Now death inhabited the tree-nest.
Goro’s spirits began to rise, for without the thunder-hand to dispute his claim, he would be king of all the land within his territory. He growled deep in his chest to show his satisfaction. This was an ambition he had long desired, but the silverback had quietly feared the thunder-hand when he feared nothing else in the jungle.
With the others, Goro climbed the trees on which Fur-nose’s lair rested, then halted on the flat wooden shelf outside the opening. The big blackbacks crowded the platform around him or hung from the edge or in the supporting branches and attempted to peer in.
Eeda had crossed the clearing and climbed over the cluster of blackbacks and onto the flat wooden space before this narrow opening, deaf to the angry grunts and growls that answered each of her movements. She ignored their protests; part of her hoping that one of the annoyed blackbacks would be provoked into killing her.
Her stinging breasts were swollen with milk, and her heart and mind were awash with emotion over the loss of poor Kado. Part of her wished for the thunder-hand to speak so she might feel no more.
There was no way for her to express the pain she felt. A constant ache had kept her from enjoying food and fresh air. Even grooming and the warmth of the sun had left her cold for she could only think of the infant she still held close; its lifeless limbs dangling where she cradled the body between her neck and shoulder.
A reckless impulse surged through her then, and she pushed between old Baho and a blackback lieutenant until she could crouch by the king who cautiously sniffed the gap at the opening to Fur-nose’s lair.
Reckless was her action, for this was a place of males; a place for violence and strength that could easily be turned toward her for this transgression. Still Eeda was blind to the consequences or desired them and the dangers that waited inside the nest.
Goro had smelled her approach, but glancing back from the door, he growled, warning his blackbacks to accept her presence. The young mother had been struggling since the death of her infant, and the present situation was too dangerous for normal law to be enforced.
The king or other would give her a child when her madness had departed.
But for now...leave her alone.
Goro gingerly pushed against the flat sheet of wood that covered the opening, and while the pressure enlarged the dark gap on one side, the shifting panel resisted. The younger apes coughed a warning, hair bristling as they suspected Fur-nose himself was inside pushing back.
But the silverback ignored them. The smell of death was strong and told him all. He lowered himself flat on his forearms to investigate a rough piece of green branch that was caught and wedged between the lower edge of the panel and the floor. His thick fingertips closed on it and twisted as his other hand pressed the panel.
The branch pulled free with a snap, and the sudden conflicting forces caused the panel to swing inward, opening the doorway wide.
Several younger blackbacks completely lost their nerve as the strong smell of death rolled out of the darkness. These adolescent apes leapt from the platform and charged a safe distance to where they could watch from the grass.
Goro snapped his fangs at their foolishness and to bolster his own courage, for with Baho and Eeda close behind; he moved forward growling. The hair stood up on his neck and shoulders as he angled his broad frame into the cramped opening.
Baho coughed a warning over his king’s shoulder.
Fur-nose’s body was propped up on a fragile-looking structure of sticks that rested against the far inside wall. He was easy to see despite the shadows. The smell drew the eye, and enough sunlight filtered through the open door and holes high in the walls to show the rest.
Goro bared his fangs and snarled for there was thunder-hand clutched in putrefying fingers.
So close was the terrifying thing—in their old enemy’s dead hand still, but both were silent. The bristling Goro moved into the tree-nest with Eeda close behind as Baho and a couple brave apes squeezed in after. Other blackbacks outside the door hooted their worry but remained in place at a distance.
The silverback leaned in to sniff at Fur-nose’s legs, and he watched as wriggling maggots boiled out of the swollen flesh. Then gritting his teeth, Goro moved closer still so he might investigate the thunder-hand—a tool that seemed comprised of shiny stone, and wood.
Goro growled at the strange device as Baho and one of his sons first grunted worriedly, and then started whimpering fearfully as their king reached for the hated thing.
Eeda, meanwhile, had grown sick of looking at the rotten corpse of Fur-nose, at the long hair straggling over the blackened flesh and at the torn skin upon its throat and breast. She felt no fear, only sadness to see where Fur-nose’s belly was ripped open by birthing maggots.
She squeezed her infant’s corpse, and despaired. The thunder-hand was dead like its master, and would not stop her pain.
Then she froze in place as a new scent struck her.
This was something different in that closed place, not death, but life! She smelled blood and breath, and turning feebly in place to catch the scent, her eyes fell upon an opening in the wall like a cave framed by tree trunks. Blackened, it was, with burned wood, but the scent came to her keen nose from inside it. The blood smell and breath wafted from the darkness within, and Eeda hooted quietly when her eyes detected movement.
She coughed in recognition as a pair of small eyes gleamed out of the shadowy recess. These were locked upon her own as she hooted, and a quiet hooting hiss came back.
Goro drew his fingers away from the thunder-hand and grumbled for silence; then he looked up at the ceiling—listening.
Eeda moved away from the king with her eyes set lovingly upon the small red eyes in the cave for she saw now that a little infant hid in the shadows. Pale it was, and strangely formed, but it tipped its head left and right to mirror Eeda’s own curiosity. The others had noticed her movement and their nostrils flared as they realized what had caught her attention.
