Saku crouched low behind the log and held his breath. The
tracks he'd been following faded where the vines crept thickly over the jungle
floor. Only a snapped branch, sagging above his head like a dead finger, marked
the passing of his quarry. That and the soft wuffling of the pig as it dug
through the loam with a round, fleshy snout.
He tightened his grip on his spear and rocked from one toe
to the other. The pig would certainly pass old Mikau's scrutiny. It would prove
Saku's manhood well enough and earn him the status he craved in the village.
All he had to do was slay the beast. And if he didn't, there would be little
point in returning at all.
The weapon felt off balance in his hand now, due to his
nerves more than any flaw in the shaft itself. It would fly true. Saku felt it
in his bones--the spear would find it's mark.
All he had to do was wait for the fat boar to turn, wait for it to offer
him a shoulder or a heart to strike at.
The top of the log grew a padding of moss, and Saku peered
over this at the round haunches and flicking tail. A rump shot would only send
the pig into the fronds, and it was far better suited to navigating the brush
than he was. He might lose it, lose his spear, never be able to go home again.
He waited. The jungle filled with the boar's snorting. The
log bit into his knees and chin, he'd pressed so tightly against it. Saku
watched the tail flick. His spear arm began to tingle. He shifted again, from
one foot to the other, so slowly that the pig should not have noticed. The log
rocked and sank into the vines another
finger's width, but the soft ground made no complaint.
Another sound answered, however. Saku heard the whisper, a
burring hiss, but the pig chose that moment to turn, and his chance had come
before he could worry about a buzzing log. The round side of the animal was
exposed, and Saku focused on it, aimed his spear, and hurled it. The boar
screamed, scattering the birds overhead. It lurched to one side, staggered.
Saku stood. He lifted his foot, and fire tore through his
calf and ankle. He howled his own cry and leapt to his uninjured foot, dangling
the burning one mid-air while the flames crept under his skin, higher and
higher. Behind his own scream, Saku heard the whisper again. This time, the
buzz swelled into a drone, and another sting landed on his thigh.
He swatted too late. The swarm poured from the space below
his hiding log. A black cloud swelled to his ankles, and his other foot took a
hit, and another. The flames rose to his waist, and his head buzzed with them.
His thoughts hummed. Pain, fire, run
away.
But his boar lay dying amidst the vines. His ritual was not
complete. He stumbled back a step, but the bees came with him. He turned, and
they swirled at his knees like a tide. His mind felt their fire. The poison
leeched into his thoughts and made his vision tangle--the fronds overhead, the
flash of a red bird, the tree trunks in the sky, falling and falling.
Fire upon fire, the stings came. Saku swelled with them,
blurred and faded into the poison and the droning song. He rolled over and over
until his limbs tangled in the vines and the jungle held him, still and
throbbing. The flames continued, one
after the other, until he knew that he would die of them, that he would never
see his village or old Mikau again.
The song drove the caring away.
He dreamed it in a poison fog, the buzzing of stars, the
whisper of worlds within worlds. It lifted him over the agony and up, into the
sound. It found him, when his heart stopped beating, and begged him to breathe
again, if only to continue hearing.
Humming.
Saku's eyes flickered open in time to see the angel. She
leaned over him, orb eyes as big as his head. Her long black fingers folded
under a pointed chin, and behind her darkness, a diaphanous veil vibrated.
Wings, singing like the hive, buzzing, humming to him.
"Arrrrrre you alivve?"
"Are you an angel?"
"If you call us that, we will not argue." Her
voice lingered like the song. It stretched into a drone as well.
"Angel." His body melted around him, but the round
eyes flickered and held him to life.
"Come."
Three pairs of slender arms embraced his burning corpse.
Claws pressed into his spine, and the angel lifted him from the ground. Her
wings, a translucent veil that never slowed, made a blur of the jungle, made
the sky dance. He never saw the boar's corpse, if his spear had landed well or
not.
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