The Strength of the Wolf is the Pack

by Scott Peterson

  And crawling over every surface were thousands of monkeys.

  Mowgli was bigger and perhaps even stronger than any one of them, but he had no chance against an army. He was outnumbered and more than a little scared. His mind swam with images of dozens of hissing creatures descending on him in unison, claws digging, teeth tearing, burying him under the weight of their numbers. If they chose to attack, he was already dead.

  One of the langurs approached the man-cub timidly, grunting and tapping at the floor, then absentmindedly scratched his head with his foot before running away, laughing. All around Mowgli, the other monkeys picked up the laughter, screeching and banging the ground in what seemed to be some kind of game. But to Mowgli, the ranting, screaming faces could be explained only by dewanee, the madness. It was terrifying.

  The langur who had started the hysteria stepped forward again, gesturing for the man-cub to follow him up another flight of stairs. Mowgli hesitated. Each new environment in the ancient civilization appeared to be worse than the last. What could possibly be waiting for him next?

  He shuddered to think what the ranting creatures had in store for him, but as they prodded him forward, it was painfully clear that he really had no choice in the matter.

  THE MAN-CUB was pushed farther up the spine of the dead city.

  Mowgli rose into a grand corridor illuminated by wide holes in the stone walls, passing from brief patches of light into unsettling pockets of shadow. He could still feel the eyes of hundreds of spectators on him, but they were silent and furtive now, hidden in the darkness. Clearly this was no place for laughter.

  Mowgli smelled the room before he reached it, its breath the sickly sweet scent of rotting fruit mixed with the pungent smell of a beast that had not seen the river in many moons. He hesitated, fighting his gag reflex, and the monkeys behind him prodded him onward.

  Stairs, tiers, platforms, and man-made plateaus spread up and out from the center, creating a valley of stone, an unnatural arena that could easily have housed every creature Mowgli had met in his lifetime and then some. It must be some sort of great hall. But for what purpose?

  The man-cub instantly spotted the source of the sweet stench: a giant pile of rotting fruit on the floor of the hall, taller than Mowgli himself and growing larger as monkey after monkey tossed more down from the skylights. Was it preparation for some sort of hibernation, like what Baloo had told him about…or something else?

  Mowgli looked around and felt his skin crawl as he realized that all the monkeys had withdrawn to the shadows. He stood in the center of the massive hall, an ant in a cavern, alone—and yet instinct told him there was something else out there in the dark, waiting.

  He wanted to flee, wanted to be anywhere but there, but he didn’t dare run.

  “Hello?” he called out meekly. His tiny voice echoed off the stone structures surrounding him, but no other voice answered back.

  And then he saw movement in the darkness.

  A gargantuan hand reached out of the shadows and grabbed a papaya from the pile before disappearing back into the blackness. Mowgli’s brain tried to reconcile what he had just seen. It was clearly the weathered gray hand of a primate, but its size was impossible. It could have picked up the man-cub as easily as the papaya. No creature was that big. Mowgli’s racing thoughts came to a screeching halt as a powerful, commanding voice emerged from the shadows.

  “What part of the Jungle you from?”

  “Me?” Mowgli said weakly, taking a step back.

  “You. Man-cub. You come from the south? The north? What part of the Jungle?”

  “South, I think,” Mowgli said uncertainly. He truly didn’t know, but even if he had, he was so unnerved by speaking to a creature he couldn’t see, couldn’t fathom, that he barely knew what he was saying.

  And then the shadows moved.

  Mowgli found himself frozen in place as the thing in the darkness leaned into the light. The man-cub’s head tilted back, then farther back as the mammoth red ape appeared before him, only his head still in shadow. The ape was colossal in size—gargantuan, like the mighty rhino must seem to the mongoose. His bloated body, the result of years of gluttony and self-indulgence, more mountain than mammal, was carpeted with stringy hair that cascaded from his oversized arms to drag in the dirt below.

  Mowgli felt overwhelmed with both fear and amazement. How could a creature like that even exist?

