“Yes, you’re right. We must act urgently.” The sun was a shimmering globe suspended on the edge of the ocean, and Malenfant began to feel its heat draw at the skin of his face. “We’ve a lot to talk about.”
“Yes.”
They walked up the path to their cars.
Fire:
The sun is above his head. The air is hot and still. The red ground shines brightly through brittle grass. People move to and fro on the red dust.
Fire thinks of Dig. He thinks of himself touching Dig’s hair, her dugs, the small of her back. His member stiffens. His eyes and ears seek Dig. They don’t find her.
He sees Sing.
Sing is lying flat on her bower, in the sun. Her head does not rise. Her hand does not lift from where it is sprawled in the red dirt. Her legs are splayed. Flies nibble at her belly and eyes and mouth.
Fire squats. His hands flap at the flies, chasing them away. He shakes Sing’s shoulder. “Sing Sing Fire Sing!”
She does not move. He puts his finger in her mouth. It is dry.
Fire picks up Sing’s hand. It is limp, but her arm is stiff. He drops the hand. The arm falls back with a soft thump. Dust rises, falls back.
Emma is beside him.
“Fire. Maxie is ill. Perhaps you can help. Umm, Maxie sore Maxie. Fire Maxie… Fire, is something wrong?”
Her eyes look at Sing. Her hands press at Sing’s neck. Emma’s head drops over Sing’s mouth, and her ear listens.
Fire thinks of Sing laughing. She is huge and looms over him. Her face blocks out the sun.
He looks at the slack eyes, the open mouth, the dried drool. This is not Sing.
His legs stand him up. He bends down and lifts the body over his shoulders. It is stiff. It is cold.
Emma stands. “Fire? Are you all right?
Fire’s legs jog downwind. They jog until his eyes see the people are far away. Then his arms dump the body on the ground. It sprawls. He hears bones snap. Gas escapes from its backside.
Bad meat.
He jogs away, back to the people.
He goes to Sing’s bower. But the bower is empty. People are here, and then they are gone, leaving no memorials, no trace but their children, as transient as lions or deer or worms or clouds. Sing is gone from the world, as if she never existed. Soon he will forget her.
He scatters the branches with his foot.
Emma is watching him.
Sally is here, holding Maxie. Maxie is weeping. Emma says, “Fire, I’m sorry. Can you help us? I don’t know what to do…”
Fire grins. He reaches for Maxie.
Maxie cringes. Sally pulls him back.
Emma says, “No, Fire. He doesn’t want to play. Fire Maxie ill sick sore.”
Fire frowns. He touches Maxie’s forehead. It is hot and wet. He touches his belly. It is hard.
He thinks of a shrub with broad, coarse-textured leaves. He does not know why he thinks of the shrub. He doesn’t even formulate the question. The knowledge is just there.
He lopes to the forest. His ears listen and his eyes peer into the dark greenery. There are no Nutcracker-folk. There are no Elf-folk.
He sees the shrub. He reaches out and plucks leaves.
His legs take him out of the forest.
Maxie stares at the leaves. Water runs down his face.
Fire pokes a leaf into his small, hot mouth. Maxie’s mouth tries to spit it out. Fire pushes it back. Maxie’s mouth chews the leaf. Fire holds his jaw so the mouth can’t chew.
Maxie swallows the leaf, and wails.
Fire makes him swallow another. And another.
Somebody is shouting. “Meat! Meat!”
Fire’s head snaps around. The voice is coming from upwind. Now his nose can smell blood.
Something big has died.
His legs jog that way.
He finds Stone and Blue and Dig and Grass and others. They are squatting in the dirt. They hold axes in their hands.
The meat is an antelope. It is lying on the ground.
Killing birds are tearing at the carcass.
The killing birds tower over the people. They have long gnarled legs, and stubby useless wings, and heads the size of Fire’s thigh. The heads of the birds dig into the belly and joints of the antelope, pushing right inside the carcass.
The people wait, watching the birds.
A pack of hyenas circles, warily watching the birds and the people. And there are Elf-folk. They sit at the edge of the forest, picking at their black-brown hair. The bands of scavengers are set out in a broad circle around the carcass, well away from the birds, held in place by a geometry of hunger and wariness. The Running-folk are scavengers among the others — not the weakest, not the strongest, not especially feared. The people wait their turn with the others, waiting for the birds to finish, knowing their place.
One by one the birds strut away. Their heads jerk this way and that, dipping. Their eyes are yellow. They are looking for more antelopes to kill.
The hyenas are first to get to the corpse. Their faces lunge into its ripped open rib cage. The hyenas start to fight with one another, forgetting the killing birds, forgetting the people.
Blue and Stone and Fire hurl bits of rock.
The dogs back away. Their muzzles are bloody red, their eyes glaring. Their mouths want the meat. But their bodies fear the stones and sticks of the people.
The people fall on the carcass.
Stone’s axe, held between thumb and forefinger, slices through the antelope’s thick hide. The axe rolls to bring more of its edge into play. It slices meat neatly from the bones. The birds have beaks to rip meat. The hyenas and cats have teeth. The people have axes. The people work without speaking, not truly cooperating.
Fire’s hands cram bits of meat into his mouth, hot and raw. Fire thinks of the other people by the fire, the women and their infants and children with no name. He tells his mouth it must not eat all the meat. He holds great slabs of it in his hands, slippery and bloody.
Fire’s ears hear a hollering. His head snaps around.
More Elf-folk are boiling out of the forest fringe, hooting, hungry. They have rocks and stones and axes in their hands. They run on their legs like people. But their legs are shorter than a person’s, and they have big strong arms, longer and stronger than a person’s.
Stone growls. His mouth bloody, he raises his axe at the Elf-folk.
The Elf-folk show their teeth. They hoot and screech.
A bat swoops from the sky. It is a hunter. Its wings are broad and flap slowly. The people scatter, fearing talons and beak.
The bat falls on the Elf-folk. It caws. It rises into the air. It has its talons dug into the scalp of an Elf-woman. She wriggles and cries, dugs swinging.
One Elf-man throws a rock at the bat. It misses. The others just watch. She is gone, in an instant, her life over.
Suddenly Stone charges forward at the Elf-folk. Blue follows. Dig follows.
The Elf-folk scamper away, into the safety of their forest.
Stone hoots his triumph.
The people return to the antelope. The hyenas have approached again, and bats have flown down, digging into the entrails of the antelope. The people hurl stones and shout. The people’s hands take meat and bones from the carcass, until their hands are full. The people’s mouths dig into the carcass and bite away final chunks of meat.
Other scavengers move in. Soon there will be nothing left of the antelope but scattered, crushed, chewed bones, over which insects will crawl.
The children fall on the meat. Their mouths snap and their hands punch and scratch as they fight over the meat.
Fire approaches Dig. He holds out meat. Her hands grab it. She throws it away. A child with no name falls on the discarded scrap.
Dig laughs. She turns her back on Fire.
Emma comes to Fire. She smiles, seeing the meat. His belly wants to keep all the meat, but he makes his hands give her some.
Emma takes it to the fire. There are rocks in the fire. Emma beats the meat flat and puts it on the hot rocks. She peels it off the rocks and carries it to Sally and Maxie.