Despite his illness, Omag was still a powerful male with silver hairs on his muscular shoulders and back. His face and chest grew more ravaged by the day, but male apes were judged by their strength, not beauty, and it was clear that the crippled ape’s physical deficiencies were compensated by a ruthless mental acuity. So, when Omag was not away hunting and eating the sickly flesh he craved, he’d squat near Akaki and Oluza, and encourage their dreams of power.
They would find a place to talk away from the Grooming Rock and the king. Away from Goro either Akaki or Oluza—or sometimes both would offer to mate with Omag, but the crippled beast had an appetite for something far more subtle and primal than sex.
“Goro is weak,” Oluza said in the grass by the trees. Of the aging queens, she was the most reckless with her words.
“Challenge him Omag,” Akaki would say, nudging his great shoulder, but Sip-sip, for so the queens called him in their thoughts, would only shrug.
They secretly used the name as did others in the tribe because there were few who liked or trusted the crippled ape, and fewer who had not suffered during his rages. Additionally, the queens had long suspected the true nature of his ill-favored cravings, and scorned him for it.
“Not Omag,” he lisped, sputtering as saliva dripped from his ragged mouth, before pointing at the young males at play. Among them, a large sturdy ape of six years led the games. “Ulok son of Goro, child of Akaki must challenge.”
“Ulok is young,” Oluza said jealously, munching a fistful of grass.
“It will take him many years to be so strong,” Akaki added, heart racing to know that her own offspring might hold the key to power. “But he is Goro’s son.”
“He is Goro’s in body,” Omag said, his tongue falling out of the hideous hole in his face to lick at spittle that dribbled from his jaw. “But Omag speaks to Ulok’s head and Ulok eats Omag’s sweet words like fruit. Omag makes him fat with pride.”
The aging queens nodded before Akaki yelped when her drowsing infant bit her nipple. She dealt a heavy slap with her leathery hand and the little she-ape squeaked.
“So Omag is like Ulok’s father,” Oluza grunted, her lips rolled away from her monstrous canines as she nodded her head up and down panting rapidly.
“Ulok is weak of heart, and strong in body like Goro,” Omag said, climbing to his feet. He leaned forward on his powerful fists. “Ulok will be king for Omag—sip! Sip!” The disfigured ape slurped, and his deformed lips writhed. He turned and scowled at Akaki and Oluza, daring them to tease him. “Tell Ulok to love Omag and you will be Ulok’s queens.”
Omag flinched when the sickly white foundling, Gazda, suddenly appeared from behind a nearby tree. He was clinging to the rough bark by his fingers and toes, and making a repetitive clicking noise.
Omag glared up at the young one and bared his fighting fangs as Akaki and Oluza rose beside him, the long fur on their necks and shoulders bristling.
While the group had grown to accept the foundling, his appearance was still unnerving. This was Goro’s work again; the king should not have allowed the weakling into the tribe.
Omag leaned toward Gazda and barked up at where the strange creature perched, his eyes burning from under his thick brow ridge.
But, Eeda swung out of the branches overhead and picked the little white ape up in her arms. She glared at Omag before snatching at a hanging vine and swinging away with her son.
Omag watched them go, his lips wrinkling over sharp yellow teeth. He had seen the hatred in the she-ape’s eyes—the disrespect. The old queens had seen it too.
“Gazda is sick! Sleeps in day and chases the moon at night,” Akaki said, reaching over to groom Oluza’s shoulder. Oluza was some years older and had a higher ranking in the group. “He is a night ape!”
“Did the night ape hear us talk?” Oluza asked, glancing up at Sip-sip. “Or his mother?”
“The night ape is too young,” panted Omag, appreciating Akaki’s humor. He’d also seen Gazda sleep in the day when the tribe was picking fruit and living life, and had seen him up in the night, sitting in the dark, or like a white frog on a tree trunk. Night ape. “Eeda hates Omag, but only thinks of Gazda.”
The crippled ape hated Eeda’s foundling, but like all of his kind, Omag was plagued with curiosity that sometimes overwhelmed all other instincts. It had not taken long for him to discover the night ape’s strange day-weakness.
Omag had pondered the orphan many times before, and had fantasized about hunting him, and eating his flesh. The night ape’s pale body reminded him of the bone-faces that lived across the river. They were hairless and pale, and similar to Gazda behind their masks and beneath their strange coverings of other animals’ skins.
Omag relished the flesh of their females so much that he often awoke from passionate dreams of devouring them. He had been hunting them for years now, at any opportunity.
Their lair lay days of travel from the Grooming Rock, past the eastern border of Goro’s land where they lived in many huts within a large ring of sharp sticks. Omag went there when the craving for the flesh grew too strong to deny, though he could not stay long so far from his own tribe.
It was easier to satisfy his appetites when Goro’s group foraged eastward for bananas, shortening his journey to the bone-faces. If the tribe ever lingered near, then Omag could make the trip so often that he could grow fat on the mottled pink flesh before the other apes resumed their trek.
Omag caught the bone-faced females at the river where they’d
