He’d had the sudden feeling that something was among the trees—something was in there watching him!
A snake? Leopard? Hyenas, perhaps?
The hair on Gazda’s head and neck prickled as he squatted on all fours before the thicket.
The shadowed trunks and twisted roots grew close together, and the big leaves cast a murky darkness that settled like a fog near the ground, obscuring much. It slid among the trees this haze, and crept into the open grass. The darkness was moving outward, slithering toward the night ape in undulating waves crested by a light green mist.
The fog caressed the withered blades of grass that edged the wood as it drifted closer.
Gazda glanced up quickly. Eyes in the trees? Had he seen eyes in there—watching him?
No! He jumped up to his full height, swinging his arms at his side and hooting worriedly. It must have been the sunlight falling from... Where? The leaves were too thick; the wood was dark within.
A flicker of light again, and then nothing.
Baring his fangs, Gazda bolstered his courage by snatching up some sticks and long tufts of grass before standing up to swing his arms and snap his teeth—glaring an angry challenge at the tall black trees.
The night ape barked at the shadows and the memory of things looking out, before he made a desperate charge toward the dark grove where he threw the sticks and grass at the creeping fog.
But he veered away at the last second moving stiff-legged toward Fur-nose’s lair, certain that he had had enough of the strange trees.
He barely glanced back as he ran, though his thoughts were fixed upon the wood if his eyes were not. Gazda’s heart pounded, and his breath came in gasps as the weird trees loomed large behind him and in his imagination.
The night ape consoled himself thinking that he would return to explore the black grove more closely in the future, for he did not have the time at present.
He still wanted to investigate the mysterious tree-nest before the other apes or his mother realized he was away.
Gazda was never watched very closely anymore—especially when the tribe was engaged in eating its favorites—and now that he was approaching adolescence, he was expected to recognize the jungle dangers on his own.
But his maturation made no difference to his mother. Eeda doted on him, and was prone to worrying if he was very long away from her sight.
The night ape growled at this parental constriction as he sprinted across the grass toward the vine-covered structure in the trees.
The area around it was scallop-shaped, and filled with a great mass of long grasses that was encroached upon by thick ferns growing out from the surrounding jungle wall and intermingling with the clustered bushes laden with the berries favored by the apes.
After his unsettling brush with the dark stand behind him, the large leaf-shrouded structure in the old trees was more curious than threatening; and he barely slowed to climb up the swollen trunks that formed a base for the structure.
Once atop this he cleared away creepers and tangled vines to expose a broad platform made from flat sheets of wood laid edge to edge. Most of the lair was covered so thickly by foliage that the night ape was forced to reach through it and use his fingertips to investigate what lay beneath the greenery.
There he felt a flat piece of flexible material, much reinforced, that rose up perpendicularly from the platform to form a wall. Feeling along this, he found another angling away and past that one, another.
Quickly tearing the clingy covering aside, he set his palms against the wall and found it was made of a strange pliant substance laid over hard angular shapes and cross-braced branches that formed an inner support structure and reminded the night ape of bones beneath flesh.
The green-stained skin was comprised of a fine lattice of interwoven hair-like threads. It was soft, despite its age and dampness, and smelled of mold and decay, but it gave him a pleasurable feeling when he placed his bare hands or feet against it.
Gazda turned from the structure, and looked back toward the line of trees that obscured the beach. From his vantage point, it was plain to see that the entire open space was slowly filling up with plant life as the jungle grew inward to overtake the grasses and fill every hole and shallow—except where the dark grove grew and covered a fan-shaped section of the rising southern slope. There the verdure was falling back as the sick, black trees spread out toward the jungle.
He grumbled and the hair on his neck prickled when he realized that the shadowy fog he’d seen before was still leaking out of the grove and into the long grass.
The night ape hooted worriedly as he turned to the tree-nest where he continued to feel the shapes beneath the overgrown leaves and vines. With broader gestures now, he touched its walls and overhanging roof until he envisioned the large almost circular shape of the lair.
This investigation he had supplemented with his powerful nose, for a scent had been playing at his subconscious that grew stronger as the tree-nest was exposed.
He dropped to all fours upon the platform and snuffled about the structure. An old odor still seeped from beneath the fronds and there was nothing sweet about it. No. Gazda only smelled rot and old decay, but it was distant enough to provoke no sense of impending danger and of a vintage that bespoke no living threat.
It came from deep within the layered nest, and the heap of foliage covering it. This greenery he continued to clear away until he found a smooth piece of wood; a squarish panel hung in a curious arch of wooden supports that were set into the wall, but seeming somehow separate from it.
The night ape imagined this to have been the place where Fur-nose, and then Goro and his blackbacks, had found an opening and entered—an opening that the other apes had later reported as having disappeared.
He sniffed the panel and pressed against it; pulling still more vines away so he could push again. Gazda was amazed to see that the flat shape shifted suddenly against the wooden uprights in which it was set and when it did more of the reek emerged from inside.
Musty, and it stank of very old decay; the smell of green bones on the jungle floor.