  The ape’s enormous form was wrapped around a mighty throne dappled with the rotting remains of a thousand meals. It was rare that he moved from that spot, and some might wonder if he even could move, massive as his body was. And what reason did he have to move? His legion of foot soldiers brought him everything he needed. Even now, several of the smaller langur monkeys were crawling into and out of his hair, feeding on the scraps that fell from his jaws to land in the folds of his great belly.

  “Southern Jungle,” the red ape said, considering it as he sucked from another handful of papaya. “The Seeonee. Beautiful. I hear. I’ve never been there myself.” He swallowed the sticky fruit and reached for more.

  “So tell me. You ever taste the pawpaw fruit down there in the Seeonee?”

  “I don’t think so,” Mowgli murmured. He couldn’t believe he was talking to a mountain. And the mountain was talking to him.

  “Some people call it, what’s the word…‘papaya.’ Stolen words. I say ‘pawpaw.’ Goes to the sound it makes. When it tumbles to the floor.”

  “Okay,” Mowgli answered. What else was he supposed to say? Was that why he had been taken there? To talk about fruit? What did this monster want from him?

  “Try it,” the ape said, holding out a papaya. Mowgli took it, but his attention was riveted to the massive hand inches from his body. This creature could swat Mowgli like a fly. The man-cub held the papaya in his hand, unable to eat it or move.

  “Do you know who I am?” the creature finally asked.

  “No,” Mowgli answered honestly.

  The mighty ape leaned toward the tiny boy and into the light, revealing his frightening face for the first time. Mowgli struggled not to recoil as he gazed on the giant staring down at him. Fleshy pouches framed a sickly gray face, its scowling mouth leading down to thick orange whiskers matted with sticky fruit. His small, closely set black eyes peered out menacingly from under his heavy brow. A hideous smile pulled back his lips to reveal jagged yellow teeth.

  “I am king of the Bandar-log. Call me…King Louie.”

  THE FACE of the sheer cliff frowned down at the cat and the bear.

  Bagheera and Baloo, out of breath, stared up from the base of the cliff that led to the kingdom of the monkeys and, without a word, began the difficult ascent.

  “If you’d asked me this morning what I’d be doing today,” Baloo huffed, “climbing a mountain would have been at the bottom of the list. Right below giving a rhino a tongue bath.”

  Bagheera, whose sharp claws and sinewy body were custom-built for climbing trees, was not equipped to scale steep cliffs. Baloo more easily sunk his claws into the dirt and rock, using his powerful upper-body strength to pull himself up, but the going was slow.

  “When I was a cub, I could’ve done this in half the time,” Baloo wheezed.

  “When you were a cub, you were carrying half the weight,” Bagheera said wryly.

  After what seemed like days, the unlikely partners reached the peak of the cliff side. Without hesitation they plunged down the other side into the valley. They could feel in their bones that time was running out.

  Crashing through the brush, they quickly made their way to the great stone doorway: the entrance to the lost city.

  “I like this. I feel good about this,” Baloo said with forced enthusiasm. “What’s not to like?”

  As if in answer, the piercing shrieks of a thousand monkeys echoed down the corridor and reverberated through the door.

  “It was a rhetorical question!” Baloo yelled back at the door. Bagheera motioned for Baloo to hush and cocked his he
ad, listening intently to the mindless screeches emanating from inside the dark structure.

  “There must be hundreds of them up there,” Bagheera whispered. For the first time, Baloo sensed uncertainty in the old cat. If even Bagheera was unsettled, it was serious. But Baloo knew that his man-cub needed him; that was all that mattered. It was time to step up and the bear was determined to do just that.

  “I’ve got a plan,” Baloo said.

  “Why does that not fill me with confidence?” Bagheera said with a sigh.

  “Trust me,” Baloo said, a mischievous smile creeping across his face as he strode with cocky assurance into the darkness beyond the mysterious door.

  “Famous last words,” Bagheera said to himself. The old cat hoped he was wrong.

  The greatest of the great apes spoke, his words slithering from his lips like snakes.

  “So you are a man-cub. A man-cub who wants to live in the Jungle?”

  King Louie reached out for another handful of runny papaya, stuffing his face as he held court with the small brown boy at his feet.

  “How do you know that?” Mowgli asked. How did one as great as King Louie, or even as great in size as King Louie, know about one little man-cub?

