A/N: Still not totally happy with this chapter, but here goes. I may rework it later.
Thanks for all the reviews, everyone:) It has come to my attention that some readers consider it rude to have a huge long a/n replying to all one's reviews, so I've stopped doing that. I do want to address one thing, though: yes, if you're confused, you should go and read Scientist King. Or at least the italic flashback bits. You will be less confused then, I promise.
Disclaimer: Laura, Laurel, Pritha, Linda, Sandy, Mike, and Carl are my invention, kind of (they are loosely based on actual people). Numair and Daine and Aly are Tamora Pierce's, although in her books they're not quite like this...
Chapter 4: Calgary, Bragg Creek, 3–8 July
Daine, who had rarely attended a meeting she enjoyed, found the work she had come here to do both exhausting and exhilarating. The idea of planning a programme of study that didn't yet exist—that could be (almost) whatever they wanted to make it—was compelling, and there seemed to be a genuine desire on the part of the Dean and the teaching staff to craft a strong and effective zoo-and-wildlife track.
Sitting more or less all day in one conference room or another, however, very quickly began to grate on her nerves.
Still, the campus, and the walk between it and their hotel, was much pleasanter than she had expected. The buildings were nearly all of that particularly hideous late-1960s vintage, true, but they were so well spread out, and the grounds around them so heavily treed and so beautifully kept, that one hardly noticed. And it was full of friendly welcomes. Often, as she and Numair entered the campus before going their separate ways (she to her meeting, he to the Library Tower), magpies or red-winged blackbirds or chickadees swooped down to greet her; occasionally a rabbit or a squirrel paused at the edge of the footpath ahead, waiting expectantly for her to hunker down and pat it.
On Tuesday, the first full day of meetings, Daine crossed the campus to the MacEwan Student Centre (known to the locals as Mac Hall) to meet Numair for lunch; they had been reliably informed that good food was to be had upstairs in something called the Grad Lounge. With her went her zoo-vet colleagues (Laura and Pritha, from the Calgary Zoo, and Laurel, from Toronto) and Linda Montali, the stocky, fortyish representative of the Ontario Veterinary College who, during the opening round of introductions, had described her research interests as "anything that isn't a dog, a cat, or a farm animal".
They had got no more than twenty feet across the grass when Linda, who was first of the group, stopped abruptly and said, "Look at that!"
Laura and Pritha had been arguing good-naturedly about which of their colleagues would be first to panic and text-message one of them for assistance in their absence; Daine and Laurel were walking with faces raised to the sky, marvelling at how blue it was and how, as Laurel had put it the day before, "there seems to be so much more of it than there is at home." At Linda's words they all stopped and looked at her, before following the line of her outstretched arm to the object of her attention.
Rabbits.
More than two dozen of them—adults and youngsters—massed very deliberately ahead of them in the vivid grass.
"Good Lord," said Daine, startled back into the flat Yorkshire vowels of her adolescence. "It's the Lagomorph Mothers' Union!"
Her colleagues backed away a little; wildlife vets or no, this was clearly not the sort of display they were used to. "It's like The Birds," someone whispered, "except …"
Daine dropped to her knees and leaned down, holding out both hands, palm up, toward the cluster of jackrabbits. They came to her by twos and threes, sniffing her fingers; the braver ones sat up on their hindquarters and touched their soft noses to hers, which tickled so that she had to bite her lip to keep from giggling. Their fur was beautifully soft under her fingertips, and they regarded her calmly with their large, lambent golden-brown eyes.
When each of them had greeted her, they began to straggle away, gradually melting back into the shrubbery.
"Wow." Tall, crop-haired Laurel was the first to find her voice. "Is going for lunch with you always this exciting?"
From: aly cooper
To: Sarrasri, Daine
Subject: RE: Just checking up
hi aunt daine,
glad to hear you're safely there and having a nice time. everything's fine here, thanks – griffin is his usual cranky self and i think mammoth is pining for you a bit, but he seems happier today. the spare bed's very comfy, thanks :). i might tidy up a bit downstairs, is that ok?
there's been nothing in the post but circulars, so nothing much to report there. mum's ringing practically every hour to make sure i haven't set the house on fire or similar. can you tell her to leave off? she's sending me mad.
love,
aly xo
On Wednesday afternoon Numair, carrying a rucksack whose contents he declined to identify, collected Daine at the conclusion of her workday, and they set out from the campus along Charleswood Drive, past a shopping plaza featuring concerns labelled "Safeway" ("That's where I did the shopping") and "London Drugs" ("That appears to be the local Boots the Chemist, though what its resemblance to London is meant to be I can't imagine"), then past a long series of quiet residential streets whose names, puzzlingly, all seemed to begin with "C" to the right and with "B" to the left.
"Where are we going?" Daine asked at last.
"Guess."
"You're not lost again, are you?"
"You wound me, vetkin." Daine rolled her eyes at this. "No, we are not lost. You'll see in a few minutes."
