Love in the Wild: A Tarzan Retelling

by Emma Castle

  “Everyone drop your bags, get your cameras out, and follow me,” the guide at the front announced quietly. “The gorillas are just up ahead.”

  Eden held her breath as they moved together. Within a minute, the mist revealed a band of twelve gorillas. A young juvenile nearest them was lying back against the roots of a tree, a piece of fruit held lazily in one hand as he gazed at the intruders.

  Eden was transfixed by the sight. His reddish-brown eyes were calm, a hint of caution mixed with curiosity. He was probably used to seeing humans, but no one here except the guides and trackers had ever had the chance to see a gorilla in the wild before. A gorilla shrouded in mist.

  She raised her camera and framed the juvenile in her sights and snapped a dozen photos. The gorillas continued to eat and socialize. The juveniles wrestled, and a few of the mothers held tiny infants to their breasts.

  It was moving to see how these creatures were like humans in so many ways, that they cared for and nursed their young, that their children played and the adults touched each other with gentle affection. She watched two mothers with infants who stood upright and toddled a little farther away, but it was the way one mother put her hand on the shoulder of the other, like friends, that stole Eden’s breath. She took a dozen pictures of that moment alone.

  The tour group had an hour to watch. When they had only ten minutes left, the gorillas seemed to sense they were free to move, and as though summoned by the magic of another realm, they blended back into the jungle as silently as they had appeared.

  “My God,” a woman whispered to Eden and the others. “Did you see them? They were just like us.”

  “Did you see their hands? They were huge.” Another man held up his own hand, looking at it as he recalled the size of the hands of the dominant silverback who had prowled, not threateningly, but protectively, around the other gorillas.

  “All right, everyone, we’re going to have a quick lunch and then head back down. Be sure to have your rain gear ready,” one of the guides warned.

  Eden crouched down by a tree and unzipped her bag, but she paused when she sensed movement in the jungle near where the gorillas had gone. She got her camera ready again and waited, bringing the rustling plants into focus. But the face that emerged was not a gorilla, but a man. A man with a grizzled beard and flat eyes. He scanned the forest and spotted her, suddenly smiling.

  Then came the screams, the shouts, the guns being fired in the air.

  Poachers. Poachers had been tracking the gorillas.

  Eden huddled next to Maggie and Harold as they were shoved into a jumbled group. They were forced to walk deeper into the jungle, well beyond the boundaries where any guides or trackers would come looking for them.

  “Oh God, Harold,” Maggie whispered.

  Her husband put an arm around her shoulders. Eden tried not to think about where they were headed or why and instead focused on anything that might help them find a way to safety. All their bags had been left behind, but Eden still had her camera bag slung across her chest.

  “Here’s good, Cash,” one of the poachers said.

  “It’ll do,” Cash said. His British accent was rough, uncultured. “Line ’em up,” Cash ordered, and the tourists, including Eden, were all pulled into a line.

  “On your knees!” one of the men shouted, and they started shoving people down. Eden sank to her knees on the muddy forest floor. Her heart raced as the man called Cash raised his gun and pointed it right at her head.

  No one was going to save her, or the others. They were going to die like Dian Fossey and all the others who had given their lives to protect the wilds of Africa.

  Lounging on the limb of a tree, Thorne heard his gorilla family send a warning howl in the distance. They were a mile away, but the sound carried. Birds screamed in response, and Thorne leapt to his feet, listening for any hint of what had caused the commotion.

  “Danger, danger,” the animals of the forest warned him, but Thorne never let danger hold him back. He raced swift-footed along the tree branches until he saw a sturdy vine and in one flying leap grasped it and swung. It had been this way for many years. When danger threatened his family, he was the one who faced it. Sunya and the other males viewed him as weak, and Thorne had lived his entire life proving to them he was not. Now swinging headlong into danger was but second nature to him.

  Moving through the jungle, vine to branch, branch to vine, he reached the source of the disturbance in a mere few minutes. He was a hundred yards away when the sound of guns went off.