  “I got ears,” the great red ape scoffed, sweeping one mighty arm to gesture at the hundreds of skittish creatures still watching from the shadows. “My ears got ears. I know all.”

  Mowgli doubted anyone could know everything, but clearly the king knew more about him than he knew about Louie. Mowgli could hear Bagheera in his head, reminding him; it probably wasn’t a good idea to underestimate this creature.

  “I know another thing about you,” Louie continued, as if reading Mowgli’s mind. “You need a people. To protect you.”

  “I have a people,” Mowgli said proudly. He wasn’t sure he believed that anymore, but he said it anyway.

  “Who,” the king laughed, “the bear?” His great gray jowls undulated like fish flapping on the shoreline as his laughter echoed off the walls of the lost city. All around him, the monkeys joined in, not understanding his words but screeching loudly as if they did.

  “Where is he now?” Louie asked, gesturing around the great arena. “He can’t protect you. Only I can protect you.”

  Protect him? From what? Was he talking about Shere Khan? Mowgli could see that King Louie and his subjects had power—that much was clear—and protection by such a group could be helpful, but something didn’t feel right to him. If he was searching for his people, for his place, for his home, this was clearly not it. Home was not a place ruled by fear.

  “And I will protect you,” Louie offered generously. “For a price.”

  Mowgli squinted at the great beast and scrunched up his brow. The king wanted to make a deal: Mowgli’s safety but in exchange for what, exactly?

  “I don’t have anything to give you,” Mowgli said, shrugging. It was true.

  “I think you do,” Louie replied.

  “What?”

  The king leaned even closer to the boy. His head was bigger than Mowgli’s entire body.

  “Look around, Man-cub,” he said. “I got everything. I have much food, endless treasure. I sit on a throne in the largest palace in the Jungle. I command a tribe too big to count. But one thing I don’t have, and that’s the thing you can give me.”

  Mowgli waited expectantly.

  “The Red Flower.”

  MOWGLI WAS STUNNED.

  The Red Flower? What made the ancient ape think Mowgli had fire? And what could he possibly want it for? Wasn’t the Red Flower bad?

  “I don’t have that,” Mowgli said.

  “You’re a man, aren’t you?” the king grunted.

  “Yeah…” Mowgli answered weakly.

  “That’s what makes you a man. You can call the Red Flower, and control it.”

  “They told me not to go near the Red Flower,” Mowgli protested.

  “You know why they tell you that?” the great red ape bellowed. “Because once you have it, you rise to the top of the food chain, brother. Nothing in all of the Jungle can stand up to the Red Flower.”

  Something sinister radiated from the massive creature like the Jungle heat on a blistering summer day. Mowgli didn’t believe any animal could be truly evil, but the look in Louie’s red-rimmed eyes made the man-cub’s heart turn cold. If Mowgli had thought things were bad with Baloo and Bagheera, it was nothing compared to this. Even a close encounter with Kaa was better.

  “Please,” Mowgli begged. “I don’t know anything about it. I just wanna go.”

  “Go?” roared the king. “Go where, Man-cub? Where will you go?”

  Mowgli had no answer. He had no place to go.

  “Did you know,” Louie said flatly as he scooped up another handful of fruit, “there was once only a single pawpaw tree? In the whole Jungle.”

  Mowgli hesitated. He had expected anger or arguing, not stories.

  “We were just dirt people then, the Bandar-log. Log dwellers on four legs. Till one monkey—didn’t have a name—he had a notion to look up.” King Louie tilted his head back to illustrate his story.

  “Saw more fruit up there than he seen his entire life. Then he looked at his feet. Saw he didn’t have feet, he had hands. Four hands. So he climbed, something no one had ever done before in the history of the Jungle. He…evolved.”

  Mowgli stood in silence. Where was Louie going with this?

  “That fruit. Must have tasted delicious. May have been the sweetest thing that monkey ever put in his mouth. So he spread that seed. So more pawpaw trees would grow. And more Bandar-log would rise up, flying high. A great people who reach and rise to the top.”

