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“They’re just confused,” Terk assures him, scooping up mud from the riverbank. “You’ll see,” she continues, slathering the mud on his back, behind his ears, on all the places he can’t reach, “once we clear up this whole ‘hairless’ thing, they’ll be lining up to play with you!”
Tarzan leans forward to study his reflection, mud dripping down his nose and from his hair. He looks more like a failure than ever.
“It…could use a bit of work,” Terk concedes.
“Tarzan. What are you doing?” They both turn at the sound of their mother’s soft voice. Kala is there, wise and warm, and Tarzan has never been more ashamed to see her.
“Why do I look so different?” he demands.
“Because you’re covered with mud,” says his mother as she begins to wipe his face clean.
“No! Terk looks just like everyone else,” Tarzan says. “What went wrong with me?”
“Nothing is wrong with you,” Kala replies sternly.
“You know,” Terk jokes uneasily, “it is pretty hard to live up to good looks like mine.”
Tarzan ignores her. “Look at me!” he snarls and back away.
“I am, Tarzan,” says Kala, “and do you know what I see? I see two eyes, like mine and your sister’s, and a nose—somewhere—ah, here! Two ears,” and beside him, Terk wiggles her own ears cheerfully, “let’s see, what else?”
“Two hands?” Tarzan supplies, but when he holds his up to Kala’s, his hands are so much smaller and softer that they don’t look the same at all. Terk’s hands, tiny though they are, look so much more like their mother’s.
Kala sighs.
“Close your eyes. Now forget what you see.” She places his hand on his chest. “What do you feel?”
Thud-thud, thud-thud, thud-thud. “My heart.”
Kala smiles, and lifts him into an embrace. Tarzan holds his breath and listens.
“Your heart!” he answers after a pause, and pulls Terk close, too. Thud-thud, thud-thud, thud-thud. The same sound, the same rhythm. “Terk’s heart!”
“You see?” says Kala, arms warm around them both. “We’re all exactly the same.”
“Pfft,” snorts Terk. “Too bad Kerchak can’t see that.”
“I’ll make him see it,” says Tarzan, warming to the idea as he crawls on Kala’s back. “I’ll be the best ape ever!”
It’s the leopard that draws his attention. At first he thinks it’s Sabor, but that’s impossible: Sabor is dead, body still cooling at Kerchak’s feet where Tarzan left it. Then he fears it might be her mate. Not even the oldest of the silverbacks has mentioned such a creature, nor its ability to make the sound he heard earlier, but he can’t be too careful.
Terk makes a face at him and jerks her head back towards their nests. He ignores her, and, with a huff, she settles back down on her branch.
When he gets a better look at the leopard, he realizes he’s wrong. This leopard is female and its coat is all wrong for a leopard’s, even though the body and face is similar. She stalks before—before a creature that looks like him. The pair is joined by two other sets of animals: at first, a smaller creature with a butterfly that bobs around him, and lastly a taller one trapped in some sort of yellow shell with a baby baboon sitting on her shoulder.
The three who look like him talk cautiously among themselves. The one accompanied by a leopard makes more strange noises with his stick before the latest arrival apparently commands him to stop. Tarzan peers at them warily, uncertain what to make of them, and then relaxes when the two newcomers crouch down on the ground and then embrace each other, just as Kala and Terk do him. They can’t be all bad, then. Not if they can love one another like his family does him.
The butterfly and the leopard and their companions go on, making more of those strange noises to each other, but the last pair hang back. The one who looks more like him flips open a set of oddly shaped, pale leaves and begins prodding at it with a short stick; and before long, looks up again and starts communicating with the baboon. Tarzan concentrates, the better to make out the words.
“There you go, what d’you think? Something to commemorate our landing!”
The baboon makes a squeak, and this is the strange part: he doesn’t sound like any baboon Tarzan has ever met before. Instead he tears the stack of leaves from the Tarzan-like creature’s hands and scampers onto another branch, chortling.
“Well, this is absolutely peachy. Come to study gorillas, and you pinch my sketchbook first chance you get.” The baboon scrambles backwards into the jungle, forcing the other creature to follow. “Cleisthenes, this isn’t funny, give it back!”
In their absence, Tarzan scoops up one of the leaves that fell out in the case. It doesn’t feel like any leaf he’s ever seen before, or taste like one either.
Before him, the Tarzan-like creature extends a hand. “Give me that!”
The baboon responds in the same language, too low for Tarzan to make out the words. He laughs again, though, so Tarzan doubts it’s anything the other wants to hear.
“Oh come on now, enough of this. I want this paper on the count of three. One…two…oh, look, bananas!”
Whatever has been said, it makes the baboon turn and look where the other points, only to have the leaf snatched out of his hands. The Tarzan-like creature chuckles, and Tarzan can’t help but smile himself. It was rather clever, in its own way.
“And what, pray tell, is the reason behind your high spirits? Trying to fit in our new surroundings, I take it?” The baboon sulks, but when an arm is extended, crawls onto the larger creature’s shoulder once more. “Careful, though, my boy—you wouldn’t want one of the wild animals to think you’re…one...of their own…”
It trails off, and soon enough, Tarzan can see why. A whole family of baboons has found them, all horrified to see this apparent kidnapping of one of their own.
The leader opens his mouth. “Let go of the child,” he hisses urgently, showing off his yellow teeth.
Terk whistles and hoots with laughter. “Oh, we’re in for a show now.”
The Tarzan-like creature, baby baboon still clinging to its shoulder, lets its eyes go wide in an all-too-obvious sign of panic, promptly stumbles backwards over a tree branch, and begins to run in the opposite direction. The baboons follow, adding nasty threats and desperate pleas to their demands to return their child.
