The hunched man-thing bent backwards to look up. An act that its anatomy was never designed to do, having no neck to flex, its head and face growing directly out of its upper chest. He and his tribe of the anthropophagi had been distracted from their task by the droning of the stiff red-and-white metal bird streaming high in the clouds, far above the treetops. They had been hiding in the undergrowth that fringed the great pool near one of the hearts of the forest. They had been watching three figures that floated to the surface and came ashore. They watched very carefully because something was wrong here. They had the appearance of humans and the sweetness of their meat was a great allure. But they did not smell like them. Only the one that the other two dragged out of the water onto the warm mud had a faint whiff of ammonia, fat, musk, and salt that so marked the man species. The others that had brown shiny skin smelt like nothing they had ever known before. The strangeness of it warned them of bad danger. The bird moved away and the yellow tribe peered back at the trio. The brown ones were holding the other between them. One sucked at his face while the other probed his anus. Both hammered and punched his chest. Some kind of mating act easily recognised in all species. This one looked much simpler than the complex entanglements of the anthropophagi. There was a one-in-three chance of being savaged or infected hideously in their procedures, and sometimes dying from blood poisoning caused by their sexual clusters becoming knotted and turning septic. These hazards in breeding functioned as a unique form of natural selection and stopped the Vorrh from being overrun by the constantly hungry and famously ferocious predators. The most human of the trio started coughing violently and the yellow tribe sank back away from the noise. The brown ones stopped their manipulations and started to talk to the other one.
“Ishmael, Ishmael, talk to me, talk to me,” said Seth.
“Come on, little one, awake,” said Aklia.
Ishmael rolled away from them. He had a terrible pallor: a white-grey that gleamed unhealthily in the dappled light. There were minor lacerations and bruises all over his face and some bleeding under his clothing. The socket of his lost eye had turned black around the paste that Aklia had smeared there, and his original eye appeared shrunken and wild. He was not responding to their voices because he could not hear them. In their hurry to resuscitate him, they had only removed the paste from the nose and mouth. His ears remained blocked. He stumbled over onto all fours, trying to find the balance that he’d had knocked out of him somewhere in the underwater tunnel. As he panted like a maimed animal, the anthropophagi came closer, their hunger and the sweetness of human flesh testing their fear of the strange other two. There were nine of them, armed with wooden blades and long barbed spears. The one that smelt good was obviously too weak to fight at all. The strength and ability of the brown ones was unknown. Gradually their aching stomachs and saliva won, and the three that were hiding behind Aklia attacked, running with their spears and blades at her slim Bakelite body. She heard them before they had moved a pace, turning to catch the spear, while the others snapped against her hardness. Four more were charging at Seth, while the other two were creeping up on the prone Ishmael. A terrible noise screamed through the Vorrh and they saw that their weapons had no effect. They instantly turned and ran into the deeper undergrowth. It was far too late for the three within reach of the Kin. Aklia had put her hand through the first one’s face, grabbing out a soggy handful from inside while kicking out at the second and sending it squealing in a broken ball. Both of the Kin had made a high, hissing warble, which carried deep into the trees and had sent the remaining yellow pack running and crashing through the foliage. Seth had plucked the third attacker out of the air, snapped it, and thrown it towards those that had dared to touch Ishmael. They fled before it hit the ground. Aklia stamped the noise out of the one that she had kicked and suddenly the clearing became very quiet. The birds, animals, and insects were speechless, having nothing to say about what they had just heard. The Kin walked over to Ishmael, who was now trying to sit up. Having ascertained his well-being they both walked to the water’s edge, where they calmly washed the sticky acrid blood from each other’s perfect dark lustrous bodies. For a moment it looked like Eden again; then all the silent creatures burst into song, as if having something wonderful to say.
On the other side of the great forest, Modesta stopped in her tracks as a great tidal wave of sound rolled through the trees. It was as if her ears had become unblocked and every living creature’s voice had sharpened into a new and profound clarity. She stood marvelling at it, bathing in its momentum that seemed to be coming for her. Something in her face gave way and opened; she put her hand on it and it felt like a wound or the shape of a scream, but it was filled with warmth and tasted like nothing she had ever experienced before. Her lungs expanded and shrank in a fast pulse that aligned its rhythm to her heart. Her terror of malady or damage was puffed out. She was laughing.