The ape-man had been his killer.
Despite some initial reservations, in that exchange he’d given her a look steeped in yearning and shaded by loss. There was a sadness in the ape-man that underlay his excitement and desire to know more about her.
His expressions conveyed a great loneliness within him. While Harkon did not trust the creature for there was also a coolness behind his heated gaze; she had hoped he would kill many more Bakwaniri—as attested by the anger she’d seen flaring in his eyes.
Afterwards each night that Harkon lay awaiting sleep in her place of hiding, she dreamed that a partnership might be formed with the ape-man and with his help, she could attack the Bakwaniri village and rescue her little Anim. With many of the healthiest hunters away there were few left who were not too old or infirm to adequately defend its walls.
The thought brought an ironic grin to Harkon’s strong features, because she knew it was this same weakness that the Bakwaniri had exploited to destroy her life.
Ever since Harkon had first seen the ape-man, he had appeared occasionally on the trail before her with a wry grin on his handsome features, or she’d hear a sound behind her and she’d whirl around to see him standing there, smiling again, obviously pleased that he had stalked her so closely without her knowing.
He did not seem to mean her any harm, and was somehow gaining great pleasure from the joke.
Proof of this benevolence came when she began finding fresh food upon her trail: a bushpig or small antelope laid upon a plate of broad green leaves. The meat had always been partially prepared, bled out through the throat, but Harkon had always met the gifts with gratitude for often her obsession to kill Bakwaniri drowned out her stomach’s cry for food.
She wondered if the ape-man understood this somehow, and she accepted the possibility that he might at any time be lurking near. He had the strength and skill to hunt her, so if he had wanted to kill her, she would be dead before she knew it. So, she accepted his gifts and curiosity without attributing some darker purpose to this attachment.
He was lonely, and lethal, that was all.
Occasionally, he would leave a dead Bakwaniri hunter out for her to find along the path, or hung upright in branches, as if the man was still alive, and she would be startled, and cast her spear, only to realize it was a corpse that she was killing. Then she would wonder if the ape-man was off somewhere in concealment watching her and laughing at his jungle joke.
Regardless of the position in which he left the dead bodies, their throats were always cut or torn out and judging by the pale skin all the blood had been drained away.
It was clear that the ape-man’s hatred of the Bakwaniri was as ferocious and unabated as her own, and Harkon hoped that he would continue to focus his hunting and killing powers to achieve their destruction.
He was unlike anyone or anything Harkon had seen before.
After their one attempt to communicate, the ape-man had never again offered her that kind of close proximity for long. He had clearly understood her attempt to speak previously, and even made a crude, but intelligible response.
So since it seemed that he would only communicate with Harkon through action and gesture, she suspected that he might be mute.
When she saw him during the day, he appeared much like other men, though he was very white of skin beneath a film of mud that he layered upon himself as camouflage, at times even drawing decorative lines in it resembling fish scales, sun shapes, or jagged waves like fur.
He looked to be 20 years of age, and was well-muscled and like any young man despite his behaviors. The eyes were dark beneath pointed eyebrows, and a long scar marked his forehead at the hairline.
The ape-man had long, sharp canines hidden behind full red lips that were framed by dark sideburns growing down and along the underside of his lower jaw. A band of rawhide kept his long black hair from his face and channeled it back over his swelling shoulders.
He had no obvious unnatural qualities other than the company he kept, the sometimes eerie intentness of his gaze and the profound feelings he could convey with it.
But Harkon had seen him at night, and the effect had been the opposite.
She always stayed well hidden during the dark hours, but on occasion her hiding place had allowed for a view of the surrounding terrain. Harkon had once seen the ape-man climbing into a tree and hauling with him a full grown antelope that looked too heavy for a normal man to lift—but up he’d moved like it had no weight at all.
And at another time she’d seen him in the trees outside her hiding place. Then he’d been little more than a shadow in the branches, but he had smelled of blood, and his eyes had shone like crimson flames as he watched her.
That had sent her scrambling for her weapons to guard the doorway to the little cave where she had made her bed, but he had shown no aggression toward her and she had seen no more of him that night.
Once just past sundown she had witnessed him scrambling high into the trees overhead with a speed that no ape could have matched and when he reached some 150 feet he leapt to the next tree that stood 60 feet away.
She knew that the jump was impossible, so she had convinced herself that what she had seen was a trick of the eye. The growing dark and shadow must have hidden a swinging vine or some other mode of transport.
Harkon rarely crossed paths with him as his life with the apes took him to the farthest reaches of their range many, many miles along the coast
