“No,” Redman replied, sheathing his knife as he started down the hill toward the jungle. “Go wash up young Wolfish there, then you and your sisters finish supper. I’ll be back hungry, so be sure you make plenty!”
With these words, Redman vanished into the shadows, following the trail of plaster. Lark set her brother on his feet and stood a moment holding his hand. The lights of the village cooking fires shone like beacons in the deepening night, surrounding her mother’s stone house on all sides, save the one leading down to the jungle. Down there, all was dark. Dark and dreadful.
“Poor wasp man,” Lark whispered. She hoped her da would find him. Before the totems did.
One never fully appreciates the blessing that is a pair of shoes until one is suddenly without them in a deepening jungle twilight, fleeing, one presumes, for one’s life.
The jungle teemed with insects, and with creatures that ate the insects, and with creatures that ate the creatures that ate the insects. Foxbrush could have safely bet there were creatures that ate those as well, but he wouldn’t let himself consider that far up the hierarchy.
The insects themselves were bad enough. Everything with wings and far more legs than should be permitted swarmed to the sticky mess smeared over Foxbrush’s skin. They weren’t wasps at least, but many of them were biters. More welts swelled on his arms, his neck, his hands, and his poor bare feet.
Foxbrush was out of breath before he’d gone far. Lack of exercise and terror made it so that he could scarcely keep himself upright as he plunged through the tangle of vines. By necessity he found the beaten trail. There was no break in the foliage anywhere else, so he ran down the trail with all the speed he could muster. He did not know where he was going or what he hoped to achieve by this foolish dash. Perhaps he had gone a little mad.
This was when he started hearing things.
“Danger! Danger!”
“Stranger!”
The voices relayed this rumor as fast as he could run, faster even. He heard it whispering through the treetops, darting on ahead of him, then looping round and coming back. They did not speak in a language he knew, but he understood the words even so.
“Danger! Stranger!”
It must be the figs. He must have eaten too many bad figs, and this, all this, must be the result of one spoiled-fig-induced nightmare!
Something landed on his shoulders.
Foxbrush screamed as he was knocked flat, and he felt strong fingers grabbing first his ears and then his hair and then his chin, twisting his head as though to wrench it off. He scrambled for balance, and something coiled and serpentine slithered over his bare hand. He screamed, and the thing on his back screamed as well, and the thing that had crawled over his hand screamed louder still, and then something struck his heel.
It was like having a nail driven swiftly into his foot, then yanked out with equal swiftness. Foxbrush’s screams intensified, but his voice was drowned out by all the other voices shouting: “Danger! Stranger! Danger!”
Monkeys and birds and who knows what else erupted in eerie chorus on all sides. The whole world came alive in screeches and caws and bellows and shrieks and even a sound like a great wooden drum being thumped by enormous fists.
Foxbrush curled up into a ball, his hands over his head, his knees hiding his face, and felt fists and beaks and claws pummeling him from all sides. He waited to die.
It was in this position that Redman found him.
The light was mostly gone from the forest by that time, but Redman’s one good eye was comfortable in the dark, and he feared none of those living near the village. So he stood, his arms crossed, and looked down on the crumpled form of the stranger. “Well,” said he, “we’re not all born to be heroes.”
With that he knelt and took hold of Foxbrush’s shoulder. Foxbrush only curled tighter, like an overlarge hedgehog. Redman snorted. “Come,” he said, valiantly disguising any hint of disgust. “Let’s get you back to my wife’s house and clean you up again.”
Foxbrush, hearing a mortal voice, dared peek between his fingers. “Where . . . where are the monsters?” he gasped.
“No monsters, lad,” said Redman.
“They were attacking me!”
“They’re all gone now. I paid totem-tribute, and they’ve backed down.”
Though he understood none of this, Foxbrush did not resist as Redman hauled him to his feet, though he winced at the pain in his wounded heel. Redman, noticing, put Foxbrush’s arm over his broad shoulders. There was no use in fighting. Foxbrush submitted like a docile sheep to Redman’s prodding, and together they hobbled back the way they had just come. Lemurs watched with solemn moon eyes, and night birds laughed from their perches. It was as though the whole of nature was amused at Foxbrush’s expense, and he, feeling the shame, hung his head and thought he’d never lift it again.
Then the wind spoke his name.