Dragonsapien (4 page)

‘Hah, that’s
much
bigger than I expected.’

It was a
gigantic wild boar, trapped by a hind hoof in the twine
noose.

As Celly and
Jake appeared from out of the enveloping jungle, the boar halted
its frantic efforts to pull itself free. It eyed them both
suspiciously, curiously, like it was trying to figure out if they
had anything to do with its entrapment.

It surely, Celly
thought, didn’t see them as a threat. They were far too small to
give it any cause for concern.

Whatever it had
decided, it suddenly propelled itself forwards towards
them.

Unable to
withstand the abrupt jerk of the powerful charge, the twine noose
snapped.

And suddenly,
Jake found himself standing directly in the path of a furious,
rampaging boar.

*

‘Run!’ Celly
cried.

Jake didn’t
move.

He was
petrified, frozen to the spot with fear and a sense of
hopelessness.

The boar had
lowered its head, tusks menacingly jutting forward, each one of
which would penetrate deeply, shattering bones, ripping apart
flesh, muscle, organs. With a fierce jerk of its massive head, he’d
be tossed up in the air, badly gored, either dying or at least
invalided for life.

He could see its
eyes, red with fury and blood lust.

Behind him,
there was an abrupt, violent gust of wind, a wind that soared over
his head.

Suddenly, the
boar ahead of him seemed to be struck by a blinding burst of the
sun itself, an orb of glittering gold and silver falling upon it
and bringing its charge to an immediate halt.

Celly’s immense
wings, curling around the action, glowed vibrantly, almost
painfully. Jake saw the furiously rising and falling talons only as
further sharp glints of light.

But he could see
the effect that Celly’s attack was having on the boar.

It was
thrashing, snorting, growling.

Fighting
back.

Tossing its
head, probing for weaknesses that its fearsome tusks could make the
most of.

Lifting itself
up on its powerful hind legs, lashing out with its equally powerful
forelegs.

But Celly wasn’t
retreating.

The talons rose
and fell time and time again, each time duller, more bloodied than
before. She was even using her wings not only to give her the lift
she needed but also to brutally batter the now writhing, squealing
animal.

The boar knew it
was losing.

It was
terrified.

It was trying to
get away.

Strangely, Jake
felt sorry for it.

‘Celly! Celly!’
he yelled. ‘Let it go! You’ve won! Let it go!’

The pummelling,
shredding talons continued to rain down.

Threaded flesh
and bloody muscle was scattered around the combatants.

At last, with an
effortless flap of her sparkling wings, Celly rose away from the
fight.

Jake gasped at
her incredible beauty.

She could have
been a warring angel, St Michael himself, hovering over the
defeated Beast.

The boar,
exhausted and with tattered curtains of flesh hanging down its
sides, briefly appeared relieved.

It stumbled.
Snorted in agony. Fell.

Its eyes were
now sad, pained. Oddly pleading.

Instantly
forgetting the danger he had been in, Jake whirled on
Celly.

‘Why’d you kill
it?’

Still hovering
in the air, Celly glared back at him.

‘Because it was
going to kill
you
, remember?’

‘But…but you
didn’t have to do it so
horribly
!’

As Celly
gracefully dropped back to the ground, her wings rapidly retracted,
her bloodied talons slid back into her hands, the metallic glow of
her skin faded. She would have looked innocently human again if it
hadn’t been for the blood covering her hands, her badly torn
shorts, and now almost non-existent t-shirt.

‘Horribly
? It put up a bit of a fight, Jake! Or hadn’t
you noticed?’

‘But you’d
beaten it! You didn’t need to finish it off so…so…’

‘Go on! Say it
Jake! Brutally, right? Like I’m an animal, you mean?’

‘No, no…I
didn’t…’

‘Yes you did!
I’ve watched you all week, Jake! Your face creased in disgust every
time you saw Hincheley or Mary killing and skinning an animal! Like
we’re animals and you’re some superior being!’

She strode past
him, storming off back into the undergrowth.

‘Wait! What
about the boar?’

Jake pointed
back towards the now lifeless boar.

‘What about it?’
she cried back over her shoulder.

‘Well, we can’t
just leave it here, can we? The other animals, they’ll–’

Celly spun
around.

‘They’ll
eat
it, you mean?’

Jake shrugged,
embarrassed.

‘Now it’s dead,
it seems such a waste–’

‘A waste of food
you mean? That’s a bit
brutal
, isn’t it?
Eating
the
poor thing?’

‘It’s dead
anyway–’

Celly furiously
strode back towards him.

‘Yes, it’s
dead
Jake! And do you know what would have happened if it
wasn’t
dead, Jake? We’d have a wounded boar running about
the island, dangerous and looking for trouble.
That’s
why I
killed it!’

Still…’ Jake
said weakly.

‘Still what,
Jake? We’d have killed it anyway, wouldn’t we? For the meat we
need, right?’

He
nodded.

‘So…what should
we do?’ he asked. ‘It’s too big for us to cut up or drag back,
unless you...’

‘Unless I cut it
up? You’d like that would you? To see
me
butchering it?
While you can go on pretending you’re back at home, getting all
your meat from the supermarket, kidding yourself you’re not really
an animal too?’

‘I’m not
supposed to be
here
, remember?’ Jake spat back. ‘I’m
supposed to
be
at home! But you and your family kidnapped me
after killing a whole bloody station of coppers!’

