“Once upon a time in Lemuria there was a happy lemurian mother with a happy lemurian baby, who were caught in a terrible storm. Winds whipped from all sides and the rain poured relentlessly. As the mother looked for shelter, they were caught up in a torrent of water and mud coming down the mountain. The mother struggled and swam, holding the baby between her teeth by the scruff of its neck. With her last strength she managed to put the baby girl on a large boulder, and then she was washed away.

“There was also a tiny village where lived the last few remaining humans up on the mountains. The storm washed away the whole village…”

“Hold up, did there really live humans on Madagascar before the English and the French came?” Patty asked Pearly. “Or is this just part of the story?” A good question, thought Faye, she’d like to know.

The three girls walked along the trail behind the Gustafson Farm late in the afternoon, their bicycles in their hands. They had walked like this for quite a few afternoons, just talking. It was nice. Pearly had also taken them fishing in the nearby reservoir. She hadn't caught anything. It wasn't her usual spot, she explained. She would catch plenty in the lake near the shantytown, but other lemurians and Mexicans would be there, and the three girls agreed it would be better if no one saw them together.

“Yes, according to a lot of stories there were humans on Madagascar, like, thousands of years ago. Small groups. Lemurians told all sorts of strange tales about them, and called them ‘smoothskins’. They all had black hair on the top of their heads, and small dark eyes and they came in canoes. They also called them the People from Beyond the Horizon,” Pearly told them.

“But where did they come from?” asked Patty.

“I’m not sure. You’ll have to ask Johnny when he gets back. I don’t care much about history, I just like the stories Johnny tells me. So on with the story…”

“God, Johnny,” Faye thought. Would he really come back? Of course she hoped he did, for Pearly and her family, so everything would be normal again. But would it be normal? What would he say to her? Honestly, part of Faye hoped he didn’t return. Everything was pretty okay now. She still gave Pearly and her family some food each week, which made her feel good. And Pearly had found some other job, cleaning machinery during the night. Even though she was only six. That’s right, six.

“You’re six years old?” Faye had asked stupefied.

“Almost seven,” she had said, “but we lemurians grow up fast.”

“Then how old is Johnny?”

“He’s twelve.”

Twelve? “Twelve? I thought he was about my age!” sixteen year old Faye said.

“A twelve year old lemurian is practically grown up. But seeing Johnny is half human, I’m not sure how that works. I guess he’s about your age, in a way.”

“So on with the story,” Pearly said, flapping her large pitch-black hands about like two birds, in this way she had when she was talking enthusiastically. “The lemurian mother survived the terrible storm and she went looking for her baby daughter. Among the rubble that had come down the mountain, she found a wailing human baby, still wrapped tightly in its wicker cot. She cleaned the baby girl, and breastfed her, while she pushed on to look for her own daughter. Which she found, and with the two babies she returned to her town.

“The Judge ruled that the smoothskin baby was to be brought back to its own people, everything had its natural place.

“So a few days later, a small group of lemurians climbed up the mountain, where the humans lived, but found the complete village had been washed away, and no other human had survived.

“The mother could keep the human baby girl she had found, which was fine by her, because she thought it was pretty cute.

“The baby grew up with her lemurian sister, and was happy amongst the lemurians. But the lemurians pitied the little girl. She was the last of her tribe. There were no other humans left. She could never have children, and be part of the Great Current. And as the girl grew older, she would look up at the stars and wonder what the Great Current had in store for her.”

“What’s the Great Current?” asked Faye.

“The Great Current? That’s, like, everything, everything that changes, and it’s what makes everything change. It’s everything that is now and everything that will be in the future. And it’s also like fate, like destiny. But it’s also everything we create, like houses we build, or stories we tell, and, most importantly, the children we make, so the Great Current can flow on into the future through our children.”

“Wow,” said Faye.

“It’s part of the old lemurian religion,” said Patty, who went to church with her family every Sunday, as all decent people did in Odessa, Texas in 1963.

“So, then, in a dream,” Pearly continued, “the girl saw herself nursing four small children. Her children. Now she was convinced she would have children.

“Lemurians attached great importance to dreams and visions, you understand. They still do. They call it the Inner Eye, and believe it can see into the future.

“The human girl told her lemurian mother and sister she was going to look for other humans. There had to be more humans alive, how else was she supposed to have these children that her Inner Eye had shown her? Her lemurian sister said she would join her on this quest. They were the greatest of friends.