He sensed no threat within, though his experience at the dark trees had kept his hair on end. Throughout this investigation, Gazda had been afflicted by fleeting moments of fear—almost panic—and he’d glanced over his shoulder as if someone or something had been looking at him.
It was the way of all jungle creatures to be ever vigilant, but in these alien surrounds, the night ape’s instincts were sharply tuned.
However, he had felt no lurking presence connected to Fur-nose’s lair. The stories had said he was dead, and Gazda could catch no scent or evidence to contradict that.
The night ape set his legs and pushed harder against the panel with his shoulder, attempting to wedge his fingers in a dark gap that briefly appeared between the flat wood and the upright.
He could not get a grip to pull or push the sheet aside and so after several attempts, he stepped back, and ripped still more vines and covering foliage away from the tree-nest.
The sun had continued to sink further, and the shadows by the dark grove had crept a few more feet across the clearing by the time the night ape stumbled upon a curious twist of leather string that stuck out of the structure where the wall rose up to meet the roof.
He reached out to pull upon this.
There was a sudden and startling clack and thump as though something had moved inside the tree-nest, and it was only Gazda’s frustration that overpowered his fear, and finally goaded him forward.
The panel in the wall had shifted inward; the dark gap between it and the upright had grown wider.
Gazda hooted quietly to himself as he set his right palm against the angled wood and shoved.
The old smell of death rolled out upon a plume of dust as the shadowed opening grew larger from left to right. Over this a clingy curtain of spider web stretched until it broke in twisting filaments and fell aside. The night ape crouched low—his steel-like muscles coi
led. At the first sign of danger he would spring upward for the vine-covered roof and leap over that toward the distant trees.
But it was a stale odor of death that drifted from Fur-nose’s lair, and other scents with it like rotten wood and dead animal smells, but little else.
The lowering sun at Gazda’s back illuminated the inside of the structure, but the night ape’s shadow obscured what lay directly across from him.
Hooting cautiously, eyes flashing back and forth as he proceeded, Gazda felt a sudden peculiar fear come upon him as he shoved the flat wood completely aside and moved slowly into the murk.
Aged or not, to his superb senses the smell of death still permeated the enclosed space in a way that was impossible for him to ignore.
Gazda’s whistling breath came rapidly and his heart pounded. The brighter light outside the structure and the darkness within dazzled him. His eyes struggled to adjust as he moved deeper into the tree-nest and shadow.
CHAPTER 12 – Treasures
There was a clicking sound when he set the knuckles of his right hand down on small and brittle shapes that felt like sticks. He snatched his hand away and cast a glance to investigate—before a panicked gasp escaped him!
There in the angled light were the thin white bones and dried out skin of a baby ape!
Gazda coughed a warning, and then shut his mouth, embarrassed—they were only bones...
He grumbled at his own cowardice, and knelt to smell the little skeleton, but in the action, his shadow shrank so the rays of the setting sun fell past him and full upon the body of Fur-nose!
Fur-nose!
Growling and snapping, Gazda jumped back and sidled away from this eerie tableau. His fangs flashed as he moved toward the entrance.
But even in that strange light it was obvious that Fur-nose was dead. The desiccated corpse had only appeared to be alive where it sat across from the door, perched upon a peculiar arrangement of sticks that formed legs and a platform on which the creature’s bones were draped.
The night ape rose angrily to his feet snarling, glaring and swinging his arms to raise his courage as he staggered closer with hair bristling.
Fur-nose it was. Gazda could tell by the dry but fuzzy skin that covered the skull, from which long hairs trailed beneath a withered nose and cheeks to fall loosely on either side of the gaping mouth. Teeth, dried lips and some gray stretch of jawbone peered out from behind the dark filaments.
High in the face, empty eye sockets stared at Gazda, and there was a weird, weathered bag of animal skin upended on Fur-nose’s head from which lank cords of hair trailed.
Such a strange creature, yet Gazda could not contain an angry growl and low bark as a sudden fear came upon him that Fur-nose might have some wondrous power that would allow his rotten bones to speak for him in violence or in deed.
But the night ape’s eyes were drawn back to the platform that supported the dried out corpse and kept it upright. It was made of sticks, and there beside it was another structure of similar design, though it was taller and upon it rested artifacts of unknown function.
However, this was nothing compared to the mysterious creature that sat so near. Fur-nose was a monster from legend, but there was no life left in him.
Gritting his teeth to steady his nerve, Gazda took a step closer and squatted again to better investigate the bones. These were hidden in part by thin material made from a crosshatch of threads like the skin that covered the lair.
This substance was rotten and torn, but clung in tatters to the skeletal shoulders and followed the bones in the legs until they disappeared in leathery containers that held the feet.
The night ape hooted sadly, for this closer observation made it plain from the skeletal arrangement that it was as Baho had hinted: Fur-nose would have resembled Gazda in size, shape and construction.
He reached up to feel his own ribs, while counting those on the skeleton’s chest with his eyes.
