1903
Nine years of age.
CHAPTER 9 – Special Son
By the time Gazda had reached the age of nine, he was tall enough to look his mother in the eye if she could be coaxed to stand erect. It was an uncomfortable position for the powerfully built apes to maintain for long, so her son had caused some friction when he had begun adopting the stance as it suited his purpose.
Not wishing to alienate himself further from the group, he had been forced to compromise and only stood that way when an equal footing with his adoptive tribe was required; because upon all fours, Gazda’s head barely reached the elbows of his much larger blackback contemporaries.
The blackbacks thought him bold for grandstanding in such a fashion, since standing upright among the anthropoids was primarily done during bull-ape threat displays or in challenges for leadership. This had already led to several misunderstandings with adolescents that were primed for a fight, so Gazda used caution when assuming the position.
At nine or ten the adolescent apes were mostly grown, but Gazda lagged behind his peers in this, and was dwarfed by most of the others. His slow-witted but good-natured friend, Kagoon, had grown into a creature of solid muscle, slightly taller than Gazda when on all fours, and easily four times his mass.
Ooso was growing too, but was still small by female ape standards, though she was twice Gazda’s body weight.
So, the night ape took great pleasure in seeing eye to eye with his mother, which put him at just over four feet in height. He was also getting heavier, with ridges of swelling muscle beneath his pale skin—the direct result of his active and vigorous lifestyle—and diet.
Gazda was now far too old to take any food from his mother, so he had begun to depend upon the hunting skills that he had played at as an infant, but that he was now secretly perfecting.
No more scooting up and down the sleeping trees snatching up frogs and rodents and sucking the blood out of them while the tribe rested. His needs now required bigger game, and bigger game demanded better hunting skills.
The vegetation, grubs, fruit and nuts that formed the staple of the ape diet had never appealed to Gazda, though he had gone through the motions in an effort to fit in. Indeed, he had acquired a taste for many plants and nuts—even certain grubs—but he’d long ago discovered that he could not stomach swallowing solid food once he’d chewed it up.
This had been an alarming condition that several of the youngest apes were quick to capitalize upon. They gathered around him as he foraged, waiting to share the pre-chewed “snacks” he threw their way. Eeda did not approve of this behavior if she caught him doing it, but since he continued to grow and mature despite the bad habit, she tended to look the other way.
But as Gazda grew so did his appetite, and the tribe of apes did not hunt together often enough to suit his needs.
So he hunted alone. The night ape moved from catching frogs, lizards and rodents to tracking and killing monkeys, small forest antelopes, bushpigs and birds.
In most cases, he would kill the creatures as the other apes did, by ripping them to pieces with his powerful jaws and hands, but instead of swallowing the dripping hunks, Gazda chewed the bloody flesh until his thirst was satisfied and his hunger diminished.
The solid meat did not agree with him, so he spat it out. Hunting to the night ape was about the blood; the blood was the life.
Eeda had long known that her son desired fresh meat far more than the other apes, and had seen him drink the blood while butchering his small kills; while at other times, he brought the meat back to share with the tribe already drained of the nourishing fluid. Eeda did not condone his strange behavior, but she had grown used to her adopted son’s peculiarities. He was not like other apes.
So, by his ninth year, Gazda was hunting, always hunting, to feed his unquenchable thirst.
He hunted most often at night because he had learned that his physical abilities were multiplied many times after sundown, when he was also mentally much more alert.
A weakness came upon him during the day as though some illness arrived with the sunlight. It was an inconsistent condition because his nocturnal strength surged briefly at sun up, and again when the blazing orb was directly overhead. Then, for a short period, its rays could draw him from his daytime stupor, only to desert him again soon after, to the usual weakness that dragged at his limbs until the sun set.
This was what had caused him to nap for short periods of time during the day whenever the lethargy became overwhelming.
Early on, his mother’s protestations had prompted Gazda to explore the effects of daylight further and around his sixth year, he had climbed out of the eternal twilight of the jungle floor and into the highest branches of a kapok tree that pierced the thick canopy.
He had found it impossible to look directly at the sun in the blue sky—its brightness was blinding; and while he did not feel pain from the touch of its warm rays, he had noticed a “tightness” to his naked skin that grew more uncomfortable the longer he remained in the light.
Gazda had also been alarmed to feel the sun drain his strength to the point that he felt as though he would lose his grip on his high perch, and so he had beat a hasty retreat, only to find his vigor returning as the shadows darkened near the jungle floor.
In time the night ape had found that sleeping once or twice during the day was all he needed. He could still travel and interact as