  Guns. He hated them.

  He had learned from his friend Bwanbale how to speak English and Swahili, and in the last five years he had gained some knowledge of the world beyond his forest. Guns brought pain, suffering, and death to all that he loved in the jungle.

  Rage surged through Thorne, roaring like a fire within him as he swung toward the small clearing. Some humans were kneeling on the ground, and others were shooting guns at them. It was easy to see who were the predators and who were the prey as the bodies fell. Thorne filled his lungs with air and let out a wild roar that echoed across the jungle.

  The predator men screamed and ran, but one stayed behind, his gun pointed at the last remaining prey. Thorne launched himself from the nearest tree and tackled him to the ground. They rolled half a dozen feet, and the moment Thorne had his bearings, he gripped the man’s neck and snapped it. Then he chased down two other men, killing them and leaving their bodies where they fell. The forest would take care of them.

  He returned to the small clearing and crouched behind the survivor, and his breath caught in his throat.

  This human was female. He had never seen a human female before, at least from what he could remember aside from puzzling dreams of a female who’d held him in her arms and sang to him. He’d refused to come near the part of the forest where Bwanbale had said humans visited. His only experience with other humans had been violent and dangerous, aside from Bwanbale.

  But now he wished he had ventured closer to other humans much sooner. This female’s hair was the color of sunlight. He ached to touch it. He crept closer, staying crouched lest she attack. Female gorillas would sometimes snarl and attack males who crept up on them when they did not wish to mate.

  He grunted in the tongue of his gorilla family, hoping to reassure her that he meant no harm. Thorne leaned in, smelling the air just above the back of her neck. Something about her scent—a mixture of sweat, fear, and fruit—appealed to the deepest male part of him, but he didn’t want her to fear him. Her hair, bound up in a strange way, brushed against his face, its silky texture tickling his nose. He reached up. His fingers trembled now when they had never trembled before. Thorne curled his fingers in the sunlight of her hair.

  The female gave a soft gasp, almost a sound of distress, and flung herself to the ground. He was so startled by her sudden movement that he leapt around her prone body to see her face. She was in a submissive pose, but he wanted . . . yearned to see the face of this female. The one he had saved, the one whose scent called to him like nothing ever had before.

  In that moment he was overcome with bone-deep loneliness. He had always been alone. Though Keza and Akika loved him, he knew he was not truly one of them. Now he had a chance to end the ache that had dwelt inside him for years.

  She slowly lifted her head to look at him.

  He remained hunched, his knuckles pressed into the ground as he studied her eyes, eyes the color of leaves. Her face was delicate, her nose small and curved up slightly. There was a hint of something secret and wonderful in her pale skin and the way the blood tinted it the soft color of ripe fruit.

  His heart beat an unsteady rhythm against his chest. Looking upon her filled him with a dozen hungers that he barely understood. Bwanbale had spoken of human mates, of women, but Thorne had not been able to imagine such a female.

  This female was like him and yet unlike him. She was smaller, her body soft and curved as opposed to the hard, angled lines of his own
form, yet he found her enticing in a way that made him want to let out a low rumbling growl of pleasure like a jaguar would when filled with contentment.

  At the thought of jaguars, he made a chuffing noise as he curled one fist around one of the few human weapons he possessed—a knife, one Bwanbale had given to him. He wasn’t sure how to speak to her, because the English he’d been taught seemed to have fled his mind in the presence of this female’s beauty.

  Thorne balled his fist and pointed an arm toward the dead men and grunted. He wanted her to know she was safe, that he’d killed the predators and now she would not be harmed. The words Bwanbale had taught him still wouldn’t come to him.

  The female continued to stare, swallowed hard, and then spoke to him.

  “Hi.”

  It was a greeting. He stopped pointing to the dead men.

  “Do you understand me?” she asked.

