Kanana Read online

  “Then, how come you agreed to dine with me?”

  “You did ask, didn’t you Mr. Goode?”

  * * * * *

  The following morning found me again in the pool below the waterfall. This time when I emerged, I felt much more refreshed. Being able to shave before bathing, and being able to step into clean clothes afterward, did much for my spirit and my disposition. Kanana had not been present when I woke, but she arrived shortly after my swim, carrying an egg the size of a bowling ball. She held it up and grinned.

  “Breakfast,” I said.

  “Breakfast,” she confirmed.

  We ate and she, as she had on previous occasions, quizzed me on the names of everything within sight. At one point she became a little testy when I offered the same word, “plant,” for several different varieties of vegetation. She knew far better than I that each was unique and was to be used for specific purposes—such as the soap plants and whatever herbs she had used to doctor me.

  “Come,” she said when we had finished breaking our fast. “See Giwa.”

  We started down the jungle path, away from the great rock fortress and the small stream. Without Kanana, I would have become hopelessly lost beneath the high canopy. All I knew was that we were traveling generally northward. Great vines and gigantic leaves reached out from everywhere, but Kanana easily navigated through the foliage, finding game trails where I had noticed nothing but unbroken forest. As we walked, she looked back over her shoulder and encouraged me to help her build her burgeoning vocabulary. It expanded so rapidly that I was sure it was only reemerging from some hidden recesses of her brain, and not being learned for the first time.

  After a little more than an hour, we came to the edge of the jungle and stepped out onto a vast savannah that stretched as far as the eye could see. While I was sure the forest was full of life, for the most part it was hidden. Here the animals were on full display. Vast herds of creatures roamed, eating grass. Most of them resembled the ungulates of Africa, though there were some differences. I recognized gnus, antelope, and deer, but in almost every case they were much larger than any similar beasts that I had ever seen. Not fifty feet away was a pair of large spotted cats with two cubs. They were slightly larger than African leopards, though nowhere near the size of the lion that Kanana called Kawunsa. They had long saber-like teeth extending from their upper jaws.

  I glanced at the jungle girl to see how she would react to the presence of the predators. She gave them little notice. Instead she cupped her hands around her mouth and blowing air through her lips, created a noise that mimicked the trumpeting of an elephant. Many of the closest grazing animals looked up, and the Elizagaean leopards slowly began to move away. She trumpeted again, and this time was answered from the forest far off to the right. A minute later, the foliage parted and out stepped a tremendous beast.

  It was an elephant, though one such as I had never seen before. Possessing the high crown and small ears of the Indian elephant, it was much larger than it or its African cousin. Standing thirteen feet tall, it had to weigh in at more than ten or eleven tons. Spiraling out in front of it were two massive tusks, each more than fifteen feet in length. It paused; looking left and right, then raised its trunk into the air. Kanana called again, and the monstrous pachyderm ran toward us at a speed that I would have expected impossible for something of this size not powered by steam.

  I was more than ready to turn and run back into the protection of the trees, but Kanana stood her ground, holding one hand up in greeting. The elephant ran right up, only just stopping before trampling her. Then, reaching out with its long proboscis, it gently caressed her outstretched arm and then the rest of her. The girl spoke gentle words to the beast and then turned to me.

  “Giwa.” She waved me toward them. “Come. Let Giwa smell.”

  I stepped hesitantly forward. The long sinuous appendage ran lightly over me from head to foot and back again. Then it seemed as if Giwa was satisfied. He lowered his great head and Kanana stepped up onto his massive tusk. As the elephant gave a single mighty toss, she was flung through the air to land on the vast bristly back. Seconds later, from her spot high atop the monster’s back, she called to me.

  “Come, Henry Goode.”

  The elephant lowered its tusk again, and I stepped onto it. Before I knew it, I too was flying through the air. If it hadn’t been for Kanana, grabbing me and guiding me with unnatural strength to a spot just behind her, I am sure that I would have found myself prostrate on the ground. But I wasn’t. I was sitting comfortably atop the largest animal that I had ever seen.

