It came from deep within the layered nest, and the heap of foliage covering it. This greenery he continued to clear away until he found a smooth piece of wood; a squarish panel hung in a curious arch of wooden supports that were set into the wall, but seeming somehow separate from it.
The night ape imagined this to have been the place where Fur-nose, and then Goro and his blackbacks, had found an opening and entered—an opening that the other apes had later reported as having disappeared.
He sniffed the panel and pressed against it; pulling still more vines away so he could push again. Gazda was amazed to see that the flat shape shifted suddenly against the wooden uprights in which it was set and when it did more of the reek emerged from inside.
Musty, and it stank of very old decay; the smell of green bones on the jungle floor.
He sensed no threat within, though his experience at the dark trees had kept his hair on end. Throughout this investigation, Gazda had been afflicted by fleeting moments of fear—almost panic—and he’d glanced over his shoulder as if someone or something had been looking at him.
It was the way of all jungle creatures to be ever vigilant, but in these alien surrounds, the night ape’s instincts were sharply tuned.
However, he had felt no lurking presence connected to Fur-nose’s lair. The stories had said he was dead, and Gazda could catch no scent or evidence to contradict that.
The night ape set his legs and pushed harder against the panel with his shoulder, attempting to wedge his fingers in a dark gap that briefly appeared between the flat wood and the upright.
He could not get a grip to pull or push the sheet aside and so after several attempts, he stepped back, and ripped still more vines and covering foliage away from the tree-nest.
The sun had continued to sink further, and the shadows by the dark grove had crept a few more feet across the clearing by the time the night ape stumbled upon a curious twist of leather string that stuck out of the structure where the wall rose up to meet the roof.
He reached out to pull upon this.
There was a sudden and startling clack and thump as though something had moved inside the tree-nest, and it was only Gazda’s frustration that overpowered his fear, and finally goaded him forward.
The panel in the wall had shifted inward; the dark gap between it and the upright had grown wider.
Gazda hooted quietly to himself as he set his right palm against the angled wood and shoved.
The old smell of death rolled out upon a plume of dust as the shadowed opening grew larger from left to right. Over this a clingy curtain of spider web stretched until it broke in twisting filaments and fell aside. The night ape crouched low—his steel-like muscles coiled. At the first sign of danger he would spring upward for the vine-covered roof and leap over that toward the distant trees.
But it was a stale odor of death that drifted from Fur-nose’s lair, and other scents with it like rotten wood and dead animal smells, but little else.
The lowering sun at Gazda’s back illuminated the inside of the structure, but the night ape’s shadow obscured what lay directly across from him.
Hooting cautiously, eyes flashing back and forth as he proceeded, Gazda felt a sudden peculiar fear come upon him as he shoved the flat wood completely aside and moved slowly into the murk.
Aged or not, to his superb senses the smell of death still permeated the enclosed space in a way that was impossible for him to ignore.
Gazda’s whistling breath came rapidly and his heart pounded. The brighter light outside the structure and the darkness within dazzled him. His eyes struggled to adjust as he moved deeper into the tree-nest and shadow.
CHAPTER 12 – Treasures
There was a clicking sound when he set the knuckles of his right hand down on small and brittle shapes that felt like sticks. He snatched his hand away and cast a glance to investigate—before a panicked gasp escaped him!
There in the angled light were the thin white bones and dried out skin of a baby ape!
Gazda coughed a warning, and then shut his mouth, embarrassed—they were only bones...
He grumbled at his own cowardice, and knelt to smell the little skeleton, but in the action, his shadow shrank so the rays of the setting sun fell past him and full upon the body of Fur-nose!
Fur-nose!
Growling and snapping, Gazda jumped back and sidled away from this eerie tableau. His fangs flashed as he moved toward the entrance.
But even in that strange light it was obvious that Fur-nose was dead. The desiccated corpse had only appeared to be alive where it sat across from the door, perched upon a peculiar arrangement of sticks that formed legs and a platform on which the creature’s bones were draped.
The night ape rose angrily to his feet snarling, glaring and swinging his arms to raise his courage as he staggered closer with hair bristling.
Fur-nose it was. Gazda could tell by the dry but fuzzy skin that covered the skull, from which long hairs trailed beneath a withered nose and cheeks to fall loosely on either side of the gaping mouth. Teeth, dried lips and some gray stretch of jawbone peered out from behind the dark filaments.
High in the face, empty eye sockets stared at Gazda, and there was a weird, weathered bag of animal skin upended on Fur-nose’s head from which lank cords of hair trailed.
Such a strange creature, yet Gazda could not contain an angry growl and low bark as a sudden fear came upon him that Fur-nose might have some wondrous power that would allow his rotten bones to speak for him in