Obviously it’ll take someone with some common sense to sort out this business. Tarzan rolls his eyes and takes to the vines, Terk following somewhat more reluctantly behind him.
“I’m afraid I wasn’t very popular as a girl, either,” Jane admits. Tarzan has just finished an explanation of how he acquired his prodigious skills, but unfortunately English is very limited as a language and the best he can manage is a halting description of how he had never quite fit in.
“Who wouldn’t like Jane?” Tarzan wonders. He can’t imagine that anyone could hear Jane’s laugh, or see the light in her eyes when she’s teaching him about something, or feel the softness of her skin and not love her. Well, that’s not strictly true: Terk, still refusing to get any closer to the human camp than she has to, is currently glaring at them both from the trees behind them.
“Actually,” she says, so brightly he knows there’s something wrong, “it wasn’t quite so much that they didn’t like me—no, no, really, they were rather pleasant….in their…own ways, but I suppose they found it rather strange that Cleisthenes couldn’t seem to behave; heavens, the number of tea parties he had us thrown out of before he learned to sit quietly!”
“He is ram—rambunctious,” Tarzan says, proud of himself for using the word Jane and the Professor had taught him after Terk had—yet again—demolished their camp. “Why do you keep him with you?”
Jane looks as though he’s one banana short of a bunch. “It's not as though I had a choice in the matter, did I? Cleisthenes isn’t a pet, Tarzan; he’s a d—“ she gives him that look that means she thinks a word is too difficult to introduce into conversation without prior explanation. ”He’s what Terk is to you.”
“Your…brother is a baboon?” Tarzan asks uncertainly. How unfortunate. No wonder Jane has never mentioned the family connection before.
“Brother?” Jane frowns. “No, no, Cleisthenes isn’t my brother; he’s my dæmon.”
“Dæmon?” Tarzan tries out the word carefully. It sounds cold. He doesn’t like it. “What’s a dæmon? And what does it have to do with my sister?”
All of a sudden, Jane looks terribly sad. “She’s not your sister, Tarzan,” she says.
In the periphery of his vision, Terk hisses and bares her teeth.
He wants to shout, yes, she is, I’ve never been without her!, but can’t manage to form the words.
Jane says: “She’s so much more than that.”
“So,” Terk says in her most abrasive tones as they peer around the treehouse where Kala found them curled around each other as infants, “Let's get this straight. Jane says I’m not your sister. Jane says I’m just an ‘extension of your soul,’ that I wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for you. Jane says you can go with her to England, where--apparently--there’s a whole herd of animals that follow humans around all day like they’ve got nothing better to do!”
“Terk,” growls Tarzan, but finds, to his horror, that there really is nothing he can say to contradict her.
Terk scoffs. “Is it really that hard to make out I’m a gorilla? I mean, clearly, Little Miss Sunshine isn’t exactly the brainiest animal around, but even a termite could see that this girl—“ she points to herself “—is all ape!”
“Jane says it’s because we’ve been around gorillas for all our lives. She says we both expected you to be a gorilla, and so you did. You didn’t switch around because we didn’t know you could.”
“By all means, if Jane says so, it must be right, you bald ingrate!” Terk stalks back through the door, slamming it shut behind her, but now Tarzan is conscious of the connection between them, the instinct that lets him know she’s slumped only on the other side of the door. She's still furious with him, but that’s no surprise. All his life he’d thought the bond between them had only been because they’d be so lonely when he was young, but now—
Now so much more makes sense, based on what Jane has explained to him, but he feels loss more than anything else. Terk’s anger will fade someday. His own unease will not.
He picks up the pile of his father’s clothing uneasily. This is what’s best for him. This is where he belongs. There’s no changing that.
Kala and Terk are waiting for him when he comes back outside. Both of them look away when they see him, hidden in the shell of his human suit.
“No matter where I go, you will always be my mother,” he tells Kala.
“And you will always be in my heart,” she replies, holding him close for what will most likely be the last time.
He turns to Terk. “And no matter what, you will always be my sister,” he tries to explain to her, but she won’t look him in the eye. Instead she follows him back to the Porters’ camp in silence, no matter he says or does.
He’s losing her already.
On the beach, after he chooses to stay, he watches the boat drift away on the waves. Despite it all, he is glad to have met Jane. Before, he had so many questions; now, he knows enough to realize he doesn’t need to see the world of his fellow humans with his own eyes. This is enough. His mother; his sister; his family is enough.
But it would have been better with Jane. As long as he lives, he will remember her.
Just then, as though his thoughts have called her, he hears his name and sees Jane racing towards him through the waves. In one very confusing, very wonderful minute, she throws her arms around him and puts her lips on his, and Tarzan, after recovering from his surprise, returns the gesture.
She doesn’t stop there. She reaches for Terk and, after a moment of hesitation, (Tarzan remembers Jane explaining, “it’s really quite awful manners to touch anyone else’s dæmon without permission. Unless you’re—“ and then she’d turned red and refused to continue) takes Terk’s hands in her own. Cleisthenes leaps onto Tarzan’s shoulder and begins grooming him with every sign of smugness.
“I do hope,” she says, “that it’s all right if I join your family, Terk.”
“Eh,” says Terk and shrugs in the way that means she’s secretly pleased. “I can put up with you a bit longer.”
Tarzan doesn’t dare hope, but he asks anyway: “Does that mean—“
Jane just smiles and bends down to one of his youngest cousins to babble, “Jane stay will with goh-rillas.”
Despite the atrocious pronunciation and even more dreadful grammar, she does it with such clear joy that he can’t bear to correct her, not yet. Now they have tomorrow, and the next tomorrow, and tomorrow after that to talk of such things, a lifetime to spend together. He can hardly wait.
“Besides,” Terk whispers to him with a snicker, “you’ve got to leave something for the honeymoon, yeah?”