The Mantooth

by Christopher Leadem

Chapter 9

'Sylviana, come here. This is something you must see.' She went out and stood beside him on the parapet. Skither was preparing to leave.

He stood solid with legs spread and hooked claws clinging, his abdomen expanding and contracting as he prepared for the single thrust that would send a massive burst of air through the small opening in his purposely dislocated jaw.

He let the final breath gather inside him. Then spreading his wings for balance, he exhaled in a quick and powerful motion. The result was a whistling sound so loud and shrill that it wounded the hearing even through covered ears. All the Valley seemed to hush in its aftermath, an echo of silence, as if all life for miles around had stopped its breath to listen. Indeed, thought the girl, even a creature that did not know the massive killer from which it emanated, would be sure to stay far clear of the place from which the sound had come. The Mantis rested for a short time, then repeated its territorial warning.

Akar returned out of the larger cave as Skither's breathing became normal once more. After several minutes he nodded imperceptibly to the wolf, then spread his wings and took off slowly. He circled the mountain twice, swooped low down the canyon as if in anger, then turned westward at the sandstone ridge and moved steadily out of sight. Sylviana stood watching Kalus, whose eyes gleamed with some fierce emotion that was beyond her experience, but not her ability to feel. He was silent, lost in some world of his past, then spoke.

'It will be a long time before the Commodore ventures so far from its hole, to steal the flesh of those yet living.'

With this he seemed to come back to himself. He turned to the girl, contented. 'There is much work to do.' He reached above and behind her on the rockface to the place where he had set the pelt to dry. 'Have you ever worked with leather or fur?'

'Yes, a little.'

'Good. Take my knife and see if you can cut four long strands from the skin, each about as wide as your smallest finger. They need not be straight; they are only for binding wooden poles. I go to the valley to fetch them. Do not leave here until I return.' He began to descend, remembered himself. 'The sword…..' He passed her and reentered their tiny island of space, emerged with the sword, unsheathed. Its well-preserved edges looked sharp in the sunlight.

'Be careful,' she said.

'I am always careful. Akar will come with me.' He took a lock of her hair in his fingers, and would have kissed her if he knew how. He whistled for the wolf and started down.

'Kalus?' He turned. 'Won't you need an ax to cut the wood?' He could not hide his smile in answering.

'I don't have to cut it. I steal it from the beaver.'

The two hunters met on the broader ledge and descended into the shadows of the gorge, leaving the girl with only the large rabbit pelt and Kalus' jagged knife, in truth not much improved from the museum relics she had studied as a child. She moved to a small, relatively smooth stretch of stone just inside the entrance, and laid out the fur upon it. She sat down and tried to work, but after several tentative starts had only succeeded in shredding one corner and cutting her finger on the knife. There seemed no safe way to grasp it, no soft or unsharpened place anywhere on it.

'Oh, this will never work.' She sat there on the stony ground, angry and frustrated, sucking her finger and cursing this backward, half-animal world.

But then an idea came to her. She tried to suppress it, but again the strange and uncharacteristic stubbornness crept over her. She moved to the dark fissure of the shaft and looked down, deliberating. After several minutes of internal bickering, she reached her legs out over the side, lowered herself to the first shelf, and began to descend.

*

Kalus and the wolf returned late in the afternoon. Sylviana had not been idle. As the man-child laid five straight and sturdy poles on the floor by his accustomed sleeping place, he found there waiting for him four long and curving strands, spiral cut from the skin to assure greatest length and thickness. The girl returned his questioning gaze, held up a long hunting knife it its leather sheath.

'If you can steal a sword, I can at least take a few things to make my life more bearable.'

He looked past her on the floor to see one of the furs from her former bed, folded over and half filled with treasures she thought to keep. He asked to see the knife. He withdrew it from its sheath and gazed at it admiringly, not at all upset. Instead he nodded his approval.

'You have done well. He said we could take one other weapon, and I see that you have chosen the best.' He gave it back to her. 'What are the other things? Will he miss them?'

'I don't think so. It's just a few books, some bowls, and a flask for carrying water. And this.' She pulled the fur closer, fished around inside it for a moment, drew out a small whet stone. 'It's for sharpening steel.'

