for quite a while and quite well. Naturally of course, the defeat of his tenuous expectations did make him feel more than a little annoyed at the idea of being let go for him and Ann to wander in the wilderness.
The worst of it though, was the sudden, sickening sense of shocked betrayal and disillusioned sadness Jack could feel radiating from Ann, her supple fingers going painfully limp in his own and sliding out. And that knowledge of her hurt automatically conjured up a gummy, hot feeling of pique in response.
But if they were going to part ways, well, the dogs would ultimately do it whether he and Ann liked it or not, no matter how much they fumed and protested. He might as well just accept it and not stupidly weaken or burn bridges by being obstinate. Plus, he recollected, exhaling deeply to calm himself, we were intending to go to Pride Rock and get help there after we'd slept anyway before they encountered us. They're already remorseful at having to leave us, so guess I should tell them that to put their minds at ease.
"Well, to be perfectly on the level here, we actually weren't planning to live with your pack anyway," Jack straightforwardly told the painted dogs, his voice still tainted with residual anger on Ann's behalf. Realizing to his horror then that he'd likely just projected an ungrateful, "sour grapes" type attitude (and stung expressions were already beginning to show in some sets of mahogany eyes), he backpedaled, going "Oh Jesus, I'm sorry. What I meant was that we kind of intended to follow Indlovu's advice and go to this place nearby called Pride Rock, where we'd get help from-what were their names Ann?" turning to her for guidance.
"King Mufasa and Queen Sarabi," she demurely prompted, coming out of her reproachful unhappiness.
And then, even as she'd finished and he was opening his mouth to thank her, the whole pack of piebald canines suddenly went stock still, muscles tense, ears laid back. It was as if he and Ann had just uttered a horribly disgusting curse or boasted about some unspeakably despicable act they'd committed together.
Oh Christ, what faux paus did we just commit now?
A true edge of apprehension tinting his pleasurably dulcet voice, Matata said, "Good Crimdu, you can't be serious."
"Did we say something out of turn?" Ann hesitantly volunteered.
"Not in the least," Havoc reassured her. "It's not about what you said, it's about what you two are planning to do."
"Why exactly?" Jack confusedly prodded.
Pulling himself into an authoritative position, parabolic ears erect, his namesake then queried, in a low, deadly serious tone, " Jack, Ann, do you know who King Mufasa and Queen Sarabi are? Do you know what they are?"
After a moment's thought, the obvious answer hit him.
"Lions, aren't they? Mufasa and Sarabi are lions. I should've known," he said, feeling both somewhat sheepish for not having put two and two together earlier, and that sense of grateful, nervous relief one gets after learning that they just barely avoided a dangerous situation.
"Oh my goodness," Ann said in surprise, apparently feeling the same emotions herself as she brought the tips of her fingers up to her open lips, and instinctively pressed her pale body against his.
"And you don't want to have anything to do with lions," Sadiki pointedly added. "They're total bullies and jerks."
"Bullies? Why is that?" Jack asked, briefly put off a bit inwardly by such strongly opinionated word usage about the King Of The Beasts.
"Well, for one thing, they often come out of nowhere and steal our kills, after we worked so hard to bring an animal down," Mbawa resentfully revealed. "That's the main reason why we eat so fast," he added.
"Still, that's at least understandable, and I guess forgivable in a way," Zuri interjected. "I mean, we do the same thing to the cheetahs and the hyenas at times ourselves. It's just a lot less hassle to take meat off someone else then to have to chase it down yourself, you know?"
And Jack certainly did, nodding in agreement. This was the wild after all; a place where desperation and uncertainty ruled and you couldn't afford to let an opportunity to eat pass you by, even if you had to resort to rather morally dubious behavior. It was really just like life was for the unemployed masses wandering the streets back home, only even more brutally unforgiving.
Like it had been for Ann, he thought pityingly, looking at her and wrapping an arm around her graceful shoulders. Clearly interpreting his gesture as reassurance-thankfully, for he knew it made Ann feel mildly ashamed and even a little irked to have someone feel badly for her-he felt the sudden tension in her muscles drain away, to his proud relief.
Switching to another page in his head, he considered in that vein how she wouldn't even be in his life and awareness if Carl hadn't stumbled across her, in a dire gesture, trying to filch an apple. For that matter, Jack himself, his high-minded ideals of fair play and righteousness notwithstanding, had admittedly felt through his disgusted horror as the dogs tore into the Grant's gazelle a very brief, yet powerful, instinctive urge to rush forward and swipe the fresh meat for his own. Steal it so that he and Ann could live.
I guess I'll be having to do that soon enough, he pragmatically thought, smacking and squashing a tsetse fly that had just lighted on his right side.
"They also chase us away from places where we were just resting, which is pretty rude of them." White Dog complained on. "And they often hurl direct insults at us, just because they can," he added with a growl.
