Survival of the Fittest

by Jacqui Murray

  What no one said but showed in the People’s eyes was the expectation that Nightshade and Xhosa would rule as a team. Xhosa encouraged this, talking with Nightshade often and in full view of the People. Today, though, she led him to a secluded spot where their hand motions couldn’t be seen.

  “The Big Heads won,” in the battle that ended her father’s life, “yet they leave us alone. Why?”

  Nightshade curled his upper lip. “They know you and I—we are as unbreakable as a cliff. Rather than fight a battle they can’t win, they gather their forces to await the right moment. That will never arrive, not while I’m here.”

  Xhosa’s stomach tightened. “How do you know this, that they are growing in size?”

  “From scouts I send deep into Big Head territory.”

  She clenched her fists. “Nightshade. Their weapons are strong—”

  “Our warriors are stronger, Xhosa. Never doubt that.”

  His hands spoke with a quiet confidence that left no room for fear. He pivoted to leave but she stopped him.

  “Nightshade. Know I consider you a co-Leader in everything but name. You provide a counterbalance to me. You spot issues I miss. I welcome that.”

  He had never shown anger that she won the leadership. In discussions, he spoke his mind but deferred to her. He seemed satisfied to be her Lead Warrior but how could that be? His entire life had been preparing for Leadership. Now, short of her death, it would never happen.

  He cocked his head, face a mix of curiosity and insult, and left.

  She observed him as he went about his duties but saw nothing that made her worry. He performed without complaint, without hesitation, and with a full sense of authority.

  “There is nothing there.”

  Chapter 6

  Xhosa bent forward, panting from the torturous ascent. Between ragged breaths, she snuffled in the damp smell of Fire Mountain. A group of children charged across a clearing, stomping their feet and tossing their heads like Hipparion. Some plodded in perfect rhythm with those in front while others flawlessly replicated the pronking leap of Antelope with its arched spine and stiff legs. In this way, they learned to confuse prey on a hunt by walking and thinking like them.

  She studied the People’s territory with satisfaction. One side was protected by the Rift and the other by a waterhole. Beyond those, oversights like this one allowed scouts to see a day’s travel toward the horizon, providing plenty of warning should enemies invade. It stretched from one range of hills to another, filled between with rich grassland edged by berry bushes, fruit trees, melon patches, and a variety of tubers, rhizomes, bulbs, roots, and corms. These fed the People well in the absence of meat. Nightshade’s warriors and scouts patrolled constantly, marking the borders with urine and feces and allowing no one entry except to trade for females or children. This was the richest of all territories and must never be taken for granted.

  Nightshade caught her eye and bobbed his hand level to the ground. She dropped without a thought and just in time. At the edge of the People’s territory, Big Heads passed one of the many boulders that marked the People’s border, moving as though this was their territory. No Others, only Big Heads, acted this way.

  Since her father’s death, Xhosa had relentlessly but subtly stalked this enemy, searching for their weak spots. They hunted fearlessly with no respect for boundaries. The stone-tipped spear wasn’t their only unusual weapon. Often, she saw them use a fire stick to set the grassland ablaze and force a frightened herd over a cliff. Big Heads at the bottom would then harvest the meat, never sharing with others—something Coyote and Eagle always did.

  “Xhosa.”

  Her call sign was quiet as Nightshade joined her, both hidden in the grass.

  “Big Heads killed the Others that used to live there,” and he pointed to where the enemy collected.

  A cold chill ran down Xhosa’s spine but Nightshade seemed unperturbed. In fact, respect for their power tinged his movements.

  He continued, “Soon, we must clash or lose our territory. I will follow this group to see what danger they pose.”

  “I join you.”

  They waited as the Big Heads killed a handful of birds and chased down a pig. Finally, the group left, leaving an easy-to-follow trail of noise. After a hand and another of Sun’s movement overhead, Xhosa heard a buzz like a hive of angry bees. She crested a hill and immediately ducked, biting her lip to keep from gasping.