‘Because we were
about to be discovered! What choice did mum and dad have? Everyone
would just think we were monsters, like
you
do!’

‘Oh, whereas
killing a few coppers shows you’re all perfectly human,
right?’

‘So
humans
don’t kill policemen; that’s what you’re
saying?’

‘They don’t
slaughter
them!’

Celly spun
around and started heading off through the jungle once
more.

‘Where’re you
going?’ Jake cried out after her.

‘To the beach,
to wash this blood off – or did you think I enjoyed being covered
like this?

*

‘The boar! What
about the boar?’

Jake yelled out
urgently to Celly as he ran after her, following the path she’d
angrily and carelessly carved out of the undergrowth.

He didn’t want
to see the dead boar going to waste. There was enough meat there to
keep them all going for at least a week, he reckoned.

He already
regretted being disgusted by Celly’s actions. As she’d quite
rightly pointed out, she’d saved his life. And as for the question
of killing the boar, yes, he was being hypocritical.

When they’d
first come to the island, he’d tried to remain aloof, somehow
distanced from the killing and the preparing of the animals they’d
caught for food.

Perhaps if
Hincheley had used knives rather than his talons, he might have
accepted the situation quicker. Perhaps if Mary had looked just a
little sickened as she’d expertly skinned their catches as
effortlessly as if she were peeling off little fur coats, he
wouldn’t have felt they were reverting to a more brutal, bestial
state.

But, as Celly
had pointed out, all this had also taken place at home; it was all
just conveniently out of sight, out of mind, so that he and
everyone else could kid themselves that the neatly packaged meat on
the shelves had never, ever really been another living
being.

Still, despite
the recognition of his own hypocrisy, he was glad that Celly had
refused to cut the boar up in front of him.

Now, if they’d
both
done it, using
knives
, perhaps, you
know…

‘What about it?’
Celly demanded, having finally drawn up to a halt and angrily
turning on him.

‘We can’t just
leave it–’

‘We’ve already
had this conversation, haven’t we?’

‘I was wrong;
before I mean. Wrong to make out what you were doing…You saved me.
Thanks Celly. I’d be dead or injured if it weren’t for
you.’

Celly frowned,
sighed, like she was wondering if Jake’s apology made up for his
previous behaviour.

‘Okay,’ she said
resignedly. ‘But I’m
not
cutting it up in front of
you!’

She tilted her
head back slightly, closed her eyes as if concentrating.

‘Mary; Mary’s
nearby. She can take care of it.’

As Celly
finished speaking to him, she continued to say something in a
language of hisses, of tongue clicks.

Jake had heard
her parents and their servants use this language before. It was the
first time that he’d heard Celly using it however.

How did it work
over such long distances when used so quietly?

How had Celly
known that Mary was nearby?

Had Celly
somehow heard her with what must be an acute sense of hearing? Or
was it more to do with a heightened sense of smell. As Celly had
concentrated, it seemed to him that she could have also been
raising her nose to smell the air.

‘What did you
say to her?’ he asked.

‘I told her
there was large, dead boar at trap five. She said she’d deal with
it; but I sensed she wondered why
I
wasn’t dealing with
it,’

Her eyes probed
his as she said this, like she was holding him responsible for her
inability to take care of things.

‘How’d you know
where Mary was? Could you hear her?’

Celly shook her
head.

‘No; at least,
not until she was directly speaking to me.’

‘Then you
smelt
her?’

Celly’s eyes
blazed.

‘What? Smelt her
like an animal, you mean?’

‘No, no…I just
meant–’

Whirling around,
Celly stormed away from him once again, shouting back over her
shoulder.

‘You just meant
I’m a monster and
you’re
not!’

*

As they
descended through the jungle and neared the beach, the covering of
thick leaves began to thin out a little, allowing Jake fleeting
glimpses of the crudely made huts they now called home.

It was hardly
Swiss Family Robinson, but everything had been ingeniously
constructed to make it all as civilised as possible.

Yes, Jake
thought;
civilised
.

Everyone had
worked hard to create a home that provided as many comforts as
possible. A form of thick canvas sheeting had been made from
shredded and woven palm leaves, whereas walls were generally
constructs of a lattice work of wooden strips supported by a timber
frame. There were separate areas to prepare the food, separate huts
for the latrines, all of which could be easily flushed clean using
the waters of a diverted stream connected to a covered cess pit.
There was also a small patch were some of the island’s wild
vegetables were now being cultivated.

Of course, even
when ‘working hard’, Jack’s efforts hadn’t produced as much as
everyone else.

He had watched
in awe as, even in mid transformation, those around him used their
incredible strength to break or wrench free the small trees they
were constructing the huts from. Talons sliced and planed, or dug
at and scooped up the earth. Metallically glistening skin appeared
immune to the cuts and damage a human might suffer as he went about
similar arduous tasks.

As if they were
taking care not to alarm Jake, no one underwent a full
transformation in front of him unless it was absolutely necessary,
such as when a heavy load had to be moved over a distance. Even in
these cases, however, Celly would refuse to transform, just as she
never used any of her extra abilities while he was
present.

Until today,
Jake had never seen Celly change since her family had fled to the
island. Yet he had not only guessed but also now knew for certain
that Celly helped out fully whenever he wasn’t around, having
caught glimpses of her flying overhead while out walking in the
jungle.