Broken (24 page)

"A black panther!"

I had just landed on the asphalt from the tall
building. I froze, turned my head and saw a woman standing on the sidewalk in
front of a closed store. She was pointing at me while screaming. A few seconds
later more had joined her. They were shouting and pointing at me. Flashes were
lightening as they took my picture.

"A real live black panther," one said.

"It's a black jaguar," another man said.
"Don't go too close to it. A real savage predator, that's what it is.
It’ll eat you alive."

I snarled as one man tried to impress the rest by
walking really close to me. He jumped back with a small shriek. More flashes
lit up in the dark as they took pictures of me looking aggressively at the man.

I turned my back on them and ran like the wind knowing
that the news of a jaguar scaring the tourists would be on the front page of
the local papers in the morning. And soon the swamps would be invaded by
hunters with the insatiable thirst for killing us.

I longed to be with her
again and ran towards the spot inside the Twelve Mile Swamps where I usually
found her at this time of night. The anticipation me shiver and drove me to run
even faster. I pictured her there waiting for me. I happily imagined how she
expected me to jump out and show my glowing blue eyes in the darkness at any
moment now. I was late. The incident with the tourists had slowed me down and
at first I thought that was why she wasn't there when I arrived. I ran and
leaped over a huge bush but found the clearing completely empty. I stopped and
turned to see if she would appear from behind me or maybe she was waiting in
the top of the tree. I tried to catch her scent which normally led me directly
to her if I lost track of her during our hunt. But I caught nothing. Only an
old scent from the day before when we had made love in that exact clearing.
Where was she? Had she not been able to restrain her hunger any longer and
therefore went out to hunt on her own?

I roared loudly to make my presence known to her and
all other animals nearby. It caused a flock of birds to take off from a
treetop. I stared at them as they made the sky cloudy for a short while before
they were all gone. I roared again and heard animals flee from bushes and hide
in the water. I looked with my night vision for her paw prints to see if I
could figure out in which direction she could have gone. But there were no new
prints. The heavy rain earlier that day had washed the ground clean of any old
ones. My heart was racing and I felt sick. Where could she be? I leaped onto a
branch and jumped to another one higher up until I was as high in the tree as I
could possibly go considering my weight. From my high place I could see far,
but I didn't see her. Not a trace. I jumped down to the ground and started
smelling my way, running through the swamps searching, to try and find her
track. If she had been there she must have eaten something. I looked for tracks
indicating that she had run here, or an animal had been chased here. I picked
up the scent of a half-eaten prey but recognized it as one we both had eaten
the night before. The stench of decay made me feel worse. Birds were picking in
it, worms and maggots were crawling all over it. My heart stood still for a
second. If I couldn't find her, did that mean that she hadn't been there? Could
she be on her way? Maybe she was back at the clearing now waiting for me?

The hope gave me new energy and I ran towards the
clearing again hoping, dreaming that she would be waiting for me there, but as
stormed in there I found it just as horribly empty as earlier. It screamed at
me.

No, something had to be very wrong. Not knowing what
else to do I searched for her in the swamps all night, roaring my sorrow into
the stillness of the night, making everything, every creature flee from my
distress. I didn't eat anything all night and as sunrise approached I ran back
home, heartbroken, devastated, wondering what could possibly have kept her
away? She had been hunting these swamps every night since she was sixteen. It
was in her blood, in her nature to do so. She needed it more than anything.
Nothing could ever hold her back.

Was it because of me?

Next morning the St. Augustine
Report
was packed with pictures of me.
The black jaguar which acted hostile towards the tourists last night. My
picture filled half of the front page. People were scared, the article said. It
was bad for tourism to have a predator like that running around. I sighed and
tried to hide the paper when William and Sarah entered the kitchen. I sipped my
coffee. Sarah looked at me.

"Horrible with all these wild animals we have
living up there in the swamps," she said and pointed at the paper curled
up in my hand. "They should close that place up so the public couldn't get
in and the creatures couldn't get out. I bet this one also lives in there like
the one we had ten years ago. Remember that, doctor? The one that everybody all
of a sudden wanted to hunt down. Poor creature. Wonder what ever happened to
it. Did someone manage to shoot it? Well better off that way. Better the animal
than some child getting hurt, am I right?"

I smiled and nodded along wondering how many hunters
would be out there the next days. They would come from everywhere once the news
spread. It was going to be hell.

"I do think I saw that black jaguar the other day
out in the streets come to think of it," Sarah continued.

I almost choked in my coffee. "You what?"

Sarah turned and looked at me. "The other night
when the doctor had been gone all day I couldn't sleep so I sat by the window
and did some of my sewing while worrying where the good doctor might be. By
sunrise in the light from one of the streetlamps I could have sworn I saw what
I thought was a really big cat. Black as the night and with shining blue eyes.
But before I could get out of my chair and stand up to see better it was gone.
I thought that was what had broken into the house when I heard the sounds from
downstairs. That's why I brought my gun."

I scoffed while my heart was beating fast in my chest.
"Probably just a hallucination from sleep deprivation," I said trying
to sound convincing. "You worry too much, Sarah. It's not healthy for the
body to not get enough sleep. It's bad for the heart."