  “Big Heads—that buzz is their voices!”

  During the day, the People vocalized to communicate call signs or warnings. Only at night, when well-protected by the bramble barrier, did they use voices, but not the constant uncontrolled barks, chirps, hoots, howls, and yips of these Big Heads.

  The encampment abutted a hillside as would the People’s but there the similarity ended. Their people covered the land in front of her. She opened and closed her hands too many times to track. For the People—it took only a hand of hands to tick off everyone.

  A youngster caught her attention as he took food to an elder, her legs shriveled like desiccated twigs. Why feed anyone who could no longer work? The elder chattered a string of the odd Big Head noises, patted the child with a dry wrinkled hand, and he ran off, giggling.

  Nightshade pointed to the warriors training rigorously with the long-throwing spears. To the tip of each, they’d affixed a stone, like a pointed chopper. “How do they attach that?”

  He licked his lips and leaned forward, his agitation building the longer he watched. He didn’t answer—or couldn’t.

  As Xhosa prepared to leave, a male touched a burning torch to a mound of twigs and dry weeds. Instantly, they burst into flames but no one fled. Instead, they gathered around the fire, hands out, smiling.

  With that, the two slipped away, their footsteps obscured by the crackle of burning branches, both lost in their own silent thoughts but with the same inescapable conclusion: The Big Heads needed more room.

  Chapter 7

  “We have to leave, Nightshade.”

  Xhosa hated that her motions were stilted and worried and that her insides cramped with fear, but what she had seen—so many Big Heads, so well-armed—made her want to run. No wonder her father had hoped for peace with these creatures, up until the day he died.

  The day they killed him.

  That horrid thought rattled around inside of her. But my job as Leader is to protect the People. Doesn’t that mean sometimes, it’s better to run than fight?

  Her hands were damp with fear, partly because of the Big Heads and partly because she just didn’t know what to do.

  Nightshade glanced at her, his face filled with recrimination, jaw so tight his teeth ground like rocks rumbling down a hill, but he said nothing, simply headed home, never looking back the entire time. At homebase, he sent his most trusted scouts with instructions to find the People a new home. They would go every morning until they found one.

  For the rest of the day, every time his eyes found hers, it was as though he had sized her up and found her disappointing. Truthfully, she disappointed herself. What she wished to know was, the day her father died, did he stand and fight to allow the rest of his warriors and hunters to escape or was he frustrated they hadn’t stood with him?

  Xhosa walked to the stream at the edge of the clearing and washed the heat from her body. With her sweat stink gone, a new one made her eyes water.

  “What’s rotting?” She muttered, sneezing, just as a distraught mother grabbed her arm.

  “My son—his leg—it’s worse,” her eyes pleading.

  In her panic, she raced off but all Xhosa had to do was follow the fetid stench to a grimy squalid pile of sordid flesh and bones.

  “Ant,” Xhosa motioned dispassionately, swallowing the sourness that rose in her throat. “You look awful.”

  Though one of the People’s newest adults, Ant wouldn’t get much older if the boil on his leg didn’t stop weeping gooey yellow puss. He deserved it of course—who would wade into a feces-laden s
tream with an open sore? His excuse had been that a rhino chased him. He survived but the formerly benign wound grew into a pustule the size of his palm and now much larger with a smell so awful, no one would go near him.

  Xhosa stooped, cutter in hand. “I must rupture it.”

  Not waiting for Ant’s approval, she told the mother to keep her boy from moving and abruptly stabbed the pustule until it broke open. Ant howled as a bloody foul-smelling mucus squirted out. Xhosa patted it with moss until the gush trickled to a stop, leaving a crater of raw weeping tissue.

  Ant whimpered and Xhosa scowled. “Be quiet. This is your fault. You irritated Rhino.”

  “I wanted a drink of water, not her calf!”

  She ignored him while stuffing the last of a particular blue flower into the wound, layered it with honey, and sealed the whole thing with leaves.

  “Mother of Ant, keep this damp with honey. I will look for more of the blue flowers but it may be too late.”

