The men, Hon thought. I used to be one of them, one of the strongest. But now, look at me. He pushed the hides away from his face and rolled over, peering at the three young ones as they stood there. They stared at him. Kai brazen, Jumu nervous, and Ula imploring. Just as they always did.
“Please?” Ula asked. Her eyes were gentle and reminded Hon of someone he’d known long ago. He hadn’t been able to say no to those eyes either.
He let out a resigned sigh and flopped the covers aside. “Help me up,” he grumbled. His voice was steady, but his body’s strength had left him weeks before. He sat up slowly, the pops and cracks of his joints mixing in with those of the fire.
Ula stood and stepped back as the two boys moved forward. They helped Hon get to his feet and stood on either side of him in case he needed support.
Hon smiled at their thoughtfulness.
Not that far gone, he thought. He was still grateful for their kindness. He grabbed one of his hides, wrapped it around his bony shoulders, and made his way out of the cave. Dull aches bit into his joints, but he refused to let it show on his face.
He was still Leader.
Jungle sounds washed over him. The fresh air felt good on his skin as the last traces of daylight filtered through the high canopy above. The rest of the tribe sat or squatted around a large fire, and they greeted him with nods and smiles. Some were his own children and grandchildren. Others had joined the tribe over the years, seeking the safety of the hills and Hon’s legend. Not one of them remembered the long journey across the water, the journey that brought Hon to this place, these hills. Any who could have remembered had already returned to the jungle.
He slowly sat down and leaned against a time-weathered log set there for that purpose.
“He’s going to tell the story,” Kai said, beaming at the Tsukike, Hon’s people. The three children moved to where their parents sat as one of Hon’s youngest sons handed him a piece of warm, roasted meat.
Hon took a few thoughtful bites, working the meat with what teeth he had left, swallowed, and then began the story of The Last Qwilai.
O O O
I raced through the misty jungle, fern fronds slapping bare skin. I wore only a loin cover, as was the custom, and gripped my remaining two spears tightly, shifting larger branches and vines aside as I chased the great, blue and red kuduk bellowing and honking ahead of me. I had tracked it all morning and come upon it dozing atop a grassy hill. It scented me and squawked as I threw a spear. The tip grazed its neck, and with a frightened honk the chase began.
Shortly after entering the jungle, the feathery, flightless beast started to slow down. I had coated my spear tips with glistening poison that oozed from the small, leathery tree animals of the jungle, just as my father had shown me. I hadn’t known if it would affect kuduk the way it did smaller animals, but I was gaining on it much more quickly than normal.
It had to be the poison.
The thrill of the hunt consumed me as I raced around the bole of a giant tree and spotted the beast crossing a small clearing. It veered down the hill, headed for a tangle of bushes on the far side. I threw another spear and missed as I continued to gain ground. My arm tensed, ready to throw my last spear, but my father’s voice echoed in my head. Think, he always reminded me. Save the last spear for the killing.
It leapt, sailing over the thicket.
I put on a burst of speed, leaping lightly across moss-covered boulders that shaped the course of a small stream snaking its way through the jungle. I would not fail my rite of passage. All young Tsukike were obligated to set off alone and kill the largest kuduk we could find. It had been this way forever, and this kuduk was very large. Its skull was greater even than the one my father kept with his other sacred things.
I heard a crash and pained squawking on the far side of the thicket as the kuduk fell and tumbled down the hill. I leapt atop a boulder and dove headfirst over the thicket, hoping I could span the distance without falling in. If I got tangled in the thorny branches, the hunt would be over. My prey, still stumbling, disappeared around the trunk of a massive tree many strides wide.
Anticipation for the kill coursed through my body. I could almost feel the kuduk ahead of me. I hit the ground, tumbled once, and came up at a dead run. I raced around the tree trunk.
And crashed headlong into a solid, feathery-blue chest.
