Airborn (21 page)

At the bottom we paused to wipe sweat from our brow and have a drink from Bruce’s canteen. We spotted another of Kate’s blazes, showing us the right direction.

“Should we start hollering for her?” Bruce wondered aloud.

“Probably a good idea.”

“Miss de Vries!” he shouted.

I added my voice to his. I was glad he was with me. I would have felt odd belting her name out into the wilderness by myself. There was no echo. The sound just disappeared, swallowed up by the trees and the hot, heavy air. I was amazed Kate had had the nerve to come so far alone. I turned back and could no longer see the bluff—the foliage was too dense. Trees and snaking vines and flowers were everywhere. Our voices sent rainbow-plumed birds crashing through the leaves and branches. The sun was well overhead now, the air almost too thick to breathe.

“Miss de Vries!” I hollered.

“Here!” came a pleasant singsong voice.

Bruce and I both looked about and then up into the trees.

“Up here!” Kate said.

We walked toward an enormous tree with thick branches, hairy with moss. Resting at the base was a familiar carpetbag with a pink floral pattern. It smelled quite awful. I peered up into the verdant foliage. There, in the highest branches, was Kate, reclining against the trunk, legs swinging. A spyglass hung around her neck, along with a compact camera. In one hand she held her notebook. If she hadn’t been swinging her legs and waving, it would have been most difficult to see her. She was wearing a pair of outlandish, emerald-green harem pants with sequined cuffs and a reddish-brown tunic. I could see that it was good tree-climbing gear, snug at the ankles, with no long skirt to tangle her up. And the colors couldn’t have blended in better. A real thinker, my Kate.

“Are you quite all right up there, Miss de Vries?” Bruce asked.

“Perfectly comfortable. The view’s fine. You should come up and see.”

“Actually,” I said, “we were hoping you would come down and return to the ship now.

“She probably needs help down,” Bruce said to me, starting to climb.

“She doesn’t need help,” I told him. And I certainly didn’t want Bruce to be the one to help her.

“I’ll just nip up,” he said.

“What about your head for heights?” I said, loudly enough for Kate to hear.

“I should be all right in a tree,” he muttered.

I went after him. It was quite an easy one to climb, the branches just the right distance apart. I made sure to outstrip Bruce and reach Kate first. She was perched right near the top. I saw her close the notebook as we neared. She gave me a withering look as if to say, How clever of you to have brought someone else along: what on earth were you thinking?

“Hello, Miss de Vries,” said Bruce.

“Wonderful to see you again, Mr. Lunardi,” Kate said, suddenly the perfect hostess.

“We were sent to bring you back,” I said, by way of explanation. Bruce and I stood on the branch beneath hers, so all our heads were at roughly the same height. I had to give it to her, she’d picked an excellent vantage point. Near the tree’s summit the branches and leaves thinned, as had all those of the surrounding trees. She had a view deep into the forest around us for about fifty yards.

“See anything interesting?” Bruce asked.

“Plenty,” she said. “All manner of birds. The vantage point is really quite splendid.”

“I can see that,” said Bruce.

“We should head down,” I said. “Mr. Lunardi here might get a little woozy from the height.”

“I’m fine, thanks,” he said.

Kate was all smiles up there in the tree, quite the little actress. You’d never know she was worried about our secret getting out, someone else horning in on her scientific breakthrough.

“Good job finding your way here,” I said. “My compass help you out, did it?”

“It was awfully useful. I did mean to give it back.”

“I’m sure.”

“But I was under lock and key at the time, as you know.”

“Unfortunate. Well, we should really be heading back now.”

“I’m not quite ready just yet, thanks,” she replied.

“You’ve created quite a scandal back at the ship,” I said, losing my patience.

“I don’t see why,” she murmured and peered through her spyglass.

“You drugged Miss Simpkins!” I exclaimed.

“Drugged! Honestly! You make it sound so extreme! All I did was give her a dose of her own sleeping elixir. Four drops in her water glass before bedtime. Maybe it was eight—I can’t remember. No more than eight. What choice did I have? You weren’t about to help me. How else was I supposed to get out? She kept the keys clutched in her fist in a death grip. I knew I’d have no chance of wiggling them out unless she was in a good deep sleep.”

“She’s in a terrible state. And the captain is displeased as well.”

