Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever (5 page)

And then
She
decided She couldn’t be lonely anymore.

~~~

Vesna descends the stony stairs. The professor sits on a rock beneath the wall rising above a small cove. Sea washes the sandy shore gently. It’s late afternoon and several strollers on the promenade above talk loudly and laugh at a joke one of them has just made. Above them, a small dinosaur calls in a ringing voice, methodically searching the crown of a downy oak for an insect or two. It has a greenish back, a yellow breast and belly with a central black stripe, black crown and throat, and white cheeks: a great tit.

When he sees Vesna coming down the stairs, Professor Šaric loses his breath. He freezes, petrified, speechless.

“Something wrong?”
Vesna asks, worried at the sight of him. She wears a simple cream dress with a white cardigan thrown across her shoulders and a white shawl wound about her neck. Nothing special, nothing calculated; autumn afternoons and evenings have begun turning cool.

“Did it ever—” The professor pauses, not taking his eyes off Vesna. “Did it ever happen to you that you saw something — someone — so beautiful it’s painful? So painful it squeezes your heart and…”

For an awkward moment or two, Vesna doesn’t know what to reply. If it weren’t for the pain in the professor’s eyes, she’d take his words for simple flattery or teasing. But now … Somehow, she’s not sure things are going the way she expected them to go. How and why did something that was to be just a harmless, pleasant company — meant merely to wash away the bitterness left after weeks of fights and tears — catch her completely unawares? And does she have the right to play with an old man like that? Should she excuse herself and turn and leave?

No, that would make things even worse, hurt even more. Should she—

“Forgive me.” Professor Šaric takes Vesna by her hand and leads her from the stairs to the shore. Her feet sink, shallowly, into the soft moist sand. “I didn’t mean to worry you or anything. I do sometimes prattle.
This
is why I invited you here.”

Only now does Vesna notice the CD player that the professor has placed beneath the wall, safely away from the waves. “Maybe it will be somewhat of a disappointment to you, but a phonograph with a horn was really a bit too heavy to carry.” Vesna laughs at the professor’s joke while he presses the play key. Music spills from under the wall.
A waltz.
Vesna doesn’t recall ever having heard it before; certainly, it’s nothing she’s heard played in clubs or on the radio.

“Tchaikovsky. Some find it saccharine, but honestly, Strauss became boring to me ages ago. May I?” The professor offers Vesna his hand. She hesitates, not really knowing what to do next.

“I’m afraid I’ve never danced to this,” she admits, blushing.

“It’s easy — just let go.” The professor smiles as Vesna takes his hand. Warmth of times past streams through her palms.
Times not as past as the ones in her portfolio, but nevertheless, gone forever.
Times neither better nor worse than present, but lost, never to return. The professor takes Vesna around her waist and leads her across the shore. After several clumsy steps, Vesna’s feet catch their own rhythm and she and he begin flying across the sand, in harmony to the melody of the waltz, enthralled in the whirlwind of dance. The world around the professor and Vesna is no more. Gone are the warm afternoon and the chuckling white dinosaurs in the sky, the sea and the whispering trees. Only the two of them remain, dancers cocooned in a time of their own that will never pass…

But then the waltz
does
come to an end and the merry-go-round winds down and stops. Vesna staggers, flushed, breathless, but remaining on her feet, steadied by the professor’s hands. She bursts into joyous laughter; it’s been ages since she’s had such a good time.

“Now, take a look at the footprints, Vesna.” The professor smiles knowingly, like a teacher happy at the sight of his pupil about to grasp new knowledge, reach new levels of understanding.

~~~

They spent that entire day together,
She
and He, touring the coast and the forest, feeding on plentiful juicy shoots, drinking in the cool river. Occasionally, between morsels, shy at first and then becoming bolder and bolder, He’d touch
Her
neck with His beak. Then He tried to lick
Her
cheek — just one fleeting, flickering touch of His long tongue. At first, She wiggled away, waving
Her
powerful tail in mock warning, as if driving a boring insect away. But He was persistent. She kept evading Him, feigning annoyance. She even tried to bite Him with Her beak once, and spur Him with Her thumb spike, but
She
didn’t really mean it. He jumped aside and then approached
Her
again, licking Her and rubbing His strong body against Her side.

She moved away from Him and eyed Him from a distance, measuring Him. Then
She
turned away from Him, acting disinterested. She took a step deeper into the fresh forest, looking for something juicy to nibble on. And He followed close on
Her
heels; wherever She bit, He bit, too. As the day grew warmer, they grew closer, body next to body, feasting together.

Then He took Her even deeper into the green shade of the old forest. She let Him lead
Her
. She followed Him up the river, until they reached a sunny clearing among the tall sequoias: a remote and secret place only He knew about. She stopped at the edge of the clearing, as if waiting for Him to invite
Her
in.

The place was well-hidden from prying eyes; away from hungry jaws filled with sharp, serrated teeth. It was quiet, too. Buzzing of insects and flapping of pterosaurs’ wings were all the sounds
She
heard. It felt like just the spot to scrape a nest in the soft ground and fill it with dry leaves. It looked like just the perfect place to lay eggs and guard them closely until they hatched. He watched
Her
as She decided it was indeed an ideal place to raise offspring, to watch over them as they grew to a size when it would be safe to lead them into the hostile outside world.

That whole day, He introduced
Her
to His domain, in the forest by the sea, until the shadows grew long and the forest started sinking into dark.

And then
She
stopped and turned, following the river back to the seashore. When
She
heard the breaking waves, She ran through the shadows. And He ran after
Her
, the ground shaking as they went.