My spear flew from my hands as my feet lifted out from beneath me. I sailed between the kuduk’s powerful legs, sliding across the turf. Through a blurry haze I saw its great beak lunge at me. I rolled to the side in a flash and heard a monstrous CLACK! as its beak clamped down where my head had just been.
It raised its head, a fringe of bright red feathers at its neck sticking out like a halo, and it screeched its fear and fury, the sound filling the jungle
It lunged…
I rolled away.
CLACK!
Again I rolled.
CLACK!
My hand slapped down upon my spear. I had only one chance. I rolled towards the monstrous kuduk.
The fringe of red feathers blinded me as its beak came down again. It bit into the turf and tore out a chunk of soil and grass.
I thrust with my spear, aiming for its heart.
The spear tip sank in, disappearing into the feathers. The kuduk screeched and shuddered in agony. It leapt away, tearing the spear from my hands, and staggered back several steps as it flapped is small wings furiously. It screeched one last time and toppled slowly, its heavy body hitting with a loud thud at the base of the tree.
I rose from the ground and stood over the kuduk, my breath rasping within a pounding chest. Sweat poured from my skin.
I had done it. I was a man.
I spent a long time simply staring at the great beast whose life I had taken. I was filled with a deep feeling of respect. It had fought till the end and was as much a part of the jungle as me. I realized someday I would end up just as it had.
Such is the jungle.
O O
It took me a full day to return to the home of the Tsukike. My body ached from dragging the flesh and head of the kuduk, the heavy load wrapped in hides and suspended between two long poles. I had wanted to stop many times, but I was driven by pride. We would all feast tonight, and I would finally be treated as one of the men. I reached the base of the hill where my people lived. After the Great Journey across the water two seasons earlier, our Leader had chosen this high place above the trees. It was safe and afforded a beautiful view of the whole valley.
“Father!” I shouted.
I dropped the poles and dashed up the hill, holding only my spear, ready to celebrate my victory. I expected the whole tribe to come out cheering, but as I crested the hill, my heart sank and my blood went cold.
Halting in my tracks, I fell to my knees.
Gone.
They were all gone. The huts lay in ruin. Wide splashes of blood and bits of flesh covered the top of the hill where something very large had fed upon my tribe.
“No…” I whispered. “Mother!” My terrified, boyish scream carried across the canopy of trees below the hill. “Father!”
I rose, my eyes filling with tears, and ran to what was left of my family’s hut. The structure had been flattened. Part of me wanted to pick through the blood-covered tumble of leaves and branches that had been my home, but I couldn’t, afraid of what I might find underneath.
“Hon!” a voice cried from behind me. I spun, spear raised in defense. It was Shar, my mother’s sister. She ran towards me from the jungle on the far side of the hill.
I dropped my spear as she crashed into me and wrapped her arms around me. “Hon!” she wept, her tears running down my neck. “It came,” she whispered frantically, “out of the darkness!” She squeezed me until my breath caught in my chest. “It was huge and black…” she sobbed. “Your mother and father… they….” she paused and shook her head violently.
“The screams! The terrible screams as it killed them!” Her voice broke
and she wailed like a wounded animal.
“What, Shar?” I tried to loosen her grip. Something inside me pushed the sorrow aside, replaced the boyish fear with something else. My tears stopped, and I stood tall, wresting her arms from around me. It was time for me to be a man. “Shar,” I said, staring into her terrified eyes as I squeezed her arms. “What happened?”
“It was a qwilai, but it was huge!” She paused and went suddenly calm, frozen with the fear of the memory. “It looked down at us….” Her voice trailed off.
My eyes went wide, but it took time for it to really sink in. Qwilai were long, scaly, black beasts, normally as long as two or three men, with half of that length a long tail. Their heads usually came up to only a man’s knees, with the very largest as high as a man’s thigh. The thought of one looking down at me filled me with terror.
She nodded and gripped my shoulder. “All the men are dead, Hon.” She searched my eyes. “Unless you …” she looked at me hopefully.
