and some of her fur was shot through with silver, Termite was the most popular woman in the group, as far as the men were concerned. On some patches of her head and shoulders her fur had been worn away by the constant grooming; her small skull was all but hairless, her black ears prominent.
That allure, of course, made her one of the most powerful women. Just as the weaker men would compete for the friendship of Big Boss, so the women were ambitious to be part of Termite’s loose circle. Shadow – and Tumble, and even Claw – had special privileges, as Termite’s children, arising from that power.
And it was real power, the only power, even if the women had to endure the blows and bites of the powerful men. Everybody knew her mother and her siblings, and that was where loyalty lay; for nobody knew her father. No man, not even Big Boss, would have achieved his status without the backing of a powerful mother and aunts.
At last it was time to move on. Little Boss – the brother of Big Boss, his closest lieutenant – led off, working his way down the hillside towards the river. He paused frequently, watching nervously to be sure that Big Boss followed.
The people gave up their grooming and wandered after them.
The Elf-folk entered thicker swathes of forest. The day grew hot, the air oppressive in the greenery. The people walked easily, save where the vines and brambles grew too dense, and then they would use their powerful arms to climb into the trees. They moved slowly, stopping to feed wherever the opportunity arose.
Even at its most dense the forest was sparse. Many of the trees’ leaves were yellow, shrivelled and sickly, and some of the trees themselves were dead, no more than gaunt stumps with broken-off branches at their roots. There was much space between the big trees, and the gaps in the forest canopy allowed the sunlight to reach the ground, where shoots and bushes grew thickly.
Shadow, like the others, kept away from the more open clearings. Though her long slim legs carried her easily over the clear ground, the denser green of the forest pulled at her, while the blue-white open sky and green-brown undergrowth repelled her.
They came to a knot of low shrubs.
Termite lowered Tumble to the ground. This was a bush Termite knew well, and her experienced eyes had spotted that some of the leaves had been rolled into tubes, held together by sticky threads. When Shadow opened up such a tube she was rewarded by a wriggling caterpillar, which she popped into her mouth.
The three of them rested on the ground, relishing the treat.
Little Tumble snuggled up to her mother, seeking her nipples. Gently Termite pushed the child away. At first Tumble whimpered, but soon her pleading turned to a tantrum, and the little ball of fur ran in circles and thumped the ground. Her mother held her close, subduing her struggles, until she was calm. Tumble took some of the caterpillars her mother unpacked for her. But later, Tumble made a pretence of having eaten her fill, and began to groom her mother with clumsy attentiveness. Termite submitted to this as she fed – and pretended not to notice as Tumble worked her way ever closer to her nipple, at last stealing a quick suck.
Shadow stretched out on the grass, legs comfortably crossed. She plucked caterpillar leaves from the bushes with one hand, holding the other crooked behind her head.
The sky was a washed-out blue, but clouds were tumbling across it. She had a dim sense of the future: soon it would be dark, and it would rain, and she would get wet and cold. But she saw little further than that, little further than the bright sunny warmth of the sun and the softness of this patch of grass, and she relaxed, her thoughts warm and yellow.
She raised her free hand before her eyes. She stretched her fingers, making slats through which the sun peeked. She moved her hand back and forth, rapidly, making the sun flicker and dance.
Now, with a single graceful movement, she turned over and got to her knees. She gazed at the sharp shadow the sun cast on the leaf-strewn ground before her. She raised her hands, making the shadow do the same, and then she spread her fingers, making light shine through the hands of her shadow.
She got to her feet and began to whirl and dance, and the shadow, this other self, capered in response, its movements distorted and comical. Her dance was eerily beautiful.
The wind shifted, bringing a scent of smoke. Smoke, and meat.
Big Boss stood tall and peered into the green. His nostrils flared.
He rooted around on the ground until he found a cobble the size of his fist. He hurled the cobble against a large rock embedded in the ground, smashing it. Then, with some care, he fingered the debris, searching for flakes of the right size and sharpness.
He stood tall, hands full of sharp flakes, a small trickle of blood oozing from one finger. He issued his summoning cry – ‘Ai, ee!’ – and, without looking back, he began to stalk off to the west, the way the smoke had come from. His brother Little Boss and another senior man, Hurler, scurried to follow him, keeping a submissive few paces back.
Claw had been crouching in the grass. He stood up now, and took a few steps after the men, uncertainly.
Little Boss slapped him so hard in the back that Claw was sent sprawling on his chest.
But Hurler helped him get back to his feet with a fast, savage yank. Hurler, a big man with powerful hands and a deadly accuracy with thrown rocks, was Termite’s brother – Claw’s – uncle and so favoured him, more than the other men anyhow. The two of them trotted after Big and Little Boss.
As the men receded, Termite shrugged her slim shoulders and returned to her inspection of the shrubs.
Emma Stoney:
Emma clung to sleep as long as possible. When she could sleep no longer, she rolled on her back, stiff and cold. There was sky above her, an ugly lid of cloud.
Still here, she thought. Shit. And there was an unwelcome ache in her lower bowels.
Nothing for it.
She went behind a couple of trees close enough that she could still see her parachute canopy tent and stripped to her underwear. She took a dump, her Swiss Army knife dangling absurdly around her neck. The problem after that was finding a suitable wipe; the dried leaves she tried to use just crumbled in her hands.
Where am I? Answer came there none.
Maybe some kind of adrenaline rush had gotten her through yesterday. Today was going to be even worse, she thought. This morning she felt cold, stiff, dirty, lost, miserable and with a fear that had sunk deep into her gut.
She got dressed and kicked leaves over the, umm, deposit she’d left. We have got to build a latrine today.
Sally and Maxie, waking slowly, showed no desire to leave the forest. But Emma decided she ought to go say hello to the neighbours.
She stepped out of the forest.
It had stopped raining, but the sky was grey and solid and the grassy plain before her was bleak, uninviting. If she had not known otherwise she would have guessed it was uninhabited; the heapings of branches and stones seemed scarcely more than random.
And yet hominids people sat and walked, jabbered and argued, from a distance just as human as she was, every one of them as naked as a newborn. And they were talking English. The utter strangeness of that struck her anew.
I don’t want to be here, facing this bizarreness, she thought. I want to be at home, with the net, and coffee and newspapers, and clean clothes and a warm bathroom.
But it might not be long before she was begging at these hominids’ metaphorical table. She had no doubt that those tall, powerful qua-people had a much better ability to survive in this wilderness than she did; she sensed that might become very important, unless they were rescued out of here in the next few days. So she forced herself forward.
Some of the women were tending to nursing infants. Older children were wrestling clumsily and wordlessly, save for an occasional hoot