"I hope so," she said feelingly. "This hill is getting steepish, don't you find?"
She saw Numair glance at her, concerned, and realized that he didn't seem even slightly winded. "I'm sorry," he said, slowing the pace a little. "It must be the altitude. I ought to have thought of that."
"It's fine." But she did not try to speed up again.
At length they reached the end of Charleswood Drive, where it debouched onto John Laurie Boulevard, and stood looking across several lanes of traffic at a chain-link fence.
"Oh," said Numair.
"Is that what I think it is? What a wonderful idea, 'Mair!"
"It's Nose Hill Park," he confirmed. "But somehow I didn't imagine all this traffic—"
"It's all right," Daine said. "Watch."
After glancing right, then, remembering, left, she stepped off the kerb.
Behind her, she heard Numair begin to bellow at her, then change his mind when (apart from one minivan which sped past, honking) the traffic halted to let them cross.
On the other side, he hugged her fiercely. "Don't do that!" he fumed. "I nearly had a heart attack. What made you think they'd stop?"
"Laura told me," Daine said, feeling squashed but a little smug. "She's lived here most of her life. And they did stop, didn't they? Come on, love, don't sulk."
"I'm not sulking," he retorted. "I'm merely recovering from your latest attempt to send me into an early grave. Now—shall we?"
Rested, they made their way through the pedestrian gate and began to climb the hill.
They were halfway through their picnic supper—bread and cheese and apples, with a thermos of tea—when the first porcupine stopped by to greet them. It was followed a quarter of an hour later by another one, and then by a coyote and a family of deer. Every few minutes a ground squirrel or two wandered by to observe.
"A hundred and ninety-eight species of wildlife have been identified in this park," Numair whispered. The young doe who was nuzzling Daine's hair raised her head to look at him; he froze, anxious not to startle her further.
"It's all right," said Daine, whether to her husband or the deer she wasn't entirely sure.
Later, as they stood on the hillside looking down at the city, about to begin their descent, he turned her gently to face the west and the jagged blue-grey line of the Rocky Mountains along the horizon. "We'll be there in less than a fortnight," she breathed, awed, "somewhere in the middle of all that. Can you believe it?"
"Well, stranger things have happened," he murmured against her ear.
From: Sarrasri, Daine
To: aly cooper
Subject: RE: RE: Just checking up
Dear Aly,
Thanks for the quick reply! Tell Mammoth I miss him, too. I'll e-mail your mum and tell her you're doing fine, but I doubt it'll do much good – you know your mum!
By all means, tidy up if you want to – Lord knows the place needs it. You know the sort of stuff you need to leave alone, though, yes? If in doubt, ask!
Thanks so much for looking after our beasties.
Love,
Daine
P.S. Your uncle says not to touch the stuff at the back of the second shelf in the fridge. He says, and I quote, "Yes, I realize that it looks like mouldy cheese. It is carefully labelled mouldy cheese with a scientific purpose." TIA, D.
"I'm sure we can find horses to suit us," Daine said. "It's this tack that makes me a bit nervous." It was Saturday morning, and she was standing in the middle of a barn-like building at a boarding stable in Bragg Creek, some forty-five minutes outside Calgary, looking apprehensively around at the enormous Western saddles all over the walls.
"Ooooh," said Sandy Salvati, a wildlife biologist with Parks Canada, at whose invitation Daine, Numair, Linda, and Mike Lloyd from Colorado State University were here. "I didn't even think of that. You're probably used to an English saddle, huh? Well, let me see what they've got in the back room. Go out and get acquainted with the horses, everybody."
Daine led the way out to the closest paddock; not bothering to look for a gate, she hopped nimbly over the low rail fence and called the horses with a low whistle. The small, timid bay mare with the white star on her forehead was Sandy's Arwen, she could tell; Daine gently threaded her way through the herd to stroke the mare's neck and to blow softly into her nostrils, teaching Arwen her scent. The mare whuffled back, pleased, and butted her nose against Daine's chest. "You are lovely, aren't you?" Daine praised her. "No wonder Sandy loves you so."
She found a tall, sweet-natured piebald gelding for Numair, warning him in advance that he was in for a rough ride, but promising apples at the end of it; an eager little sorrel mare chose her, almost knocking Daine flat in her enthusiasm. It was harder to know what might suit Linda and Mike, as she had known them only a week, but both had said they were near-beginners, so she looked for gentle, placid beasts who would not mind inexperienced riders. That one, over there along the fence—she's the right sort of thing.
"Daine?" That was Sandy's voice, inflected with concern. "Everything all right?"
Daine turned to reassure her, one arm around the little sorrel mare, and began to laugh: there was Sandy, standing at the fence beside Mike, and behind her people in jeans and cowboy boots were barrelling toward the paddock, holding their hats on their heads. "What's happening?" she inquired, when she had managed to catch her breath. "Is there some sort of emergency?"
