The Urn Page 17

  I would have used this lethargy to my advantage, except I did not know the long term impact of all the sunlight upon him. I knew in his previous life that while he could go about in daylight, he preferred the night when his abilities were at their peak. So, I did not want him in this vulnerable state to be often exposed to the sun’s direct rays. Luckily, the thick jungle canopy and tall trees surrounding the yurt kept most of the sunlight from ever reaching us.

  I was running short of ammunition and black powder from firing my pistol at those wretched wild men. They had returned and over a few days, several of the big males came through the long grasses, quite close to the yurt.

  I fired through the windows at them when they neared, but they seemed to have developed an ability to predict my targets by watching for the angle of the gun. I think at best I may have grazed some of them.

  Gazda clicked excitedly whenever the gun was fired and tried to glimpse the action through the windows, but I do not think he saw more than great black shapes in the green grass.

  Later, after a final exchange with an enormous male who threw rocks at the yurt as I fired back at him; the tribe suddenly sank back into the jungle without a trace. It seemed that the group of them had left the berry patch.

  As I have kept watch for them since, I have prayed that the sea would cast up one of those Winchester repeating rifles, or at least a bag of lead shot.

  Still, as I had fired at the hideous wild men, and hoped to penetrate their hairy hides; I could not consider it a waste of ammunition. Surely, this time they had learned a stronger revulsion to the yurt and this clearing our home.

  The worst has happened.

  The wild men had left with their tribe, but one must have remained.

  A week after the last exchange with the beasts, I traveled along the line of trees to search for any remaining berries, and to clear my snares of small game and reset them.

  I had Gazda bound tightly in his sling upon my chest. It was a day like any other, but my little ward had been unruly in a fashion similar to how he could be when a storm was coming.

  But the sky had told me nothing by way of cloud or cool, so I set about my chores, and as I pulled living game from the snares, Gazda grew more excited in the proximity of the fresh food.

  I found his curious nature most fascinating when we were safe within the cabin, but out of doors, it was a distraction that I feared would one day prove fatal.

  So I kept my sword in hand as I walked, and my pistol was loaded and primed at my belt. We continued through the thick greenery atop the incline in a southwest direction and I soon got a clear look at the strange tree where I had buried my master.

  I angled toward it, but could barely see the grave marker where I had left it at the roots because all the seedpods that had dropped had thrown up branches of their own, and were fast becoming a thicket.

  None of the new saplings looked healthy either, though they were clearly pushing outward against their neighbors, and well on the way to forming a greasy barked and dark tangle around their parent. What also caught my eye was that the surrounding trees that came against the new saplings appeared dead or dying.

  I cursed myself for I had yet to retrieve the master’s urn and book in the months since Gazda’s appearance. True he was a handful and took all of my attention, but with the delay and new growth, the chore now promised to be challenging.

  Gazda squeaked, and started clicking. His little body struggled mightily within the sturdy sling.

  “Hah, Gazda!” I said petulantly as I turned from the gravesite and started up the incline, moving through the long grass toward the berry bushes. “You must stop your fussing...”

  The words were barely out before a great beast loomed up out of the undergrowth. The wild man’s shoulders were four times the width of mine, and his barrel chest was thicker than a horse’s. I raised my sword as the beast bared his enormous fangs and came stamping forward.

  I slashed down with my blade, but it slid off the thick hair growing on the wild man’s shoulder as the sheer mass of this hurtling creature struck me and Gazda like a rockslide.

  Pain flared instantly in my stomach and hips and legs, and I cried out, just as Gazda started a shrill clicking that wound upward in speed and intensity until it became an insect-like whine. But it was only a sound that cut the silent trees around us as the wild man came storming down upon me again.

  His gigantic fists rose and fell on my thighs and stomach like sledgehammers, and both my legs shattered with a loud report.

  I had one hand raised to protect Gazda, and with the other I clawed at my waist for the pistol.

  The beast leapt in again, his dark eyes gleaming with hideous malice. The rubbery lips rolled back from sharp canines, and his scream filled me with terror.

  The wild man bit my left leg and savaged the flesh with his fangs, before he swung me tumbling over the ground toward the clearing.

  I managed to get the pistol free, and then marveled that despite my pain I was still whispering calming platitudes to Gazda, as I struggled to free him from his sling.

  The wild man charged me again, and I got the pistol up in time.

  There was a sharp report and flash, and then the smothering mountain of muscle fell upon me.

  Gazda was missing and night had fallen by the time I awoke beneath the dead giant.

  My pistol shot had gone in through his left eye and killed him. In agony, I pulled my mangled legs out from under the wild man’s bulk, but still I had the presence of mind to feel about on the dark grass for my pistol and then slide the weapon through my belt opposite the long knife.

  I could not see my sword and its scabbard, and lacked the strength to look for them, so I dragged myself back toward the cabin.

  As I struggled in the slick grass, I wept and raged and called poor Gazda’s name. But I knew from the heat running up from my extremities that infection was starting already, and that I’d never live long enough to see my poor ward to safety.