“They saddled two young elephant birds, they brought some supplies, and they rode off on the elephant birds, starting their quest.”

“An elephant bird? What’s that, a bird with a trunk?” asked Faye, trying to be funny. But she really didn’t know.

“No, they were these huge birds, that couldn’t fly. Like ostriches, but even larger, and much heavier,” Pearly said.

“Wait, were these real birds, or are they just part of this fairy tale, like dragons and pixies?”

“They really existed, yes. Johnny doesn’t like it if I call these stories fairy tales, he says they are legends. But I like fairy tales, that’s why I start it with ‘once upon a time…’ No, the elephant birds were very real. There are all sorts of animals on Madagascar that live nowhere else. You see, a very long time ago Madagascar got separated from Africa and India…”

“Eighty million years ago,” said Patty.

“See,” said Pearly, “that’s a long time. It was an island for so very long, without any influence from without—”

“It was isolated,” said Patty.

“That’s right,” said Pearly, “so all sorts of animals evolved there that live nowhere else. Like the elephant bird, and like the terrible fossa…”

“What’s that?” Patty and Faye asked in chorus.

“Horrid creatures, that sneaked into lemurian homes at night and stole babies to eat, or bit whole families to death while they slept. For fun, I guess. They still exist, but the elephant birds are extinct now, because humans hunted them, and ate their eggs.”

“Oh, God. Us humans are real stinkers, aren’t we?” asked Faye glumly.

“I don’t think so,” said kind Pearly. “It’s just in your nature, I think, to take things. That’s why you rule the world. You’re a bit like a fossa, I guess. But the fossa can’t help itself, it’s also in its nature—it isn’t really evil. At least humans know what’s bad, and they try to do better next time. So in that way you’re not as bad as the fossa.”

“I think that makes us even worse than the fossa…” said Patty.

“Yeah, we’re much worse,” said Faye.

“But, see? You feel bad about it, so I think that makes you a better person than the fossa.”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“Well, we don’t eat babies,” Faye said.

“People eat cow babies,” said Patty.

“Okay, I was telling a story…” said Pearly.

“…The two sisters, one lemurian and one human, rode their elephant birds all across the great island of Lemuria, and they asked the lemurian clans they encountered if they knew of any living humans.

“They followed the river, asking the lemurians that for many generations had dived for fish and whose bodies had shed the fur on their backs and bellies—they had become partly smoothskins themselves! They asked the lemurians that lived deep in the woods where many still lived up in the trees, like the old ones do. The elephant birds climbed the mountains, where the lemurians live in caves—where they once made weapons from iron and steel, but now, in these peaceful days, only made jewelry and tools. The sisters even rode into the desert and asked the exiled lemurians who had lost their shadows.

“None of them knew of any living humans, and all of them looked mistrustfully at the human sister. They had all heard disturbing tales about the smoothskins. How they talked to their ancestors, who became ‘invisibles’ when they died, how they were never satisfied with how things were—when it rained they asked the sky for sun and when the sun shone, they asked the sky for rain. They would sacrifice animals to the sky, and dance to make it rain. And, worst of all, how they loved making war. The clans weren’t very hospitable and were always glad to see the sisters go.

“Still the sisters didn’t give up. The human girl still dreamed of her four children every night.

“They had come to the other side of the great island, when they came upon a city which had once been glorious, but was old and dusty now, and was practically abandoned. Only a few elderly lemurians still lived there and on this side of the island none had ever seen a human before.

“One of the old dames seemed especially sensitive to the human sister’s story and pleas for help, and beckoned the two girls to her home. Here she served them warm milk, and told them how she had once been a young girl, too. She had been the only daughter of the Judge that ruled over this city, which had been a great city in those days. When she became of age, many suitors came to her, all claiming to have had dreams and visions of her, all claiming to be her truelove. Many of them brought her precious gifts, but none had stirred any feelings in her. She had become weary of these men, who only seemed to love her because her father was the Judge, and she had become weary of the whole idea of truelove. She had rarely left her home, and never had children. There had come a day when she had regretted this, but she had been too old by then to change her ways. This was why she now wanted to help this young smoothskin girl.

“The old dame rummaged through cupboards and closets, throwing aside a great variety of trinkets, jewels and baubles—these had all been brought to her by her suitors. And she brought out a single feather, and gave it to the human sister. She turned it this way and that way in the light. It was beautiful, glowing with all the colors of sunset skies.

“This feather will help you make a baby, the woman told them. The two sisters looked at each other—maybe this old dame had gone dotty, their eyes said.