“I passed the test, Shar,” I said quietly. There was no pride in my voice, no victory. Merely resolve. I knew what I had to do. “Who survived?” I asked, dreading her answer.
“Not many. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Some of the old ones, a few of the women and a handful of children.” Her eyes drifted to what was left of our homes. “The qwilai took the rest,” she whispered, her voice full of hate and fear. “It must have fed upon them all morning What are we to do?” she asked. She sounded lost. Something inside me ached at the sound of her voice. Shar had always been so strong.
“Move on,” I said simply. “And survive, like we always have. But this hill is no longer a safe place.” I stepped past her, headed towards my kuduk, and heard hear fall in step behind me. “Wait here.”
“But—” Fear filled her voice.
“I said wait,” I replied without looking. “I’ll be right back.” I strode down the hill, the aches that had tormented me forgotten. I grabbed the poles and dragged the meat of the kuduk back up the hill. As I crested it, Shar saw what I had killed for my trial. Her eyes grew wide.
I nodded slowly. “A big one. The rest of you can eat while I do what I must.” I strode past her in the direction she had come from. “Take me to them.”
O O
After gathering what tools and hides we could from the ruin of our village, we traveled towards the setting sun and found a ravine with a small stream running through it. I helped those of the Tsukike who were left get settled in, and we ate the kuduk silently.
Night closed in and exhaustion finally took hold. I found a soft patch of grass and slept, albeit restlessly. My dreams were full of horrors, of a giant qwilai ravaging the Tsukike, of my parents screaming. I woke in the morning covered in sweat and filled with fear.
Despite that fear, I gathered several spears and coated their tips with my father’s poison. Then I put on my thickest hides and told the others they should rest while I hunted the qwilai. Several of the women begged me to stay, and I agonized over leaving them, but the qwilai must be killed. Alive, it could return in the dead of night and feed upon the rest of us when its belly was empty again. I couldn’t let that happen.
I set off for what was left of our village with the women’s weeping filling in my ears.
A misty rain started to fall not long after, and it felt good on my skin. It was easy to pick up the trail of the qwilai. It had left broken branches and crushed grass in its wake, and its claws had opened great furrows into the earth. I set off at a run, only stopping to check how fresh an occasional pile of spoor was.
I reached the end of our forest and came upon a span of high, swaying grass. A wide swath of flattened stalks showed me where the qwilai had gone. It was headed towards the next river valley. A forest rose before me, dipping away down a long slope that ended in a far, rocky ridgeline.
I crossed the grassland and entered the trees, running down a rolling landscape that gently descended into thick mists. The jungle was heavy with ferns and blossoming vines, their deep shadows spreading out in all directions. I couldn’t see it from within the forest, but I knew the base of the ridge was somewhere below. The air was alive with humming insects. Thin rays of afternoon sunlight traced through the mist rising and swirling around me.
It didn’t take long before I encountered a wide stream where I stopped and drank deeply. Once I had caught my breath, I stood slowly, clutching the three spears I had brought. As I scanned the forest, something caught my eye. I hopped across several small rocks spanning the stream and ran down the hill. At my feet was a fresh pile of its spoor.
The qwilai was close.
A lump of fear rose in my throat. For a moment my legs threatened to carry me back to what was left of my tribe. How could I defeat such a monster alone? It had killed all the men of my village.
The memory of my father’s voice filled me: “We do what we must, Hon,” he used to say. “For the Tsukike.”
I took a deep breath and swallowed my fear.
Crouching, I moved through the forest as silently as I could. I sniffed the air, hoping to catch its scent as I moved from tree to tree. I maintained some distance between its still-obvious trail and myself. Its claw marks paralleled the stream down towards the bottom of the valley.
The rocky face of the ridge finally came into view through the mist, and it rose up out of sight beyond the canopy. I followed the stream, which turned along the ridgeline and disappeared around a jagged curve of rough, tumbled stone several men high. There was no moss upon the boulders, no clumps of dirt or foliage. It was a rock fall, and it had happened recently. The stream flowed around stones, cutting a fresh swath of mud in the moss-covered ground.
