She began to call out, a piercing cry of fear. “Oo-hah!” Nutcracker-people were fierce and strong, and would come rushing to the aid of their own.
But if any Nutcrackers were near, they did not respond.
Suddenly Big Boss made a leap, from his tree to the Nutcracker-woman’s. The Nutcracker-woman screeched. She leapt to Claw’s tree, her big belly wobbling.
But Claw, small as he was, was ready for her. As the Nutcracker-woman scrambled to get hold of a branch, Claw grabbed her infant from her.
He bit into its skull, and it died immediately.
The Nutcracker-woman screamed, and hurled herself towards Claw. But already, with his kill over his shoulder, Claw was scurrying down the tree trunk to the ground. Blood smeared around his mouth, he held up his limp prize, crying out with triumph.
But Big Boss and Little Boss converged on him. With a casual punch, Little Boss knocked Claw to the dirt, and Big Boss grabbed the infant. The two of them huddled over the carcass. With firm strong motions, they began to dismember it, twisting off the infant’s limbs one by one as easily as plucking leaves from a branch. When Claw came close, trying to get a share of the meat, he was met by a punch or a kick. He retreated, screeching his anger.
In the tree above, the Nutcracker-woman could only watch, howling: “Hah! Oo hah!”
Claw came up to the men time and again, pulling at their shoulders and beating their backs.
A powerful blow from Big Boss now sent Claw sprawling. Clutching his chest, he groaned and lay flat.
Shadow approached her brother. She held out a hand, fingers splayed, to groom him, calm him.
He turned on her.
There was blood on his mouth, and his hair bristled around him, and his eyes were crusted with tears. He punched her temple.
She found herself on the ground. The colours of the world swam, yellow leaching into the green.
Now Claw stood over her, breathing hard. He had an erection.
She reached for him.
He grabbed her hand and squeezed it, hard, so that her fingers were bent back. She cried out as bones bent and snapped.
Then he walked around her, legs splayed, erection sticking out of his fur. He grabbed at the trees and waved branches at her.
She understood the signs he was making. She knew what he wanted, in his frustration, in his rage. But he was her brother. The thought of him lying on her filled her head with blackness, her throat with bile.
She turned over and tried to stand. But when she put her injured hand on the ground, pain flared, and she fell forward.
He stamped hard on her back. She was driven flat into the undergrowth. She felt his hands on her ankles. He dragged her back towards him and pulled her legs apart. He was stronger than she was; sprawled face-down on the ground, she could not fight him.
His shadow fell over her, looming.
In another bloody heartbeat he was inside her. He screamed, in pain or pleasure. Shadow called for her mother, but she was far away.
Emma Stoney:
The days here lasted about thirty hours. Emma timed them with her wristwatch and a stick stuck in the ground to track shadows.
Thirty hours. No possibility of a mistake.
Not Earth, she thought reluctantly. But that thought was unreal. Absurd.
She knocked over her stick and took her watch off her wrist and stowed it in a pocket, so she wouldn’t have to look at it.
After the Elf attack, the three of them stayed on the open plain.
But every morning it was strange, disorienting, to wake among the hominids. Whichever of them woke first would take one look at the strangers and hoot and holler in alarm. Soon they would all be awake, all of them yelling and brandishing their fists, and Emma and the others would have to cower away, waiting for the storm to pass. At last, somebody would recognize them — Fire, or Stone, or one of the younger women. “Em-ma. Sal-ly.” After that the others would gradually calm down.
But Emma would have sworn that some of them never regained their memories of the day before, that every day they woke up not recognizing Emma and the others. It seemed they came awake with the barest memory of the detail of their lives before, as if every day was like a new birth.
Emma wasn’t sure if she pitied them for that, or envied them.
The days developed a certain routine. Emma and Sally worked to keep themselves clean, and Maxie; they would rinse out their underwear — they had only one set each, the clothes they had arrived in — and scrub the worst of the dirt off the rest of their clothes and gear.
The women had precisely two tampons between them. When they were gone, they laboured to improvise towels from bits of cloth.
As evening drew in Emma and little Maxie would help build the hominids” haphazard fire by throwing twigs and branches onto it. Paying dues, Emma thought; making sure we earn our place in the warmth.
In the dark the hominids gathered close to the fire, she supposed for safety and warmth. But they didn’t form into anything resembling a circle, as humans would. There were little knots of them, men testing their strength against each other, women with their children, pairs coupling with noisy (and embarrassing) enthusiasm. But there was no story-telling, no singing, no dancing. They even ate separately, each hunched over her morsel, as if fearful of having it stolen.
The group did not have the physical grammar of a group bound by language, Emma thought. This was not a true hearth. Their bits of words, their proto-language, were surely a lot closer to the screeches of chimps, or even the songs of birds, than the vocalizations of humans. Though the Runners huddled together for security, they lived their lives as individuals, pursuing solitary projects, each locked forever inside her own head.
They aren’t human, Emma realized afresh, however much they might look like it. And this wasn’t a community. It was more like a herd.
As night fell, Emma and the others would creep into the shelter she had made with Fire. A few of the hominids followed them, mothers with nursing infants. Maxie cried and complained at the pungent stink of their never-washed flesh. But Emma and Sally calmed him, and themselves, assuring each other that they were surely safer here than in the open, or in the forest.
One child, looking no more than five or six years old in human terms, fell ill. Her eyelids, cheeks, nose and lips were encrusted with sores. The child was skinny, and was evidently in distress; her gestures were faint, her movements listless.
“I think it’s yaws,” Sally said. “I’ve seen it upriver, in Africa… It’s related to syphilis. But it’s transmitted by flies, who carry it from wound to wound. That’s where the first signs show: little bumps in the corners of your eyes, or your nostrils, where the flies go to suck your moisture.”
“What’s the cure?”
“A shot of Extencilline. Safeguards you for life. But we don’t have any.”
Emma rummaged through her medical pocket. “What about Floxapen?”
“Maybe. But you’re crazy to use it up on them. We’re going to need it ourselves. We’ll get ulcers. We need it.”
Emma struggled to read the directions on the little bottle. She found a scrap of meat, embedded a pill in it, and fed it to the child. It was hard to hold her hand near that swollen, grotesque face.
The next morning, she did the same. She kept it up until the Floxapen was gone. It seemed to her the child was getting gradually better.
Maybe it helped the Runners accept them. She wasn’t sure if they understood what she was doing, if they saw the cause-and-effect relationship between her treatment and any change in the girl’s condition.
Sally didn’t try to stop her. But Emma could see she was silently resentful at what she regarded as a waste of their scarce resources. It didn’t help relations between them.