She’d never seen a cheetah or leopard, not in person. Thomas had shown her a book of cats on the plane and she remembered the cheetah, a sleek, long-legged creature with a nipped waist and enormous amber eyes in a relatively small, dainty face.
“How about the barking noise? I heard that one a little while ago. It doesn’t really sound like a dog, though.”
“That’s a jackal.” Kohana shifted his hip to the rail, folding the carpet over his arm so he could cup his hands to his mouth. The imitation made her smile; then he shifted to the rumbling, hoarser cat call which earned a response, one of the cats echoing him.
“So does this mean the leopard who wants to mate will come find you?”
Kohana snorted. “For all that a cat in rut can be a bit brainless, I think he’s got more sense than that.”
“Do another one.”
His eyes warmed on her, pleased with her enthusiasm, and he gave her a succession of calls. It worked like a dog howling, setting off a chain reaction. The catcalls from the night got more varied and diverse, a natural music that made her rise and put her hands on the rail, cocking her head to take in the song. As she did, she was amazed to feel the touch of the night close around her, a real sense of all the things moving and part of that darkness, the way nature was supposed to be. The simple pleasure gave her some reassurance. As well as laughter, when the radio at his hip beeped and Chumani’s irritated voice came through.
“Do you mind, mato? You’re getting everyone down here worked up with your racket.”
“No man wants a shrew, pahin.”
“Good thing I don’t want the nuisance of a man, then. Shut it or I’ll come make you sorry.”
Kohana grunted. “You’re all talk on the radio, skinny girl.” But when he released the button, he cocked a brow at Elisa. “They’re doing feeding and exams down at the enclosure.”
“What’s m-mato, and the other word?”
“Mato is bear, and pahin is porcupine. We’ll call you tuxmagha. Bee.”
Elisa smiled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause a problem.”
“Far as I can tell, you didn’t.” He gave her a wink. “Keeps them on their toes.”
“Does he rehabilitate jackals as well?”
“Not exactly. Mal and the people who helped him set up this place knew they needed an environment similar to that of the different cats, to help with their rehab. We have meat flown in for those in the habitat, and to supplement the ones learning to hunt, but we also have small herds of gazelle, wildebeest and other game. Since cats don’t eat everything, and because we’re trying to make it as close to what they’ll experience in the wild, he also brought in the smaller scavengers. Jackals and the like. There’s a zoologist on the mainland who spent a lot of time helping him know what would work and what wouldn’t.”
“Extraordinary.” She thought about the drive. Hazy, tired and flustered as she’d been, she did remember some details. “The island has very different terrain. Last night, it was like crossing through entirely different countries.”
“Mmm.” Kohana’s benign expression turned into a scowl. “Yeah. He worked that out with someone, too. Someone he shouldn’t be tangling with.”
Someone a vampire should avoid? Kohana didn’t linger on that curious statement, though. He pointed to the sky instead. “Can you see that many stars back in Australia?”
“They’re arranged a bit differently, but it’s a lovely new view of it.”
“We’re in the Northern hemisphere,” the Indian said. “Some things you see from one side, you don’t see from the other.”
Nodding, Elisa turned her face back up to the sky. “I guess I’ve been distracted by so many other things, I haven’t appreciated what it is to be traveling half a world away from everything I’ve ever known. I’ve never been much of anywhere. Lady Constance met me in Perth, and sent me to school in Adelaide. And of course I went to Darwin to help Lady Danny and Dev when we first got the children.”
“Fledglings,” Kohana reminded her helpfully. “He’s right about that part. Plus, it’s best not to rile a vampire for no reason.”
“No worries. That part I do know.” She considered the sky again. “There’s the Milky Way. We can see that one, though it looks a bit dimmer here.”
“The Tsalagi, the Cherokee, call it ‘the place where the dog ran.’” Kohana slanted her a glance. She wondered if he spent a lot of time here by himself, which made him so willing to talk to her, or if he’d been instructed to keep her distracted, though Mal hadn’t really projected such sensitivity. He might be merely gathering impressions to share with Mal later, but if so, she could only be herself. Plus, she was doing just as much information gathering herself.
“Why do they call it that?”
“That’s a Tsalagi story. I’ll tell you a proper Lakota story, which is much better.”
She gave a mock snort. “Oh really? Better than a story about the Milky Way?”