"But the worst thing of all, the worst, is that lions will deliberately stalk and kill us whenever they can," Zuri said with a shudder. "And not even for food. They just do it out of rage and to suit themselves."
It was a disturbing revelation, and Ann, shocked, cried out, "My God, that's horrible! Why would they do that?" putting a hand to her mouth in incomprehension.
"We think it's because they regard us as competitors for their own prey, and it's definitely an instinctive thing at any rate," Jumbe theorized. "They'll kill any other carnivore they can, for that matter. I sure don't pretend to understand why, I mean there are plenty of wildebeest, zebra, and gazelle to go around, and we're so nomadic anyway that we can't be interfering with any one pride's hunting that badly. There's certainly no reason to go around assassinating fellow carnivores like some crazy."
"Do you ever approach the lions at all, for any reason?" Jack asked, trying to get some idea of what reception he and Ann might get from the big cats, and especially if they could be reasoned with.
"Sure," the four-legged Jack said. "Occasionally, as pack leader I've found it necessary to have an audience with the Lion King of whatever lands we're traveling through at the time about a problem that concerns us both, or more often to request help for an ill pack member."
So there was a chance that you could, if you were diplomatic, encounter lions and get out of it alive. That was very good to know.
"But," Jack cautioned, as if he'd read the writer's mind, "I always make damn sure I get a promise of safe passage first. And then I confirm it again. Even then, I never turn my back on any of those kitties, believe me, and you can sure bet that I watch my step.
Make no mistake about it, the lions are savage brutes, and I'd do my utmost to avoid them if I were you Jack and Ann. Don't have more to do with them than you can help. In fact, just don't be anywhere nearby at all," he frankly advised.
"I don't understand," Ann said, her sleek brow wrinkled in confusion. "Why would Indlovu have suggested going to Pride Rock if it would've put our lives in danger?"
"That's because he's an elephant," Havoc stated, flipping her forepaw in a dismissive gesture Jack found all too oddly humanlike. "They're so huge they don't fear anything, or really even recognize that what might be safe for them is dangerous for a smaller creature. Plus, they're so into dignity and royal protocol and authority themselves that of course he'd have thought the lions were a good choice."
"Yeah, once they hit the age of eight-nothing can touch me now, pal!" Binky emphasized, making Jack smirk and Ann giggle. How he loved that high, chiming giggle.
Suddenly conscious of the fact that twilight would be coming soon enough, Jack told the dogs as he looked behind him towards the open plains, "In any case though, thanks for your advice. We'd better be moving on ourselves now."
"Well," Zuri answered with an open-mouthed smile, "it was great to have met you, and a real delight to count you as honorary pack members," as Jack, ignoring the soreness and twinges flaring up from his wounds and stiff muscles as best he could, levered himself up and then considerately took Ann's hand to support her while she stood erect herself in turn.
Following the pack of gorgeously variegated animals as they trotted out of the woodlands, he and Ann stopped at the edge to see them off. "Here's where we say goodbye for now I suppose," Jumbe said in a mixture of resignation and warmth.
"Sure hope to see you again," Lotus fondly said, nudging Jack's waist with her blocky muzzle.
"How do we know that we will?" Ann inquired in something of a dispirited plea.
Sensing her mood, Zuri gave her a warm grin, reassuring her, "Because as rare as it may be, friends that the painted dogs make remain that way forever. When the spirit moves us or we hear that they need our assistance, we get up to our paws and we find our friends, no matter how much distance and time separates us."
It was not only touching, but Jack understood it as being said with utmost sincerity as well, and he could see that Ann knew it too, curving her lovely lips into a smile of hesitant, promising hope before bending down to hug the alpha female. The other fourteen members of her pack bid their goodbyes with an affectionate series of licks, both humans reciprocating by passing their hands between the parabolic ears and patting shoulders, feeling the coarse, wooly short fur.
It was a quick thing, and suddenly, the pack abruptly switched focus, rallying and prancing around their alphas, making those animated squeaking cries and licking Jack and Zuri's lower jaws. "Good luck, and may Crimdu bless you both." Jack said through the voices of his family. "Keep on being strong, smart, and courageous for each other, and I'm willing to bet you'll both continue to do fine."
"Thanks fellas. Let's do this again sometime," Jack responded with a smile, putting his arm around Ann's slim shoulders. Oddly, it made him think of a farming couple seeing off visitors to their home.
"And good luck to all of you as well," Ann put in cordially, her expressive blue eyes shining. "We'll be seeing you."
Then, their followers arranging themselves into a ragged group, Jack and Zuri gave a series of flutelike hoos,the rallying cry of the wild dogs. In response, the painted dog pack turned and put on a swift turn of speed, running unhurriedly in that easy, athletic, ground-eating lope as crowned plovers flew up shrieking in surprise before them.
Out of Africa's five great predators, the painted dogs are by far the most nomadic, a pack being able to cover as much as fifty miles in a day when they don't have den-bound pups, and about half that distance on average. They live a truly footloose lifestyle, one that is part pirate, and part gypsy. And just like Madeline's gypsies, the dogs "never stay. They only come to go away."