“I was being held prisoner! It’s probably illegal, not that you seemed at all concerned about my welfare.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re to come back with us immediately.”

“How are you enjoying this island, Mr. Lunardi?” she asked, turning her smile on Bruce. “Is it not paradisiacal?”

“It’s very beautiful,” he replied.

He was smiling up at her with a completely contented look on his face. I didn’t much care for that look. Not that Kate wasn’t striking. In her emerald-green harem pants and mahogany blouse, she looked like some exotic bird of paradise. But I didn’t see why Bruce had to pick this moment to be all suave and matinee-idolish.

“Really, I’m surprised no one’s ever settled here,” he said.

I half expected him to ask me to fetch them drinks.

“It’s not near anywhere,” I said impatiently. “It’s off all the main trade routes. According to the charts, the nearest sizable island is over a thousand miles away.”

“Still,” Bruce said, “it seems to me someone could live here quite comfortably.”

“Perhaps your father might buy it for you as a vacation home. Shall we head down now?”

Kate turned to me. “I’m not leaving until I get pictures.”

“Pictures of what?” Bruce asked.

“We are out of time,” I told Kate. “The captain wants to leave as soon as possible.”

“Then this is my last chance, isn’t it? I want to get a good clear shot of her.”

“Her?” Bruce said.

“Ah! So you’re happy to share your little secret with Mr. Lunardi, are you?” I said to Kate. “We’re allowed to tell now?”

“What secret?” Bruce demanded.

Kate looked at me, immensely pleased with herself.

“I’ve found her nest,” she said.

“Some kind of rare bird?” Bruce asked impatiently.

“Where?” I said.

She pointed. “Do you see it?”

I followed the line of her finger, deeper into the trees, not exactly sure what it was I was looking for. Branches, flowering vines, leaves, and fronds, getting thicker and darker the farther my gaze ventured.

“It’s just trees,” I said.

Kate pulled the spyglass from around her neck and passed it to me.

“Keep looking, Mr. Crow’s Nest,” she said.

Eyepiece pressed tight, I adjusted the focus. It still looked like nothing extraordinary, and I felt my impatience with Kate rekindle. Then I noticed a strange weave of branches. They’d not grown together naturally, not those. It looked as if many small pieces of branch had been carefully arranged into a kind of screen. And there were feathers woven into it too, of all different colors, and bits of sod and clumps of leaves. I was just seeing the screen from one angle, but it seemed that it continued around in a full circle, a high-walled nest, unlike anything a bird would build, more like the nests squirrels build for winter. It looked as if it might even have an overhang to keep out the rain. I noticed too that the windbreak was angled against the prevailing winds.

I lowered the spyglass.

“She built that,” Kate said.

“Why would she make a nest?” I said. “Birds make nests to lay eggs in; squirrels make them for winter.”

“She needed a place to live,” Kate said. “It’s incredible, really. She’s not a land mammal—she started with no experience—but instinctively she thought to make herself a kind of shelter. She’s smart.”

“Do you mind if I take a peek?” Bruce said, reaching for the spyglass.

Before he could put it to his eye, something happened. Something long and cloud-colored appeared in a distant tree. I saw the flare of a wing.

Kate fumbled her camera to her face, but the cloud cat was already moving again. She leaped away into another tree, her amazing wings flashing open, and I heard Bruce gasp. I probably gasped too, because it was still a surprise to me, the way the creature suddenly became huge and glorious and powerful in that one second its wings spread. And then they folded up again, and she touched down on another branch and swiftly glided among the foliage and then disappeared behind the wall of her nest.

Kate exhaled loudly through her nose.

“Missed it. I wasn’t ready,” she said crossly. “You two got me all distracted!”

I looked at Bruce. He was staring, his whole body hunched in the direction of the cloud cat. His mouth was open.

“I’ve been waiting all day for it to come back,” Kate said. “You hollering through the forest probably didn’t help.”

“What on earth is it?” Bruce said, his voice dry.

“We don’t have a name for it yet,” Kate told him.

“It’s a cloud cat,” I said absently.

Kate looked at me. “That was the name I thought of too!” She smiled. “We thought the same thing.”

“I thought it would be too unscientific for you.”

“No, it’s the first thing that leaped into my head.”