His eyes creased, showing his enjoyment of her. “Yes, young smart mouth. It’s a story about the creation of the world. There was another world before this one.” When Kohana looked out at the night, at the beauty of the darkened island, she saw something in his face that quieted her. “But people didn’t act as they should in that world, so the Great Spirit sang and it rained. The more he sang, the harder it rained, until the whole earth was flooded and nearly everyone drowned, swept away by his disappointment. However, Crow came to the Great Spirit and asked to please give him a place to rest his feet. The Great Spirit relented and decided to create a new world. He sent four animals who could swim into deep water to get him creation clay. Three of them failed, but Turtle succeeded, bringing back the clay that became the land. The Great Spirit cried over what had been lost, and the rivers and streams formed from his tears. He populated the new earth with animals from his pipe bag, and then, after much deliberation, he took red, white, black and yellow earth and made people again. He gave the people his sacred pipe and told them all would be well if living things learned to live in harmony. But if they made it bad and ugly again, it would once again be destroyed.”
As he glanced toward her, she showed her appreciation with a curve of her lips. “Dev would like you. He tells Aboriginal stories, because he has their blood. What kind of Indian is Mr. Malachi?”
“His mother was Cherokee; his father was a white trapper. But Mal doesn’t tell Tsalagi stories, or speak the language.”
“He’s never learned?” she ventured.
“I never said that. I said he doesn’t speak it. Doesn’t tell the old stories.”
Since Mal would hardly talk to her about the children, let alone something personal about himself, she wondered why she heard a warning in Kohana’s voice.
“He hired all Indians to work here. So he must feel some connection.”
Kohana made a rather irritable grunt. “That’s a story for him to tell. Mal’s put all of himself into this. Too much. You two may have more in common than you know.”
Reclaiming his crutch, he hopped back toward the door. She noted he’d left a stack of bedding on the arm of the couch. “Is that for the guest quarters?”
“No. I expect you and Thomas don’t need a linen change yet. Unlike some other people who live here, I assume you don’t fall into your bed at dawn still wearing your dirty clothes, and get leaves and dirt on the sheets.”
Elisa bit back a smile. “No, I try to wash off a bit before bedtime.”
“We might as well give him a hole in the backyard,” Kohana snorted. “He wouldn’t notice the difference, and I wouldn’t have to keep it clean.”
“I’m about done with the windows. Would you like me to take it to his room and change them out?”
“Be happy to let you do that.” He waved her in that direction. “Downstairs, last bedroom at the end of the hallway. I usually straighten up a little in there, but don’t get too fussy about it. He won’t be able to find anything and he’ll bitch about it for half the night.”
Nodding, she returned her window-cleaning supplies to the supply closet as he disappeared around the corner, headed back to the kitchen area. He’d told her he started cooking for the staff just before midnight to give them a good supper break, so she’d do the linens and then come back to help. She was pleased she’d worked hard enough that her muscles were aching. Fatigue dogged her all the time now, but this felt like a physical tiredness, not a stress-caused one, and that was an improvement, to her way of thinking. While she wished Mal had taken her with him, it was quiet here. She liked it, and Kohana’s company. Liked not being the center of so many sympathetic or tsking countenances. She liked those new sounds in the night, the idea she might see things she’d never seen before.
Kohana seemed to trust her well enough, though it was probably because she’d come from Lady Danny’s household versus any merit of her own. Still, she’d take the opening it provided. There were puzzles here to engage her interest, like Kohana’s cryptic comments about the island and Mal’s dedication to it.
The other doors along the wide corridor downstairs held guest bedrooms. They were a bit nicer than what was provided for the humans on the second level, but not by much. The walls were stone, as were the floors, giving a castle impression to her fanciful imagination. The gaslight sconces added to the feeling, casting dim, shadowed light across the rock. They illuminated drawings on the wall, or rather, one big drawing. A mural of cats.
They weren’t polished, not like a painting in a museum, yet there was a rough realism to them, reminding her of the Aboriginal drawings one came upon in caves in the Outback. It was apparent the mural had been done over time, no real plan for it, as if the artist was merely idling away spare time, drawing what captured his imagination. For instance, there was a picture of a lion lying down, but a domestic cat’s tail lay over one paw, the cat looking over his shoulder and up at the lion with typical feline disdain. Cats of myriad species played, hunted, leaped, slept . . .