He had been excited, and pleased—so very pleased to be there among creatures like himself—but he could not deny the disorientation he felt to be in his favorite place in such unusual company; all while their words poked and pried at him, caused his guts to churn and thoughts to flail in a dizzying flood born of his dreams and nightmares.
In his dreams but not in life had Gazda seen the things the strangers’ words had conjured in his memory—things he did not recognize but that seemed so very familiar. Shapes they were—places and objects surrounded by sensations and emotions that he could not place but did feel deeply.
The talking had an effect similar to the way their music had played upon him, but amplified now and echoing within him, as if the notes had still been playing in the shadows of his mind.
And while their words bombarded him, he had felt Lilly’s presence near, her scent distracting and disturbing him the more. For another mate to be so close, and his first mate at that—a young female injured by his inexperience and excitement.
Gazda had been in Ginny’s company, too—the female he had taken as his second mate. Her essence infused the setting also, her scent arousing him, and encouraging him as he gauged the night ape males and their behavior—determining if they were threatening or friendly.
This storm of confusion and anxiety had undermined his ability to embrace his cousins fully. Face to face they clearly were of Fur-nose’s stock, beyond the apes of Gazda—and one of them the very incarnation of that mythic creature. He still thrilled at the memory of twice overcoming his fears to touch the “fur” for which the tree-nest builder had been named.
They were of Fur-nose’s group, so they must have been of Gazda’s tribe, too.
It had been overwhelming. He had never imagined the setting, and with two of the strange night apes now his mates. So, the King of the Apes had pushed down his anxiety and drawn upon his fighting spirit to maintain his dignity, even with the scent of Lilly near—silently calling to him between breaths.
She was asleep behind the tree-nest wall, though the rapid heartbeat he heard with his uncanny ears did cause him concern—though not for long, for he had been more pleased that she was alive.
Alive, and just there. How simple it would have been to mount the platform—and go to her—as the other night apes chattered.
Yet Ginny had been there at his side. Fresh was her pale skin, and sweet were the secrets of her flesh. He only knew the scent of her blood not the taste. His thoughts had traveled back to their time together, and soon, Gazda had begun to fear Lilly’s emergence from the tree-nest.
What would he have done if she came out? He remembered old Baho’s tales of having more than one mate, and how his queens Akaki and Oluza had become jealous and vengeful.
In fact, Baho claimed to have tired of mates as he grew older saying the she-apes worried his brain like the buzzing of honey bees—but without hope of any sweetness.
Adding to Gazda’s dismay was the constant attention of the night ape male with the face like Fur-nose. Vanray, as he called himself, had communicated with a staccato bark and flashing eyes that watched Gazda’s every move and expression.
Vanray of the furry nose had studied him from head to toe, and then beyond all outrage, had reached out to touch Gazda’s precious shining snake disk.
He had relented without violence for the older night ape was Ginny’s friend, and Vanray had approached with curiosity and without aggression or hostility.
Did not Gazda’s tribe of apes touch one another in grooming and share the things they found?
In that event, one ape knew another from birth so such intimacy was second nature; yet, Vanray had done this thing to a great hunter and killer upon first meeting, and so Gazda had been cautious in his response. It had been a very bold move that could only mean that this Vanray had strength and abilities like Gazda’s—older though he be. Could that mean he was Ginny and Lilly’s silverback and mate?
Such boldness could easily earn a crown.
And silver threads curled in the fur atop Vanray’s head.
As Gazda leapt back into action, jumping from the khaya to swing from bough to vine to branch, his mind struggled beneath this burden of new truths.
His life among the apes had not prepared him for these strange creatures with their busy minds and language, and active eyes and hands that expressed subtle emotions and meanings beyond his comprehension.
In coverings also did they seem his better, for each wore garments akin to what he’d found in Fur-nose’s lair, and much like the images in the skin-stones. To the touch, they’d been like softest fur, and as flexible as grass.
Gazda’s own crude garment was like something an ape could make, and practical or not, being in such company when clad in that attire had made him feel crude and rough. In fact, he’d almost retreated from the gathering to seek out one of his hidden hunting capes, and lather a fresh mud-skin over his naked flesh.
With care he could have made impressive marks and shapes in the mud covering to match the bones and skulls etched on the Bakwaniri bands that clasped his muscular limbs.
Only then could Gazda hope to display his true status in the jungle.
Sadly, these thoughts only came to him later when his anxiety began to pass, and with hindsight he could rework the first meeting in his mind. However, he could not live the experience over again, and so events would have to stay as they had unfolded.
He had had only his short experience with Lilly and Ginny to guide him, and so he had awkwardly copied his second mate’s behaviors where he could—though his raw nerves had thankfully stopped him short of grooming the night ape males.
How would they have reacted?
Gazda clambered down to the forest floor again to confirm the night ape trail still wended east. Ginny’s lost friends had seemingly wandered aimlessly, sometimes south, and with uncertain steps had made easy tracks to follow.
His mind traveled back to the tree-nest. He had barely been able to keep his focus with Lilly’s presence dogging his conscience, robbing him of the clarity he required to make the proper impression.
