[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

.
B
B
A
A
Click here to buy
Click here to buy
w
w
m
m
w
w
o
o
w
w
c
c
.
.
.
.
A
A
Y
Y
B
B
Y
Y
B
B
r r
on a log to rest and was startled by a small black snake crawling out from
under it and between his legs.
Small leapt to his feet, started to run again and went headlong into a
tree. It was not a tremendous impact, but it was enough to spin him around
and cause him to slide to a sitting position with the bark burning his naked
back.
From there, exhausted, he watched the small snake, its middle swollen,
slither away. There was a bird's nest lying there beneath the log. In the nest
was one cracked egg. There had most likely been others, and that was why the
snake had been plump. It had taken advantage of this meal dropped into its
path by last night's storm.
Small eyed the egg carefully. He was ferociously hungry. He scooted
over to the nest and picked up the cracked egg, held it over his mouth and
separated it with his fingers, dripping the yolk into his mouth. It tasted pretty
good.
Small eyed the log on which he had been sitting. It was rotten and filled
with plump, white insect grubs. Small watched the grubs quiver in the wood
for a moment, then plucked one of the grubs between his thumb and finger,
tossed it into his mouth, and began to chew.
It was a gritty meal, but not as bad as he expected. Not as good as one
could hope, but still serviceable if you were nearly naked and lost in the
jungle and tired and filthy and had just run away from a panther after
spending the night under fallen trees in a storm. Not to mention that prior to
the storm you had been chased and shot at, and had a huge python crawl over
your legs. All those events considered, a meal of a bird's egg and grubs was,
time and place considered, fairly cosmopolitan.
Small began to eat the grubs like popcorn. He ate them until the log was
absent of them. Then he found a low-limbed tree, climbed as high as he dared,
located a cluster of crisscrossing limbs and vines, and stretched out on them.
Glad for the hot golden sunlight that was leaking through a gap in, the foliage,
Small slept.
As Small slept, the wind picked up, and the tree rattled as if it were a dry
skeleton. Small sat up. He felt strange. He climbed down from the tree. He
began to walk, and as he walked the jungle opened up before him. On either
side of him he saw great black walls, and in the black walls, as if they were
trapped beneath tar, figures moved. Small observed them with an odd
detachment. But even beneath the thick black tar, the shapes were
recognizable.
Jean. Hanson. Hunt. The wild man he had seen tied to a tree. Cannon and
Wilson and Gromvitch were there. The tar-covered figures writhed and
wadded together, and twisted into a great black knot, and from the knot,
oozing out of the squirming black wall there dripped pops of blood so red a
prize-winning rose would have paled beside it. Small looked at the blood, and
as it rolled toward the ground it came to rest on a piece of ancient stone wall,
and on top of the wall the blood gathered and swelled and took the shape of a
heart, steaming and pulsing.
a
a
T
T
n
n
s
s
F
F
f
f
o
o
D
D
r
r
P
P
m
m
Y
Y
e
e
Y
Y
r
r
B
B
2
2
.
.
B
B
A
A
Click here to buy
Click here to buy
w
w
m
m
w
w
o
o
w
w
c
c
.
.
.
.
A
A
Y
Y
B
B
Y
Y
B
B
r r
Small felt a tinge of horror, but no more than that. And he considered
that most strange, for he knew the heart was his own. He touched his chest.
There was no wound, but he knew the heart was his.
And then as he watched, the heart went soft, became a red puddle, and
the puddle leapt off the stone and onto the wall and fled upwards until it
reached the great black knot of humanity. It entered the knot. The knot went
flat against the wall, and Small stirred in his sleep. He opened his eyes,
blinked, and found that he was still in the tree. It had been a dream. A
moment of trepidation swelled inside his chest. His mother had once
dreamed of her own death. She told him she saw her own heart lying on a
table, steaming and beating. Then it ceased to beat, and she awoke.
She told him this, and then she died a week later. She said she knew she
would die. It was an inherited ability. Her grandfather had envisioned his
death in a similar manner. Their ancestors, long ago traded to whites by other
Africans, had been descendants of a powerful shaman who could foretell the
future. It was his mother's belief that the trait had been passed on to later
generations-at least in one way. The ability to sense one's own demise.
Small disregarded the vision. The dream. It was nothing more than his
natural fears swelling inside him. He would be okay. He would be all right.
Maybe.
His anxiety could not fight away his exhaustion. He slept in spite of the
dream, and he slept deep, and sound, and good.
Jean felt empty. She no longer cared what happened to her. The
warriors had abandoned their trefe camouflage, and were pushing her
quickly along a rough trail. They were silent as they walked, and she noticed
the warriors were both men and women. Due to their size, she had at first
assumed they were men, but now, devoid of their tree camouflage, she saw at
least a third of them were women.
Many of the warriors were quite young. All were very tall with classic
Negroid features and skin black as wet ebony. They were well built and
muscular and wore white paint on their foreheads and cheeks to complement
the scars burned into then: flesh. A few of them wore plumes of feathers.
Those without plumes wore their hair long and well oiled. Some carried
short, thick spears while others carried long, almost floppy spears. Several
had bows and quivers of long arrows strapped to their backs. All wore huge
knives-swords actually-in loops at their waists, or in scabbards slung over [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]