At the noise, Eeda was startled a moment, before panting with humor, thinking that she would have chosen their word for “cricket” as a name had she heard that sound first.
The she-ape’s wounded spirit surged with love, as the heartbreak for her dead son Kado departed like a sad breeze.
She watched Gazda nurse and smiled when he glanced up from his meal. Eeda winced as his little teeth nicked her flesh again, before she settled into a pleasant drowse.
Like all things in the jungle, life was too terrible and urgent for Eeda to take anything for granted, and she knew too well the harshness of existence and the fragile relationships that kept things alive. A bittersweet moment of calm was as good as it got for her, but she had learned to relish each she found.
1894 - 1899
One to five years of age.
CHAPTER 4 – The Night Ape
Eeda’s new baby fit into Goro’s tribe more easily than any outsider would have thought. The intelligent anthropoids’ lives revolved around their individual families and the larger group they comprised, and so they craved “proximity” and “numbers” as much as they craved juicy seedpods, mangos or bushbaby meat.
It was understood by all that the group was greater and that all were safer the larger the group grew. Famine or drought was rare in the jungle, so this simple equation of “safety in numbers” gave them all a better chance for survival.
Death was never considered for long or feared, as much as the act of dying was. Once life had left a body, there was no evolutionary advantage to dwelling on what could not be changed. This is why the other apes had been so confounded by Eeda’s utter despair at the loss of her firstborn.
It was natural for the tribe to acknowledge the death of one of its members and in its own way grieve, just as it was understandable that a mother would mourn such a thing; but Eeda’s unsettling insistence on carrying the infant’s corpse around with her had been outrageous.
So for Eeda to adopt an infant, no matter how strange or ugly he may have been, suited the other apes well enough, especially since it ended the young mother’s morbid attachment.
The new baby also appealed to their active minds. The apes were clever creatures with a penchant for problem solving, and so Gazda was a mystery that many of them obsessed about.
Each member of the tribe had something to say about the small creature’s origins, but some apes became downright intrusive with their curiosity, and things might have gotten much worse if Eeda had not answered the most inquiring apes with her fighting fangs.
So in time the apes settled back into their daily tribal rhythms, though the other mothers and the young apes remained keen to observe the foundling, but learned to do so from a safe distance.
Baby Gazda’s pale skin was lined with thin blue and green veins and drew the eye of any that ventured near; his generally hairless state stood out in stark contrast to his adoptive mother’s dark pelt.
True, Gazda was growing a good-sized tuft of black hair atop his round head, but the rest of him was sickly white, and clammy to the touch, much like a snail pulled from its shell.
The foundling’s flat face was a horror also, though he did have small bright fangs. They were set in pink gums behind full red lips that pouted between a pointed chin and a nose that was shaped like a bird’s beak with tiny curling monkey nostrils.
Despite the obvious differences, the most circumspect ape in the tribe still had to admit that Gazda looked very much like the beasts who had adopted him, though he was of a most pathetic variety.
The aging queens Oluza and Akaki could not resist teasing that Gazda was a monkey and they made several coarse jokes about Eeda’s mating habits.
Eeda endured the teasing and the joking because she was enrapt with her little foundling. His true challenge to fit in would come later in life, though, for Gazda was already attracting the attention of superstitious and aggressive blackbacks and adolescents. Those combative forces would have to be dealt with when he matured enough to leave his mother’s protective embrace.
Any bullying behavior to one at that delicate age would not be allowed and the majority of females and most of the males would have gladly protected Gazda or any infant in the tribe, as their own.
When he wasn’t being a nuisance.
Gazda made a high-pitched cricket noise, usually at night, repeating it until every ape in earshot was annoyed. Old Baho and the aging queens decided some deformation of the infant’s lips had caused it.
But since the jungle at night was never a quiet place that complaint soon died down as his clicking faded into the raucous background sounds that usually disturbed their sleep.
However, they were less accepting of his peculiar behavior. Gazda rarely slept, and spent most nights skittering about on the shadowy branches that supported his mother’s nest.
Goro the silverback was perturbed by the young one’s nocturnal activities. Since the king and the blackbacks were tasked with protecting the tribe, and keeping a watch at all hours; Gazda’s activities could be mistaken for a threat.
So, the bull ape had commanded that all apes would sleep at night; but the wisdom of that decree faltered soon after its issuance, when it was learned that Gazda was unable to comprehend it.
Eeda had struggled to comply with the king’s edict, but she could not keep Gazda wrapped in her arms while she slept, and he was skilled at escaping her clutches. So she couldn’t sleep!
Goro saw that the female was soon exhausted from the watch she was forced to keep against her son’s truancy, and her temper was fraying to the point that her struggles with him were growing disruptive and waking other apes in violation of the