As the others had talked, Gazda had wondered if Lilly was angry because he had taken her blood. Was that why she had chosen to sleep? Upon that note he had also dwelled, thinking that she would only grow angrier to see he had taken another mate! And this one her own good friend.
So, Gazda had been quick to take up the hunt for Ginny’s friends. He had determined the scents of those night apes that had been around the tree-nest, and Gazda had seen mental images of the missing males when he looked into Ginny’s eyes.
It seemed to him now that the farther he got from the gathering, the greater his confidence grew to be. Gazda had two mates of his own, and he decided that worrying about them would be part of having them—which made him think that this might have been why Goro had waited so long to choose queens of his own.
Would Gazda make Lilly and Ginny queens and take them back to his tribe of apes?
It would be a difficult decision to make.
He missed Lilly very much, but found he favored Ginny. The older female’s thoughts were somehow more comfortable for him to know or see when the situation arose. She had experience that he savored in her words and in the thoughts he saw behind her eyes.
So long as he was careful with his passion, and stayed away from the black fog, he would keep her long and happily as his mate, he knew; and he would avoid the mistake of sharing his blood as he had with Lilly.
That had felt wrong to him when it happened, and while he had yet to see any long-term effects, he knew that feeding upon one’s mate was a thing no king or silverback should do.
Gazda had made a mistake.
Ahead he saw tall, widely spaced trees, and he hooted excitedly as he sprang from one trunk to the next. He was getting close to the place where he had slain the traitor Sip-sip.
Gazda was glad that he had drunk deep of Omag’s blood, and of the bushpig before returning to Ginny in the
ir nest high in the trees for he had thought that with his appetite sated, he could better control his passions and desire.
In that way could he mate with Ginny without fear of feeding upon her.
Gazda’s face flushed with shame as he leapt and dodged through a tangle of high-hanging creepers and vines for his thoughts had shifted to his time with Lilly.
True, drinking her blood while mating had heightened the experience in its ardor and danger, but it had shortened the coupling, and complicated his feelings about the young female by endangering her life and distracting him from her physical beauty.
It was as he slid down a long thorny trunk to check the trail that he realized his experience with Lilly might have fit perfectly within the night ape traditions that he had yet to learn.
Then he ran a maze of branches going east again thinking that in his ignorance, he did not know if all night apes fed as they mated.
Because he had only Goro’s apes as teachers, he now had to teach himself.
Already he had learned that feeding before mating allowed Gazda to lie throughout the night with Ginny, and enjoy such intimacy without fearing for her. In that way he could watch the pictures in her mind, and capture hints to the ways of her words.
Though even her words held some danger for as his comprehension of them had grown, so too had his fear that the black fog was gathering somewhere near—as though it too could hear the words and was drawn to their meaning.
So he had quieted her with kisses to lie for a time together and await the clinging murk’s subsidence.
Gazda dropped lightly into the open place where he had slain Omag, and there he found his enemy’s headless and broken body. As he struck the ground a pair of striped jackals bolted away from the remains and disappeared behind the underbrush.
Sip-sip’s body had been torn and mangled, and was just beginning to wriggle with maggots. Of his severed head, there was no sign, something that did not surprise the night ape. The jungle floor teemed with scavengers, and doubtless one had made off with the prize.
Then he hooted worriedly to see the stumps of broken bone-faced arrows protruding from the corpse, and he growled at finding the tracks of many Bakwaniri that had gathered there.
This worried him the more when their tracks intersected with those of Ginny’s friends.
As he puzzled out their capture, he found two bone-faces lying dead in the underbrush, and he smiled to see that each had lost a chunk of scalp.
Harkon the huntress had been there, though she had come to take the hair after Ginny’s friends had been abducted.
Gazda soon found Harkon’s scent headed east and he hurried to overtake her.
Despite the day-weakness dragging at his limbs, he charged ahead through tree, by vine and upon foot, racing after her trail.
Until two hours later when he stopped to kill a small antelope, and drink its blood. Then his full belly started whispering for sleep, and his pulse thudded dully in his ears.
Crouched there over the dead buck, he caught the subtle whisper of one blade of grass sliding against another...
...and he turned with long knife in hand expecting a panther’s scream, fangs and claws—only to see Harkon rise up out of the ferns.
Gazda panted happily at this, pleased at his friend’s hunting skills, and pleased it was not a panther. For he had not heard her come so near.
“Gazda,” the night ape said, reaching out to stroke Harkon’s offered palm.
“Harkon,” she answered, before sliding her hand over her hairless skull. “I am hunting Bakwaniri.”
“I hunt the bone-faces,” the night ape answered. “Now they have taken men...” After his time with Ginny his language skills were so hard-pressed that unfamiliar concepts caught upon his tongue. “...apes like Gazda.”
Harkon grunted, startled by the ape-man’s response. He had learned to speak more of her language, though his own guttural speech intruded—but how? Who had taught him the words?
“I follow Bakwaniri that took a white man like you and a black man, one day past,” she said. “The Bakwaniri will eat them.”
Gazda understood some of her words that he had learned by reading their meaning in her mind. “Man” she had called him in the past.