On the beach, on the very edge of the sea,
She
stopped and waited for Him to come to Her. Then
She
reared on Her hind legs. She looked at Him, a male in his prime, and He looked at
Her
, a young female ready to start a herd with Him. He reared, too, and they touched their forelimbs and started turning, instinctively, in slow circles. They turned and turned, in an ancient ritual whose meaning they didn’t understand, but that would forever seal the bond between them. They kept turning around each other, led by something primeval within them, their powerful legs leaving footprints in the sand.

They kept on turning as the large pterosaurs glided through the dusk, tracing circles above the dancing lovers, before returning to their night roosts far out on the cliffs. She and He danced, and the sea was all the music they needed. The waves sung to them, the wind fluted, the pterosaurs clapped their leathery wings. They danced the way they would dance for decades to come, the way their parents had danced, the way their children would dance as well.

The hungry roar of a meat-eater broke through the forest, but they didn’t heed it, not stopping for a moment. They were together, inseparable, strong. No predator could touch them. They danced for new generations, in harmony, as if they’d been dancing together their whole lives, as if they hadn’t met only that morning. They danced in slow, heavy-legged rhythm, two dark shapes against the sunset sky burning bright in reds and oranges and fiery gold.

And then, as night fell, under the twinkling stars, they stopped dancing, She and He, and surrendered to each other. Under his panting weight,
She
forgot Her old herd, and teeth and death and horror. Instinct led
Her
into the future, towards a large nest, with eggs and little ones that would one day grow and dance themselves to the rhythm of life.

~~~

Vesna snuggles against the professor’s chest. His gentle hand rests on her breast. The autumn nights are chilly, but the professor’s warmth spills comfortably across Vesna’s back, and she enjoys his quiet breath on her hair.

That afternoon, it had taken her time to understand.
Time to take the proportions of the animals into account, their anatomy and how they moved.
Time to accept the obvious, no matter how impossible it seemed.
But as much as her mind resisted, as much as the scientist inside whispered it could not be, in the end, there could be no doubt. Her and Šaric’s footprints on the beach, in the sand, the impressions left by their shoes … Vesna substituted them for the prints of the iguanodons’ feet in her drawings.

Many, many millions of years ago, two iguanodons danced. They didn’t just perform ancient rituals of wooing, calling and displaying, and ritualized fights that occasionally erupted into something more serious — that would be nothing more than paleontologists had assumed for decades they’d done. No, these two danced! Facing each other; holding each other by their forelimbs; turning, circling, twirling just like humans do. They danced!

Why? That, too, was demonstrated by the afternoon’s experiment. When, exalted by their discovery, Vesna embraced the professor and, not fully realizing what she was doing, kissed him. And then when they looked into each other’s eyes, fully realizing what they were doing, they kissed once again. Only to end finally, after the best dinner Vesna had ever had, in the professor’s apartment, in his bed, in a hot, sweaty, panting embrace that made Vesna forever change her opinion of elderly gentlemen.

“You don’t sleep?” The professor’s question is a whisper in her ear. He starts rubbing himself gently against her hip, and the young woman realizes with joy that the night is by no means over yet.

“Something’s troubling me.” Somewhere in the corner of her mind, Vesna wonders why she must stubbornly — usually with the same disastrous results — analyse every relationship she’s
in?
Why can’t she simply let go, all the way, without holding back? Why can’t she listen to her heart when it whispers to her she’s finally found what she was looking for?

“What?” The professor kisses Vesna’s cheek, his hand caressing her breast, teasing her, making her entire body tremble with desire. Their breathing growing faster, Vesna turns to face him and look him in the eyes. They kiss and kiss and kiss some more, until she opens to him, spreads her legs, breathless, surrendering to the passion, moaning as his lips close over her nipple and his moustache tickles the soft skin. And, as the professor penetrates her in slow thrusts, Vesna thanks two ancient behemoths that helped her — eons after they
died,
millions of years after their species went extinct — to find a new love.

And later, much later, feeling cozy and fulfilled, as she ruffles the professor’s sweaty hair and places a gentle kiss on his forehead, she asks, “The iguanodons. Who played them their waltz?”

~~~

ALEKSANDAR ŽILJAK was born in Zagreb, Croatia, in 1963. He graduated from Electrotechnical Faculty in Zagreb and earned his Master of Computer Sciences degree in 1990. He’s a freelance illustrating artist, specializing in wildlife, but also doing science fiction.
      

He also writes science fiction/fantasy/horror stories. He has published two story collections, Slijepe ptice (Blind Birds — 2003) and Božja vu ica (The Divine She-wolf — 2010), and a book on cryptozoology. He has published his stories and texts all over the world. He’s also an editor.

Aleksandar Žiljak has won six SFERA Awards for his science fiction writing, art and editorial work.

John doted on the elite French touring car he’d devoted much of his time to restoring. Can his dead wife teach him there are other things worthy of his attention too?

THE RESTORATION MAN

by
Simon John Cox

John doesn’t stay long at the wake.

It’s held upstairs at the Dun Tap, round the corner from the crematorium; just trestle tables and sandwiches and a hundred quid behind the bar for the mourners, who flock in after the service and croak their grief like ravens. He arrives last, circulates amongst them beneath heavy beams that smell of dust: lovely service, very respectful, it’s what she would have wanted. Someone gives him a beer. It feels heavy, and he drinks it too quickly. He leaves as soon as he feels that etiquette will allow.

“Still in shock, I expect,” says a steel-haired aunt, and she smiles briefly after him before returning to the carcass of the buffet.

At home, in the house where they lived, he is overcome by a feeling that she is nearby. Every time he walks into a room he feels as though she has just left it, senses that she is in the very next room, tells
himself
that if he can only get in there before she leaves …