Jon finally lifted his head and looked carefully to the left and right. And then down.
And there it was – a great black shape, hardly visible except as a darkness greater than the surrounding darkness. A living darkness that somehow radiated a feeling of power and menace. The dark mass at the end of the greater darkness moved. It was a great head and as it moved Jon could see it was looking up into the tree, for two great viridian eyes became visible; great saucer eyes with shone not by reflected light, for there was none, but by a baleful inner power that cast shadows onto the hitherto unseen surroundings. It saw Jon and roared. The roar had been powerful enough at some distance but now it was so close that the great tree literally shook like a sapling. Despite the risk of falling Jon was forced to clasp his ears to keep out that awful noise.
And then came the noise of scrabbling claws and Jon could see the thing was trying to ascend the tree to reach him. Six strong taloned feet bit into the bark and very, very slowly it started to climb.
Jon stared at it as it silently approached. There was nowhere to run. He hadn’t the strength to try to climb higher and even if he did, his progress would be so slow that the thing would easily be able to rear up and claim him.
There was only one chance and there would be only one opportunity to take that chance. Jon had never been so close to one of these killers before but he had seen dead ones and remembered something of their anatomy. This was no time to doubt his memories.
Relentlessly the predator came on, its clawed feet making its ascent much swifter than Jon’s laboured climb. He could hear the clash as chitinous jaws snapped together, gradually getting louder and more terrifying. In a moment its head would appear above the branch and then would be the instant for this one, this only chance. Jon was ready. He drew back his arm and tensed the hand that held the throwing stick. Already he could smell its breath. Any moment now. Any moment.
The head appeared above the branch, bathing Jon in a horrible putrid glow of green death, two saucer eyes staring at him, mocking him, telling him “You are mine!”
Two saucer eyes.
And then there was one as Jon thrust his stick into the nearer eye, pulled it out and thrust it at the second orb. He missed but the creature pulled back and, losing its grip, flailed its upper four limbs and then lost its footing completely and tumbled back down. As it hit the ground it roared again in a sonic explosion so great that Jon thought his skull would explode.
Silence came in a great wave of peace, crashing over the trees and its one four-limbed inhabitant. Jon decided to dare to look down to see if the wounded creature was returning to claim him, to seek horrific revenge for its maiming.
But it had gone.
Jon lay there on the branch, not daring to sleep for fear of tumbling to the ground into jaws that were assuredly waiting for him. Eventually, he became aware of a faint purplish glow around him and the trees gradually emerged from their cloak of blackness.
A new time of light was dawning.
He was safe for the moment. The predators only came out during the time of darkness. Carefully, he rose so he was sitting on his heels before attempting the perilous return to the forest floor. As he did so, his eyes came level with a gap in the canopy through which he could see a distant hill.
And from that hill rose a thin blue column of what other observers would have interpreted as smoke.
What could that mean? Jon had never seen smoke in this rain-sodden wilderness and so was unable to put a name, rightly or wrongly, to what he saw. And yet he had a feeling that it meant something tremendously important.
Something he would have to investigate and learn its secret.
Carefully, he began his return to the surface.
Two
Jon made steady progress through the resistant undergrowth, making sure that he kept his bearing on that distant hill which was now hidden again by the sweeping curtains of black vegetation. Sometimes he could climb onto a pile of fallen tree trunks to see if he could see its dim outline and its enigmatic column of bluish substance. Usually, it was obscured by the riotous mass of fervent vegetation but sometimes he could catch a glimpse of it; apparently as distant as ever.
As he trudged through the seemingly endless mass of growing things he wondered again and again why he was doing this. It must be a pointless drain on his limited energy reserves. Would there be more kabarras there? It seemed unlikely as they were creatures of the jungle and as far as he could see the hill was only lightly clothed with vegetation.
Why was he doing it? He could not explain it to himself; it was as if there was some unconscious compulsion driving him on, forcing his complaining muscles to take step after step through the resisting bushes and scrub, a compulsion that made him heedless of the slashing thorns that seem to impede every step.
At last, he could drive his weary legs no more and he crashed down on a fallen log.
‘By Korok, I’ve had enough of this!’ he roared at the crimson sky, clenching his fists in impotent anger.
He paused: why had he said that? He had never said that meaningless expression before. What did it mean?
What was a “Korok”?
Another mystery and he was getting very tired of mysteries. Only yesterday (if there had indeed been a yesterday) he had had no experience of mysteries. Surely his life had been a simple one with only two imperatives – Firstly, hunt and eat kabarras; Secondly, avoid being eaten by the great night predators. What else did life have to offer? It must be impossible that there could be anything else.
And yet – there was that nagging worm that kept whispering that something was not right, that there was some great hidden secret that had not yet been revealed to him; some secret that he would have to look for and discover.
He sat there for a while with his head in his hands. It was all too much for so simple a man as he. Why could he not simply accept the world for what it was? There was only one world and this was it. There were the great trees, the scuttling kabarras, the night predators; all carrying out their existence under the great crimson sky. There was nothing else. How could there be? Outside of Everything there is only Nothing.
Finally, he realised that he was wasting valuable time before the time of darkness came again. He cast an anxious glance at the sky and was relieved to see that as yet there were no lurid bars of purple crisscrossing its featureless surface. There was no immediate danger. Then he noticed something that he had not realised until then: the trees were thinning out. There were definitely fewer of them than he was used to. How could he escape a night predator should one stalk him in the coming dark period?
It must be literal madness to continue, he told himself angrily. He must stop. Or at the very least find some shelter from the predators which even now must be gradually emerging from their day-time sleep.
He could now get a better view of that enigmatic hill and now that it was hardly obscured by vegetation he could see that it was unquestionably nearer. Straining his eyes, Jon could see there appeared to be a cluster of structures encircling its flat summit, from the centre of which arose that thin bluish smoke-like column. He felt gratified that his labours seemed to have had some effect.
He studied the hill again. It was very odd. All the landscape around it was flat; geometrically flat. The actual surface he had been walking on was hidden by the growing things, and all the akaro trees rose to almost exactly the same height, forming a black lid on top of the ground, so he was unable to decide whether the land suddenly became flat or not. The trees were mostly behind him now; ahead they petered out and were replaced by a gradually thinning expanse of scrub, dotted with clumps of boulders.