The Mantooth

by Christopher Leadem

Chapter 7

The hours passed slowly. Using the wood Akar had brought him, Kalus built a small fire and they divided the cooked meat between them. Sylviana had protested slightly, but given in when informed that regardless of the Mantis' decision, there could be no more free meals of sebreum.

There was an air of restless tension in the small enclosure. For though being banished from the mountain did not mean certain death, it did mean a much harder and more treacherous life. Both Kalus and the wolf knew just how difficult living without a home could be; Sylviana could only imagine it.

Akar had not forgotten that he and the girl were already welcome to remain there, but he kept this knowledge to himself. His friend needed the companionship of her own kind, and he had made a pact of mutual protection, however tentative, with the man-child. And Akar was a creature of his word.

As morning yielded gradually first to early, then to late afternoon, the three had still seen or heard nothing of the mantis. Exhausted by his seasonal battle with the mating spiders, he lay unmoving and death-like in the larger cave below them, buried in the deep, recuperative sleep of an insect.

With time hanging heavy around them, Kalus and the girl were given the chance, denied them by the turbulence of previous days, to study each other more closely, and to ask, if they would, the unspoken questions that had been forming in their minds. Kalus had finished with the carcass by mid-day—-cutting and shaping the skin, sharpening the ribs against the rock to make bone needles—-but showed no sign of interest in talk, moving instead to look out from the entrance, apparently deep in thought. Sylviana watched him there in the sunlight, with the wolf sleeping peacefully beside her, as she gently stroked his fur.

For the most part she studied his primitive attire, crudely made, but not without a certain atavistic grace. His primary garment consisted of a large skin, possibly that of a buck, cut and worn like a sleeveless, thigh-length coat. Worn with the fur side in, it closed in a narrowing V across his chest, and was bound about the waist by a band of tied leather. Long slits at either hip allowed his legs their freedom of movement. Beneath one of these as he crouched could be seen a tanned and soft-beaten loincloth, tied off with a knot at the crest of the splayed and sinewy leg closest to her. His boots were made of some furrier hide, silver-black in color, and tightly bound to his calves by crisscrossing leather thongs. He also wore thongs about his neck and wrists, a sharpened clamshell hanging from the former, the strands dangling loose in the case of the latter. Decorative in appearance, they were in fact purely practical, serving many purposes as need arose. He also wore the buckskin pouch, along with a drinking skin from which he rationed water for the two of them, Akar being free to pursue it as he might. As for the man himself, his hair was light brown and wild; a short and irregular beard wrapped a face whose stern features implied a determination and experience beyond his years.

Nor had she failed to note the striking body beneath, endowed very probably with more supple and functional strength than any she had ever seen. More than once she felt her eyes trail across it—-the knotted arms and shoulders, the well shaped thighs and buttocks—-very much attracted.

But it was this same strength of mind and body, infinitely desirable in a tamer soul, that brought home so consistently her own helplessness against him. That he could overpower her at any time was obvious, that he had not yet tried to do so of little comfort. She wondered if perhaps the presence of the wolf alone protected her. And the hardest thing was that she did respect him. All his actions seemed to indicate a courageous and unselfish character. But his morals? She suspected (correctly) that he had none.

But in truth she need not have worried. The idea of rape was so foreign and unnatural to his existence that the thought never occurred to him. As was the way of his people, he intended first to feed and protect her, to establish his claim and earn her trust, and only then to take her, willingly, as his mate. And in his own mind at least, he had begun the process already. His desire and timid affection for her bound him to her more closely than she knew. At last he broke away from the entrance and came inside. The wolf stirred.

'It will be hard if he refuses us. Very hard.' He sat opposite her against a nook in the wall and once more destroyed all preconception. His face was worried and drawn, full of very human emotion. Again she felt the presentiment of inescapable reality: that here before her was true Man, stripped of all pretense, reduced to his simplest terms.

At length he looked up at her, and seemed anxious to communicate. Indeed, his eyes almost pleaded for some reassurance. She thought to herself, then offered a simple question.