  The old female clutched her chest, tears wetting her cheeks, but Xhosa had no time for her. She handed Ant the shredded pulp from inside a brilliant orange bark. “Eat this. It helps the fever,” adding as she left, “and the pain.”

  When far enough the boy wouldn’t see, she beckoned Nightshade. “Ant will die without more of the blue flower,” and motioned where it grew.

  “That’s on unclaimed land.” A smile flitted across Nightshade’s face. He loved a challenge.

  Xhosa, Nightshade, and handfuls of warriors left the next day when Sun awoke, planning to return well before Sun slept. One of the warriors carried a dead gazelle for trade in case the blue flower’s location was controlled by an Other tribe.

  Xhosa led the group along a dry riverbed, past the caves where subadults learned skills, and skirted the tree where the elders talked while pounding and chopping roots. As they left the People’s land, Xhosa executed a careful sensory search, probing the shadows for movement and searching for noises out of sync with nature's own. All seemed well so the group continued toward the shimmering narrow band of the Great Waterhole. The blue flower lived in the forests along its edges.

  The group continued in silence, each stepping in the prints of those in front of them, crouching to remain below the grassline as much as possible. They passed a family of graceful Giraffid, their delicate necks rising high above the mammoth and Wild Beast that browsed close by. A youngster limped, gashes left by Cat’s claws still fresh on its hind leg. Nightshade brushed a single digit over his hip, motioning, “We should kill it and harvest the meat.”

  “We first collect the healing plant. The carcass will be here or won’t when we finish.”

  Nightshade frowned. "We skip a sure hunt to heal the wound of a boy too stupid to protect himself. He will never be able to defend the People!” Nightshade had no patience for stupidity. That the boy was innocent mattered not at all.

  Xhosa held her hand behind her, palm to the ground—Wait—and scrambled up a hill to check the forward path. And think. She remained motionless for a breath and another, head pivoting over her surroundings, mind churning. Killing Giraffid would be easy but then, they wouldn’t have time to harvest the healing plant. Ant would die.

  It didn’t take long. Nightshade wouldn’t like her decision but he wasn’t Leader.

  She beckoned him and headed toward the blue-flowered plant. “If a predator kills Giraffid, we scavenge the carcass on our way back."

  Nightshade dropped to the end of the column. Protecting their backtrail was a good job for him. His reflexes were like Cat's, his hearing like Owl's—no one would surprise them.

  Today was hotter than yesterday and that worse than the day before, the land’s way of saying the wet time had ended. A white haze shimmered in the sky like a mist. The thump-thump of their feet frightened a family of bush pigs as they scooted across the trail. The group pounded beyond a copse of trees, down a treacherous defile, and under a jutting ridge.

  Around midday, they moved away from the cliffs to ground filled with sagebrush and bunchgrass. She stopped just beyond a termite mound where Leopard slept, searching the landscape, looking back along their backtrail, a frown wrinkling her face. Fire had burned a thicket of trees that always provided a restful break in trips past. Her nose flared at the acrid aroma of scorched meat—some animal died in fire.

  “This way,” she motioned to Nightshade.

  Their shadows shortened to the length of a hand by the time they came across a mud-filled puddle. The warriors smeared the muck over their bodies while she monitored the surroundings. In the distance loomed both Fire Mountain and a nearby cousin. Their flanks met in a deep gully that disappeared below the horizon. Xhosa compared this to the mental image from her last trip and searched.

  There! The dry creek bed twisting amid stalky grass at the foot of a boulder bed, and a spear’s throw from that, the skinny-stalked, small-leafed blue-flowered plant swayed in the shallow breeze as though to catch her attention.

  She raced over, leaving Nightshade and the warriors resting in the shade of a baobab. It was a large patch with so many flowers, roots, and stems that they filled her neck sack. A welcome breeze lifted her hair, carrying the smell of dust and carrion—

  And Big Heads. No other creature had this stink.

  She raised her arms high and motioned, “Down!”