Goro growled at this new scent, and old Baho coughed repetitively as he moved into place at the silverback’s side where together, their noses twitched at the strange smell.
As Eeda drew near, she saw that the little infant’s limbs were white and trembling as with cold, and then her breath left her with excitement. She threw dead Kado’s corpse aside and leapt toward the cave in the wall, and reaching in, she swept the creature from its perch and into her embrace.
Warmth filled her powerful breast and caught at her throat as the creature’s tiny fingers twined in her fur.
Goro grumbled and turned to challenge her, but Eeda answered him fiercely. She shrieked, and snapped her teeth at the silverback with her shoulders half-turned to him, jealously guarding the infant with her body. Screaming she leapt away, first climbing over the shoulders and backs of Goro’s surprised lieutenants, and then outside rushing toward the jungle through the long grasses.
The assembled blackbacks snorted uncomfortably and showed their fangs at yet another breech in etiquette in Goro’s presence, but all of them were too unsettled by the thunder-hand’s proximity to challenge the disrespectful female who was already out of their reach.
Goro shook his head at Eeda’s histrionics and followed his thoughts back to the dangerous tool lying in his dead enemy’s lap. He reached out with his massive fingers to pluck it from Fur-nose’s hand.
Something in its precarious placement, and in the clumsy way the silverback handled the hard thing caused the device to suddenly clink loudly, and thunder-hand roared with a deafening crash. Flash and smoke blinded the terrified apes in the crowded lair.
Goro dropped the thunder-hand on the floor and turned with his blackbacks to charge out of the tree-nest as a mob.
And somehow, in the mad scramble to escape, the flat panel that hung in the doorway was batted and knocked about so hard that it swung shut.
As the last frightened ape leapt to safety, the door hit the frame hard enough to throw th
e latch and forever lock them out.
Eeda climbed high into the jungle canopy with her strange discovery until she came to a crossing of stout branches where she quickly built a nest of woven twigs and leaves that she lined with blankets of hanging moss.
The little white ape—for so she thought of him—seemed in form and shape similar to her, with the same number of arms and legs. Male he was, and possessed of a strong grip despite his fragile look.
She settled onto her comfortable bed, and on her back gazed up admiringly at the infant as his great round head rolled against her hairy chest, his sharp fangs gleaming when he opened his mouth wide to cry and fuss.
Eeda shifted positions, elevating her head and shoulders so that she could look down into his eyes. No longer red there in the daylight; they were dark. She could barely contain her excitement, panting and hooting as she cradled the foundling in her arms.
She caught a scent of blood then, so pressed her nose and mouth tight against his belly, legs and body to see if he was injured.
“Eek—eek!” the infant chortled, and Eeda was pleased that her snuffling inspection had brought a squeaky giggle from his bony chest. Panting and nodding, Eeda shared the laughter as her mind registered the scent of blood on his breath and thin bare skin. Musty he seemed, and she thought of how the poor thing had been closed up in a cave in the tree-nest with the rotting Fur-nose.
His eyes caught hers again and gleamed as they focused. A red heat grew in the orbs all of a sudden, and Eeda’s breath caught as the jungle went quiet all around her. The eyes probed, and the female’s slowing heartbeat grew loud in her ears. Lips going slack, she moved her face toward the infant’s until a wind came up to rock her nest, and she hooted joyfully before licking the little thing’s cheeks and neck.
Gazda. The name had popped into her mind as her eyes were locked on the white ape’s little face.
“Gazda,” Eeda repeated as she panted at the infant’s red smile, before her ridged brow furrowed, wondering at the source and meaning of the word.
She coughed and hooted happily then, pointed at her own chest with a sturdy thumb.
“Eeda,” she told her new baby in introduction, lifting him then, and pressing his bright red lips to her swollen breast. She winced as the little thing hungrily pricked the flesh around her nipple with his sharp teeth.
But before she could react to the minor pain, a calm slipped over her, and leaning back she gazed at the bright pink mixture that dripped from the baby’s busy mouth.
“Gazda,” she said in the guttural way of her folk, thinking that the name fit well enough. The speech of the apes consisted of crude words and sounds, but much of it was couched in body language, sign and gesture.
If she said “Ga” and opened the fingers of either hand, that indicated “bird” to another ape. The word “zeda” when linked to a stamping foot meant “snake” to her kind, so that must have been why she had thought of the name. One look at the odd little fellow made her think of birds and snakes, because Gazda had the long skinny legs of a bird and the hairless skin of a snake.
He had no fur, save for the dark covering upon his head.
“Gazda,” she repeated, breathing calmly to settle back into her leafy nest. Suddenly, Gazda made a rapid-fire clicking sound before moving over to suck upon the other engorged breast.
At the noise, Eeda was startled a moment, before panting with humor, thinking that she would have chosen their word for “cricket” as a name had she heard that sound first.
The she-ape’s wounded spirit surged with love, as the heartbreak for her dead son Kado departed like a sad breeze.
She watched Gazda nurse and smiled when he glanced up from his meal. Eeda winced as his little teeth nicked her flesh again, before she settled into a pleasant drowse.