  Thorne did understand, yet he was too fascinated by her soft voice, which was the sweetest birdsong he’d ever heard. It prevented him from responding. He tilted his head to one side and inhaled deeply. He could feel the river mud he’d painted on his face and body a few hours ago drying and growing stiff against his skin. It kept his skin protected when he went into the sunlight and helped him camouflage himself the way other beasts did when they wished to hunt or go undisturbed in the jungle. Was she startled by his appearance? He must look fierce to her—or at least strange.

  She got to her feet. “Hello?”

  Thorne stood up to his full height. The female did not approach him, but stayed where she was, her eyes lifting from his feet all the way up to his face, her lips parted as she inhaled softly. Then she seemed to recover herself and spoke again.

  “Kiswahili?”

  She spoke Swahili, but his focus was soon diverted. The forest had grown quiet around them again, just as it had when he’d fought the predators. Something was out there. It was not safe for his female. Thorne’s keen ears heard the jaguar’s footfalls, and he issued a warning by throwing his head back and bellowing. He had killed jaguars before, but he would not now, not when he had a female to protect. Caring for others was one of his responsibilities. Yet when he thought of caring for this creature, that duty became a sacred thing. Keza would praise him for it.

  “Unaongea Kiswahili?” The female asked him if he spoke Swahili.

  Thorne cast her a glance before he gave a sharp whistle into the jungle, calling for the birds to be his eyes and warn him if the jaguar came back this way. The birds whistled back, and he faced his female again. There was no time to try to find his tongue to speak. She needed to be taken to safety.

  He grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder. Hers was an easy weight. When he’d seen fourteen winters in the jungle, he had been smart enough to battle dominant silverback males who’d tried to chase him away from his mother and brother. He had speed and agility in other ways, and his ingenuity had proved the most useful skill he had in battle against an opponent bigger than him. He had proved to those males then that he could and would fight back. But he’d also grown strong, strong enough to fight almost any beast in the jungle, and where his strength wasn’t enough, his cunning was far better.

  Those adult gorillas had backed off and let Thorne and Akika as grown males stay in the band when adult males were expected to leave to form their own bands with other female gorillas. By the time he had seen seventeen winters in the jungle, Thorne had killed the jaguar who had stalked his family and attacked the infant of another mother. That beast had been twice the weight of this female.

  Thorne ran at a quick pace deeper into the jungle, far away from the areas where the men of Bwanbale’s world went. He had his own place, a home he had built that was close to the waterfall and the river. The female would be safe there.

  He reached the network of trees that formed his private home, and he set the female on the ground. She rolled to her side and vomited. Thorne’s chest ached because he wanted to soothe her, but when animals were sick they often felt weak and did not want to be touched. He didn’t wish for her to lash out at him.

  When she seemed to have recovered, he held out his hand. She placed her palm in his, and something shot through his body, as though for the first time in his life he was awake. Her green eyes met his, and for a second he wanted to speak, wanted to tell her all that lay in his lonely heart, but for the first time since he was a child, he was afraid. What if this beautiful female did not wish to hear the words from his soul? He pushed away the riot of new feelings swirling inside him and pointed to the tree before them, then gestured for her to climb on his back.

  “No, no, I’m not—”

  He lunged at her, planning to throw her over his shoulder again, but she threw her hands up in submission.

  “Okay!” She pointed at his back.

  Good, she understood his commands. He faced the tree, his breath strangely quick for being so still. Her soft hands touched his shoulders, and her legs wrapped around his waist. Excitement burst through him like a sunrise. He wanted her to be in front of him, to feel her body against his, but he could not climb that way. This need to feel her against his body was both strange and exciting.

  Thorne used the footholds he had made in the tree and climbed up to the concealed entrance of his home. He moved the branches covering the entrance aside and crawled into the tree house. That was what Bwanbale had called it when Thorne had brought him here. He had marveled at Thorne’s series of three structures connected by vines wound carefully around and through wooden planks to make pathways in the air.

  Thorne was not sure how he had first envisioned building his home. Perhaps it came from the murky depths of the past he could not remember or the wild and beautiful dreams that came often when he fell into the twilight of sleep. Once he’d learned he could use vines and the pieces of wood from fallen trees, he’d used pieces of broken shale rocks to smooth the fallen wood into flat planks.