  Another breeze and the odor disappeared but no one moved. Her leg twitched as ants poured over her foot. She bit her lip to distract herself. Sweat dripped down her face, tickling her neck.

  Nightshade crawled to her. “We take a different route back,” and they diverted toward the waterhole where her father died but Big Head stench was strong here. Sun's glare bounced off the sparkling surface making it impossible to see so she squirmed around to get a better view. A pair of mammoth blocked her view as they threw trunkfuls of water at each other, flaring their giant ears and trumpeting their contentment.

  When the behemoths plodded away, a flash of movement and a glint of light on the opposite shore caught her eye. Xhosa tightened her grip on her spear and tried to focus.

  “Big Heads,” Nightshade motioned, his shoulder touching hers, body reeking of energy. “Let’s see what they do,” and he took off up a hillock with oversight of the waterhole. Xhosa huffed and followed.

  The dry grass crackled beneath her steps. Insects chirruped and squeaked their displeasure at the intruders, these noises concealed by the Big Heads non-stop chatter.

  Nightshade and Xhosa peered below. Big Heads filled the shore, eyes on each other, ignorant of those watching. A dangerous stillness settled over Xhosa, part of her wanting revenge for her father, another part knowing this was not the time. Sweat dripped from Nightshade's steaming body, plopping loudly against the hardscrabble ground. A snake wriggled across Xhosa’s hand and into its hole to escape the muggy heat.

  The pounding began inside her head as she focused on her nemesis, her mind starting to tingle but before a plan could pop into her brain, the Big Heads left.

  She motioned to the warriors and all followed, traveling deep into strange new territory. When the landscape changed from crater-pocked grassland to wooded flatland, Xhosa breathed a sigh of relief and oriented herself to this new terrain, marking her position relative to Fire Mountain, Sun, and the distant scent of Great Waterhole. Over there, on her weak side, trees crowded against their neighbors. A baobab tilted over a cracked wadi as though pushed by Mammoth. Subconsciously, a map formed in her head populated with these landmarks. This was the same way she found roots, scavenge, fruit trees in bloom, and periodic waterholes, and knew how to avoid where other bands lived and predators slept. It happened without thinking.

  She scanned for broken branches and impressions, sniffed for urine and feces that would mark this as Big Heads' territory, but found nothing. They too traveled outside of their home.

  Finally, a faint dampness in the air beckoned like the mist before a storm and the Big Heads veered toward a pond. Xhosa settled downwind, hidden by tussock gr
asses and cattails.

  Nightshade motioned, "They don’t know we’re here. We should attack.” Tension edged his movements.

  Xhosa stiffened. Nightshade must have seen it but misunderstood.

  “This will not be like last time, Xhosa,” meaning the attack that killed her father.

  She nodded once, not sure this was the right decision.

  As they prepared, a Big Head youth sprinted out of the brush that edged the water, panting, face glowing, muscles bulging across his bronzed chest. His head hair hung to his shoulders, straight like Xhosa's but lighter in color and damp with sweat. He jabbered Big Head words, using his fingers to tick off how many of something excited him. The Big Heads screamed to their feet and sped off, Xhosa and Nightshade right behind.

  As they rounded the last tree in the thicket, the Big Heads were already flanking a Hipparion herd, exactly as the People would. The paleohorses bolted, ears pinned back in fear, manes flying, snorting damp clouds of saliva as the Big Heads flung their deadly stone-tipped spears. Some Hipparion fell as others reared in terror. Panic filled the whites of their ebony eyes. Sweat washed from their loins and muscles rippled, driving them on as the Big Head warriors butchered those that fell, their frightened whinnies not slowing herdmates.

  When finished, hunters severed pieces from the still-bleeding bodies and carried them away, leaving the rest to a smaller group of Big Heads.

  Nightshade motioned. “This is our chance."

  He never considered failure. Fighting meant winning and he trained his warriors to be more vicious, ruthless, and violent than those they faced. If they refused to give up, they would prevail.