As Kel made his way back to the marker twig he had left on the main branch, he noticed a large purple globe, about the size of his head, hanging down from a vine over one of the side branches. It wasn’t one of the normal food fruits, and he couldn’t recall having seen one like it before, so this too must be treated with a degree of caution.
Leaving the main branch, he went along the side spur and then climbed up a lesser bough so that he was level with his target. Wrapping both legs tightly around the branch, he leaned out and gave the purple pod a poke with his stave. It just swung back and forth on its long thin stem, slowly coming to rest again after a short while. It hadn’t emitted a swarm of angry insects, which some pods did, nor did it squirt out any noxious fluid to warn off anything wishing to use it for a meal.
Increasing his grip on the branch, Kel lined the stave up with the pod and stabbed at it firmly, aiming for the point where it joined the vine from which it hung. The first attempt was unsuccessful, causing the pod to swing wildly to and fro, narrowly missing his head.
As the pod swung back out of his reach, he noticed a strange smell, almost like that of an animal which had died many days ago.
Maybe this was the defence which the pod used to prevent it from being eaten he thought, but then some of the strange creatures of the forest seemed to prefer old carcasses to a fresh kill.
As this was a new discovery, there would be much to learn from it, and he would report any details he could gather to his group upon returning.
A second stab at the pod produced better results, and as the pod swung away from him, now captive on the end of the stave, he was nearly pulled off the branch.
Gently Kel pulled the stave towards him, and as the pod drew nearer, the smell increased to the point where he wrinkled his nose in disgust at the aroma of rotting meat.
There was no way he would touch the purple pod with his hands until he knew a little more about it, so he drew it as near to him as the hanging vine would allow, and then jammed the stave between the branch on which he sat and his body.
Carefully reaching out with the lesser knife in his hand, Kel severed the pod from its supporting stem, and was nearly catapulted from his perch as the full weight of the pod came onto the end of the stave as it bent down under the unexpected load.
He could feel the roughness of the bark cutting into his legs as he increased his grip still further to prevent himself from being spun round underneath the bough, and grimaced at the searing pain.
After he had regained his balance, Kel slowly drew the stave toward him, sliding it beneath his body bit by bit, the noxious odour of the pod getting stronger as it came ever nearer to his twitching nostrils.
By the time he had the pod within hands reach, he realized that he had been holding his breath, and let it out with a great whoosh, only to refill his lungs with the overpowering stench of something long since dead.
Regaining his feet, Kel drove the stave a little deeper into the smelly pod to make sure it didn’t slip off, and then began the journey back to the marker twig to see what lay beneath the suspect area of pathway.
There had been various rumours for some time now of a new creature in the area, something which lived under the surface of the branches and grabbed its prey as it passed by overhead.
Two people of the neighbouring group had been lost this way, disappearing down a hole which had opened up in a branch and then seemed to cover itself up again, leaving no trace of what had happened. Things were forever changing in the forest, and not always for the better.
Kel wondered if the twitching bark on the pathway was the home of one such creature, although none had been spoken of it in their area of the forest.
With great care he approached the suspect part of the branch, and then pushed the pod on the end of his stave towards the area of the bark which had twitched earlier. With the purple fruit positioned directly over the faint line in the surface, Kel stood waiting for some sort of reaction, ready to leap backwards if it should happen too near him.
Perhaps he had been mistaken and there wasn’t anything under the bark after all. He was about to give up the idea of tempting whatever it was under the pathway to show itself, for nothing untoward had happened for several minutes, and then it did, and with a suddenness which took him completely by surprise.
The bark of the huge branch had burst open with a soft ripping sound, the two halves of a trapdoor springing inwards while a grey shiny tentacle whipped out wrapping itself around the purple pod and stripping it off the end of the stave so quickly that Kel hardly felt the jerk. The two halves of the door to the creature’s hiding place snapped shut in the same instant that the pod disappeared, and all was still again.
It had all happened so quickly that Kel didn’t even have a chance to step back, so it was just as well that he was outside the range of the creature when it struck the pod. He still had his stave, and as it was about four times as long as he was high,