  “Buwa Giwa!” called Kanana, and the giant started off across the grassy plain.

  Chapter Six: A Jungle Hideaway

  Gertrude Quincy stopped at my desk and peeled off her gloves. She waited impatiently while I pretended to finish some paperwork that was in reality a shipping report from the previous day.

  “Good day, Miss Quincy,” I smiled, at last looking up.

  She didn’t look as though she was having a good day. Her pretty face was screwed into a frown. She twisted the gloves in her hand as though she was twisting the neck of a small animal.

  “Mr. Goode…” she started and then paused.

  “Yes?”

  “Would you care to have dinner with me this evening.”

  “It would be my privilege.”

  Something akin to a smile appeared at the corners of her mouth.

  “You may pick me up at seven.” She turned and walked briskly from the offices of Otis and Quincy Shipping.

  “What was that all about, I wonder,” I said, mostly to myself.

  “Haven’t you heard?” asked Martin from the other side of his desk. He casually flipped his fountain pen across the desk, trying to land it in the ink well, but missed.

  “Heard what?”

  “They sent young Otis to Paris, and word just came back that he married some French girl.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. Seems they had to get married quickly as she came down with a bad case of gestation.”

  “That’s fortunate.”

  “It wasn’t fortunate for young Otis,” he said.

  “No, but it’s fortunate for me.”

  “Yes, it’s fortunate for you… if you like that sort of thing.”

  * * * * *

  The swinging gate of the gigantic elephant, as it moved across the great plain, mimicked the motion of a small boat on the ocean. It was almost hypnotizing. I watched the many animals that we passed by. Having been to Africa, I was no stranger to great herds of herbivores moving as one across the grassy landscape, but here I was able to view them from much closer than I had ever been before. The huge deer, standing seven feet tall at the shoulder, but with antlers spanning twelve feet; gnus, almost identical to their African cousins except for their black fur; bison with horns that would have made any Texas longhorn envious; and a species of zebra that had stripes only around its face and front shoulders—all of these creatures allowed the pachyderm to approach much closer than they would have a walking human. I saw more of the saber tooth cats, rhinoceros with no horn at all, brightly colored ostriches, and armadillos the size of a kitchen table. It was an amazing expedition, but one can only stay amazed for so long. Eventually, between the general fatigue that I experienced, and the motion of my mount, I was lulled into a drowse.

  “Henry Goode,” said Kanana.

  I started awake.

  “It is time to say goodbye to Giwa.”

  Kanana slipped a leg over the great beast’s shoulder and slipped to the ground. Fortunately I didn’t have to perform the same acrobatics. The elephant lowered itself just as it had done when we climbed aboard, and though it was still quite a drop, I managed it, sliding down its side. Giving us a parting sniff with its trunk, Giwa turned and walked off across the savannah.

  “Are we back home?” I asked, looking around.

  “No no, Henry Goode. We are… many far away.”

  “Wh
y did you send your elephant away then?”

  “Giwa not… happy?” Kanana looked for my confirmation of the word. I nodded.

  “Giwa not happy here.”

  “This looks very much like the rest of the grassland to me,” I conceded. “More jungle off in that direction.”

  “Smell,” she ordered.

  I took a deep breath but couldn’t smell anything notable.

  “What am I smelling?”

  “Smell zuhu.”

  “Doesn’t zuhu mean lion?”

  A tremendous roar suddenly reverberated through the air, into my skin, and right down my spine. Before I had realized what was happening, a pair of monstrous lions jumped out of the high grass, right at Kanana. I was frozen in place, but my companion wasn’t. With an equally ferocious roar of her own, she leapt forward, grasping one of the beasts around the middle, and knocking it from the air. I suddenly remembered that I had a pistol and pulled it out, but by that time the girl and the two lions were one gigantic, growling pile. As I looked for a target amid the furry mess, the jungle girl let loose with a peel of laughter. Jumping to her feet, she wrapped an arm around each of the great black-maned heads.