Rooted to the spot and suddenly aware of how pitifully slow human beings truly were, Jack just watched with Ann from the tree line while the checkered forms of "those who are white at the tail," as the Maasai call the dogs, disappeared into the southeast. Then there was nothing but the long, mournful whistles of a gray hornbill, the clear peeu-peeu-peeus of blue-naped mousebirds, the shrilling of cicadas, and the omnipresent coos of the laughing doves.
With their departure, he suddenly felt so much more alone, the sheer weight of his responsibility as sole protector and provider leaping down to mantle his shoulders in lead. "So now what do we do Jack?" Ann hesitatingly said, putting his thoughts into words perfectly as with sapphire eyes that like the eyes of T. J. Eckleburg sometimes seemed bigger than her head, she turned to look into his own.
"A pretty good question. I suppose it wouldn't inspire much confidence to say that I'm not really sure?" Jack wryly said with a grin.
"No, that's not exactly helping one bit."
"Sorry. One thing I do know though, is that we're not going to get very much accomplished just standing here," he dryly added as he went back to the croton bush where they'd been sleeping under the pack's protection and picked up that crude limb bone club.
As he stood up, he felt Ann's presence close behind him and the weight of her sapphire stare on his form. When he turned, he heard her say his name, softly.
"Jack?" It was a plea, an expression of hesitation and internal uncertainty as much as it was a query.
"Yes Ann?" he responded, in a tone that was both neutral yet soft as fog at the same time. Her face wore the same expression of nervous indecision that he remembered from their first rapturous kiss on the Venture, already seemingly ages ago; her eyes held something like a desperate hope as well now.
He knew what Ann wanted to do, and as she began to take strides towards him, he did the same, literally meeting her halfway, keeping a hold of the bone as his angel slipped her arms around his ribcage. Touched by her implicit trust, he embraced Ann back, stroking hair like golden thistledown even as she voiced, "Don't you dare leave me. You're truly all I've got," raising her face to his.
"I wouldn't dare dream of it," he tenderly told her, stroking her back with his free hand. "I'll be your light and guide and look out for you as long as you wish Ann."
"I could want you to be that forever," she innocently told him.
"Then the wish is granted," he said, smiling before entwining his fingers in her hair and planting a kiss on her widow's peak. A sign of excellent breeding, he thought.
"Besides," he continued, gesturing outward with his hands as she drew back from him, "whom would I talk to then without you around?"
"The animals?" she wryly pointed out.
"Yes, true, the animals can talk back for some unfathomable reason, but I've always found my own kind to make far better conversation partners," he affirmed, feeling his mouth corners and cheeks tense in a smile that was part fondness, part mirth. "And you're a far lovelier companion to have as well."
Her cheeks flushing pink, Ann adopted a posture of coy embarrassment for a few moments, than said in a reassured tone, "Thank you very much Jack. In more ways than one," with a small smile that only revealed her top two teeth. God, how he loved when she did that.
"Hey, we're sticking together and looking out for each other out here," Jack intoned with a small, awkward, shoulder shrug.
"Whether we like it or not," Ann playfully teased to break the solemn mood, lightly whacking his uninjured shoulder as he chuckled.
Touching his palms together, Jack reluctantly dismissed his thoughts, reflectively saying, "We'd better go take some fire with us though, if we expect to cook any meat and keep warm, to say nothing of protecting ourselves."
Ann following, he then turned and walked back out into the never-ending green pasture of Bermuda and Rhodes grass, the sun briefly dazzling him as his nostrils became reacquainted with the perfumes of grass, dung, musky earth, heated air and growth itself, washing over him in the wind as the scent of pine and resin hits the traveler encountering the woods of Northern Minnesota for the first time.
Compared to when he'd last entered the riverside forest, the air was distinctly cooler now, pleasurably warm instead of blisteringly hot. The small bands of other animals were more active as a result too. Reaching down with his free right hand and trying to disregard the blossoming twinges from his cuts and bruises that resulted from bending, he picked up a suitably dry fallen branch of African greenheart, stretched his hands above his head, and then retraced his footsteps back to the impromptu sort of campfire he'd made for cooking.
Although it was burnt down to white-hot coals and ashes, the branch caught nonetheless when Jack knelt down and touched it to them, the twigs becoming glowing, withering coils that sent thin whispers of smoke slithering into the air. Waiting until the branch had soon burnt down to its main body, he untangled himself from his kneeling position to stand up. It was a bit of a balancing act to hold the firestick and reach down to pick up the limb bone, but that was resolved when Ann volunteered, "I'll take that Jack. I can even carry that burning stick around for you if you want. Take some pressure off my sheik's shoulders."
"Thanks doll," he told her warmly as the safe end left his fingers for hers, looking into her blue eyes. Already, they were making the beginnings of a good team out here.