  Still, I could not give up, and finally came awake on the floor of the yurt. I do not know how much time had passed since I penned those first notes in my journal.

  I must rest again.

  I am so thirsty.

  Gazda has returned, and he played with my journal pages when I opened it to write.

  It is still dark but the light outside suggests that morning is near. He still clings to my chest, and steals the heat from me. I have been drinking wine from one of the shipwrecked bottles and I do not know how much time has passed.

  Poor Gazda seems worried. The injuries on my legs are festering and I have not had the strength to bandage them.

  But he is my good little helper, poor Gazda, and at times he has lain upon my shattered thighs and licked at the injuries to clean them. I am amazed that the little tongue acts as an analgesic, or it may be the wine—but I am growing numb there.

  I could not shut the door. Crawling to it almost killed me from the pain, but its lower edge has become caught on something, and it will not shut completely. My eyes do not focus now, and I cannot see the obstruction, so the door is still open a crack.

  I hope to feel better soon, and I can remedy this lapse in security.

  It sickens me to write this, but I smell rotten meat. It must be gangrene. A pity there are no Gypsy virgins I could call upon to cure it with a sweet kiss.

  Gazda is starving. I have not fed him since his return to the cabin, and there is nothing here to suit his needs. How many days have passed? How many days?

  My vision swims and my breath bubbles in my chest.

  I see now that at some point, I have put a splint on my left leg, the most mangled. Bone protrudes from the knee, so it was a worthless effort.

  My flesh is yellow, and my fever is raging. The wine does nothing.

  I, see also, that I have a blanket over my chest, and I have managed to reload my pistol.

  I am feeling light-headed as I jot this note.

  My little helper continues to cle
an my wounds. I feel his ministrations are like a thankyou for what I have done for him. It is not necessary, for I love him so.

  He will die, after I do. Perhaps it is better that the door cannot be closed completely. He may get out, for he must be starving. But he cannot hunt for himself. He cannot set the traps.

  The smell of rotten flesh within this cabin makes me nauseous.

  At night Gazda crawls up onto my lap. He has taken advantage of my new lazy ways, and has begun spending hours curled up against my bosom dreaming his strange dreams.

  But he must be starving.

  Often now, it takes a moment to know if I am awake or asleep. My flesh burns and my mind is ablaze with fever.

  Another storm approaches and the lightning terrifies Gazda. It seems it ever shall, now that he has come back to life only to die.

  It is sad for me to fail my master so, with him just here. Here, climbing up onto my chest again where he nestles over my bosom. It has been his way to curl up there in the warmth, and fall asleep listening to the beat of my loyal heart.

  He shivers so as the lightning rages. His eyes appear unfocused. It is his fear, or hunger driving him somewhere deep inside himself.

  “I am here, little one...” I whispered, patting his bony spine.

  I add these notes while he sleeps. I must have used my matches for a candle burns on the small table beside me.

  Where is my tinderbox?

  And then I came awake from a dream or vision in which my thoughts drifted in delirium until I saw the dark halls of home, and by a crumbling stair I watched the master’s brides approach.

  The looks of scorn were obvious on their white faces, and desire was crimson in their eyes, but they ceased their forward motion and would come no closer as I muttered, “I too have loved before, but not like this... Not for service! Nor for hunger. But for love alone! The master speaks to me in a way you would not understand, and I will die for him, but never will I have his kiss.”

  As I write this, I am blushing, for it seems I say too much about the master.

  I am awake again, and the master’s skin is chill and clammy beneath my fingertips.

  Oh what a shame that he would return to life, only to die. If only I could protect him from the thunder that rages past the open door. At least that would provide some small comfort. Instead, I will lift my warm shirt and blanket that he can hide from the howling darkness under there. It is a small offering, but I have nothing else to give.

  His eyes flash some subtle communication to me before entering the warmth between my clothing and my chest—an understanding.

  Ah, his skin is cold against my own. But, he is settling down, and already his flesh is growing warm from my own.

  I am glad I can give him this.

  I chuckle now, penning these words for I can barely see the page.

  My skin shivers at the touch of his cold fingers and hands, at the slippery chill of his thin body.

  “I shall for a time be thy anya, for mother is another word for faith,” I murmur, and then laugh, relishing the thrills his lips send over my skin as he kisses the ridge of muscle on my breast. How I have longed for that kiss.

  The uncomfortable chill passes quickly, diminished by the dearness of little Gazda’s flesh. Like morphia his touch heats the muscles beneath my skin and sends warm tendrils outward to calm my aching limbs, and it gives me a moment of clarity.

  “Gazda,” I whisper, and the hungry creature gave a click and guttural squeak of appreciation. Then I breathe, “Gazdálkodik...” Hopelessly, I knew. But the warm thought matches the heat I feel at my breast.

  I patted Gazda’s bony spine where it pressed up from inside my shirt, and now I set my pen aside, to rest awhile and listen to his heart.

