Elephant Song - Smith Wilbur - Страница 82

• Предыдущая
• 82/140
• Следующая

Under her feet the dead leaves were thick and luxuriant as a precious oriental carpet.  They gave a spring to her step and rustled under her feet to give warning to the forest creatures of her approach.  it was unwise to come unannounced upon one of the wicked red buffalo or to step upon one of the deadly adders that lay curled upon the forest floor.

Kelly moved swiftly, lightly, with the susurration of dead Leaves under her feet, stopping once to cut herself a diggingstick and to sharpen the point with her clasp-knife as she went on.

She sang as she went, one of the praise songs to the forest that Sepoo's wife, Parnba, had taught her.  It was a Bambuti hymn, for the forest itself is their god.  They worship it as both Mother and Father.

They do not believe a jot in the hobgoblins and evil spirits whose existence they so solemnly endorse and whose depredations they recount with so much glee to the black villagers.  For the Bambuti the forest is a living entity, a deity which can give up or withhold its bounty, which can give favours or wreak retribution on those who flout its laws and do it injury.  Over the years she had lived under the forest roof Kelly had come more than halfway to accepting the Bambuti philosophy, and now she sang to the forest as she travelled swiftly across its floor.

In the middle of the afternoon it began to rain, one of those solid downpours that were a daily occurrence.  The heavy drops falling thick and heavy as stones upon the upper galleries of the forest roared like a distant river in spare.  Had it fallen on bare earth with such force, it would have ripped away the topsoil and raked deep scars, washed out plains and scoured the hillsides, flooding the rivers and wreaking untold harm.

In the forest the top galleries of the trees broke the force of the storm, cushioning the gouts of water, gathering them up and redirecting them down the trunks of the great trees, scattering them benevolently across the thick carpet of dead leaves and mould, so that the earth was able to absorb and restrain the rain's malevolent power.  The rivers and streams, instead of becoming muddied by the torn earth and choked by uprooted trees, still ran sweet and crystal clear.

As the rain sifted down softly upon her, Kelly slipped off her cotton shirt and placed it in one of the waterproof pockets of her pack.  The straps would cut into her bare shoulders so she rigged the headband around her forehead and kept her arms clear as the pygmy women do.  She went on, not bothering to take shelter from the blood-warm rain.

Now she was bare-chested, wearing only a brief pair of cotton shorts and her canvas running shoes.  Minimal dress was the natural forest way. The Bambuti wore only a loincloth of beaten bark.

When the first Belgian missionaries had discovered the Bambuti, they had been outraged by their nakedness and sent to Brussels for dresses and jackets and calico breeches, all in children's sizes, which they forced them to wear.  In the humidity of the forest these clothes were always damp and unhealthy and the pygmies for the first time had suffered from pneumonia and other respiratory complaints.

After the constraints of city life, it felt good to be half-naked and free.  Kelly delighted in the rain upon her body.  Her skin was clear and creamy white, almost luminous in the soft green light and her small taut breasts joggled elastically to her stride.

She moved swiftly, foraging as she went, hardly pausing as she gathered up a scattering of mushrooms with glossy domed heads and brilliant orange gills.  These were the most delicious of the thirty-odd edible varieties.

On the other hand there were fifty or more inedible varieties, a few of which were virulently toxic, dealing certain death within hours of a single mouthful.

The rain ceased but the trees still dripped.

Once she stopped and traced a slim vine down the trunk of a mahogany tree.  She dug its pure white roots out of the rainsoaked leaf mould with a few strokes of her digging-stick.  The roots were sweet as sugar cane and crunched scrumptiously as she chewed them.  They were nutritious and filled her with energy.

The green shadows crowded closer as the day died away and the light faded.  She looked for a place to camp.  She did not want to be bothered with having to build a waterproof hut for herself, the hollow at the base of one of the giant tree-trunks would do admirably as a hearth for a single night.  -Her feet still rustled through the dead leaves, even though they were now dampened.  Suddenly there was an explosive sound, a rush of air under pressure like a burst motor-car tyre, only ten feet or so ahead of her.  It was one of the most terrifying sounds in the forest, worse than the bellow of an angry buffalo or the roaring grunt of one of the huge black boars.  Kelly leaped involuntarily backwards, from a steady run she rose two feet in the air and landed as far as that back in her own tracks.

Her hand was shaking as she flicked the headband off her forehead and dropped the backpack to the leafy floor.  In the same movement she dipped into one of the pockets and brought out her slingshot.

Because of her slingshot the Bambuti had given her the nameBaby Archer.

Though they mocked her merrily, they were really impressed by her skill with the weapon.  Even old Sepoo had never been able to master it, though Kelly had tutored him repeatedly.  In the end he had abandoned the effort with a haughty declaration that the bow and arrow were the only real weapons for a hunter, and that this silly little thing was only suitable for children and babies.  So she had become Baby Archer, KaraKi.

With one quick motion she slipped the brace over her wrist and drew the heavy surgical elastic bands to her right ear.  The missile was a steel ball-bearing.

On the forest floor ahead of her something moved.  It looked like a pile of dead leaves or an Afghan rug patterned in the colours.  of the forest, golds and ochres and soft mauves, striped and starred with diamonds and arrowheads of black that tricked the eye.  Kelly knew that what seemed to be an amorphous mass was in reality a serpentine body, coiled upon itself, each coil as thick as her calf, but laced and camouflaged with cunning and seductive colour.  The gaboon adder is, except for the mamba, Africa's most venomous snake.

In the centre of this coiled pyramid of body, the head was drawn back like a nocked arrow upon the bend of the neck.

The head was pig-snouted, flattened and scaled, the eyes were raised on horny protuberances, the colour and lucidity of precious topaz.  The pupils were bright as jet and focused upon her.  The whole head was bigger than both her fists held together.  The feathery black tongue flicked from between the thin grinning lips.

Kelly held her aim for only a fraction of a second and then let fly.

The silver ball-bearing hummed as it flew, glinting like a drop of mercury in the soft green light.  It struck the gaboon adder on the point of its snout and split its skull with such force that jets of blood spurted from the nostrils and the grotesque head was whipped over backwards.  With one last explosive hiss the adder writhed into its death throes, the great coils of its body sliding and twisting over themselves, convulsing and contorting, exposing the pale belly latticed with diagonal scales.

Kelly circled the adder cautiously, holding the pointed digging-stick at the ready.  As the shattered head flopped clear she darted forward and pinned it to the earth.  Holding it down with all her weight while the adder wound itself around the shaft, Kelly opened the blade of her claspknife with her small white teeth and with a single slash lopped off the snake's head.

She left the headless body to finish its last reflexive throes and looked around her for a campsite.  There was a natural cave in the base of one of the tree-trunks nearby, a perfect night shelter.

• Предыдущая
• 82/140
• Следующая