I understood, then. The living SE was a female, and her mate had fallen ill and died.
I was held by the depths of the SE’s — Essie’s — grief as she hunkered beside her mate. I wondered if this had been part of her purpose, to bring me here for a sharing of her bereavement and suffering. If so, it was a ritual beyond my comprehension.
I faded back quietly, working my way through the saw-grass and canebreaks as the sun rose higher. I knew when she returned to my trail. Through the brightening heat came her high-pitched mewling, the note of loneliness and despair that had so often told me her position. The cries, became less strident as the sun neared its zenith. Finally, there was only the insect hum and the sound of my own exhausted breathing.
At midday I looked out through a screen of brush on the island where I’d finally come to roost. I saw no sign of Essie, but I knew she was out there, waiting for nightfall again.
I took a bearing. Far to the southeast a thin sliver of smoke hung in the brazen sky, marking the approximate location of Point E. If I survived, I would meet the helicopter there as scheduled. If not, I would leave this report beside the bodies of my two comrades.
Meanwhile, my body machinery demanded attention. I dug out some coontie root with the knife and munched the starchy provender of the old-time Seminoles. It was flat, tasteless, but Ailing and nourishing. Then I rolled into the water, clothed, to cool off. A mess of a Marine, face hamburgered from insect bites, each hair a painful quill in the tenderness of my sun-burned scalp…
Afterward I crawled into the palmetto shadows and slept.
Now, Captain McCabe, I have regained enough strength to move out again. My destination is Point E, and I would like to complete this report insofar as possible in case I am not there to file a verbal report when the helicopter returns for the pickup of the survival team.
If I’m missing, when you view the bodies of good men such as Gordon and Finklestein you must give all due thought to my explanation. There are things unknown in the recesses of the ’Glades, Captain McCabe. You must accept that.
Just as I am accepting the clarity of certain factors.
I know why Essie didn’t club me to death in the first attack on the campsite. She had seen that I was the biggest of the three strange SE-oid creatures that had invaded her domain. She had a reason to spare the largest.
I know the meaning of her mewlings and whimperings, her high-pitched barking notes of entreaty.
I can begin to understand, to imagine, how the big, dead male must have felt when he in vigorous life smelled that primeval odor, the exudation of musk, that perfume of hers. Now he is dead, and the laws of her nature can’t be set aside, any more than we could stop a female deer from exuding her mating scent when she is in heat.
Essie is a passion-heavy female in full season, on the prowl for a mate.
I can’t help feeling for her innocence, her helplessness in her hormonal situation. But even though I feel compassion for her, I have my knife out and ready. If I am denied sanctuary at Point E, one of us will die.
She is out there now in the lengthening shadows, mewling and whimpering and bark-barking her impatience. She is out there, sir, singing her hellish song of love…