***
After I wiped the blood from my head and face, we entered the jungle in haste. Judd and Nadalie went first, followed by Gellica and Jordin one-hundred-and-twenty counts later. Dixan, Satoru and I brought up the tail. Judd and Dixan were armed with their bows. Ruzzell would bring his, and Shawz would bring mine when they made the trip to the main camp later.
The journey north was the most difficult hike to a Gathering in my life. Just the night before I had soared through the tree tops, now I ploughed through the impenetrable jungle. Last night, I toured with a friendly enemy; today, I travelled with homicidal friends. In the dark hours, I had felt safe; in the bright light of the day, I felt under threat.
The sun burned through the foliage overhead, baking the jungle into a clammy, claustrophobic oven, making the air feel gritty in my throat. Beads of perspiration ran down my face, and my shirt stuck to my lower back in a pool of sweat accumulating at the soaked waistline of my pants. Where the beams of sunlight broke through the cover, I could feel my skin sizzle and the little twists of water vapour rising from my body told me I was losing plenty of body fluid. It was an unusually hot spring day, and the lack of any sort of breeze made the trip feel like a detour through Hades’s tortured Underworld.
The criss-cross of low-lying branches and the mesh of undergrowth that I easily swept over last night now seemed ominous, like gnarled fingers and knotted hands groping and grasping, bent on dragging me to the grave.
To add to my woes, a twist of stinging ivy—the effects of which were not fatal, but intolerably painful—whipped at my cheeks and coiled around my left arm when, in my air-headed hustle, I crashed through a broad curtain of low-hanging vines. Instantly, my cheek stung like blazes and a ring of itchy welts pinched my forearm in red blisters which, combined with the copious sweat and the heat of the sun, made my arm feel as though it was thrust into Hades’s furnace.
Just freaking great!
It wasn’t wise to talk along the way, but Satoru and Dixan couldn’t help themselves. Keeping a reasonable distance ahead of me, they mumbled and argued and debated the entire way. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, and I wasn’t going to remind them of the dangers of making a noise in the jungle; sensing their turmoil, they certainly didn’t need me to patronise them. Were Ruzzell’s crew going to gut me if the messengers hadn’t arrived? Would I have fought back, or would I have played lamb to the slaughter?
Nah, I don’t do bleating.
Trailing a fair way behind the quarrelling duo, I had my own thoughts for company, and again; I was a jumble of emotion and confusion. This time a horrible, sour mix of dread and suspicion. I felt pulled into the slipstream of a runaway problem hurtling off the rails, powerless to resist its screaming rush towards certain chaos.
What’s going on?
I was now sure that Ruzzell and his interns had met with Dylain the day before to plot and plan; it wasn’t just a joyride, a boys-day-out jaunt. It seemed that Dylain had authorised my murder. Really? I couldn’t come to any other conclusion given the things Ruzzell and Shawz had spouted.
But why?
How was I a threat? Perhaps, when Dylain heard of my encounter with Shumbalic, he wanted to remove me and any information I might have gained from her. No doubt, he knew they spoke our language, and he might be afraid that I discovered something about his conspiracy.
Yes, that’s it.
Ruzzell didn’t know anything about the Zikalic before our wrangle at the Hog trap, but he did come back from their powwow yesterday supremely brazen. Like one playing with loaded dice. Dylain must have divulged all his dirty Zika-secrets to his fan club and selected today as the day he’d launch us all into mayhem and mobocracy. With all Shawz’s talk of a new day, could there be any other alternative? Did my encounter with Shumbalic serve only to fast track Dylain’s insurrection?
I was sure Scott would have gotten in touch with the other Mzees first thing this morning. All the Mzees, except Dylain, now lived in the main camp or the camps just north or south of it. It wasn’t difficult for them to meet quickly when the occasion so demanded. And could there be a more urgent juncture than this?
They could have met by now, and come to some decisions. Maybe they had a ton of evidence against Dylain already. Scott hadn’t said anything last night, but he was discreet in what he shared. I knew he was trying to keep me out of harm’s way.
If you only knew what my morning was like!
Could they have called the Emergency Gathering to expose Dylain in the nick of time? It seemed unlikely given that the messengers were led by Cainn and spoke to Ruzzell before announcing the Gathering. But no, the Mzees could have called it. Dylain might just have hijacked it.
Yes, that seems plausible.
What did Ruzzell mean by ‘taking’ Gellica? Surely, that was just another barbed statement to entice me? Exactly, how raunchy and raucous a picture had Dylain painted of a ‘new day?’
And Judd? Why would he go along with any of this? Unless they only told him enough to pull the wool over his eyes. Or maybe he was trying to derail the mutiny from within. Probably, a bit of both, I reckoned.
Still deep in thought, I passed the hole I had fallen in on our way to the Anniversary Gathering a few days before. Dixan had moved over this spot swiftly. I wondered if he was rehearsing the moment we shared together, the kind words he had expressed. It felt like a million years ago. So much happened since. The decisions he and I had taken from that point defined a very different future to the one we might have envisaged on that day. He definitely came to his senses briefly before my near-lynching, although he hadn’t said a word to me since. I’ll snap him out of this trance he’s in … soon. I could only hope that Satoru wouldn’t fill his cranium with nonsense again.
Absentmindedly, I rubbed my itchy left arm and irritated the flaming welts in another wave of stinging pain. I munched on my lip hard and trapped the squeal in my gullet.
Stoopid!
I couldn’t restrain the self-flagellation in my own head, however; for the pain in my brow still burnt like fire, and my bruised right elbow screamed like it had been snapped off at the joint. I managed the discomfort by imagining how difficult a time Ruzzell would have in making the journey, even though with every ache and gnashing of teeth, he’d probably come up with a new way to kill me. Good, I hope you hurt real bad! I immediately chastised myself again for wishing him harm. Forgiveness was the only way to a new day and inner peace. Had I not learnt anything from Scott yet?
Oh, Scott!
I couldn’t wait to see his face. He would bring calm to this insanity. He would reason with Dylain and Ruzzell, and break the bewitching spell they had cast over their disciples.