“The beautiful feather came from a beautiful bird, the dame said, which used to live a long time ago in the Valley of Birdsong. It was hunted for its beautiful plumage, hunted to extinction. As is common among birds, only the male birds wore these beautiful colorful coats of feathers, she explained. The lady birds were very plain-looking, so only the male birds were caught, killed and plucked. Yet the female birds clearly didn’t want to go extinct. They still laid eggs, and the eggs still hatched! The Great Current streams strongly in these eggs, the old dame told the human sister. If you swallow one whole, the Great Current will stream strongly through your belly. You will have these children you have seen with your Inner Eye.

“It sounded too miraculous to the two sisters, but they would try anything.

“But how to find these birds, that are so plain looking? That, the woman explained, is what the precious feather was for. The birds would surely be instinctively drawn to it!

“And indeed they were! The sisters travelled on their elephant birds to the Valley of Birdsong, which was terribly quiet for a valley with that name. The human sister tied the feather into her black hair, and it didn’t take long for the curious birds to come out. They were small yellow-brown birds. They were bewitched by the beautiful feather, which sparkled in the sun. Some even landed on the girls head, and pecked at it for a bit. After a while the bird would lose interest and flew off. The girls had no trouble following the birds, and found several that had nests filled with eggs. The human sister was glad the eggs were quite small, seeing she had to swallow them whole. Her lemurian sister was the better climber, so she clambered up the trees and took out one egg per nest, apologizing to the twittering birds. The human sister swallowed four eggs, because she had seen four children in her dreams.

“And then they returned home, which was on the other side of the island. They were in no hurry, and when they finally arrived home, behold! The girl’s belly had already swollen a bit!

“She had four healthy children, three girls and one boy. They were all wondrous, but the boy especially so, since the birds only hatched female chicks! The young mother took good care of the precious feather, which would come in handy when her children came of age!

“And so goes the Legend of the Last and First Human!” Pearly concluded enthusiastically. “That’s how Johnny ends his stories. And he starts them with ‘This is the legend of’, instead of ‘once upon a time’.”

Patty said what a nice story that was, and how well Pearly told it, while Faye turned gloomy again for moment.

“…I wish I could tell a story like that,” said Patty.

Every time pearly mentioned Johnny some invisible hand squeezed Faye’s insides. Whenever she spoke of him he seemed like such a nice guy. And interesting.

“I particularly like these stories where the human being is the odd one out. It makes me feel less like weirdo,” Pearly said.

She had told how Johnny would ride his bike to neighboring towns to meet elderly lemurians that lived there, and write down the stories they told him. Stories which he’d then read to his little sister.

It was hard anyway not be constantly reminded of him when she was hanging out with Pearly. Pearly was much smaller, and a full-blooded lemurian, but their eyes were very alike. Even at home Faye was often reminded of Johnny. When her mother made coffee, the smell stirred memories of him, of him standing so very close to her, looking confused. The smell of peanuts had the same effect. The sort of rough scent he had about him was more complex and nuanced then the smell of ‘wet earth’, as she had initially summed it up.

And when she caught her father gravely thinking, she wondered if he was also still thinking about Johnny, like her. She knew he’d been very sorry with how things turned out, but he hadn’t spoken of it since.

“Have fun, you two!” Patty rode off on her bike, waving goodbye. It was dinner time. Faye was getting quite hungry, having walked around all afternoon, but she and Pearly would wait around till it got dark, so Pearly could safely ride into town. Because…wait for it… Pearly was coming over for dinner!

She was very nervous about it, and talked a lot (even more than usual), and asked a lot of questions.

“So you keep your fork in your left hand, and the knife in your right, right?”

Faye thought about it, imagining sitting at the table. “I’m not sure, do I? It doesn’t matter. Nobody cares. Really, don’t worry, my parents are really nice, and they are excited to have you over. They are as sorry about what happened to Johnny as I am. The twins are a bit different, but I think you’ll like them.”

The sun went down, and they got on their bikes (Faye had brought Pearly an old kid’s bike which used to belong to her brothers. It was much better suited to her short legs than Johnny’s bicycle, and she had been delighted). Pearly wore a large sweater over her overall, and put on a baseball cap, tucking in her fluffy ears. Just to be sure. She had done this before.

“You did tell your parents that us lemurians chew our food then spit it back on our plate and then slurp it all up in one go, right?” Pearly asked. She looked at Faye’s flabbergasted face, and laughed hard. This kid…