"A bone club and having to carry fire around, while walking on the African plains" he chuckled in amusement. "Really is like it was back in the old days, back to the primitive, isn't it?"
"I suppose it is, except I don't believe our first ancestors ever knew a world with talking animals," Ann playfully, gleefully responded, her creamy teeth and delicate lips parting in a mirthful laugh that Jack very soon just had to participate in.
When they were done, he decided they'd better start traveling again. "Well, let's shake a leg," he told himself out loud, and began to head in their original direction, towards the small river's still unseen source. Suddenly, he remembered the condition of Ann's poor abused feet, covered in scabs, scratches, and abrasions, dirty and oozing blood. Just imagining the pain she must feel putting that bare, unprotected sole to ground made his very own feet sting in a sympathetic response.
Poor little bunny, he thought glumly.
Turning sideways to stop and look at her, he softly questioned, "Ann, do you think you can walk okay? What I mean is, would it hurt you to do it for a long distance? I'll be perfectly happy to carry you if want."
"In fact," he volunteered in a burst of sudden altruistic inspiration, "how about I give you my own shoes and I just go in socks?" Yeah, that's a perfect idea, he thought, starting to take off his footwear.
"That's very kind of you Jack, but keep your shoes on for now," Ann told him in gentle refusal, touched as she clearly was. "The grass doesn't feel half bad really. Personally, I think it's kind of nice and bouncy to be walking on."
"And besides," she added, "I did use to be a vaudeville lady after all, so I've given my feet more than a few hard knocks already-including while barefoot. I've even come down on a toe wrong and snapped it a few times," she offhandedly remarked, briefly giving an involuntary cringe at the memory of what had to have been terrible pain.
"That would be a time when I'd really be wanting you to carry me then, Jack. But don't worry, I can still walk just fine out on this," she reassured him, gesturing at the grass.
"If you say so," Jack sighed. "But if it ever hurts too badly, just let me know, and I'll let you have my shoes in a heartbeat."
"Of course," she agreed.
Going out about eight hundred feet into the emerald green sward, Jack finally turned and started walking more or less parallel to the gallery woodland, feeling the bone club's weight add momentum to his swinging left arm with each step. He wanted to be in a place where he could see their immediate surroundings comfortably, making it all the more difficult for a lion or leopard to sneak up on and ambush them. Yes, this short-grass country was the domain of those feline speedsters, the cheetahs, but he'd never heard of a single instance of the gentle cats attacking a person, so it wasn't an issue.
As for the dangerous herbivores-now there is one hell of an oxymoron, he thought-like buffalo or elephants, they would be able to see and hear him and Ann coming in plenty of time to react and move away. And so, a dangerous situation where the animal would be surprised and feel cornered would be avoided.
Last but not least, by staying out in the short grass, it was far less likely that they'd literally stumble upon a puff adder, Egyptian cobra, or other venomous snake, something Jack was especially worried about with Ann's bare feet and exposed legs. If the horrific, unthinkable tragedy did happen and he failed to keep fate from taking Ann away from him, he did not want to have to watch her die in the slow, hellish agony of snakebite. He'd willingly far rather take the bite himself.
The subject of that sudden morbid thought, gracefully falling into step beside him as he walked and cradling the butt end of the torch against the right side of her ribs, asked in confused trepidation, "Jack, why are we still heading towards Pride Rock? Didn't you hear what the dogs said about the lions?"
"You sure bet I did," he replied, a brief twist of fear gnawing at his stomach as he considered the unknown, frightening possibilities of what could happen in an encounter with the tawny cats, anyone of which could probably kill him with a single blow. Although they were walking in the flat river valley, he could now see a huge rectangular column of reddish-tan sandstone peeking over a ridge to their left, getting steadily bigger as they kept walking north.
And Jack could sense very well that what he was seeing was just the proverbial tip of the iceberg, still a good distance away from them. He too, didn't want to meet that natural castle's inhabitants any more than she did. Most likely, if they did run into the lions, the big cats would bolt in fear, or calmly leave after satisfying their curiosity from a distance. But then again, they might not, he reflected dismally.
He thought back briefly to when Carl had once proudly showed him, back in 27', film he'd taken of a staged Samburu lion hunt. The shields of the spearmen had provided surprisingly good protection against the maned beast's rage. Still, the chocolate-maned cat had managed to briefly get his paw under a shield as he began to collapse, wrap it around the man's leg-and slice the Samburu's calf muscle with his claws like Jack would cut a banana.
In the wilds of Africa, the real $10,000 question as far as all the animals are concerned is "Where are the lions and what are they currently doing at this moment?" Even the uncertain question of whether the great honey-colored cats are hungry or not seems to hang in the air like windblown dust, and it sure is an equally pressing question to the person walking unarmed or at best lightly armed in lion country.