"Well—the thing is—when I said you should go get acquainted with the horses, I really meant from outside the fence," Sandy explained. "They don't really like visitors going into the paddocks …"
"I'm sorry." Daine gave 'her' horse a last pat and made her way back to the fence. "I didn't realize. I'll come out." She heaved herself back over and stood on the other side dusting her hands on her shirt. "Only I thought it would be more efficient if I got all our horses while you were looking for the tack …"
By this time she and Sandy were surrounded by the owners and several employees of the stable, who explained at considerable length that visitors were not permitted to roam around inside the paddocks, that not all the horses were available for day rides as they belonged to boarding clients, that some of them were "ornery" and the stables refused to take responsibility for any injuries visitors incurred through their own failure to follow the posted rules, that a few had even been known to bite—
"You mean that one?" Daine pointed out an irritable-looking strawberry roan. "He's got ear mites, that's why he's out of sorts. You want to put some ointment in his ears—I'll write out the scrip for you if you like—"
But the stable owners were beginning to look outraged, and she was rather grateful, after all, when Numair put a casual arm around her shoulders and smoothly interjected, "What Daine means is that she's sorry to have worried everyone, but she is a qualified vet and has a great deal of experience with horses, and furthermore she was unaware of that rule. We shall all be more careful from now on."
"Right," she said, trying not to giggle as the sorrel mare nuzzled her left ear. "That's just what I meant."
To her immense amusement, the mounts selected for the group by their assigned stable-hand were exactly those she had chosen herself (the sorrel mare, Scrap by name, being a something of a foregone conclusion, as she had stuck to Daine like glue since their first meeting). The piebald gelding turned out to be called Spots—"Just like our Spots!" she chuckled to Numair, who seemed to find the association dubious—and the shy mare she had marked out for Mike or Linda was introduced to the latter as Penny. Mike was assigned a bay with white socks who went by the name of Marty.
Though at first their slow pace made Daine itch for a good canter, before long she was lost in enjoyment of the beautiful weather, the trail's breathtaking proximity to the mountains, and—perhaps most of all—the simple fact of being on horseback, outdoors, with the sun on her skin and the scents of horse and grass and pine-needles in her nostrils. Ahead of her Numair and Spots seemed to be coping well with one another, all things considered; she allowed herself a restrained grin when the former, lost in contemplation of some object he had picked up during their last rest break, narrowly missed grazing his head on a tree branch.
"Animals really like you, don't they," Linda remarked, as Penny broke out of line to amble beside Daine and Scrap. "I've never seen anything like it."
Daine shrugged and said, as she always did, "It's a knack. I've always had it."
"Well, whatever it is," said Linda, "it's good for picking out horses. I've never felt so comfortable on a horse before."
"Dr Barton," Daine began, diffidently. She had asked to see the Dean, and was now rather wishing she had let the matter drop.
"Carl, please," he reminded her.
"Right. Carl. Em … the thing is …" she stopped, annoyed with herself for behaving like a tongue-tied adolescent. "I'd like it if you could tell me why I'm here. I mean—I understand what my job is, and I'm incredibly pleased and flattered to have been asked, but … why me? I can't help but notice I'm the only one who's come so far, as well as the youngest, and it seems so odd, when there must be hundreds of more experienced people closer to hand …"
The Dean looked at her consideringly. "You weren't the only European delegate we invited," he said, "just the only one who wanted to come."
"Oh." That was something, anyway. She wouldn't, of course, tell him that she hadn't exactly wanted to come, that her husband had more or less browbeaten her into agreeing. It had turned out to be a good idea, and that was the main thing.
"As for your age and experience," Dr Barton smiled, "you were highly recommended by a number of colleagues whose opinions I respect. You're billed as having exceptional insight into animal behaviour and the human–animal bond, and those are some of the most important areas of veterinary education, wouldn't you say?"
Daine nodded, wondering who those colleagues had been and what exactly they had told him.
"How is the planning going?" he asked then. "Are you managing to reach a consensus? What do you think of the programme so far?"
Here she was on firmer ground. "It's going very well," she assured him. "We're all having a lovely time—that is, it's lovely to have an opportunity like this, to build a zoo-and-wildlife course from the ground up and really think about what ought to go into it, instead of cobbling it together from odds and ends and having to bargain for more course time and so on. And the level of cooperation you've got here, with the other vet schools in the country …" Daine sighed. "I'd love to see something like it at home."
"Perhaps you could import some of our ideas," Dr Barton suggested.
She laughed. "Not me," she said. "My main job's at the Zoo, and even when I am working for the vet school I'm only a lowly sessional lecturer. I'll certainly be telling everyone I meet about your marvellous new zoo-and-wildlife course, though. Perhaps if the right people got jealous and wanted one like it …"
From: aly cooper
To: Sarrasri, Daine
Subject: RE: RE: RE: Just checking up
hi again,
thanks for talking to mum, i appreciate it! she's only rung twice since yesterday which is a big improvement.
you can tell uncle mair his cheese experiment is safe :shudder:.
love,
aly xo