After the Apocalypse (3)

Cahya raced into a gap in the jungle wall which marked the start of a steep trail downhill toward the closest beach to the village. A flash of beige shirt in the distant dusky murk of the forest told her Susswan had waited for her to catch sight of him so she would be sure of the chase. She was fast, but of all the village children Susswan was fastest, she would need to be smartest to catch him. As she jumped over roots and through ferns whose lush green might hide holes or other obstacles, she clenched the smoothness of her bamboo swatch. When she caught the thief, a weapon would be useful. As she ducked beneath the limb of a young sandalwood tree, she heard a chittering like a monkey from ahead and below. She recognized Susswan’s monkey imitation and changed direction without losing her headstrong momentum by whiplashing herself around an almost vertical liana limb.

Just as she released her hold on the vine, she heard its brittleness shatter from the force of her little body twisting it. She had no time to be surprised at the explosion of the otherwise solid appearing liana as a series of thumps and flashes of beige and flesh downhill showed that the thief had missed his footing and tripped over a root.

All around her in the still, torpid jungle heat Cahya could hear the crashing and delighted hooting of the other children as they tried to keep up with the new adventure. They were absorbed in their childish play while she was immersed in the deadly serious business of keeping the old lady’s trust, of being worthy of Flores after being flushed out of Sumatra so casually.

Ahead, Susswan came to rest against a moss-covered boulder just before one of the many small creeks burbling toward the sea. He was temporarily stunned, shaking his head before leaping up to recover his sense of direction. He saw Cahya bearing down on him with her stick already raised, a vicious anger clouding her brown eyes. He ran his fastest over the first little clearing down the hillside, dust rising behind him from the closely cropped, brown-dry grass. Cahya paused by the mossy boulder, panting and planning ahead as she watched Susswan disappear again into the undergrowth. A parcel of children emerged from the darkness of the ferns behind her, a few batting in irritation or disgust at the tree leeches they’d picked up on their wild chase. Cahya ignored her own collection of leeches, dashing through the same gap between trees which Susswan had used. From above, a thump and a snap signaled another accident as one of the slower children came to a private grief. A laugh from close by suggested that no serious injury resulted.

Not long after re-entering the jungle, Cahya needed to pause again. While downhill toward the beach was Susswan’s obvious direction -he lacked sufficient imagination to create a ruse- his exact destination was unclear. Cahya mentally listed his likely routes and realized she knew a potential short-cut that just might allow her to get in front of him before he made it to the wide-open sands of the beach. With his lanky legs she’d never be able to catch him there. To her right an ancient creek had cut a furrow down the mountainside through the fragile pumice; her old ally, and vegetation had been suppressed by the raging flows, almost waterfalls, of the monsoons. It was terribly steep and she’d never tried to descend by that route at a run. A fall could be catastrophic, the sharp pumice and the precipitous descent made the gully a better place to climb than to go downward, but it would get her to the beach ahead of Susswan if she was careful…, and lucky.

Below to the left she caught a flash of Susswan’s light earth-colored shirt flitting frantically between the undergrowth of the forest. For the shortest moment Cahya was confused by his haste; surely he must know she wasn’t on his tail, and then she spied a quick flash of something brick red and moving fast along the same path as the thief. Puzzled, she looked harder and now heard the crash of a body moving recklessly through the jungle growth, dodging and weaving at a breakneck pace.

With a start she recognized Wein, but who was watching over his birds? The rush of sweaty pleasure over discovering an ally with her in the jungle raced back to oppressive frustration as she watched him perform an unintended somersault on a hump in his path. From a tree above the spot where Wein thumped hard onto his back a great hornbill honked its eerie echoing note in agitation and flapped its vast wings into the air. Silence where her friend had tripped, then a quick rustle as he shot back onto his feet and tore off in headlong pursuit of Susswan.

From her vantage point Cahya could interpret the hard determination which flashed across Wein’s face; this was about more than the stolen icon. Cahya thought of the day three weeks earlier when a stone thrown hard at him by Susswan’s older brother missed Wein but killed a parakeet in one of his cages. She nodded knowingly to herself, reached down to twist away and pluck an engorged leech from her calf and began a semi-controlled tumble down the dangerous gully.

Perhaps sixty yards behind Susswan, Wein arrived at the base of a steep climb over a prehistoric lava flow which had long been subdued by the life growing all over it. Still, it was this barrier which most often convinced villagers to drop any thought of going all the way to the beach to escape the thick air of the forest surrounding the village. The discouraging trudge up the hill after the strain of the downhill mile-and-a-half hike left distaste for the walk to the beach in almost everyone. The potential danger on the beach didn’t help either.

Wein glanced up to see Susswan near the top of the ridge. At the same time a second squawk from the hornbill caused Susswan to pause in his upward thrust and glance over his shoulder. The out-of-place colour of Wein’s red shirt drew his eye downward. He saw Wein begin his determined push up the ridge and it startled Susswan after Wein’s hard tumble. Of all the other boys in the village, he personally felt his only true rival was Wein. About the same size and almost as quick, it was Wein with whom Susswan had long worked to cultivate a separate peace, an entente of equality at a sort of apex of boyhood power.

But then Susswan had laughed when his brother stoned the bird in Wein’s cage. Watching Wein’s angered fortitude; Susswan realized he felt fear of the other boy. His breath, caught up during his pause, clenched in his suddenly constricted throat; however, Susswan was all in by now. He gripped the stupid, ugly icon, a wooden lizard with a hole in its snout where a thin wisp of a forked straw tongue had once protruded, and he cursed the ora for the monster of his nightmares that it represented. Another glance at his pursuer and Susswan turned in his costume of sweat and dirt and leeches and twigs to plow ahead through the undergrowth to the top of the ridgeline.

From below, Wein saw his quarry turn and reach the blue space between trees at the top of the climb. He was surprised at how winded he already felt and brushed irritably at the sweat on his forehead. He was surprised again by the thin, watery blood on his palm as he looked at it. Right, he’d hit his head a sharp blow on a banyan root in his somersault. There was more damage than he’d expected but it was not worth the worry as he shoved his path up the jungle scree, even more determined now than he’d been earlier.

Just before Wein reached the height, a troop of white-handed gibbons whooped down near him from the higher branches and tried to pelt him with ripe mangoes and even a few hard seeds. They too were enjoying the spirit of the chase. Luckily for Wein, the gibbons were moving to keep up with his race through the trees, effectively disrupting their aim. Behind and around him Wein could hear the laughter of the human children who could see how he was under attack from the branches above.

Please continue reading this story in "After the Apocalypse" (4)

https://vocal.media/fiction/after-the-apocalypse-4