And then he kissed me.
The entire world became the wide warmth of her mouth, the secret, thrilling taste of her. Heat galloped through my body.
She leaned back. “Is this how you kiss your other sweethearts?”
I liked the notion she might think me worldly, but I said, “You’re my only sweetheart,” and kissed her again.
Overwhelming: just the fact of being so close to her, all the things my eyes had been desiring from a distance. Her cheek and nose and brow all grazing mine. The smell of her skin and hair. I kept my eyes open. My hands touched her face, holding her close. Her cheeks were scalding.
“Gently,” she murmured against my lips.
I wasn’t aware of being rough, but I tried to kiss her more softly.
“I’ve wanted to do this for so long,” I said.
“Gentler,” she said again, and this time I was annoyed because she was making me feel like a slobbering dolt.
“As if you’ve been kissed a hundred times before!” I said, breaking off.
The fact was, my own experience was tragically small, even though I’d got the craving early. When I was seven I’d wanted to kiss girls. During a picnic I’d invited Abigail Sims into the bushes behind the gazebo. It was shady and hidden and smelled like dog pee. Without asking, I pushed my mouth against hers. But she clamped her teeth together, and I bruised my lips against them. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, and she wouldn’t sit near me anymore. After that, I had many flirtations—girls liked my sweet talk—but the only kisses I was allowed were on the cheek. Just this year, there was Rebecca, who was sleek and dark haired and said she was “exceedingly fond” of me, but she wouldn’t even let me lift her hair so I could kiss the nape of her neck.
Rachel touched two fingers to her upper lip. “You’ve chafed me.”
“Maybe you’re too delicate.”
She laughed. “I’m certainly not that. You’re rough. And you smell like bacon grease.”
I’d stopped noticing. “It keeps the bugs away. I’ve got some in my pocket if you’d like to try. Looks like you could use it.”
“How kind of you. No thanks.”
Even though her face was dotted by mosquito bites, her skin looked smooth and tanned—much nicer than when I’d first met her in Philadelphia. Altogether she looked less dowdy. Hair looser, dirt on her skirt and hands. It suited her.
Tentatively she stroked my stubbly jaw. I’d never been touched like this, and it was wonderful. She moved the pads of her fingers along my upper lip.
“I’d like to shave you.”
I shook my head, laughing. “You really are odd.”
She said, “I should be getting back, or they’ll come looking.”
“Yes,” I said, and our lips found each other again. Her hands slid up my chest to my neck, and into my hair. I was trying to kiss her slower and more gently.
“I’ve got to go,” she said, pulling away.
“Go then. But when will I see you again?”
“That’s up to you.”
“Father’s got us quarrying in the morning, and prospecting afternoons. Tomorrow if I can get away!”
She laughed at my eagerness; it was the closest I’d come to seeing sheer delight in her expression.
“Where will you be?” I asked.
“The same general area, I think.”
“I’ll find you.”
“Will we have a secret signal?” she asked teasingly.
“I’ll try the bird whistle again.”
“Let’s hear it.”
Softly I whistled. She grimaced. “No wonder I didn’t hear it.”
“Then I’ll have to keep throwing stones at you!”
She closed her fingers briefly in my hair, and then walked back toward the Yale students.
I woke with the bird’s dawn chorus, as if I couldn’t wait to start thinking of him.
I went to the flaps of my tent and opened them to the still-dim sky. How I loved that promise of light in the east. I lay there on my stomach, watching, wondering what the day would bring.
My heart contained a double happiness. I was here in these badlands, getting to do what I’d always longed to do, and was eager to dress and eat and strike out into the buttes and ravines; and yesterday I’d had my first kiss.
I liked having my hands in his hair. It was thick, a bit coarse, but my fingers got deliciously tangled in it, and I could flex them and feel like I was holding all of him somehow. Best of all was the way he looked at me, his warm-eyed look that made me want to tell him everything.
I could still feel his skin, the small spikes of his stubble. His kissing was hurried and too hard. So his actual kisses did not please me much, but him wanting to give them to me did very much.
I’d never thought I’d get to hold something so warm and solid and good. I didn’t even mind the bacon smell—
And at breakfast ate more than usual, grinning to myself.
My pony was saddled and ready before Hugh’s or Daniel’s, and I made sure Papa noticed. “Just waiting for Hugh and Daniel,” I said casually.
And then, finally, we struck out. Papa had methodically assigned each group different areas to prospect, and every day we were responsible for making a map of what we’d covered.
So we set out in the same direction as yesterday, picketed our ponies near a pond, and walked into the ravines. After that, my entire concentration was focused on the rock, checking the ground for shards that might hint at something higher up, sweeping the rock faces for glints of bone.
An hour in, Hugh thought he found some.
“I think that might be limestone,” I said. In fact I was sure it was glacial-erratic limestone but was trying to be polite. It was completely the wrong color and texture to be bone.
“No, that is definitely bone,” Hugh said, not even glancing at me—which I found infuriating. He took a stake from his tool pouch, knocked it in, and tied a swath of blue cloth around it. “Done.”
“We’ll let the professor decide later,” Daniel Simpson replied, trying to be diplomatic.