'Kalus? What are the rest of your people like?' He shifted positions, drew one knee toward him, then answered.

'They are no longer my people. I am banished….. For what they are like, I don't know how to tell you. I can only say they are not much like me.'

'In what way?' Finally she had something.

'They act more and think less. I think they are closer to the true predators than I.'

'How do you mean?'

'Well. Let me think how to say it.' A pause. 'My name is
Kalus, which stands for Carnivore, or Great Hunter. My father made it
for me, hoping that such a name would give me strength. I am strong,
Sylviana, but not, I think, in the way he wanted.'

'Go on.'

Again he struggled. 'I draw no pleasure from the hunt. I don't understand. To my people it is the proudest and most important thing they do. But to me it is often ugly, and I kill only to live. Also. . there are times when I do not want to be aggressive. Like now. If the Mantis would let us stay here, I would trade that safety for all the meaningless battles….. Perhaps I am just a coward and a fool.'

'No,' she said emphatically. 'You're not.' She had to restrain herself from going to him then and there. Why did his anguish move her so? 'Maybe you're just better than they are. You feel things they can't.'

'I do not feel better. I thank you for saying it, but I do not think it is so. Barabbas, my new father….. It is easy for me to speak with you and say I do not love the hunt. But he must feed and protect many others. Please believe me, that is not an easy thing.' She let it go at that, sensing an undercurrent of anger, or something, in his words.

Kalus was silent for a time, lost among his thoughts. But as the daylight began to fade, he too felt the need to know something more of his companion. Largest in his mind was the question of her origin, since it carried with it the one answer which truly mattered. Could she ever be his?

'Sylviana. You say you are not from the Island. How then did you come here? In all my years I have heard of no other tribe for many miles around, surely none so fair of face and skin, that wear such garments.' The girl looked down, and realized for the first time how odd her own clothes must seem to him: the gauze top, the worn and fading denim jeans. And her hair, somewhere between blond and brunette, with streaks of both. Silver earrings and bracelet. But these thoughts were as a passing shadow on her mind. How could she possibly tell him the truth of her existence? Somehow she had to try.

'This is so hard. A lot of it I don't know myself.' She looked across at him. 'Please be patient, and let me choose my words.'

'It's all right. I am patient.'

After several halting starts, she saw there was no other way but to tell him straight out. Let him understand or believe what he would.

'A long time ago, many hundreds of years I think, there were infinitely more people on earth. Our civilization had advance so far, that we could build or do almost anything. We lived in cities as high as this mountain, and many times as broad, all over the world.

'Unfortunately, one of the things we built the best were weapons, devices to….. Well, the argument was that they were to protect ourselves. But really, they had no other purpose than to kill. Some of the more primitive of these are in the Mantis' cave, though I have no idea how they got there.' It was useless.

'We destroyed ourselves, Kalus. I don't know how else to say it. I suppose there were reasons for the War, and in fairness I don't think either side wanted it. But it happened all the same. We launched weapons that could kill millions of people from thousands of miles away, and go on killing years after….. I don't know why I was left alive.' DON'T CRY. 'All my friends and family are dead. Everything I knew is gone.' Kalus answered softly.

'Is that what the voice in the mirror was trying to tell me?'

'I thought you had forgotten.'

'I do not forget, Sylviana. And I think of things more than you know. I am not one of the lesser animals. I am only different from you.'

'I'm sorry.' Again she hung her head.

'Don't be sorry for things that are not wrong. You have your sorrows and I have mine. Do not think of it now. There is only one more thing I must ask you.'

'What is it?'

'Why did you not die with the others? And living, how have you not grown old? Is your flesh so different from mine?'

'No, Kalus. It's very much the same.' She felt weak and tearful, but also a strange determination to see it through. An unusual emotion for her: direct rebellion against despair.

'My father was a scientist, a man of learning. Somehow he knew the war was coming. Maybe I should have known it, too, but try to understand. My friends and I had lived with the threat of nuclear destruction all our lives. It just didn't seem real…..

