Gazda’s mouth fell open, and his immediate rage bled away, as shock sent tremors through his mind. For the moment, his curiosity overpowered his fury.
The creature wore a long decorated cloth that hung over its loins and a vest of woven sticks and bones protecting its chest. But more importantly wherever the flesh was exposed the skin was pale brown—and hairless!
True, the skin was mottled, varying by degrees of yellow-brown, and the muscular limbs were marked in places with blotches—bruises and wounds of dark red and purple, but it was still enough like his own flesh to make him wonder if he was looking at a night ape thus disguised.
Beneath the bone-face would the creature have a fur-nose?
As quietly as a panther, Gazda slipped back to the tree trunk, and then crept down until he clung in place where he’d be just above the bone-face as it passed beneath him on the trail.
He struck with the speed of a snake, his fist snapping down on top of the creature’s head. The impact knocked the bone-face senseless, but Gazda’s strong fingers caught in its hair before it could fall.
The night ape turned and dragged his prey high up onto a broad bough where he leaned his captive against the tree trunk.
Then Gazda ran his nose over the creature’s chest and neck, and his lips curled up with disgust. It was the same stink he’d found on the wooden mask—pungent, but there had been something else, too. This one smelled like an ape, but there was the scent of sickness and decay.
Gazda lifted the creature and held him upright by the throat so he could remove the face covering with his free hand, before stripping off its garments and the metal ornaments that clung to its arms and ankles.
There was hair on the bone-face’s head, and some under its nose—there was no doubt—and upon its skin were dark lines depicting other bone-faces like skulls and bones that danced.
Curious things...
When the creature started gasping itself back to consciousness Gazda let it sink onto its haunches, as he stepped back to study it further.
It resembled a night ape—like Gazda, and like Fur-nose.
However, the bone-faced ape was diseased, for mottled skin and boils showed purple-red around the joints of the creature’s arms and legs—and a gray-yellow ooze slid out of cracked skin that stank of rot.
Part of its face had been eaten away, too. The upper jaw and along the right side of the nose had opened up to show raw, scarlet muscle beneath, and sight of this put Gazda in mind of Omag. The sores and slight “bowed” shape of its legs reminded him of Sip-sip.
Gazda was puzzled. So, as the bone-face struggled to breathe, the night ape investigated the creature’s coverings and tools that he’d set out on the broad tree branch between them.
There was a loincloth like his own and belt of shiny leather with a knife hanging from it. There was a stick bent around a taut string, and a long, leather pouch full of sharp sticks. These had been slung over its shoulder, and Gazda drew one stick out to study.
Its point was as sharp as a fang, and on the other end split feathers had been somehow attached. Gazda imagined the thing moving through the air...and a dark shadow entered his mind as he imagined it striking his mother as Baho had said.
A red gleam flared up in the night ape’s eyes as he let the stick fall from his grasp.
Squatting before the bone-face, Gazda hissed as it shook its head and opened its eyes to look at him.
Terror filled the disfigured face as the creature saw the night ape’s wrath.
Immediately, it pressed itself tighter to the tree, and gibbered in a terrified and irritating way.
But at that moment as the bone-faced ape showed its fear—the predator in Gazda surfaced, as did the enraged son, and in the creature’s eyes he saw his mother’s terror reflected.
This creature and its brothers were the cause...had forced Gazda to...
He struck the bone-face too swiftly for it to react, and gripping the thin neck, Gazda easily lifted him overhead. The creature squealed, kicked and tried to cry out.
The night ape smiled, and bared his fangs as he lowered the creature toward his mouth.
The bone-face’s eyes went wide.
It made a gurgling noise as Gazda tore into its jugular and drank the foaming blood that gushed out. Then, as if the potent meal added passion to his rage, Gazda chewed, gnashed his fangs and tore at the strange ape’s throat until the head rolled to the side and dangled by a grisly string of flesh and skin.
But Gazda’s immediate anger had subsided as he drank the creature’s life away, and afterward he sank to his knees to calmly study the bone-face’s clothing and equipment again, thinking he might take them for his own use. The questions they raised were too exciting to ignore, and something of their design resonated in the night ape’s breast.
He licked at the blood that still colored his lips and chin, thinking that the blood and flesh tasted much like that of a chimpanzee...and the smell of it was ape. And with that, he decided with some finality that the bone-face was a night ape similar to his own kind—and Fur-nose’s.
Then he wondered if perhaps Omag could be induced to explain the similarities between his diseased flesh and that of the bone-face’s for at close range they looked to be the same.
But Gazda shrugged, uncertain if he was prepared to mention Sip-sip’s disabilities for the crippled ape was sensitive and vengeful when any attention was drawn to them.
He decided that the dangers of asking Omag would be warranted if it might help explain how the night ape came to be Eeda’s child...
...and how the events had unfolded that led to her end.
Growling angrily at the thought, Gazda lifted the bone-faced ape overhead and flung the body to the ground far below where