The night ape already knew that he was different from Goro’s tribe, but what could this mean? Fur-nose had legs as long like Gazda’s, and his arms were short like the night ape’s, too—their arrangement similar but opposite to the anthropoid ape’s—and here they shared that feature.
The skull’s face was flat, just as Gazda’s face was flat, and the teeth were set in the jaw the same, though the night ape’s fangs were longer and sharper.
Gazda briefly contemplated the possibility that Fur-nose had mated with his mother Eeda. He had heard about this happening with the other she-apes, when rogue males might secretly approach the tribe and mate with them. Had Fur-nose done the same?
That would answer many of the questions that had plagued Gazda and made him the target of such derision. He pondered the notion, and wondered if he would ask her. If not Fur-nose then perhaps the night ape’s father was one from the strange dead creature’s tribe.
Gazda moved closer, sniffing at the air. The body smelled little different from the bodies of dead apes, what could that mean? Was it possible that he like Gazda were just ugly apes? The skeletal differences suggested something else, but the similarities were undeniable.
Unless Fur-nose and Gazda were of a different family than Goro’s but still apes, in the way the leopard was different from the lion.
That made some sense to him, though it would never tell him what he was.
The night ape backed toward the door where he could again lower himself over the arrangement of small bones that littered the floor. They were proof that the apes had come into Fur-nose’s tree-nest, but none had mentioned an infant in the tale. Goro would never allow such a thing in the company of blackbacks, and on an expedition of this sort, no mother and babe would be allowed.
He growled angrily. Unless Fur-nose had killed the baby ape for his own ends—to eat the meat perhaps? Or like Gazda had the stranger similar tastes and murdered the infant for its blood?
Gazda shifted back on his haunches so he could see the two sets of remains, and as he studied them, he reached distractedly for a lock of black hair that hung from his temple. He thrust the end this between his sharp teeth and chewed, twisting it around in his mouth as his mind ran over the mystery.
Then his attention shifted to the lair again. To the right of Fur-nose’s perch were similar structures. The first was taller and stood against the wall. Gazda lifted himself to peer at the top.
Such strange items there: a curious blob of something that looked like chewed fruit but smelled of lightning strikes; there were sheets of thin, pale, skin-like material that sat in dust-covered piles; and by that was a strange knobby stone that was slightly glossy and filled with black dirt.
At the foot of this taller platform, he saw a scattering of small wooden sticks that smelled of ash and charcoal, and on the floor by them a very strange green stone twice the length of his hand.
He moaned fearfully when he moved closer to the tapered rock, and realized he could see completely through its hard skin at certain angles.
Gazda rose again to move past that taller structure to where it touched up against another thing quite like it, but which was shorter and much, much wider. It had stout legs that held up a broad platform covered with sheets of a flexible material that was soft to the touch.
Hooting quietly, he panted at the pleasing texture, and then grunted his amazement as his eye shifted up to the wall over it, and on from there to the corner.
There he recognized the skulls and horns and furs of jungle animals that Gazda had hunted himself. There the skin of a bushbaby and monkey—further on the horns of a bushbuck and tusks of a pig. He panted happily and tapped lightly upon the wall under them and each time he did, fine debris rained down from the ceiling.
Gazda lifted a hand to catch some of it and he noticed that the cascading particles flared to life and shone as they passed through yellow light that leeched past a vine-covered opening in the wall.
Coughing and nodding in understanding, he rose up to his full height and peered out. Indeed, the opening
was covered by vines, and also by thin hardwood sticks that had been placed in an interwoven arrangement over it.
Vines had grown through the mesh, and the night ape picked a piece off and chewed it in place of his hair. Gazda squinted out into the light again, and realized he was looking toward the jungle on the south. On impulse he flattened himself against the wall, and angled his eyes right, so he could see—indeed, he could just make out the dark edge of the black trees, and the orange sky of sunset beyond it.
The black fog seemed to have grown even more.
Grunting worriedly, he turned from the window, and looking across saw that another such opening was set in the opposite wall.
Light from this flew across Fur-nose’s dead legs and lit a cloud of dust that was falling upon another platform to Gazda’s left.
This was just like the thing that Fur-nose rested upon, but it was larger with a tall thin back and broad upraised arms.
Gazda crept closer to it, grumbling warmly, and then panting at an odd feeling of familiarity. He sniffed the wooden arms, and then half-climbed upon the platform. Its old bindings squeaked but held.
The night ape studied its high, narrow back, tipping his head left and right, trying to understand...and then his eye fell upon the structure there in back of it.
This was a tall, hard-looking thing built against the wall where an opening that smelled of burned wood gaped between two smooth wooden uprights like trees.
Gazda’s nose itched as he climbed down from the platform to investigate it. He sniffed at the charcoal and ash within the opening until he leapt back sneezing.
Center to Fur-nose’s lair now, he leaned back on his haunches to study the strange cave-like thing that smelled of...flames. It was fire that he smelled there.
The night ape’s attention shifted back to the skulls on the wall and the broad flat platform beneath it and from his vantage point, he could see that something was stacked under there.
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