Like all things in the jungle, life was too terrible and urgent for Eeda to take anything for granted, and she knew too well the harshness of existence and the fragile relationships that kept things alive. A bittersweet moment of calm was as good as it got for her, but she had learned to relish each she found.
1894 - 1899
One to five years of age.
CHAPTER 4 – The Night Ape
Eeda’s new baby fit into Goro’s tribe more easily than any outsider would have thought. The intelligent anthropoids’ lives revolved around their individual families and the larger group they comprised, and so they craved “proximity” and “numbers” as much as they craved juicy seedpods, mangos or bushbaby meat.
It was understood by all that the group was greater and that all were safer the larger the group grew. Famine or drought was rare in the jungle, so this simple equation of “safety in numbers” gave them all a better chance for survival.
Death was never considered for long or feared, as much as the act of dying was. Once life had left a body, there was no evolutionary advantage to dwelling on what could not be changed. This is why the other apes had been so confounded by Eeda’s utter despair at the loss of her firstborn.
It was natural for the tribe to acknowledge the death of one of its members and in its own way grieve, just as it was understandable that a mother would mourn such a thing; but Eeda’s unsettling insistence on carrying the infant’s corpse around with her had been outrageous.
So for Eeda to adopt an infant, no matter how strange or ugly he may have been, suited the other apes well enough, especially since it ended the young mother’s morbid attachment.
The new baby also appealed to their active minds. The apes were clever creatures with a penchant for problem solving, and so Gazda was a mystery that many of them obsessed about.
Each member of the tribe had something to say about the small creature’s origins, but some apes became downright intrusive with their curiosity, and things might have gotten much worse if Eeda had not answered the most inquiring apes with her fighting fangs.
So in time the apes settled back into their daily tribal rhythms, though the other mothers and the young apes remained keen to observe the foundling, but learned to do so from a safe distance.
Baby Gazda’s pale skin was lined with thin blue and green veins and drew the eye of any that ventured near; his generally hairless state stood out in stark contrast to his adoptive mother’s dark pelt.
True, Gazda was growing a good-sized tuft of black hair atop his round head, but the rest of him was sickly white, and clammy to the touch, much like a snail pulled from its shell.
The foundling’s flat face was a horror also, though he did have small bright fangs. They were set in pink gums behind full red lips that pouted between a pointed chin and a nose that was shaped like a bird’s beak with tiny curling monkey nostrils.
Despite the obvious differences, the most circumspect ape in the tribe still had to admit that Gazda looked very much like the beasts who had adopted him, though he was of a most pathetic variety.
The aging queens Oluza and Akaki could not resist teasing that Gazda was a monkey and they made several coarse jokes about Eeda’s mating habits.
Eeda endured the teasing and the joking because she was enrapt with her little foundling. His true challenge to fit in would come later in life, though, for Gazda was already attracting the attention of superstitious and aggressive blackbacks and adolescents. Those combative forces would have to be dealt with when he matured enough to leave his mother’s protective embrace.
Any bullying behavior to one at that delicate age would not be allowed and the majority of females and most of the males would have gladly protected Gazda or any infant in the tribe, as their own.
When he wasn’t being a nuisance.
Gazda made a high-pitched cricket noise, usually at night, repeating it until every ape in earshot was annoyed. Old Baho and the aging queens decided some deformation of the infant’s lips had caused it.
But since the jungle at night was never a quiet place that complaint soon died down as his clicking faded into the raucous background sounds that usually disturbed their sleep.
&
nbsp; However, they were less accepting of his peculiar behavior. Gazda rarely slept, and spent most nights skittering about on the shadowy branches that supported his mother’s nest.
Goro the silverback was perturbed by the young one’s nocturnal activities. Since the king and the blackbacks were tasked with protecting the tribe, and keeping a watch at all hours; Gazda’s activities could be mistaken for a threat.
So, the bull ape had commanded that all apes would sleep at night; but the wisdom of that decree faltered soon after its issuance, when it was learned that Gazda was unable to comprehend it.
Eeda had struggled to comply with the king’s edict, but she could not keep Gazda wrapped in her arms while she slept, and he was skilled at escaping her clutches. So she couldn’t sleep!
Goro saw that the female was soon exhausted from the watch she was forced to keep against her son’s truancy, and her temper was fraying to the point that her struggles with him were growing disruptive and waking other apes in violation of the silverback’s command.
So Goro and Baho observed the strange infant over the next few nights in an effort to resolve the situation, and both soon remarked that he didn’t click as much while roaming the tree. He was adept at climbing, and showed no interest in wandering far. They also noticed, although they did not discuss it, that while Gazda’s eyes were dark during the day, at night they glowed a feral red.
The silverback and Baho recognized the benefit of having a set of busy eyes awake all night in a jungle full of predators, and so the king issued an altered decree that all apes “except for Gazda” would sleep at night.
The tribe accepted this unnecessary piece of legislation without much fuss. For the most part, the apes were rough and ready individuals that soon adapted to the foundling’s unusual nocturnal ways.
Many of them even grew used to waking in a sleeping tree and seeing Gazda’s fiery red orbs seemingly afloat in the branches overhead and they took some comfort from his watchfulness.
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