  Mowgli nodded, listening, agreeing with the mountain of flesh in front of him. He figured that as long as King Louie was still talking, that meant the ape wasn’t crushing him or eating him or doing anything else in the horrifying pictures racing through the man-cub’s head.

  A self-satisfied smile crept across the hideous face that loomed over Mowgli.

  “There’s just one thing we need to reach our full potential,” whispered the king. His breath was foul. “Bring me that Red Flower and we will rule this Jungle. I will protect you and you will want for nothing ever again.”

  “I can’t,” Mowgli replied, at a loss for anything else to say.

  The massive brow crushed down over the king’s squinty black eyes as his mood darkened.

  “You can’t or you won’t?” snarled Louie.

  “I can’t,” Mowgli repeated.

  “You will!” roared the massive ape, his foul breath blowing back the hair on Mowgli’s head as he banged his fists on the ground like an angry child. The chittering creatures scavenging his body for scraps raced for safety. Louie was furious.

  You never say no to a king.

  MOWGLI’S MIND RACED, desperately trying to come up with a means of escape. The fact was, he was surrounded.

  Every way he turned, he found himself blocked by swarms of monkeys. Hundreds, maybe thousands, more than he had seen in his lifetime, all moving in on him, snarling at him. Even if he could find a way to get the Red Flower, the rising tide of hissing simians wasn’t going to give him the chance. He wasn’t leaving there alive.

  “Well, well, well,” sang a familiar voice from across the sea of monkeys. “As I live and breathe, is that King Louie?”

  All eyes turned to the intruder. It was Baloo, standing casually in the entryway of the Great Hall.

  Despite his terror, Mowgli felt a jolt of excitement race through his body. What was that bear doing there?

  The army of monkeys shrieked their disapproval, surrounding the bear in an instant. They were all on edge, on guard, protective of their great and powerful king.

  “Oh, man, look at all this,” Baloo continued, waltzing nonchalantly toward the center of the arena. “The opulence. The grandeur. The monkeys. The smell. This is so exciting. Love what you’ve done with the place.”

  “Who goes there?” rumbled Louie.


  “Me?” Baloo laughed gently. “I’m nobody. I’m nothing. But you. Look at you. The legends do not do you justice. Man, oh, man, you are enormous, but in the best way. Look at all that—a mountain of relaxed muscle, sitting on an ancient throne.”

  “Seize him,” the king demanded. Instantly, the hordes of monkeys were on Baloo, on his arms, his legs, his back. One moment the bear was visible, and the next he was a mass of squirming primates.

  Mowgli’s heart dropped. For a second he had hoped that Baloo had a plan, a scheme, something that might help them get out of there, but instead he’d only managed to get both of them in hot water.

  And then Mowgli spotted a sleek shape, dark as the shadows, slipping behind the colonnade, emerald-green eyes glinting from the darkness. Bagheera!

  It took all Mowgli’s concentration to conceal the smile he felt inside. Bagheera would save him. Baloo’s antics, as strange as they might be, were doing their job perfectly, distracting Louie and the monkeys long enough for the panther to slip in unnoticed and make his way to the man-cub.

  Baloo, still amiable and upbeat, pulled a few chittering monkeys off his head to address King Louie.

  “Hang on, hang on,” he said cheerily. “You gotta understand, I just climbed an entire mountain to see you. Just to be in your presence. I mean, this is a lifelong dream come true.”

  “Throw him off the cliff,” Louie said, clearly unmoved.

  “I have no problem with that. I don’t have any problem with that,” Baloo said, nodding. “I came up here without an appointment. It was presumptuous of me, I’ll give you that. But I was hoping—and perhaps this isn’t something you’re open to—but I was hoping to be a Bandar-log.”

  That got everyone’s attention. Louie furrowed his giant brow.

  “Say what now?” the king asked. Was the bear dewanee—mad? He had as much sense as the waxy blossoms of the mohwa tree. How could a bear be anything but a bear?

  While they stared in wonder at Baloo, Bagheera quietly led Mowgli away from the monkeys and toward the shadows. The man-cub’s heart throbbed as it would after a long run with the wolf pack, but not from exertion. This time it was from a potent mixture of fear and excitement and a tiny sliver of hope that he just might survive the day.