The cries of night apes still rang in his ears.
Night apes killing night apes. But these creatures were not of Goro’s jungle, and they had used flame to kill.
Gazda knew little of fire for all the apes of Goro’s tribe retreated from the orange creature whenever it appeared. Sometimes flames would spring up after lightning roared, or sprouted from the dust without reason to chase through the dry grass and trees, and eat up the jungle with its hot, yellow teeth.
The night ape had seen the smoking ruins, and burned his fingers upon the glowing black rocks that the fire left behind. His mother knew little more, only that fire would hurt him if he touched it.
Eeda, like the rest of the tribe, was superstitious about the forces of nature. While the anthropoids had not yet built a pantheon of gods to describe them; they did treat the elemental actions as living beings whether seen at close quarters or from afar.
It was easy to see water as a snake or lizard as it moved, and the wind like an invisible ape or monkey by the way it shook the leafy branches or tried to knock the tribe from their high perches.
The wind was a mischievous infant to the towering storms that lurked behind the canopy above them, where at any moment it would thrash the jungle as a giant blackback would. Such storm apes raged and howled, and threw lightning bolts, branches and rain as it challenged the jungle creatures to a fight.
Gazda had come to understand that the apes also viewed their thoughts, life and death and dreams with the same apprehension and illusion that they did the uncontrollable forces of nature.
Much was unexplainable but good things were to be enjoyed, and the bad were best forgotten.
So, the basic ape philosophy gave Gazda few tools to dissect and understand the strange images that had crowded his night ape dreams.
Flames, darkness and blood, the images flitted from one gory moment to the next as slaughter reigned supreme. Claws and fangs flashed, throats were cut, heads were torn away, and still other night apes were set aflame.
The memories had started his thirsty stomach churning, for with the crimson thoughts had come feelings of loneliness and betrayal, fear of capture and of death—of violation and loss!
Gazda stretched out on his crumbled bedding, and looked into the darkness over him. There in the black high above, a gap came into sharper focus, dim light glowed on a ring of green leaves—the opening through which he’d crawled into the hollow tree—or must have...if he could but remember.
Remember...
Magnuh! Memory of the elephant’s wrath and the injuries he’d inflicted swept over his mind like an avalanche, and he winced to relive the goring tusks, ripping trunk and crushing feet!
Hooting fearfully, the night ape ran his hands over his chest, but felt no rents or tears in the swelling muscle, no split or break in his bones.
Then how? A dream! He remembered then, another dream. His mother Eeda in a shadowed grove of strange black trees. About her hung a heavy mist that wrapped his cold, bare limbs—he had curled up beside her for warmth, and she’d drawn him near—to feed him? No! He chuckled, at the mental image.
Gazda was too old to suckle!
And she would not let...
A shudder ran through him for he had recognized his mother’s scent in the air. She was near—somewhere in the dark she...
He rolled over, and saw that indeed Eeda sat on the mossy floor of the hollow an arm’s length away. She leaned there unmoving with her back against the dark wood.
“Ah...” Gazda started, feeling his spirits rise, but he faltered as her glassy eyes gave no hint of recognition.
The night ape leapt up onto all fours and moved cautiously toward her—where he smelled the death. No. No. NO!
His mother was dead.
It had to be a dream! Or how had he survived Magnuh’s revenge?
Impossible... He pressed at his eyes with his fingertips, caused them to spark, and forced them to adjust further. He growled quietly as he rubbed at his face thinking, “Wake up! Wake up!” before opening his eyes again.
Gazda moaned. The low light from above reflected on his pale skin and a soft glow settled over his mother.
Eeda’s dead mouth hung open, and her head had fallen forward, the lower jaw resting on her deep chest, and below that...
...her breasts had been torn, the skin hung in tatters as if the flesh had been ripped by fangs—by many bites.
...too old to suckle.
The night ape craved no milk...but the bite, he... Gazda’s fangs!
He remembered Magnuh. In the dream his mother had rescued him, and taken him somewhere dark... He looked around. Safe...here inside an old tree.
Comfort...she had carried him to safety, and offered him a breast...and he had...he had...
Lost control of his hunger? No, Gazda had fed upon her with relish!
Delirious, dying...starving! He had drunk her rich blood, sucked it out of the now-cooling heart she had given him so freely.
Growling with rage he thought of Magnuh. The night ape leapt up to the opening in the bark and pulled himself out onto a nearby bough where he roared his fury as a challenge to all the jungle.
Gazda would avenge his mother’s death by making war upon all of those who brought her to this end...and upon Magnuh! The night ape would kill the elephant! And he would kill...
He would kill anything that dared to hurt...to kill her...
But the night ape had killed her!
Gazda’s face flushed and his heart shuddered beneath this realization. His legs trembled, and as he collapsed upon his lofty perch, a word passed his lips in a language he did not understand: “Ma—mater!”
CHAPTER 23 – The Guilty Parties
Gazda peered into the hollow tree and his shadow fell across his mother’s corpse. He could not bear to part with her and he could not stay. His heart forced him to look away, but his mind chased the nightmare—followed his memory