'My father used all the money he had saved since my mother died, to build a shelter in the Canadian Rockies. And he was involved with several of his colleagues, other scientists like himself, in cryogenic research: a way of putting people into a deep sleep, like hibernation. 'Just before the missiles starting falling….. My father took me up in his plane. We listened, horrified, to radio broadcasts of the destruction of the cities, and of the spreading fallout. He told me that he wanted to put me into a suspended state, which would keep me alive until….. Until what, I couldn't imagine.'

'My mind just couldn't accept what was happening. I was terrified, and told him I didn't want to leave him. But he said it was the only way. When we landed, he said that he was sorry. He had to drug me, I guess, because the next thing I knew I was in something like a casket with my father leaning over me, crying, and telling me he loved me.'

She broke down, turned against the stone wall, and wept. Kalus looked at her, and but for the iron discipline he had learned, the alternative to which was death, would have gone to her and comforted her as best he could. As it was he felt more stirred than at any time since his father's death, and quietly vowed that he would stay with her, and protect her until the end.

Sylviana recovered somewhat, looked back at him, and seeing the confused sympathy of his eyes, concluded.

'I woke in the Mantis' cave, with no idea where I was or how I came here. I've been alone for nearly three months. But for the Voice, and later, for Akar….. I nearly lost my mind with fear and loneliness.' She suddenly realized the wolf was no longer with them, and that full night was falling. She let her thoughts collapse.

Kalus could not hold himself back any longer. 'You're not alone anymore.'

Her eyes sought out his, but they were hidden among the deepening shadows of the nook. With only his limbs clearly visible, he looked like some phantom sage of the darkness, at once frightening and reassuring. 'But you must not feel it now. Feeling is for when the body is safe, and we are not. Now you should sleep….. I will guard you.'

She moved further into the cave and lay down. But though she tossed and turned for what seemed an eternity, sleep remained the distant dream of a child.

'Kalus?' No reply. She sat up and turned back toward him. 'You wouldn't hurt me, would you? Please say you'd never hurt me.'

'Of course I would not hurt you. Why do you think I stay?' He added after a time, sounding cold and irritable. 'Go to sleep and trouble me no more. I have much to think on.'

Now what had she done to upset him? Feeling more lost than ever, she swallowed hard and turned away. She lay down again, and perhaps an hour later, fell at last into exhausted slumber.

*

Long after the wolf had returned and lay sleeping beside her, Kalus remained wide awake, crouched at the edge of the shaft, listening. He studied the slow, deliberate breathing of the giant insect, trying to be certain. When he was as sure as he could be that the creature was still asleep, he began to descend.

He felt hollow as he went, partly from fear, and partly from the will-crushing desperation of the act now forced upon him. He was angry at having to be short with the girl, and once more felt bitterly abandoned and betrayed, though by whom he could not have said. And then came the voice that told him such an act was unnecessary—-that he risked all their lives for nothing—-the cruelest lie of all. No. He knew what must be done.

But always now his thoughts returned to fear; with every step the feeling grew. By the time he reached the floor of the Mantis' cave, terror had completely overtaken him. But still he went on. He HAD to have a weapon. The Mantis might banish them that very morning, and without it they were naked and helpless. And he knew that whatever prayers he might offer, to the God he did not know, no one could save him now but himself.

*

Later that night he returned, alive but nearly paralyzed with fear. Unable to overcome the emotion, he went to the girl. Touching her face with the back of his trembling hand, he woke her gently. He could no longer fight back the tears as she turned to face him.

'What is it?' she asked. 'What's wrong?' He tried to tell her what he was feeling, but it was all too much. Rising to a sit beside him, Sylviana took his face in her hands and tried to understand. Then she took his head tentatively to her shoulder, where he wept like a brutalized child. Feeling awkward, but very warm, she stroked his gnarled hair and rocked him slowly.

When morning came it found them still anxious and afraid, but infinitely closer than they had been only hours before.