  ###

  Dracula of the Apes

  continues in

  Book Two:

  THE APE

  G. Wells Taylor

  Goro’s Land

  The jungle seemed to go on forever. This African rainforest was so overgrown with verdure that the midday sun could barely penetrate its leafy covering. Some beasts could make the climb high into the thick canopy, there to watch the mist and fog that crept through the upper reaches and clung to the loftiest branches until it was dispelled in the tropical heat.

  Indeed, so thick was the jungle canopy that raindrops often failed to reach the ground, were instead consumed as they dripped and fell from the heights, sucked right into the red-mawed gullets of the arboreal denizens, or soaked into moss-covered branches as thick as trees, captured to form waterholes for high-ranging animals roaming through.

  The upper reaches teemed with living things. A cycle of life and death consumed each day.

  As it did on the ground, where it was dark and shadowy; where the undergrowth grew thick with leaf and thorny vine; where perpetual twilight gripped the land from sunup to sunset and threw endless shadows amongst the mammoth tree trunks.

  The jungle seemed to go on forever, but it did not. Few of its inhabitants understood that because few had marked many days on any calendar. It was “day one” in earth’s history for most of them, or “day two” or “three.” Some lucky few had a grasp for greater spans of time, but with that often came the curse of sentience; and in such a case, fear of instant death would bind those so endowed much tighter to their own beating hearts, and the “days” they could appreciate became dangerous to dwell upon.

  They lived in the “now” because a lapse in that focus could make any moment their last.

  But sentience was a rare and dubious prize in the jungle, so to most “forever” existed in varied lengths, but was always marked between birth and death. Both of those states were in profusion in the wild, and so “forever” varied from creature to creature.

  A basic primitive law was created within these numerous perspectives that stalked each creature to the end. The length of life was inconstant, counted in days, and measured in paces, footfalls, or the flap of wings as one traveled between water supply and food sources, between colony, flock or herd, and mates, offspring or enemies.

  A day’s walk from the Gypsy Horvat’s yurt, a tribe of unusual anthropoid apes had stopped to forage in a small clearing lush with berry bushes and ripe grasses. They were heading back to the fruit-rich forests that bordered the sandy beaches to the west after taking a long meandering loop south to eat tubers, water chestnuts and grubs in the swamps before heading north again to the Grooming Rock where they had stayed for three long days.

  The tribe of apes moved constantly throughout their range in search of food and water, a search that took them east along elephant trails where they traveled inland to clearings rich with grasses and other delicious foliage; or as the season dictated, they crossed overland on a southern course to swampy coastal lowlands. At other times, they would employ these traveling methods in tandem by walking northeast along the elephant track until a hike through thorny ravines brought them to where mango and nut-bearing trees covered the low hills.

  Their constant wander brought them at times near to the sands by the great blue water where they dined on shellfish and other tasty shore dwellers that were trapped in a shallow harbor where a long segmented arm of stone stretched in pieces out into the waves.

  There the bravest apes could wade in search of the delicious sea creatures that made their homes in the dimpled stone.

  When they weren’t raiding these tidal pools, they snacked upon the various fruit and nut trees that abounded east of the beach.

  They were especially fond of the berries that grew so densely around the Gypsy Horvat’s yurt, and their passion for the fruit had caused their many unpleasant clashes with the unusual ape-like creature in the strange tree-nest. He had come to be an object of curiosity to them, as the apes or “wild men” had been an object of terror to the Gypsy.

  “Fur-nose” was what the apes called the otherwise hairless creature that lived in the tree-nest because instead of having hair covering his body he had sprouted long fur all
around his nose for a purpose the apes were unable to comprehend. That oddity and his peculiar habit of wearing the skins of other animals over his own pale flesh caused an outrage among the apes that would be remembered for generations.

  None knew where Fur-nose had come from for he had only appeared one cycle of wandering past, and he had resisted all challenges to this invasion. Being dubious possessors of some degree of sentience, these apes knew this was not his territory, but his thunder-hand had won in each challenge to its ownership.

  So far, only one of the apes, an adolescent blackback male, had died from an infection that came on after the thunder-hand had put a hole in his arm. Others touched by Fur-nose were more fortunate and had suffered painful wounds but escaped with their lives.

  After their initial terror at the sight and sound of the thunder-hand, and understanding the danger it represented as evidenced by the scars that many bore afterward, the apes had studied Fur-nose and learned his behavior.

  It was simple. He stayed under cover to work the thunder-hand, but he could only reach so far with it.

  So long as he was closed in the tree-nest and the apes kept a respectful distance, they would be safe from his power, though knowledge of this did not diminish the fright they felt when the thunder-hand roared, nor diminish the terrifying disruption it caused in their routine.

  Only the bravest or most foolish ape dared to leave the berry bushes and cross the broad clearing toward the tree-nest. Displaying their courage in front of Fur-nose became a frequent occurrence as the tribe’s blackback males challenged each other.

  The last time the group had visited that place, the silverback Goro, king of the tribe, had led them into the berry patch that circled Fur-nose’s lair but held them at a safe distance to forage.