"Still, we need to find some sort of shelter before nightfall, and if Pride Rock is that big," Jack continued, gesturing towards the gently growing monolith with the back of his left hand, "there's probably a few other smaller rock hills around it too. Maybe there could be one that's close enough to the waterhole that we'll have easy food and drink, but far enough away that the lions won't even know we're lying up there right under their noses." The deliciously satisfying idea of being able to see the lions, yet not be seen by them, cunningly hiding in plain sight, was something Jack found oddly alluring.
"Besides," he added, "if there's a marsh around there, that'll mean reeds. And reeds mean I can make some sort of footwear for you," he pointed out, briefly looking over his shoulder into Ann's face and then down to her legs.
Many times during his life, Jack Driscoll had regarded the impressively done pairs of Ancient Egyptian sandals displayed in their glass cases in the Museum Of Natural History, as well as the more recent Japanese waraji, simple traveler's sandals with straps and soles made out of straw rope. Although he'd never exactly been one for handicrafts, despite his mother's enthusiastic attempts, Jack felt optimistic that he could do a passable job of making similar footwear with Ann's help.
"If you say so Jack," Ann responded with a buoyant trust, accepting his reasoning.
They fell silent for a time then, just enjoying each other's company and taking in the invigorating, gorgeous wild scenery around them as they walked. One of the things Jack had loved about Ann right from the start was that she wasn't at all the type of woman who talked just for the sake of talking, shooting the bull until it became as annoying and meaningless as the buzzing of flies.
He took her soft left hand in his, thrilling to how she clenched back in unquestioning, passionate warmth and recognition. Simply to touch her skin, her hair, was like becoming a whole. My beauty. No, it wasn't about the words.
But even when he wasn't talking, Jack often thought at top speed, and he decided to give himself up to this pastime for the moment as they walked together. When he and Ann had climbed so wearily out of the stygian elephant graveyard and first gazed upon this surreal paradise, Jack had been as close to the terminal stages of exhaustion as a man could be while still having the ability to walk. If he ever got back to New York, -and we will, he told himself- he'd be perversely curious to go ask Peter Denham, one of Carl's older brothers, if he'd felt similar sensations after the Germans had tortured him with lengthy sleep deprivation sessions in the POW camp during the Great War.
Truthfully, he still would've loved to just lie down and sleep for at least an entire day. Still, six or seven hours of well-deserved shut-eye had taken the edge off his terrible weariness, and he didn't feel like his head was being squeezed in a vise, have blurred vision, or hear a ringing in his ears anymore.
Instead, he felt almost giddy. Against all odds, he'd managed to fight his way through a genuine green hell, and somehow, snatch Ann more or less literally right from the hands of the colossal ape that had been holding her captive. The overjoyed, blessed feeling of knowing that the two of them were miraculously, vividly alive and together again was something so exhilarating and pure that no drug could ever compare to it.
So many things he'd thought he'd never see or hear or feel again during his multiple brushes with death on the island,-green grass, warm wind, blue sky, his heartbeat, contented happiness, the touch of Ann's smooth hand-Jack Driscoll was privately reveling in like he'd spent his whole life in a jail cell and was now experiencing for the first time. There are very few thrills in this world to compare to the realization that you've somehow miraculously survived, when the cloud of terrible doom hanging over the head has suddenly dispersed and lifted.
Even the landscape itself, the gentle rolling ridges and flat spaces mantled in vivid green grass and Sodom apple clumps, punctuated by scattered sentinels of acacias and jackalberries and wild olives, served to accent and strengthen his ecstatic enchantment all the more. It was an endless meadow in summertime, an infinite, sprawling, wild playing field where you could set up and play as many games of baseball, stickball, golf, or croquet as your heart desired. All you had to do was just watch out for any antelope in your ball's path.
To be perfectly plain, as soon as Jack had first laid eyes on Skull Island's form looming up out of the fog, it had filled him with a profound sense of foreboding, even as he'd marshaled up his courage to reassure Ann. Just looking at its craggy, brooding, crumbling features, its great ancient wall resembling the petrified spine of some huge dead beast, had made Jack's stomach feel as if a whole bunch of lizards had somehow got in and were skittering around in a shared panic. Even the normally innocuous seabirds had seemed to him almost like devious white ravens, flapping and circling around the terrible palace of some malevolent fairytale sorcerer.
As a young man, one of his favorite stories had been Richard Connell's chillingly disturbing hunting-tale-with-a-twist, The Most Dangerous Game. And despite his higher esteem for theatre, he surprisingly had hugely enjoyed watching the RKO picture of it in the cinema last year.
He vividly remembered how Whitney had talked to Rainsford in both versions near the beginning about how he often felt evil was a tangible thing, with wavelengths that could be felt like the light or heat that was currently pressing down on both of them from the powerful African sun, and how a bona-fide, bone-deep, truly evil place could quite literally send out vibrations of evil.
Just like Rainsford had, Jack had found the idea to be an intriguing one, and a nicely done element of foreshadowing in a plot, but ultimately laughably fictitious. You could sense evil intent in a person or animal, certainly, but not in a place for God's sake.