“Of course,” I said. It would only look better for me when Papa glanced at it, sighed irritably, and told Hugh to remove his stake.
We worked on. Crossing a narrow ridge between two flat buttes, I caught sight of something sticking out from one of the steep slopes, about four feet down.
“Hold on,” I said, crouching.
It protruded in a dark shallow V shape, which suggested to me a joint. And a joint meant articulated bone—two bones connected—which was what every fossil hunter wanted most to see. It meant it wasn’t just some stray bit of bone. It was probably part of something much bigger, hidden inside the rock.
“It’s wood,” Hugh said, turning away.
“I don’t think so. I want to take a closer look.”
“Too steep,” Daniel said.
“Wood,” Hugh said again, and kept going. Daniel followed. They just assumed I’d fall in obediently behind them, like a little puppy.
The Sioux tooth was one thing, but I’d spent a week prospecting now, and I wanted to make a proper find, a full specimen. The slope wasn’t so steep, by no means a vertical drop. But you certainly couldn’t walk down safely, or even scramble down on your backside. So I got down on my stomach and stretched, thinking I might be able to reach out and tap the bone. It was still too far. I squirmed more of my body over the edge.
“What’re you doing?” I heard Hugh call out.
The shadow my hat cast over the rock was making it hard for me to see the bone, and I still couldn’t reach it.
“Stop!” Daniel shouted. “You’re going to fall!”
“I’m not going to—”
I fell, or slid, fast, belly first, trying to slow myself with my hands. I clutched hold of the protruding bone and held tight. My body swung round, and my feet kicked and found a tiny little ledge that wasn’t really a ledge, just a lip of sandstone. I was standing on my tiptoes, body pressed against the rock, fingernail
s dug into the bone—which I very quickly realized wasn’t bone. It was petrified wood. I could see the grain all too clearly now.
I looked up. Hugh and Daniel were kneeling, peering down at me. Daniel looked terrified; Hugh looked more disgruntled.
“You were right,” I said, mouth dry. “Wood.”
I could hear bits of rock whispering and clicking down the slope from the disintegrating little ledge.
“We’re going to get some rope from the ponies,” Hugh said. “Don’t move.”
“I can’t hold on that long.”
“You’ve got to try.”
I shifted my toes along the crumbling ledge. I wondered fleetingly if I was going to die and never see Samuel again.
“I might be able to go down on my backside.” I risked a glance over my shoulder and fought a swell of vertigo. The stone was gray and coarse as elephant skin, but there were all sorts of corrugations and runnels that I might be able to jam my feet into. They’d slow me at least.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Daniel was saying.
But I didn’t have any choice now anyway, because my left foot slipped altogether, and I just had time to turn myself round, back to the rock, as I started to slide. It was a terrible toboggan ride. I tried to dig in with my hands and boots, but I was mostly aware of going faster and faster and the heat on my palms and legs, and then I was sprawled in a big clump of sagebrush. It was very scratchy, but it had probably saved me from breaking a leg. I sat crumpled, feeling sick for a few moments, the breath knocked out of me. Dimly I heard the students shouting from above.
After a moment, I lifted an arm and called out hoarsely, “I’m all right.”
I stood up. My tool pouch was still around my neck. My stockings were torn and bloodied, and my palms were lacerated and filled with splintered rock. But no other wounds. Nothing seemed broken.
“Stay there! We’ll find a way down.”
It took them a while. I leaned against the stone until my breathing slowed—and then stopped altogether for a second as I stared. And suddenly I was a young girl again, standing at dawn on a farmer’s field, gazing at something miraculous and ancient in the earth.
12.
PTERODACTYLUS
LUCKILY, WHEN PAPA SAW ME LATER AT THE camp, I’d already had time to wash my cuts and have the army surgeon bandage them. I’d scrubbed the dust off my face and hair and changed into a clean skirt and blouse. Still, Papa was very angry.
“They tell me you were reckless,” he said. “If this continues, I’ll send you home; don’t think I won’t.”
This was not the reaction I’d been hoping for. If I’d been a boy would he have praised me for my devotion, my initiative?
“You might have broken your leg, or your neck.”
“Well, it was worth it,” I said.
He grimaced. “How was it worth it?”
From my saddlebag, I took the hunk of rock I’d quarried out. I knew I shouldn’t have done it—we were supposed to leave it in situ—but I’d been too excited. In any event, I’d been very careful. I handed the fossil to Papa.
“Now these,” he said, “are very intriguing. Despite their length they look to me very much like cervical vertebrae.”
“That’s what I thought!”
“You staked the site?”
“I staked it.”
He looked at the bones again. “Still yes yes, you must be more careful.”
“I’m absolutely fine,” I said, flexing my bandaged hands. “And look, I can still hold a geological hammer. Or a shovel, when we quarry it out!”
“But it’s the arm bones that are really interesting,” she told me, our backs to the rock, legs stretched out. It had been four days since I’d last seen her. “A humerus, a radius, and a long metacarpal bone. And radiating from that are three stubby fingers—and one extremely long one. It’s much thicker then the others, and bent back at a strange angle. There are four phalanges, three of them very stubby, and the fourth one, it must be over three feet long!”
