“The giant python—she’s gone walkabout,” Steve stammered as I strode into the expansive Reptile Exhibit Hall.
I couldn’t run back into the drizzly night. Wildlife professionals don’t run, especially not the bloody founder and director of Australia’s Threatened and Extinct Animal Sanctuary.
And this big girl—my escaped snake—measured longer than five meters.
There once stood a tree at the Edge of the Earth where oceans cascaded into the void of the Beyond. The magnificent tree’s cloud-white branches spiraled miles into the sky, glowing with ethereal light.
Though beauty generally fostered happiness, his effervescent limbs swayed with melancholy rather than joy over the Garden at the
Desire. Need. Hunger. It gnaws at the creature like sand in a gale, consuming every thought of its bestial mind.
Even the gaping wound in its side is forgotten by the needs of its stomach. Hunger.
A thin sliver of motion catches the creature’s eye, and it lashes out with crystalline fangs
“Doctors, we have a murderer among us.” Standing at the lectern boulder at the center of base camp, Dr. Angela Mansfield glared in turn at each of her three surviving colleagues. Each were seated on logs around the council circle, every shocked face bathed in an amber glow from the setting sun behind her.
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“What’s the main difference between Bigfoot, the Yeti, and the Tasmanian Tiger?” challenged Boof Turnbull, the bulldog-faced mayor of Dunnayewie.
The small gathering shuffled their feet and made asides to each other, fearing a trick question.
Finally, Shady Oaks ventured, “There’s no Bigfoot or Yeti here in Tassie?”
“Jesus, clowns to the left
While I’ve faced plenty of crises aboard the spaceship Oceania, I’d never been charged by a rhino before.
Seconds from impact, I dodged the furious beast’s horn, lunged, and scooped her into my arms. “Take it easy,” I murmured, scratching behind Rhino One’s ears.
The Oceania was transporting a dozen Sumatran rhinos…
Liam entered the Mountain of Death at dusk.
He adjusted his headphones, checked the volume unit—or VU—dial on the mixer strapped to his belt, and reasserted his grip on a boom pole carrying a shotgun microphone. With his headlamp’s yellow beam piercing the darkness, he pointed the mic’s windscreen into…
An ordinary person only has to worry about a delayed plane, lost luggage, and the like interrupting their vacation. Me? I had to deal with a cryptid making headlines.
While I love the hubbub of NYC, I was ready to shut my mind off of work for a while. After several years, I’d finally…
“The taniwha traveled in the canoes of our Polynesian ancestors. They were kaitiaki, life-protecting guardians.” The stocky Islander gazed over the water, his slumped shoulders, usually strong, reflecting his regret. “The white settlers, on the other hand, brought the black rats in their boats. Those filthy predators extinguished almost all of our island’s endemic
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In the chill of the pre-dawn air, the kingdom slept. Sisters huddled close and dreaming, unaware of the coming beast. In the darkness they were sheltered, unworried, ignorant. Until at last, dawn broke. And with it, the tranquility of night gave way to the cacophony of day. Lorikeets squawked and flies buzzed and
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I knew I would regret taking Cuthbert Devereaux’s navigation advice.
When my old nemesis butted into my mission in Nazi Germany, he brought nothing but trouble. It’s entirely his fault we landed in colonial Australia. Now we’re trussed like roasted chickens and propped against a pile of dusty saddlebags in an outlaw camp.
“Connor, are you awake?”
I crept to the edge of Auntie’s boat, grasping an unfinished bag of woven eel grass and kelp. Kiri’s face widened in a grin, revealing the gap from her missing tooth. A chilly breeze tugged her mass of dark curls as I joined her on the dock.
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