Again he smiled. 'You have done very well. I will make a hunter of you yet.' She put out her arms to embrace the wolf, who pulled away, though gently. Akar went again to the entrance.

'How did it go with you?' she asked Kalus.

'Your friend is very clever, though his heart is not in it. He drew away the beavers while I took the poles. The female—-' He laughed. 'She was so angry. I think she would have killed me if she got the chance.'

'Killed you? A little two-foot long beaver?'

'Two feet?' he winced. 'Perhaps the beavers of your world are only that long, but I promise you, these were larger than any wolf.'

She studied him, disbelieving. A bizarre thought had just occurred to her. 'Are you telling the truth?'

'Why would I lie?'

She threw back the upper fold of the fur, searched among the books. She quickly found what she was looking for: PREHISTORIC EARTH, ESSAYS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. She checked the index, thumbed the yellowed and clumping pages.

Her mind fell back into itself. Sure enough, sketched there in relative detail against the background of a large den, was the figure of a great prehistoric beaver, '…..eight to twelve feet in length.' Recovering herself, she moved hastily to sit beside him.

'Do they look like this?'

'Yes, more or less.'

She flipped through the stiff, distending pages—-Mammals of the Pleistocene. She stopped at a pair of saber-toothed cats, lurking hungrily near a tar-pit. 'What about these?' Have you seen them?'

'Yes, but it is not a good likeness.'

Her mind raced so that she hardly heard him. Was it possible? Had life reverted to its primitive, violent stages before Man, evolution in reverse? Her scientific education told her no, it couldn't happen. But was anything impossible here? She doubted it. She turned the pages again, stopped at the illustration of a lesser species of cave-bear. Again she showed him the book.

'Yes, I have seen them, though they live mostly to the north and west. But it is not a good likeness.'

Exasperated: 'Why, Kalus? Why isn't it a good likeness?'

'Because the bear is standing—-in life a bear only stands when it is going to fight—-and still he is only a head taller than the tribesman. I tell you, the bears of the north are much larger.'

'Tribesman?' In her haste she had failed to note the two fur-clad Neanderthals which stalked it, spear in hand, from behind a group of rocks. The face of the nearer was hard and set, with swept-back cheekbones and heavy, prominent brow. Eyes animal, and yet not animal. The caption said something about, EARLY MAN IS BELIEVED TO HAVE SUCCESSFULLY HUNTED…..

'No. It can't be.' Her eyes went wide. 'Your people look like this?' This time he had no reservations.

'Yes.'

She sat there numb. The realization of the truth had quite overwhelmed her. Mindless, soulless animals returning to the form of their primitive ancestors were one thing. Men….. But it was more than even that. For the first time in her life she knew, really knew, that Man had once been caught in between, neither fully instinctive nor rational, animal nor human, left to cross the tenuous bridge alone, and for thousands of years. The intensity of their fear, and answering determination, must have been terrifying.

And at what point did he develop a clear mind, and immortal soul? She nearly wept at the thought: Man's immortal soul. As opposed to the mortal, unfeeling animals. What a sad and sorry farce. She looked first to Kalus, then at the wolf—-who stood regarding her from the entrance, feeling, but not understanding her pain. She turned again to Kalus. One last hope.

'But you don't look anything like that.'

'And I don't look like my people. It is the greatest mystery of my life, and the reason they mistrust me.' She rocked herself a little, beyond the point of tears. The man-child waited.

'What is wrong?'

She found she could not answer with words, though the thoughts had come easily enough: too easy, like vague fears taking shape and becoming familiar from the smokes of a half-remembered past. He seemed to sense this, or something like it, and to know that whatever it was she was feeling, he could not help her now. Not yet.

He continued his work, notching the poles with hard strokes from the side of his stone knife, as she moved bewilderedly back to her place. But often as he worked he would look over at her, stirred strangely by her dismay at simple truths he had long since been forced to accept. He thought of this, and it puzzled him. At length he said:

'I cannot always let myself feel things. I hope you understand that.
Perhaps, you must feel them for me.'

She glimmered softly with marble eyes and said, 'Yes,' but her mind was far away. One phrase only kept echoing inside it, gathering deeper associations as it fell, like a leaf, into place.

THE LIFE OF AN ANIMAL.

Night came, and they slept.