On seeing Skull Island though, and particularly when he got out of the longboat, setting foot on the pebble shore even as his instincts shouted "RUN, RUN. Take Ann out of here," down every nerve and muscle fiber, Jack Driscoll had understood quite clearly then what Connell had been talking about.
Here however, in this edenic combination of endless park and open-air zoo, the only atmosphere Jack could pick up about the place was one not of malaise, but of magic. Not the conjurer's crude tricks of silk scarves, playing cards, pretty ladies being sawed in half and rabbits being pulled out of hats, but real magic. A living, organic magic.
And it wasn't necessarily in the fact that the birds and beasts could speak and think. It was in the way the tawny eagles, black kites, and Ruppell's griffon vultures soared free in the azure sky. It was in the volley of doves that shot over their heads. It was the bullfrog grunting of the wildebeest ringing out in the clear warm air. In was in the tall, verdant ramparts of the forest to his right. It was the butterflies, hairstreaks and emperors and swallowtails and playboys-one of the few insects he could stand to look closely at or even think about now-that fluttered up like confetti falling in reverse before their feet. It was how the antelope sprung into joyous bucking and chasing and pronking, just for the sheer delight of it, and it made him beam in something close to merriment too.
Jack couldn't have known it, and it would've made no difference to his mood or thoughts if he did, but he and Ann had been transported to this chunk of savanna during the time of year the Maasai call ilkisirat, the season of the short rains. If East Africa can be said to have an Indian summer, it's during this time, when the land and its creatures receive one last respite from hardship before having to suffer under "the scourge of the red god," as the Maasai ruefully refer to the dry season. And as humans do with any vacation or welcoming break in the weather, with that dusty time only about two weeks away, every plant, animal, bird, and insect was eagerly making the most of it. Even a pair of naïve strangers couldn't help but pick up on the general tone.
A treacherous little voice in his mind (the tiny killjoy within all of us," as his father had once derisively referred to it) tried to gruffly remind the playwright that he wasn't anywhere close to being out of danger yet. He only had a bone club, fire, and his belt to use as a possible garrote or whip-like nearly every man walking the city streets, he knew only too well from his boyhood how the sharp, stinging lash of a belt buckle across the hindquarters feels, and he didn't think that a lion would exactly enjoy it either-to defend Ann and himself with. He had no gun, and possibly worse, no knife to cut and construct things with.
And didn't every main character in every classic survival story he'd ever read at least have a knife? Robinson Crusoe, the Swiss Family Robinson, Tarzan of the Apes, Rainsford himself-they'd all had knives. It felt like all his assets had been steadily stripped away from him by capricious Fate since he'd run out, filled with panicked desperation and a shockingly feverish, leonine courage, into the island's jungle with that party of crewmen and film people alike at his back.
If I'd been able to know somehow what sort of stunt Carl was going to pull on me for the sake of a film script and where he meant to shoot, I'd have taken Father's old pistol out of the safe in advance, Jack wryly, wistfully thought, remembering the Colt 1911 Jason Driscoll had used in the Great War, and later presented to his eldest son when he graduated from Columbia University.
Since then, although Jack had never been one for guns and shooting-unlike his youngest brother Brian was for instance-, and fervently hoped never to have to use the weapon, he'd still found a surprising sense of reassurance in knowing he had "A Colt To Ride On!" as some of the ads proclaimed, in his apartment, there to protect himself and his property if need be.
Briefly changing his thoughts, Jack idly wondered if his attorney, Mr. Lithgow, had declared him legally dead by now, and the firearm, along with the rest of "the whole bleeding kaboodle," as Lumpy would've said, had been auctioned off to some lucky opportunist. Hopefully he wasn't the violent type of man.
But his lack of firepower couldn't be helped now at any rate, not until pigs flew. Come to think of it, since we're in a land of talking beasts, I wouldn't be surprised at all anymore if we suddenly came across one doing just that, he thought, puffing air out of his big nostrils and smirking in amusement.
Of course, he mentally amended, turning to casually focus his gaze on the fever tree and fig wood's edge, with our luck, it'll be a Jabberwocky or Captain Hook or one of H.G. Wells' Beast Men from The Island of Dr. Moreau that comes flying out at us from those trees instead.
"And I don't even have the luxury of a vorpal blade," the playwright purred out to himself, feeling his cheeks wrinkle up in amusement at his private joke. He certainly didn't think he would relish having to take on the kind of beast that Tenniel had so frightfully depicted in his illustration, with its snake neck and satanic rabbit/catfish face, with only a bone club in hand.
His comment inadvertently grabbed Ann's attention, and she swiftly turned her head to regard him, brought out of her own self-occupied state. She had been enjoying watching a several dozen strong flock of Fischer's lovebirds, beautiful little parrots that looked like they'd literally flown through a rainbow from top to bottom and the colors had stuck to them in distinct waves, as they twittered and searched for seeds near the wood's edge.