Shadows at the edge of the stream caught my eye, so I crept towards them silently. There, just at the edge of the moss, were two massive footprints squashed deeply into the mud. The prints, each wider than the span of my chest, were impossibly wide apart. The qwilai had drank here and then moved on.
Its trail led further downstream. I turned and made my way along the water’s edge. I moved around the rock fall and could see the qwilai had walked down the middle of the stream, its belly dragging in places and disturbing the rocks and mud as it moved.
A deep, rumbling, rasping sound pricked up my ears, and my mouth went dry.
The ridge rose above me, a few strides away from the stream, and bent around at a sharp outcropping of stone. I hopped across the stream, landing quietly upon a thick patch of moss, and put my back against the rock face. I moved forward slowly, and the sound of the rumbling grew louder.
The qwilai was just around the corner.
My heart pounded in my chest. I moved closer and closer to the edge of the outcropping, trying not to make a sound. I could finally smell it, a rank, rotten smell of decaying flesh. As I started to peak around the outcropping, my shoulder brushed up against the wall.
Small stones clattered to the ground at my feet, shattering the silence.
The rumbling stopped.
I froze, ready to run for my life. I held my breath until the air burned in my chest. After many heartbeats, the rumbling started up again. I let out my breath, breathing silently as I tried to ease the pain in my chest. When I had calmed down enough, I summoned my courage, leaned out, and peeked around the corner.
It was bigger than the monster in my dreams.
Its body was a hill, a great mass of black armor dotted and slashed with pale, ancient scars. Its legs were tree-trunks that ended in black talons as long as my forearm. Its swollen belly crossed the stream, making a dam. A large pool of clear water had formed along its side, and the rivulets swirled under its neck and flanks. A spear stuck out of its leg.
My father’s spear.
I paused. The reality of what I was about to do hit me like a clap of thunder. I looked about, trying to think of what to do next. When I started out, I’d thought I could find a way to kill it with my spear—find a way to run up and impale it in some soft spot like I had the kuduk. The poison would do i
ts work. I could strike a single blow to end its life and claim victory.
I’d been a fool.
Futility crushed down upon me, as if the rocks above were stacked upon my shoulders. I stared up at the rock face and almost laughed aloud. I squatted down and thought about what I could do. I envisioned the men in my village fighting the beast, of them throwing their spears or stabbing at the thick hide as it slashed with deadly claws or smashed them about with its great tail.
An idea formed in my head. The qwilai had only one soft spot, a place where there wasn’t any armor—its mouth. But if I simply attacked it, it could charge me or lash out with claws and tail. It simply wasn’t possible to attack the thing and get a spear deep enough to do anything. I needed to think of something, but what?
There had to be a way.
My thoughts were silent for a long time. Then something inside me whispered, The wall. In a flash I knew how. It might cost me my life, but this, the mightiest of all qwilai, would never hurt the Tsukike again.
The idea became a plan. I brushed my fear aside, carefully set one of my spears down upon the moss, and grasped the other two in one hand. With a deep, resolved breath, I stepped silently around the corner, determined to face the qwilai.
I crouched, bristling with anticipation, and shuffle-stepped sideways across the moss-covered ground. My back faced the rock wall. I held my spears ready as I circled around the massive, curling tail twitching in the stream.
A quick glance to the side showed me exactly where I could climb. There was a pattern of notches up the middle of a deep cleft in the rock face. I tried to imagine how tall the qwilai might be standing on its rear legs and then scanned up the cleft … there.
It was a long way up, at least five lengths of a man. A ridge-like outcropping of stone, as thick as a tree trunk, rose on the far side of the cleft, reaching almost to the canopy. Cracks riddled its surface, and I realized I needed to avoid it at all costs, or I might bring the whole thing down on my head.
Fantasy Short Stories: Five Fantastic Tales Page 8