Sarah snorted. "Look who is talking," she
said.

I put a finger on my lips to ask her to stop and keep
quiet. William was listening to us and I didn't want him to know that I was
often out all night. Sarah thought I was out drinking so that was probably what
she was implying. It was enough that he constantly worried about his mother.

"Come on, William. I'll take you to school,"
I said and grabbed his lunch bag.

I called Heather's
parents from my office. Mrs. Kirk came to the phone.

"Good morning dear Chris. Any news?" Her
voice sounded worn and tired. A sadness had come into it.

"I am actually calling you to ask you the same
question," I said with a sigh. "I really need to find Heather."

"Well maybe if you give her some time ..."

"I am afraid she doesn't have much time. If she’s
not taking her medicine the lung infection will kill her. If you know anything
about where she might be, then it is of the greatest importance that you tell
me."

"We wouldn't keep that from you, Chris. You know
me better than that," said Mrs. Kirk. "You sound almost like her
father. He thinks I know where she is and just won't tell him either." She
snorted in the other end and I could picture how she was shaking her head the
way she always did when she was upset.

I exhaled deeply. "I know. It's just that I
thought ... well maybe she told you to not tell me where she was. That's all.
It's killing me that I don't know where she is. And William ... he is asking
for her. He wants to see her. He misses her," I said.

I paused and listened for a little while. I tried to
make the voices in my head quieter and searched to see if I could distinguish
one from the others. I could. I succeeded in finding Mrs. Kirk's voice among
the many. Then I did something I am not very proud of. I entered Mrs. Kirk's
mind and listened in on her thoughts for a little. She was telling me the
truth. She really didn't know where her daughter was, I concluded after a
while. I hurried out again feeling awful for having invaded her privacy like that
without asking for her permission and for not trusting her.

"Of course he does. But we need to give her time.
That's all we can do now. She'll come back to us. I am sure she will."

Her words weren't very convincing.

I put the phone down and
stared out the window. I could hear the cicadas singing happily outside. I
wondered about
Aiyana
. Why she hadn't come last
night. I longed to be with her, every fiber in my body craved for her. I feared
going out there again tonight only to find the clearing empty. For the first
time I dreaded the transformation. I never wanted to feel the way I had last
night again. I was petrified that she had left me and decided never to come
again. Did she regret the day we spent together? The love making? Had she felt
remorse afterwards? Was she overwhelmed with guilt and shame? It was wrong. I
knew that. She was still a married woman. Knowing
Aiyana
,
I knew she probably felt guilty even if he did treat her poorly. And now she
had done to Michael exactly what he had always been afraid she would do. Now
she was exactly as bad as he had always told her she was.

I touched the window with my palm and felt the heat
from outside. It was October and still almost ninety degrees. How I loved the
big outdoors. Ever since I had become part of nature and it had become a part
of me I felt miserable whenever I was indoors. I longed for the swamps and
forests. I desired to be out in the open. If it wasn't for William I am sure I
would have chosen to stay out there and never go back to civilization again. I
had no need for human belongings or desires. I didn't want prestige or a title
to my name. I wanted to hunt. I wanted to make raw love on the soil of the
forest, I wanted to eat, sleep and make love. That was all I needed really.
That and her
. I exhaled and pictured her in front of me. I
tried to hear her thoughts but couldn't find them. Had she abandoned me for the
sake of her family? I couldn't blame her if she had. It was after all the right
thing. But love doesn't follow rules, I thought to myself.
 
It doesn't answer to regulations. Love
just is and it won't go away just because it's not the right thing to do.

I tried to forget about
Aiyana
for a while and wondered instead what to do about Heather. I had no idea how to
find her but at the same time I had no idea what to do if I did? I hadn't yet
decided what to do. I didn't know if it would even work, if I could heal her or
not. The chances were minimal. I wanted desperately to be able to discuss this
matter with
Aiyana
, but I had to respect her wishes.
If she had decided she needed to stay away from me in order to take care of her
family, then I had to respect that and leave her alone, even if it broke my
heart to do so. So I couldn't turn to her. But I needed someone who could
enlighten me. Someone who knew the fountain better than anyone else.

Suddenly I knew just who to turn to.

Chapter 29

The rocking chair on
the
porch was still moving looking like someone has just left it but now it had a
companion. A small spinning top was dancing next to it, causing me to chuckle
as I walked up the stairs to the big house on the corner of the street.
Everything looked the same. The house hadn’t aged a day during the ten years
since I had last been there. The rows of white fluted columns on the front looked
exactly the same, so did the majestic staircase leading to the front door in
oak and the enormous windows. The garden and the topiaries, the deep wells of
flowers, the smooth and perfect lawn, jets of water, grapes hanging from the
trees and several statues of beautiful mythological women dancing in a circle.
I quite enjoyed this little vacuum of time and wondered if it was the same for
the people inside.

Halona
opened the door. As always she did it without touching it. Next to her shoulder
floated a book. She had grown. I was startled. She was no longer that little
girl I had known ten years ago. She was now a full grown beautiful young woman.
She was almost as stunning as her older sister even if she was lankier. Her
gracious movements reminded me of the first time I had met
Aiyana
.

Halona
smiled widely when she saw me. A voice spoke from behind her.