“A wing!” I said.
“Yes!” She grasped both my hands in hers. Her eyes were lively with the same excitement she must’ve felt when first seeing it. “It’s a flier! And I wondered how it could have flown. It must be almost thirty feet across!”
“Hollow boned?” I said.
She nodded. “I looked inside a cracked bit of humerus. Paper thin. Bones light enough to fly! Imagine, they would’ve been soaring around up there!”
I followed her gaze to the sky and pictured them: giant reptiles circling on a column of hot air from the earth.
“There would have been swamps and lakes then,” I said. “Do you think they dived down and speared fish like the cape gannet?”
“Or they stood in the shallows and got them, like herons. I wish we had the skull.”
“It might turn up.”
“And we haven’t found the other arm yet either.”
“You never get the whole thing,” I said. “That’s what my father says. There’s always some bit missing, maybe just a little bit, but you never get the complete skeleton.”
I suppose I was a little jealous, too, that she’d found a winged reptile before me, because I said:
“They’ve already found some in Europe. Pterodactylus.”
“I know, but none here yet. And most important, none anywhere near this big. This one’s huge! A completely different species.”
I had to smile at her enthusiasm. “The first American dragon.”
“My father wouldn’t approve of that term. Too showy, and inaccurate.”
“Catchy, though,” I said. “It’s an amazing find. Congratulations. I can’t believe you went over a cliff to get it!”
There was just the slightest space between us, and I felt a pull, like two magnets held very close. I closed the gap and kissed her. After a moment she pulled back.
“You still kiss me like you’re afraid I’ll run away.”
I looked at her, indignant, but embarrassed, too. Because it was true. I felt like I was hurrying to convince her of something before she changed her mind.
“I won’t run away,” she said. “And I’m likely to stay even longer if you kiss me gently.”
I think she meant it kindly, but I still felt exasperated. “Fine. You kiss me the way you like being kissed.”
As I expected she looked hesitant.
“Go on,” I said, triumphant. She’d be worried it was too forward or unladylike for her to initiate a kiss.
But suddenly she looked intrigued and then eager. She leaned forward, put her mouth to mine. I stayed still. It was a completely different experience, soft and unhurried. I felt every surface of her mouth. It was a kiss that took its time. It had its own pulse. Then her hands were in my hair, pulling me closer so the kiss became more urgent and it felt like we were desperate to reach each other.
“How was that?” she asked breathlessly when we broke off. She looked a little worried.
I felt strangely shy. “That was . . . excellent.”
“I found it more satisfying,” she said soberly.
I wondered how she could know so much about kissing. Had she been kissed before? Or had she just imagined the perfect kiss in her mind? Read about it? I felt ashamed of the ones I’d given before: She must have thought they were messy, careless things.
“I think I need more practice,” I said.
Amusement brightened her eyes. “Do you now?”
After we kissed some more, sheer happiness made me mute.
“Look, you’ve already run out of things to say to me,” she said with gentle mockery. “And I thought you found my mind scintillating.”
“I do. I just like looking at you too.”
“Well, stop it, please.”
I was delighted to see her cheeks were actually red. “Are you blushing?”
“You’re making me blush. And I hate it!”
“You’re beautiful,” I told her.
With a severity that surp
rised me she retorted, “I am not beautiful. At best I am striking—and only on account of my eyes.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to say to this. Should I rush in and insist she was beautiful, or would that only insult her? She seemed to have a very set view of her appearance. I kept quiet for a moment, then said:
“Well, you’re beautiful to me, and there’s nothing I’d rather do than look at you.”
“You’d get bored very quickly.”
I laughed. “You’re supposed to say ‘And there’s nothing I’d rather do than look at you.’”
She let out a quick, exasperated breath. “It would be a lie. When the world has so many interesting things to look at.”
I shook my head. “You really don’t have a romantic bone in your body, do you?”
Solemnly she shook her head. “Not one. You should know this about me. Anyway, even if there’s nothing better to look at, there are better things to talk about. You haven’t told me about your finds.”
“I’ve staked a bunch of things, but we’ve been spending mornings quarrying out one of Ned’s finds.”
I told her about the ancient reptile he’d found. Its skull was twice the size of an alligator. The fissured bone was mottled brown, the gaping eye socket filled with rock. Its long jaws and interlaced teeth were clenched shut, like it was gripping something it would never let go of.
I loved how Rachel listened to me properly—so different from a sour teacher, or my own father with his ten-second span of attention. Always in motion. Rachel didn’t look distracted or move away to some other task or room. I felt like a child showing her all my prized cartons and boxes of specimens. As I talked, she lightly traced my knuckle with the tip of her index finger. It was distracting, and I liked it.
“It’s really more like a giant monitor lizard than an alligator,” I said. “It’s probably a mosasaur. A Dutch surgeon found one about a hundred years ago near Maastricht. I think my father was disappointed he might not get to name it.”
“It’s still a great find,” she said.
“Not as good as yours. That was an amazing bit of prospecting you did.” I could tell she was pleased by her smile. She didn’t care about compliments on her hairpins or appearance, but she cared about her fossil hunting. More than anything.