  “Henry Goode,” she called. “These are Kanusa and Katusa. They are Kanana’s… brothers.”

  I sucked in a mouthful of air, only now realizing that I had been holding my breath. Then I realized that all around me were lions—maybe twenty of them, ranging in size from the two enormous males that now nosed Kanana’s stomach to females only slightly smaller, to a number of yearlings, any one of whom would have been a match for me. None of them made a threatening move toward me, so I stuffed my pistol back in its holster and checked my pants to make sure I hadn’t soiled myself.

  After a few minutes roughhousing with the two big lions, Kanana stepped back to me, and grabbing me by the elbow, led me away from the pride. We walked quickly but surely from the area occupied by the tawny cats, and toward the line of trees in the distance.

  “Why are we leaving?” I asked.

  “Zuhu… lions… they not eat Henry Goode…” She frowned with the effort of forming a sentence. “Kanana here… lions not eat Henry Goode.”

  “And don’t think that I don’t appreciate that,” I said, and when she obviously didn’t follow my meaning, I just said, “that’s good.”

  “Yes. Good. But Henry is not lion. If Kanana…”

  “Leave?” I offered.

  “If Kanana leave, lions forget… eat Henry.”

  “And that would not be good,” I said, “for me, or probably for the lions either.”

  “Come,” she said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “No talking. Talking hard.”

  I followed along, dutifully and in silence, as we crossed the grassland to the edge of the forest beyond. Unlike when we were riding Giwa, the animals for the most part stayed away. They were still easy to spot in the distance though, and I saw several deer, both large and small, as well as elephants of Giwa’s species.

  We had just reached the edge of the jungle when my companion stopped and looked up into the forest canopy. Following her gaze, I beheld a wondrous sight. A great tree house had been built amid a truly massive capirona tree. It consisted of at least three separate rooms, each with its own roof made of large leaves. Leading up to the tree house was a ladder formed by a series of pegs driven into the tree trunk.

  Before I had time to observe any more about it, a cacophony of shrieking cries rained down upon us from above, followed by a hail of twigs, fruit, and assorted small objects. A tribe of large monkeys was using the tree house as a base and apparently didn’t want to be disturbed by visitors. A mighty leap took Kanana halfway up the ladder and seconds later she was scrambling to the top, the entire way making the most ferocious growls. Monkeys went flying in every direction as they scrambled to get away from her. She chased after a few, but none wanted much to do with a human-shaped creature with the cry of a lion.

  She looked down at me from the largest room, her face covered with a large grin for just a moment and then suddenly by wide eyes and open mouth. Then she launched her knife right toward me. I ducked and felt it whiz past my head. Half a second later, the girl launched herself all the way from the treetop to right beside me. I expected some kind of attack, but she just grasped my shoulders as if ascertaining for herself that I was all right. Then she pointed toward the ground, where her knife was imbedded in the head of a very large snake.

  “Danger,” she said. “Henry Goode hungry?”

  She cut off the snake’s head and buried it, and then wrapping the rest of the serpent around her neck, she climbed back up the tree. This time I quickly followed her. The tree house was even more amazing up close than it had been viewed from the ground. The large room, in which I now found myself, had been designed as a living room or parlor, with a small fireplace of stones lined with a piece of sheet metal. The other two rooms were a bedroom and a shower, the former having two large mattresses of grass and leaves, and the latter a suspended water tank above a grated floor.

  The monkeys had left a mess of the entire place, so Kanana and I spent the next two hours cleaning up. This included dumping all the grasses and leaves that were used as bedding and bringing in fresh materials for that purpose. When everything was put back into order, Kanana started a fire in the fireplace, and then gutted the snake and placed it on a spit over the flames.

  “Whose house is this?” I wondered.

  “Kanana’s.”

  “Did you build it all by yourself?”

