Annotated: cryptozoic wildlife of Cresta Alta

DUNCAN

I hope these notes find you well. I dare not trust these eyes to review my own work, and though I have only landed in Cresta Alta this morning and by the time you read this I will be back in the states, I am eager to hear from you. I hold no other mind as equal among the faculty, current or former. The university is lucky to have you, as am I.

Much to report already. Much. But I promise to keep it clean and precise (unlike the Board). Jose met Gully and I at the runway after a slick landing—it rains here as much as you remember—and portered us about the coast. Cresta Alta is as much a place of contrast as before. The edge of the city remains indecipherable, a line drawn and redrawn while jungle and city skirmish for footing. Orchids unfurl to swallow sun and drizzle while bromeliads still spice the trailside in yellow-and-orange dragon tongues. Oh, how I’ve forgotten! The jungle is as Edenic as it is seductive with its greens (you know what I mean), and the city has buildings taller than the ridge now—and a McDonald’s. I didn’t believe it either.

I hesitate to confirm our first sighting, though I am giddy writing the words. First sighting! It was east of the ridge. An old volcanic flow. Thick orchid growth. I saw her wings through a cross-hatching of branches. Jose is a skeptical witness, but I’d bet my pension she was our bird. I would have clipped a photo if Gully hadn’t fumbled the camera lens. His mother had promised he knew how to use it.

Next time. Our luck seems good so far.

We established camp not far from there. I will attach pictures.

PS: The diner still stands. I ordered a slice of rhubarb pie, thinking of you. Matilda isn’t owner anymore, I’m told, but the waitress is strangely familiar. I tipped her well.

DAY TWO

No further sightings. We ventured deeper into the ridgeback and set up FLIR cams to track thermal, but she evades us. Jose said these birds don’t like white folks. I doubt his theory.

Found bone samples in two different scat deposits. Tiny, hollow bones—avian femur fragments, I suspect, and the right size for our bird. Will send scat in for testing.

Gully burned dinner. Fifteen years old and he doesn’t know how to warm up slop from a can.

Another diner night. The waitress was there. She didn’t say hello, but she wanted to; I caught her looking at us more than once. The unnamable recollection is uncanny. Young. Five-two maybe. Full cheeks freckled like thrush eggs. Her head moves before her eyes do.

DAY THREE

Visited our old research outpost today. Jose says it’s gone vacant and gutted for seven years. It’s a tourism informational hub now. They still have trouble with monkeys destroying the shingles. I asked. I would do just about anything for the funding you and I had then.

DAY FIVE

A storm washed in from the Pacific. A classic tropical blast. Most equipment survived. Two cameras damaged. The Board will whine about it, but I’m past caring. I hunkered in my tent for a straight ten hours while the skies flooded. The tent rattled like kite sails and the ground seemed to unmoor from the volcanic bed beneath it. You once said you understood why the locals acquainted rain with love-making. It had gone over my head at the time, but I saw it today; the clouds came and the fog rolled over the ridge. The heavens mated the earth, and the two became one sodden mass. I like to think this is what you meant.

Gully cried in his tent until it was over. I think he misses his mother. I can’t blame the kid. I wish you were here.

DAY SEVEN

More bones. More hollow tunnels of fragile marrow. Rib bones. I’m cataloguing them myself. Gully can’t handle a camera to save his life—or my recommendation.

We caught audio today. It started as the faintest chirping, then drawled into a more guttural, labored chirrup. Jose confirmed; it’s her. We suppose a nest is nearby. I know better than to get my hopes up, but man, it's good medicine to this old soul.

PS: The waitress’s name is [illegible]! You remember, the little porter girl? How obvious in retrospect. She couldn’t have been older than fourteen then. How she’s grown! Vertically, I mean. She’s grown into her shoulders too, and she’s kicked the hunch I so remember her for. She also has a butt now, a detail I couldn’t help but notice and only [scribbles] mention in the strictest spirit of observational science.

DAY EIGHT

I received a letter from my sister. She wants to know how Gully’s doing. I would ship him back to her on the next cargo plane if such were possible. I don’t have the heart to write a reply. Not yet.

I frequented the diner today. Breakfast and lunch. I went for one, and it was only economical to stay for the other. The girl wasn’t there. I can’t say I wasn’t disappointed.

DAY ELEVEN

Our second sighting! I am clipping the photograph as I write this. You won’t believe it. She was less than a yard from us, sashaying through the fronds with a plump, waddling elegance. The trees hid her from full view, a sensual tease, only letting a head or a tail peek out through leafy teeth until the jungle swallowed her whole again, but I got a good look nonetheless. Six-foot wingspan, easily. Golden coat that shimmered red in the sunstrikes. Heavy, fraying tail that dragged through the dirt—heavy, I know, because the dust was just as fervent to hurry after that tail as I was, as I am. You must consult the photograph. It’s blurry—the jungle only leaks so many secrets, so many portions—but you must see for yourself. It feels dirty to reduce such a gorgeous creature to mere measurements. Please, Duncan, do look for yourself.

Gully showed no excitement in our find. Proper taste must develop late in the prefrontal cortex, the same area of the brain responsible for camera and cooking skills, among a vast many other things.

I went to celebrate at the diner. I ordered rhubarb pie for you.

She was there.

