There were eyes, watching her.
She yelped and recoiled, gripping the palm’s trunk with her arms.
She saw a face. But it was not like her own. The head was about the size of Shadow’s, but there was a thick bony crest over the top of the skull, and immense cheekbones to which powerful muscles were fixed. The body, covered in pale brown fur, was squat, the belly distended. Two pink nipples protruded from the fur, and an infant clung there, peering back at Shadow with huge pale eyes. The infant might have been a twin of Tumble, but already that bony skull had started to evolve its strange, characteristic superstructure.
Mother and child were Nutcracker-folk.
Emma Stoney:
All the tepee shelters had fallen down.
One younger man was struggling, alone, to hoist branches upright. It was Fire, the teenager-type who had gifted her the caterpillar. But nobody was helping him, so his branches had nothing to lean on, and they just fell over. Still he kept trying. At one point he even ran around his construction, trying to beat gravity, hoisting more branches before the others fell. Of course he failed. It was as if he knew what he wanted to build, but couldn’t figure out how to achieve it.
Cautiously, Emma stepped forward.
Fire was startled. He stumbled backwards. His branches fell with a crash.
She held her hands open and smiled. “Fire,” she said. She pointed to herself. “Emma. Remember?”
At length he jabbered, “Fire Fire. Fire Emma.”
“Emma, yes. Remember? You gave me the caterpillar.” She pointed to her mouth.
His eyes widened. He ran away at startling speed, and came back with a scrap of what looked like potato. With impatient speed, he shoved it into her mouth. His fingers were strong, almost forcing her jaws open.
She chewed, feeling bruised, tasting the dirt on his fingers. The root was heavy and starchy. “Thank you.”
He grinned and capered, like a huge child. She noticed that in his excitement he had sprouted an erection. She took care not to look at it; some complications could wait for another day.
“I’ll help you,” she said. She walked around his pile of branches. She picked up a light-looking sapling and hoisted it over her shoulder until it was upright. Though her strength still seemed boosted, she struggled to hold the sapling in place.
Mercifully Fire quickly got the idea. “Fire, Emma, Fire!” He ran around picking up more branches — some of them thick trunks, which he lifted as if they were made of polystyrene — and rammed them into place against hers.
The three or four branches propped each other up, a bit precariously, and the beginning of their makeshift tepee was in place. But, hooting with enthusiasm, Fire hurled more branches onto the tall conical frame. Soon the whole thing collapsed.
Fire shouted his disappointment. He did a kind of dance, kicking viciously at the branches. Then, with a kind of forgetful doggedness, he began to pick up the scattered branches once more.
Emma said, “I’ve a better idea.” Raising her hands to make him wait, she jogged over to the muddy remnant of her parachute. She cut free a length of cord taking care not to show her Swiss Army knife to any of the hominids — and hurried back.
Fire had, predictably, wandered away.
Emma squatted down on the ground to wait, as Fire dug more tubers from the ground, and spent some time throwing bits of stone, with startling accuracy, at a tree trunk, and went running after a girl — “Dig! Dig, Fire, Dig!” Then he happened to glance Emma’s way, appeared to remember her and their project, and came running across as fast as a 100-metre record holder. Straightaway he began to pick up the branches again.
She motioned him to wait. “No. Look.” She took one of the branches, and pulled another alongside, and then another. Soon he got the idea, and he helped her pile the branches close together. Now she wrapped her cord around them, maybe three feet below their upper extent, and tied a knot.
…Emma Stoney, frontier woman. What the hell are you doing? What if the knot slips or the cord breaks or your sad tepee just falls apart?
Well, then, she thought, I’ll just think of something else, and try again. And again and again.
All the time the bigger issues were there in her mind, sliding under the surface like a shark: the questions of where she was, how she had got here, how long it was going to be before she got home again. How she felt about Malenfant, who had stranded her here. How come these ape-folk existed at all, and how come they spoke English… But this was real, the red dust under her feet, the odd musk stink of the ape-boy before her, the hunger already gnawing at her belly. Right now there was nobody to take care of her, nobody but herself, and her first priority was survival. She sensed she had to find a way of working with these people. So far, in all this strange place, the only creature who had showed her any helpfulness or kindness at all was this lanky boy, and she was determined to build on that.
Find strength, Emma. You can fall apart later, when you’re safely back in your apartment, and all this seems like a bad dream.
She laboured to tie her knot tight and secure. When she was done, she backed away. “Up, up! Lift it up, Fire!”
With terrifying effortlessness he hoisted the three branches vertical. When he let go, they immediately crashed to the ground, of course, but she encouraged him to try again. This time she closed her hands around his, making him hold the branches in place, while she ran around pulling out the bases of the branches, making a pyramidal frame.
At last they finished up with a firmly secured frame, tied off at the top — and it was a frame that held as Fire, with exhilaration and unnerving vigour, hurled more branches over it.