  “Sintoyana build. See.” She pointed to the several nearby trees.

  Though the sun was setting, it was still easy to make out the details of the forest. Tree houses could indeed be seen on several other large capironas, but all of them were in bad repair, half fallen from their original sites.

  “If the Sintoyana built these houses, where are they now?”

  “They… leave.”

  “Well, that explains it,” I thought.

  When the snake had become blackened and stiff, Kanana pronounced it done and removed it from the fire. We used our knives to cut up the portions, but it still required a great deal of patience to eat it without swallowing the many tiny bones. It didn’t taste quite like anything I had ever eaten before—certainly not chicken, which is what they always say about eating something strange.

  By the time we had finished, the sun had only just gone down, but I was exhausted. I crawled off to the other room, which was connected by a wooden causeway, and I climbed into the recently refurbished bed. I was asleep almost immediately. I must have slept fairly late, because the sun was shining down brightly when I woke.

  I looked at the other bed and was surprised to find Kanana lying there. She was awake and watching me. Without a word, she crawled from her bed, almost onto mine. Turning around, she knelt down and pointed her naked, and I might as well say, perfect bottom right toward me. I didn’t move.

  “Henry Goode,” she said, turning to look at me. “Mate Kanana… make baby.”

  Chapter Seven: Peril on the Riverbank

  I was literally stunned to immobility. I thought back to my life in Boston and my whirlwind courtship. Everything is relative—is it not? Even among the primitive people that I had met in Africa, Asia, and here in Elizagaea, one did not jump into the act of procreation without some small token ceremony or ritual. The jungle girl looked over her shoulder at me, watching for a moment, and the frowned.

  “Henry not know mate?”

  “Oh, I know what to do,” I said, just as I remembered that movement was still a part of my skill set.

  I stood up, stepped around her, and taking her by the shoulders, lifted her up to stand in front of me.

  “We’re not animals. We’re people. We don’t do it like that.”

  “Kanana is lion.”

  “No. Kanana is a girl.”

  “Henry is girl,” she said. “Kanana is lion.”

  “Henry is a man,”
I corrected, “and Kanana is a girl… no, a woman. Men and women don’t behave that way. They have to take their time and get to know each other. Then they make a commitment to one another—they promise to help one another. They love one another.”

  “Henry show,” she said.

  She stood there, so beautiful and for all practical purposes, naked. Her eyes, so full of innocence and curiosity, looked up into mine. And as I had told Kanana, Henry is a man. He is certainly no saint. I pulled her to me and crushed her mouth to mine. I feasted on her lips as my hands ran from her face to her shoulders, and I could feel her arms snaking around my body and pulling me closer to her lithe, muscular form. Regaining control of myself, I pulled back and looked at her. She stared up at me, her lips parted, panting.

  “Henry show again.”

  I kissed her again, this time with more control, before stepping away. I turned away so that I wouldn’t be further temped.

  “Is there a place nearby to wash?” I asked.

  “Yes. Come.”

  We climbed down and trekked through the woods about half a mile before coming to a small stream. It was barely a trickle, certainly not enough to bath in, but I could hear running water a little further on.

  “Is there a river?” I asked, pointing.

  “River not good,” said Kanana, and then she stretched her arms out and made a scissors motion with them.

  “Crocodiles?”

  “Croc-o-diles. Crocodiles eat Henry.”

  “What about you? Won’t they eat you too?”

  “No. Kanana is lion.” To add emphasis to her statement, she once again gave a throaty and very realistic lion’s roar.

  Kanana started gathering large stones and placing them in the path of the stream, and as soon as I realized what she was doing, I followed suit. Soon we had dammed up the little trickle and made a small pool. It wasn’t more than eight inches deep at most, but it allowed us to sit and bathe. The jungle girl was finished first, having been already really naked. I had never been overly shy, so I quickly disrobed and washed myself. By the time I was clean and dried and had begun to dress, I noticed that my companion was gone.