  He’d shown Bwanbale his home, and the other male had helped him refine the buildings and his technique even further so that his home was hidden from the ground. But from above, it truly was a home in the trees. Bwanbale had left him tools, a machete, a long knife, a short knife, a spear with a sharp arrowhead, and other things that had helped Thorne. In exchange, he’d shown Bwanbale how to hunt and how to find his way through the forest that Bwanbale called impenetrable.

  He had made a home here. In recent years he had felt the need to be apart, to live away from the gorillas. It wasn’t simply because he didn’t belong, but it was more the need to feel he could survive alone, define his own space and life apart from his family. The gorillas of his family belonged to the ground, but Thorne did not feel comfortable sleeping below where animals might strike out at him. So he’d built this place, a haven in the trees.

  He visited Keza, Akika, and the others often, but he did not worry them with his presence. He longed to explore the jungle more, and he strayed farther and farther north, deep into the mountains and caves where even the gorillas did not tread.

  The female took her first tentative steps on the wooden floor. “What is this place?”

  Thorne grunted, wanting her to stay in the safe corner. When she didn’t immediately understand, he herded her into the spot he wished her to be and she fell back onto her backside and gazed up at him, a hint of fear rolling off her skin.

  He had to return to the place with the other humans who were dead so he could search among what they had left behind. If he was to have this female, he needed to prove to her he could provide for her and protect her. Keza had taught him that to love was to care for others. Maybe then this female might consider being his mate.

  In the many years of being here, he had never had the chance to mate. It had left him with an undeniable loneliness that had been slowly hollowing his heart from the inside out, but now . . . Now he might have a chance to have someone who belonged to him. He started toward the trapdoor to leave.

  She moved toward him. “Wait! Where are you goi
ng?”

  He bared his teeth and growled. She needed to obey him for her own safety. Bwanbale had warned him that human females could be stubborn. Their gazes locked as he waited to see if she would challenge him again. She stayed put, her green eyes still full of fear and uncertainty. Only when he was certain she would not try to follow him did he slip down the tree and leave.

  Thorne raced back to where the attack had happened. As he reached the small clearing, he peered through a tangle of foliage at the bodies still lying upon the ground. He rested his palms on the latticework of vines that ran like pale veins through the vast emerald sea of the trees.

  A heavy stillness settled around this place of death. It reminded him of the place where old gods dwelt in the cavern full of fallen stars. Bwanbale often spoke to Thorne during their time together about his gods. The spirits had dwelt in the forest since before the dawn of man. Only Thorne was brave enough to venture into those places. His curiosity drove him to explore that which his animal brethren would not. The quiet cave had called to him, and he’d answered.

  In those explorations, Thorne had discovered a cave that held the dust of the gods in the walls, like striated stars shot through with sunlight, and glittery stones that covered the floors in numbers too high to count. The crown of leaves he wore when hunting rested upon his brow now. He believed it to be the crown of one of the gods of the jungle. He had offered it to Bwanbale as a parting gift. Bwanbale had curled his hands around Thorne’s, making Thorne clasp the circlet tight.

  “This belongs to you, Thorne, Lord of the Impenetrable Forest. Wear it with pride. A man like me deserves no crown. I am but a hunter. And even that, I am no more.”

  Thorne thought of the times Bwanbale came to visit him and the fantastical tales he told of the world beyond. Bwanbale had asked him once, “Where do you come from, my friend? Who are your people?”

  But Thorne had no answer. He had no people, not in the way Bwanbale meant.

  Yet now he gazed upon the remains of what could be his people. Their deaths filled him with a disquieting sorrow. He was no stranger to death, and he did not fear it. Yet he feared when death came for those he cared about. Each death among his gorilla family tore at Thorne’s heart, just as it did with these strangers. Their cold bodies lying still on the forest floor twisted his stomach with dread.