Now all I have to do, Emma thought, is make sure he remembers this favour.
“…Emma! Emma!”
Emma turned. Sally came running out of the forest, with Maxie bundled in her arms.
Creatures pursued her.
They looked like humans — no, not human, like chimps, with long, powerful arms, short legs, covered in fine black-brown hair — but they walked upright, running, almost emulating a human gait. There were four, five, six of them.
Emma thought, dismayed, What now? What new horror is this?
One of the creatures, despite the relative clumsiness of his gait, was fast closing on Sally and the child.
Stone stepped forward. The old male stood stock still, reached back, and whipped his arm forward. His axe, spinning, flew like a Frisbee.
The axe sliced into the ape-thing’s face. He, it, was knocked flat, dead immediately. The hominids hooted their triumph and ran to the fallen creature.
The other ape-things ran back to the forest’s edge. They screeched their protest, but they weren’t about to come out of the forest to launch a counter attack.
Sally kept running until she had reached Emma. They clutched each other.
“Now we know why our friends keep out of the forest,” Emma said.
Fire was standing beside them. “Elf-folk,” Fire said, pointing at the ape things. “Elf-folk.”
“That’s what I saw yesterday,” Sally murmured. “My God, Emma, they could have come on us while we slept. We’re lucky to be alive—”
“They took the ice cream,” Maxie said solemnly.
Sally patted his head. “It’s true. They took all your food, Emma. I’m sorry. And the damn canopy.”
Maxie said, “What are we going to eat now?”
It appeared the hominids had their own answer to this. From the spot where the ape-like “Elf” had fallen came the unmistakable sounds of butchering.
Shadow:
For long moments Nutcracker-woman and Shadow gazed at each other, fearful, curious.
Then the Nutcracker-woman took a red fruit, stripped off the flesh, and popped the kernel into her mouth. She pressed up on her lower jaw with her free hand. Caught between her powerful molars, the shell neatly cracked in two. She extracted the nut’s flesh and pushed it into her infant’s greedy mouth.
Shadow’s fear evaporated. She took a fruit herself and stripped it of flesh. But when she tried to copy the Nutcracker-woman’s smooth destruction of the nut, she only hurt her jaw.
She spat out the shell and, cautiously, passed it to the Nutcracker-woman.
Just as hesitantly, the Nutcracker-woman took it. Her hand was just like Shadow’s, the back coated with fine black hairs, the palm pink.
Shadow had grown used to meeting Nutcracker-folk.
The Elf-folk favoured the fringes of the forest, for they could exploit the open land beyond, where meat could often be scavenged. The Nutcracker-folk preferred the dense green heart of the forest, where the vegetation grew richer. But as the forest shrank, the Elf-folk were forced to push deeper into the remaining pockets of green.
Sometimes there was conflict. The Nutcracker-folk were powerful and limber, more powerful than most Elf-folk, and they made formidable opponents.
All things considered, it was better to try to get along.
But now, as Shadow and the Nutcracker-woman amiably swapped fruit back and forth, there was a screech and crash at the base of the tree. The Nutcracker woman peered down nervously, her child clinging to her shoulders.
It was the hunting party — or rather, what was left of them. She saw the two powerful brothers. Big Boss and Little Boss, and there was her own brother, Claw, trailing behind. They were empty-handed, and there was no blood around their mouths, or on their pelts. Big Boss seemed enraged. His hair bristled, making him a pillar of spiky blackness. As he stalked along he lashed out at the trees, at his brother — and especially at Claw, who was forced to flee, whimpering. But he needed to stay with the men, for he was in more danger from the predators of the forest than from their fists.
And there was no sign of Hurler, her uncle.
It was Hurler who had been killed by Stone’s obsidian axe.
Images of him rattled through Shadow’s memory. By tomorrow, though she would be aware of a loss, she would barely remember Hurler had existed.
The men abruptly stopped below Shadow’s tree. They peered upwards, silent, watchful.
The Nutcracker-woman had clamped her big hand over her baby’s mouth, and it struggled helplessly. But now a nut-shell slipped from the baby’s paw, falling with a gentle clatter to the ground.
Big Boss grinned, his hair bristling. Little Boss and Claw spread out around the base of the tree.
Shadow slithered down the tree trunk. The men ignored her.
The three of them clambered into nearby trees. Soon there was an Elf-man in each of the trees to which the Nutcracker-woman could flee.
She began to call out, a piercing cry of fear. “Oo-hah!” Nutcracker-people were fierce and strong, and would come rushing to the aid of their own.
But if any Nutcrackers were near, they did not respond.
Suddenly Big Boss made a leap, from his tree to the Nutcracker-woman’s. The Nutcracker-woman screeched. She leapt to Claw’s tree, her big belly wobbling.