I think you're every bit as stunning, even in just a dirty slip, he thought on noticing the enchantment she'd been taking in them.
"The Jabberwocky!" she broke in, a fond, nostalgic pleasure resounding in her voice and lighting up her soft Madonna features. "So you've read it too Jack! Mother would read it to my sisters and I all the time. Oh, how I loved that poem so much. I especially liked the picture of the toths," she laughed, referring to Carroll's crazy-looking part badger part lizard creatures, with their corkscrew faces and propensity for sundials.
"Yeah," Jack happily concurred, feeling the corners of his mouth twitch upward in a nostalgic grin as he briefly focused his gaze on a quartet of southern ground hornbills, magisterially huge black birds the size of turkeys with gray-black beaks like pickaxes. Flaccid, bare carmine skin covering their faces and forming pouches at their throats, they unhurriedly walked over the vibrant green grass, snapping up grasshoppers and beetles to be tossed to the back of their mouths.
"The man sure had a talent for making up funny words and animals, didn't he? Kind of makes me wish I chose to write fantasy sometimes instead of writing plays about people with depressing problems or who couldn't control their vices," he offhandedly, reflectively remarked.
"Well, at least you give the masses a balanced view of life that way, and tell them that it's not all sweetness and light," Ann wisely pointed out. "They learn a lesson about the world at any rate."
"True," Jack nodded. "But anyhow," he said, dismissing his digression with a shrug, "my favorite poem of his as a boy was The Walrus and the Carpenter ."
As odd as it was, he'd always thought of the poem as an excellent illustration of the human condition, namely how men could be so easily, even fatally, deceived by promises of friendship and good things, as well as how some others-like a certain Carl Denham-cruelly took advantage of that trusting gullibility to satisfy their own ends.
Looking at the gently undulating, endless croquet lawn sprawling before them, and in a fine temper indeed, he was hit with a playful urge of inspiration. Jack was a writer of plays for the stage, not an actor who got up and performed on it. He suffered horribly from stage fright for one thing, and just like the cats he'd owned over the years, hated to look stupid for another-especially in front of his peers.
A faint, close-mouthed smile of embarrassment touched his features briefly as he imagined how his good friends at the now-disbanded Algonquin Round Table would've reacted if they'd seen his feckless little turn as storyteller in front of the painted dogs and Ann, even if it was in an Irishman's blood to do so.
Still though, he'd had live theater training as a matter of course during his studies at Columbia. Jack knew both not only how to recognize when an actor had totally immersed himself into the character, but also how to do the deed with aplomb himself.
Deliberately making his languid, purring voice deep and husky and baritone, he switched the bone club to his right hand, tucked his upper left arm against his ribcage, and grandiosely gestured with his forearm as if it was a flipper, teasingly inquiring of Ann, " 'The night is fine,' the Walrus said, 'Do you admire the view?'" "Although it's actually still broad daylight," he broke out of character to modify.
Putting her free hand on her waist and giving that wonderfully charming giggle he knew and loved to hear, Ann responded, "I absolutely do Jack," showing her porcelain teeth. "But I think any view is good to see as long as I'm with you," she warmly told him, her voice softening.
The warm affection and implied trust contained in her statement made Jack's own soul feel warm in response, and he smiled fondly back at her. His blissful reverie was suddenly interrupted then by a mild curl of hunger in his abdomen, not so powerful that he couldn't stand to go without food for now, but enough to make him desire to eat. Besides, the more food he and Ann took in out here, the healthier they'd ultimately be.
He came to a stop then, curtailing his unhurried walk and raking the forest's edge with his eyes even as he began to approach it at an angle.
"Is something wrong Jack?" Ann asked him questioningly, instinctively drawing her slim form high to look in the same direction, then tentatively following him, coal tipped stick still resting in her hand.
"Not at all," he reassured her. "I'm just feeling a bit hungry again, and hopefully there's more fruit about for us."
It didn't take him very long at all fortunately to find another custard apple bush, conveniently located close to the edge of the grassland and in the farthest point of a kind of U formed by two promontories of trees, giving them an excellent, protected and shaded view of the open landscape before them.
The last time he'd eaten of the fruit, seemingly already an age ago, Jack's hunger had been like a starving rat gnawing at a wooden box of bananas. Throwing his usual scrupulous etiquette to the wind, he'd torn into them like a coyote into carrion. Now though, he ate in a much calmer and more refined fashion, plucking, sitting down, and peeling as he inhaled the sweet, heady smells of fallen leaves and fermenting figs. Sticking the butt end of their fire deep into the soil, Ann joined him to partake of the large bush's crinkly bounty as well, folding her legs under her after she'd filled her arms with several fruits.
It's almost more like we're having a Sunday picnic in Central Park rather than wandering like vagabonds in the middle of East Africa, he wryly thought, greatly amused by the incongruity of it all.