“Gazda will kill the bone-faces before they eat,” the ape-man snarled, though Harkon listened to his words wide-eyed for some English had slipped in. “He will destroy the Bakwaniri.” Gazda bared his fangs and then gestured like he was biting and ripping flesh.
The huntress grinned, well aware of the ape-man’s appetites.
“Harkon cannot save her people from Bakwaniri by herself,” the huntress said, her eyes growing moist as she allowed herself to think of Anim.
Gazda’s expression softened and he hooted sadly for in his thoughts Harkon had appeared with a male infant in her arms.
“Gazda will kill Bakwaniri with Harkon,” he said, before lifting his head, panting and hooting joyfully. “Gazda can get the white ‘man’ and the black, and Harkon can get her son.”
“The Bakwaniri did not sleep or rest as I did, and have gone quickly east for many, many hours,” Harkon said, pointing. “They go to their lair beyond the river.”
The night ape looked into the east, and a shudder ran through the thick muscles on his shoulders and back. He would have to leave his own land to go there, a notion more daunting than the thought of facing a bone-face horde.
But he was King of the Apes, and the greatest killer in his tribe.
“We go!” Gazda shouted, running and jumping into the lowest branches before swinging quickly through the trees in the distance.
Harkon sighed, but started jogging at her greatest speed after him, favoring her right leg; its knee and ankle joints had become swollen during her chase of the Bakwaniri, and had forced her to find a place to rest and sleep.
It was also why she had fallen so far behind the masked hunters. She had hoped that they, too, would require sleep, but they had made use of sorcery to push through the night.
Harkon had been making her best speed ever since, but feared arriving at the Bakwaniri village too late to kill her foes or help, let alone have the strength left to accomplish the task.
Snarling at the pain in her leg, the huntress set a grueling pace for herself, and had just finished her first mile when Gazda swung down and landed softly on the path ahead. He quickly made signs encouraging her to travel in the trees like him.
She shook her head.
Gazda frowned and barked as he came close. He leaned his broad back against her chest and reached around to grab at her hands.
Harkon nodded reluctantly, understanding his intention. Gazda had not offered her any reason to fear him directly, but she had never been this close to him before, just as she had not been close to any man since first vowing revenge against the Bakwaniri.
The strength of Gazda’s fine white body was not lost to her, nor was his fearsome look, which Harkon had found agreeable.
Especially when he had visited her in dreams.
She barely had time to twist her spear in the straps that held her other gear over her spine, before Gazda hissed impatiently, grabbed her wrists and crossed them beneath his chin.
She wrapped her arms around the ape-man’s corded shoulders and neck, and in seconds, Gazda was running toward the nearest trees.
He leapt off the ground and clambered up the trunk until he reached the boughs, and soon swept Harkon higher and higher into the canopy where the night ape began to swing and leap through space from tree to vine and vine to tree.
Harkon had never experienced this kind of power before as slabs of muscle knotted beneath her arms, and iron sinews slid against her breasts, belly and thighs.
Indeed, the ape-man would be a useful ally to take against the Bakwaniri. Harkon had long suspected that some moment of fury would pit her alone against the cannibals, but with Gazda? Perhaps her mission would not end in her death after all.
As she thumped and rubbed against
the ape-man’s body, she wondered if her dreams of him might also have a better end.
CHAPTER 24 – Salvation of Science
Virginia rose from Lilly’s bedside dabbing the tears from her face with a handkerchief.
“Dr. Van Resen, might I play some music for her?” she asked, desperation tightening her features as she indicated the phonograph at the foot of Mrs. Quarrie’s bed.
“Lilly needs rest,” the scientist said, shaking his head. “Music could tax her depleted mind, and might draw unwelcome attention to us.”
“Is there nothing we can do?” the governess groaned. “She refuses water and food...and struggles to remain conscious,”
“Yet, her ‘appearance’ continues to improve,” Van Resen answered, stepping quietly past her and pulling Lilly’s bedcovers aside.
The girl’s hair was thick and glossy, and resembled a heap of golden filigree where it lay piled upon her pillow despite the dim light that entered through the small window. Her face was flawless, with full lips standing out against her ivory skin like rose petals. Lying there she resembled a piece of marble statuary where the contour of her neck and shoulders rose from her nightgown.
Van Resen lifted the linen bandage that covered her throat.
“Appearance, yes,” the governess said, “but her condition worsens...”
“With little water or food she remains anemic—so there is no rational explanation for her improving in any way. Yet even these wounds on her neck are healing,” he said, pointing to the marks.
“Then she is healing...” Virginia observed, leaning over the girl with one hand raised to cover her own throat. “And she must improve if they have caused her condition.”
“I am uncertain now. The ‘rawness’ or blush that we originally observed around the wounds reminded me of marks left from ‘blood cupping,’ the ancient Chinese medical treatment that promotes circulation. Blood is drawn to the skin’s surface by suction created when hot cupping glasses are pressed to the epidermis.” A strained laugh came from Van Resen. “Though I think it unlikely that we could add Manchurian healers to the list of dangerous indigenous animals.”
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