Chapter 9

"Okay Sid. What do you see?" his father's whispering voice was like a growl as the words clambered through the thick blanket of dark facial hair his father wore.

They were lying on their bellies upon a limestone ridge, looking out to a large clearing in the wood seated in a high valley between dolomite crags. The air was heavy and humid and smelled of heat, of hot clay and mud and the sweat of man. His father was looking through a pair of binoculars, Hassidius through a rifle scope.

"Well?" his father prodded.

Sid had been trying to guess at what it was he was supposed to be looking at. He was sure he had not found it. "I'm sorry," he whispered, "but I don't see anything."

His father let out a long, exasperated sigh. Wordlessly he reached over and pulled Sid's barrel closer towards himself. The sights left the middle of the clearing and moved accordingly a few inches to his right. Then the rifle was wrestled from him altogether, his father scanning a moment and then stopping suddenly. "Here! Look, now."

Sid's small head was yanked over to the scope again. Ignoring the pain, he took a breath, held it, and lowered his cheeks against the stock again, peering through the scope. He was looking at the trunk of an elm tree. "I--I still don't--" his voice shrank away in the back of his throat. He realized suddenly that no birds sang. He kept his eyes on the tree trunk. Something, a shape, a dark formless thing, slithered about. He felt dread in his heart like never before, a foul and pervasive warning instinctual and primordial.

"You've seen it now," his father hissed. "But you know not what you see."

"Is it...a prowler ape?"

"No. Much worse," his father said. There was a foreboding in his voice too.

The slithering form quickened, climbing upwards, and disappeared into the foliage.

"Father," Sid whispered, "everything's stopped. Have you listened?"

His father's voice went directly into his ear. "She's hunting."

There was a scream. Agonized and bleating, it sounded like a woman's horrified screech, one that sends flesh rippling and feet trampling--a scream of absolute raw terror. Sid felt like he was burning up inside. His face was hot and his eyes were watering. His heart pounded so hard he thought he could hear it.

After the scream Sid buried his face in his arms and pinched his eyes shut. That poor woman, he thought, alone and vulnerable, most likely out for a simple task like picking berries or what have you, her head empty of present concern or danger, thinking only about her day, her immediate chore, not about her life or how it was spent...suddenly all gone in a flash, a life extinguished with a peripatetic cry and some shadowy evil enrwapped round the neck...

"Sid, look!"

His ear was flicked. The ringing pain almost caused him to lash out in fury, but he held himself in check. Obeying his father, his eye returned to the scope. He had to find the tree again, but this time it was much easier. This time, a dead deer was being dragged up the trunk. Sid only saw the deer, not the being lifting it. He was confused. "But that woman?" he said.

"That woman is a lion. A cougar. Their cries are like that. Awful. She's got herself a lunch."

Relief flooded into Sid. He smiled stupidly as he watched on through his scope until the deer was pulled into the privacy of the foliage.

"You promise they sound like that. There's no one hurt."

"Just the deer," his father answered. "Now get up. We're moving."

Nature burst into life again. All of the normal sounds were back. A pair of robins took off from flight overhead, their flapping wings making a racket that startled young Sid, after all of that. He laughed at himself.

"Don't be loud," his father snapped. He was on his feet and beckoning for the rifle, which Sid handed over. "She won't like to have her meal disturbed. Be smart."

Sid bowed his head and followed his father, careful to watch where he stepped as he went, per his father's command. They had followed a relatively well-worn and familiar trail to climb to this point and encountered little difficulty in following it back down. They were in Kuroctu before long, and young Panther Sprung, at this time called Mato, was the first to meet them.

"You won't believe what I saw," Sid told him.

"Hold on," his father said to Sid. "Young Bear, a minute?"

Mato nodded and ran off to find another boy to play with. His favorite friend was Matoska, his nickname for Sid. Sid was the white bear to Mato's bear.

"Do you understand what you saw earlier?" his father asked him. He was looking directly at Sid, into his eyes. He looked serious and sad.

"I think so. A mountain lion."

His father frowned, shaking his head. His sad eyes glittered with intensity. "What you saw was a predator, a master of his domain. A master so prominent and far flung the very sound of his footfalls puts the world around him to sleep. All make way for the master predator, for all fear him. Now look about you. These people, Sid, this village...they are to be respected, but they are not master predators. Not anymore."

His father seemed to be communicating in more ways than one. In his look there was an urgency, a need for understanding, a hope. His father was a slight man of Bavarian stock. His mane of black hair would be handed down to his son, as would his pallor and his intense brown eyes. Young Sid was staring at a desperate man, a wild man. He did not understand.

His father's eyes dropped as he stiffened and straightened. "I will be busy this afternoon," he said evenly, his voice back to how it normally was, authoritative and thinly polite. "Go and play with that young Indian. And remember what I showed you today."

His day recovered, Sid let go a shout that was as full of relief as it was joy. "Yes, father! I shall speak with you later?"

Hermann Drake pursed his lips and gave a terse nod. He held a palm up as a farewell gesture. As Sid left him to go seek out Mato, he had no idea it would be the last time he would see his father.

"What do you see?" she asked him. He heard her soft approach. Her chocolate hair was raven black in the moonlight and it streamed down her shoulders and framed her pale face in the shape of a wine glass. She joined him on the veranda overlooking the ranch.

"Nothing, Bethany. Nothing significant anyway. You seem to have caught me in a reverie."

"You just disappeared," she said. Her smile could be detected in the way she spoke. "You are ever more crafty." A pause. He could sense her eyes crawling over him. "Aren't you cold?"

He laughed at that, at himself. "Why, I suppose I am, just a little." Drake turned at last to receive Bethany's embrace. She was a good Jesuit, even if she didn't want to be. "I was so distracted I said to hell with clothing. Imagine if I had done it in the morning?"

"You are the boss. I'm sure no one would speak a word of objection. The sight would throw them off!"

"I might just do it, then." He felt pangs of loneliness. He always did after making love. He leaned back, holding her shoulders and smiling at her face. "How did I bewitch such a beautiful woman, Bethany?"

"With devilry and a silver tongue, no doubt," she said, snuggling his breast. "I suppose you are a means to rebel against my parents, after all."

"To that end, then, I am very proud. You know, I was thinking about my father. I've been thinking about him, more and more."

"Oh?" Her voice was small, innocent.

"He must have been my age the day he left me. I doubt he is still alive. He never wanted me to stay in New Attica, yet here is where he left me. And I have never left, not in a permanent sense. So I wonder, is there a part of me, do you think, that is waiting for him? After all these years? Like some pathetic dog?"

Bethany pulled back and reached up to him, stroking his stubbly cheeks and caressing his mustached lips. "Perhaps a part of you is. But consider that you do not await him as a dog awaits his master, but as a grown man wanting answers. That is not so pathetic, Sid. You have led a difficult life. Try to be easier on yourself."

He nodded, knowing she was right. Innocent, young, sweet and a Jesuit. A little naive, too, in regard to human nature. But dumb? Far, far from it. Wise? More so than he could hope to be. Thinking on it, it baffled him. He took her fingers in his hands and held them like a pair of feathers.

"I shall never leave you in such a way, Bethany. I shall never break your heart for the sake of it."

She nuzzled him again before shoving him back into his home. It was late, she said, and rather cold. He was, after all, still naked.