The half-panorama they could see was gorgeous, and for a time they both were happy to just be together and watch the wildebeest passing by as they ate, bulls standing like proud equestrian statues in their temporary territories with heads held high, cows and yearlings marching along in loose files with theirs held down, as if they were cart-horses pulling loads. All the while, they kept up their ceaseless droning grunts, cropping grass in the manner of cattle.
With their long white beards, hanging from chins to chests, along with their drawn, almost glum looking faces, and curved horns, the antelope reminded Jack of fairytale wizards with horned helmets, pensively going about their mysterious duties in some castle or forest. Both of them couldn't help also laughing at how truly funny the hoofed beasts looked, and especially their crazy antics.
For these animals, with their long, boxy faces, scraggly, unkept black manes, their fringed throats, and chunky bodies, are the buffoons of the plains, absurd looking and ill proportioned. Their heads are too big and their hindquarters too small. Unlike a deer or bison, their legs are surprisingly thin, seeming almost too rickety to support the weight of their bodies. They have the horns of a weird ox, a goat's beard, the mane of a pony, with black lines on their necks as if trying to extend it, and the sloping hindquarters of a hyena. Wildebeest are misshapen jokes, a bizarre parody of the graceful antelope family to which they belong. If the giraffe is the animal built by a committee, the wildebeest seems like a fusion of the spare parts from all the other hoofed animals.
Their utter silliness is also wonderfully accented by their clownish behavior. Apparently from either sheer high spirits or territorial behavior, they chase each other, run around in circles like circus horses for no obvious reason, randomly collide with each other as if they were atoms, and essentially act like an uncoordinated third-grade dance troupe on a major sugar high. When bulls are asserting or competing over territory, they horn the ground, buck like horses, do stiff-legged leaps, and otherwise cavort around, fly-whisk tails and manes flailing.
Perhaps the ultimate scene in the wildebeest comedy however, is when a bull will leap high into the air while facing a rival broadside, the three hundred pound animal doing a pirouette in midair to come down facing the other as if he was a circus clown or trained monkey parodying a ballet move. Little wonder that Theodore Roosevelt affectionately referred to them as "the fool of the veldt."
Yet they are also enormously successful and astonishingly durable animals, able to keep up with the herd and even run within fifteen minutes of birth. It is estimated that in the Serengeti, there are about a million and a half wildebeest, all participants in one of the most amazing animal migrations on earth, where each one may walk twenty miles in a day, running a gauntlet of lions, hyenas, crocodiles, raging rivers, human hunters, disease, and other dangers. They can run at speeds of close to forty miles an hour, keeping this up for as much as seven or eight miles. The hulking antelope have been known to successfully stand up to cheetahs, hyenas and painted dogs, and rarely even lone lionesses. It is a testament to the true fortitude of the wildebeest, or Nyumbu ya Montu as it is known in Swahili, that big game hunters have described it as being "like a little tank on four legs," or "the poor man's Cape buffalo."
Looking at their tousled black manes and deep, wide nostrils, he turned to ask Ann, in a spirit of playful self-deprecation, "They sure do look a lot like me, don't they? Especially in the nose," he added, feeling the corners of his mouth become taut and curve up in yet another grin.
Citron fruit pulp flew in a dozen directions from between Ann's opening lips, and she doubled over in hysterics at his comment before getting a grip on herself again. Still producing light chuckles, she sat up straight once more, pausing to flick her dried hair up and out of her face.
"Maybe, but I personally think you have much better proportions," she good-naturedly told him, lips faintly curving. "Besides, you don't have their horns, and that's a good thing as far I'm concerned."
A bit embarrassed at her praise, he replied in turn, "Having horns would sure make it a chore to get through doors, I know that. The aristocrats probably wouldn't want to associate that much with me either, no matter how good my plays were."
"Jack Driscoll the minotaur," Ann playfully ribbed him, taking another bite of her fruit.
"Be careful what you say Ann," he teasingly countered, pointing at her. "If there are already talking animals here, there's likely magic too, so who knows if you've just jinxed me and now I'm going to wake up a minotaur tomorrow just because you talked about the subject. Then I'll be hideously ugly and you won't want to be with me anymore," he finished, Ann giggling in amused pleasure.
Apparently deciding to accommodate another thought in her brain, Ann's gentle virginal features suddenly became pensive and mildly distant. Before he could ask what was eating her, she meditatively took a bite out of another and softly ventured, "Speaking of talking animals for that matter, what sort of relationship do you think we should encourage between them and us? If any," she added as an afterthought, regarding a herd of convict-striped zebras watching them with that bizarre intelligence in their eyes that they'd already come to accept as a matter of course.
She was looking to him for guidance again, and he'd better provide it fast. And it was an unspoken question that had been hanging like a veil in the back of his head, ever since he'd understood with a shock what sort of fantastical place they'd found themselves in. The time had come, like the half-formed idea for a new play, to hold and examine it.