“It’s some kind of giant bird, is it?” Bruce asked.

“No, it’s a winged mammal,” Kate told him.

“You’ve seen it before?”

“Once, yeah,” I said. Obviously we weren’t bothering to try to hide this, which was a relief. I couldn’t really see the point of pretending anymore.

Kate had her spyglass to her eye again and was peering at the nest. “She’s in there. I can see her moving. But I can’t get a clear shot from here.”

“How did you find the nest?” I asked.

“Luck mostly. I figured she would live somewhere around here, so it was just a matter of finding a good waiting place. Around her tree, the one her nest is in, there was a lot of debris on the ground. Bird bones, wings, beaks, fish heads. She must pick them out of the water from the bank of the stream or lake, or maybe she glides over!”

“Incredible.”

“She’s an omnivore. She eats fruit too. I saw some mango pits and coconut shells. She must carry them up and smash them to pieces on a rock. Quite a varied diet. Seems to like fish the best, though.”

She opened her notebook to write something down, and I saw it was filled with jottings and little sketches she’d made.

“This is amazing,” Bruce said.

“That’s why I need a good clear photograph,” said Kate.

“It’ll have to wait,” I told her.

“Look, I’d probably have one by now if you and Mr. Lunardi hadn’t come yodeling along and scared her off. You owe me a photo at least.”

I was about to tell her I didn’t owe her anything, but Bruce said, “Have you seen it fly?”

“Her,” said Kate firmly. “And no, she can’t fly. She’s crippled, we think.”

“Who knows about this?”

“The three of us,” Kate said. “And we’d like to keep it that way, if you don’t mind.”

“This is going to send the scientific world into a furor,” Bruce said.

“Do you think so?” Kate said, pleased.

“Absolutely. No one’s ever seen anything like this; you’ve made a huge discovery here. You’ll want to come back, to make a proper study.”

“Ideally,” said Kate.

“My father funds a lot of scientific research, you know,” Bruce said.

“Does he?”

“This is exactly the kind of thing that would spark his interest. He’s a keen collector, especially of freakish oddities.”

I felt a stab of indignation. Oddity. I didn’t like that word. The cloud cat wasn’t an oddity. She was a real animal, one that was meant to fly, only couldn’t because of a mistake at birth.

“My father keeps a whole wing of one of our houses as a kind of museum. All sorts of taxidermy and so forth.”

I looked at Kate, hoping she’d object, but she was just nodding, listening, swept up in the promise of glory.

“If your father’s after a hunting expedition, this isn’t it,” I said angrily.

“No, no, I just meant he’s interested in all sorts of things. He could set you up with a proper expedition, you know.”

“Do you think?” Kate asked, enthralled.

“Absolutely. With lots of equipment and experts.”

“I wouldn’t want to be shuffled out of the way, though,” Kate insisted, her nostrils narrowing just a touch.

“Of course not,” Bruce said. “We’d make it a condition.”

Bruce couldn’t stop talking. His enthusiasm was like a big balloon that was stealing all the air from mine. I didn’t mind so much that he’d seen the cloud cat—but I did mind that he’d stolen something that, hours before, had belonged just to Kate and me. He’d stolen our discovery, just like he’d stolen my position aboard ship.

“Well, that’s all grand,” I said. “Everything’s taken care of. You’ll all be famous. But right now, we need to get back to the ship.”

“I still need a picture,” Kate insisted.

It would have been nice if Bruce had echoed my wishes, but he wasn’t doing anything; he was peering through Kate’s spyglass at the cloud cat’s nest. He seemed quite happy to let me continue in the role of party pooper, and suddenly I was extremely angry.

“No,” I said to Kate. “You’re coming back now. I’ll carry you kicking and screaming if need be.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would.”

“You couldn’t.”

“I could, and I will. There’s two of us here, and we’re acting on Captain Walken’s express orders.”

Kate fluttered her fingers dismissively. “I don’t believe for a second someone of Mr. Lunardi’s breeding would pick up a struggling lady and lug her around like a sack of rice. Would you, Mr. Lunardi?” she said, smiling as if they shared some wonderful cozy secret.

“I certainly wouldn’t, no,” he said, still peering through the spyglass.

My heart was pounding. My voice shook. “Lunardi, we take orders from our captain, not from some spoiled girl!”