DAY THIRTEEN

I set Gully on cleaning the lenses and audio dishes today. If he were a tad older, I wouldn’t feel irresponsible sending him into the thick to fetch the FLIR cams for upkeep. He called it ‘laundry day’ when I explained it to him. I don’t care what he calls it.

I made a point to talk to her today. I nursed a lemonade in the corner of the diner and waited for her to go on break. (Don’t ask how I know her break schedule.) I was delighted when she came to me; she hung her apron over the back of her chair and settled in across from me with a rehearsed quietude, though her eyes, after lagging behind the turn of her head, revealed something more spontaneous, more lucid, like ripples on a dark pond.

We talked long. Throughout there remained a clear demarcation between her side of the table and mine. She hid her hands, though not very well; they were tough and weathered—I’d almost say leathery—from her childhood, no doubt. Porter’s hands. You know I didn’t ask, but sometimes the worst questions to ask are the ones you already know the answers to.

She wants to be a dancer, even demonstrated when the diner was acceptably empty: a modest skip and a twirl, her skirt hem mushrooming around that butt she didn’t have ten years ago. She had to clarify, however; she didn’t think she would ever be a dancer, nor did she express any ambition to try, but she was content to simply want. This I cannot understand. Some of us are intriguing creatures indeed.

I would be amiss to waste paper and time burdening you with the details, but in short, she wants to see the camp and peruse my work (she claims to have seen the bird herself). I said I would arrange that, for scientific and morale purposes, of course. My only condition was that I take her to dinner tomorrow.

DAY FOURTEEN

I brought [illegible] to the camp after seafood at a restaurant that had been only a slab of wave-fodder crag when you and I were last here. I must have apologized more times than I have fingers for my attire. Field work rarely rewards the formally-clad, but she said she didn’t mind. She wore nothing fancy, though it had never entered my mind to expect fancy. Anything other than simple tones and fabrics—a patient grey or a homespun cotton, perhaps—would conceal her natural fire, like slathering paint on a lily or stringing a leash to a bird. I have come to think of her as a bird, and the queer, flitty lag of her gaze isn’t all I mean by it.

Gully truly is a poor ambassador for the teenage species. He was all blush and jitters with a woman in the camp. I’m glad he kept to his tent and his tasks for the better half of her visit. Harsh as it might sound, I prefer to keep him and her in separate spheres. The fact she is closer to his age than mine is not a warm reminder.

I showed her my work, and she glowed over the bones, enough of them now for a tiny coffin. She again affirmed she has seen the bird, many a times, to my disbelief. Now, Duncan, this next part I can’t help but puzzle over. Maybe it is only my education getting in the way, but I can’t think so. When I revealed my photograph—the bird’s golden sash lit in soft solar red—she insisted that it was not her, not my bird, that I was mistaken. At the first, I shrugged this off as the adorable naïveté of the young, but she was insistent. She pestered even. And her rationale? I can hardly bear to record it here. The bird, she claimed, has no body the same way a ghost leaves no footprint and a lullaby leaves no honey taste in the air. The bird, she reasoned, therefore cannot be found. That was why white strangers had never found her. Naturally, I asked [illegible] how she could have ever seen the bird then. In dreams, in stories, in myself, was her answer. Her cheeks turned from freckled thrush eggs to an angsty red when I said I preferred on paper and on camera.

I walked her home in less than jovial spirits.

DAY FIFTEEN

Nothing. Nothing at all to report. I tire of writing these notes. Forgive me.

DAY SIXTEEN

Feathers found. Gully’s to thank, for once. 4 talons. Triple fork structure. She limps—or dances. I cannot tell.

DAY NINETEEN

I stopped by the diner after fetching medicine for Gully’s stomach. She wasn’t there.

DAY TWENTY-ONE

It rained today.

DAY TWENTY-TWO

I spent the afternoon hunched over cam footage while the awning dripped. It never ceases to drip. The photograph—that gorgeous capture—grows blurrier as the days pass. They measure days in rainfall here.

DAY TWENTY-SIX

I’m writing from the Cresta Alta hospital. Gully is not well. The poor lad.

DAY TWENTY-SEVEN

I dismantled our cam and thermal perimeter today. I won’t exhaust the Board’s funding until four days from now, but I haven’t the gall to continue. I will appendage all measurements in this journal for you. The evidence is scant, and I only ask you be honest. You always have been.

[scribbles]  [scribbles]

I seem to have misplaced the photograph.

DAY TWENTY-EIGHT

I visited the diner one last time. [illegible] was washing dishes with those hidden, leathery hands. I told her I was leaving, and she wasn’t rude, but she wasn’t what pleasant society would call responsive. Her head merely pivoted my way, her eyes slow to follow. She knew why I’m leaving. She didn’t have to say. In spite of everything, I intend to remember her. The girl who wanted to dance but was content to want, only want. The girl with dark water for eyes.

I’m writing from the airport. Jose checked our bags not a half hour ago; I can see him on the tarmac. It rains. The heavens mate the earth. I am eager to return to the classroom. This trip was in error. I question whether to bother you with these notes—vacant notes—but I did promise you them. I hope you glean something.

[FOUR MONTHS LATER]

For your eyes only:

I envy the girl, Duncan. Do not tell a soul, but she knew all along. I realize now that three of us left Cresta Alta that day, not two. I see her every night when I sleep. I see her dance through the remains of the camp. I see her tail sweeping away our footprints. I see her washed in orange sun and wreathed with dragon-tongued bromeliads. She’s as beautiful as [illegible].