Kylo

One of my stray fascinations is with dinosaurs. I've done a dinosaur novel, Orn, and similar creatures have appeared elsewhere in my fiction. One minor offshoot of my research for the novel was "Kylo," which I completed Jamboree 1, 1967. It was bounced by F&SF, ORBIT, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, PLAYBOY, SATURDAY EVENING POST, REDBOOK, COSMOPOLITAN, MCCALL'S, and BEYOND. In short, I tried the fantasy, male, female and general markets, with no success. If you wonder why some of those magazines aren't with us today, maybe it's because they weren't interested in what I had to offer. That's plausible, isn't it? But a decade or two later a "small" magazine asked me for something, and I proffered "Kylo," and it was published in PANDORA IN 1988. It is a slightly different story; I do all kinds.

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I hadn't seen the Grossets in two years, and Selma was blithely filling my ear with local gossip that was, frankly, of little present interest to me. I tried to avoid glancing too often at my watch as I wondered when Ian would get home. Something banged at the back door.

"Oops," Selma said, bouncing up so quickly her graying curls jiggled. "I forgot to feed Kylo. Just a minute." She went out, and I could hear her solicitous murmurs in the yard.

Now I could dwell upon the time. It was four-thirty—probably another hour before Ian finished his day at the accounting office. I should have anticipated this before exposing myself to his undoubtedly pleasant but vociferous wife.

"You keep a pet now?" I inquired as she returned, resigning myself to an interminable account of some dutifully unique hound.

"Oh, no, Kylo isn't ours. We're boarding her for a few days while old Butterfeldt is in the hospital. It's quite a bit of trouble, really, but Ian said..." and she continued with mundane details of neighbors and illness and obligations that slipped my mind at about the speed of sound. "It isn't that Kylo is bad-tempered or anything like that, but taking her for a walk every day is tedious, to say the least."

Not, I thought darkly, more tedious than hearing about it. "You mean you have a local leash law? Most people I know just let their dogs run loose to squat on someone else's lawn, law or no law."

"Dogs?" she asked, perplexed.

"Kylo. Remember?" I wondered whether she was growing absent-minded.

She looked shocked. "Kylo isn't a dog!"

It occurred to me then that the sound at the door had had considerably more authority than one would normally expect from canine scratchings. It had been a definite thump as of solid bone. "Do you mean to say you're boarding a horse? In the suburbs? Why don't you ride him—I mean, her—around the block, in that case?"

"Ride her!" she exclaimed indignantly. "Kylo isn't a horse. She's a dinosaur!"