Maybe Orphan knows something she doesn’t.
Then Snub shakes her head in disgust.
She will never eat water.
Orphan then does something Snub
has seen only frogs and monitors do:
Orphan jumps into the water!
Snub hoots in fear,
but as soon as Orphan has dropped below
she is back up,
head and shoulders above the surface,
the filth that dried on her body
now floating around her.
Orphan disappears back under,
and is gone for longer this time.
She comes up with a clam.
Snub has seen them before,
these strange rocklike things
that blow bubbles under the water,
but she’s never thought to pull one free.
Orphan drops it at the lagoon’s edge,
then disappears back under,
returning with a second clam.
She continues until she has a small mound,
then drags herself back to land.
Breath, curious about this new Orphan,
stares into the lagoon.
He splashes at Orphan.
Snub pulls him close to her,
in case he tries to jump in.
Orphan reclines in a patch of sunlight
at the lagoon’s shore, eyes closed.
Breath fights to get down.
He nudges and prods the clams,
sending two clattering back into the water.
Once she’s dried off,
Orphan presses her body against Snub’s
and rubs for a while,
then unsuckers a flat rock from the mud.
She props a clam on the ground, edge up,
and brings the rock smashing down on it.
The two halves fragment and part.
Snub and Breath peer eagerly
and see something that looks
like the inside of an ear.
Is this strangeness inside every clam?
Breath pokes the gooey thing with a toe.
Then Orphan slurps it down!
The thing that looks like an ear!
Orphan forces another open the same way
and hands it to Snub.
Snub looks at it, waiting for the clam to do something.
Orphan takes the clamshell to her lips,
again eats the ear inside.
Snub holds the next one to her mouth.
Breath puts his own face right up to it
as Snub works to eat the clam,
her teeth gnashing the shell.
The slick nugget inside is tough and sweet,
like the glossy bulbs of wild scallions,
though they are both richer and paler.
Orphan offers the next clam ear to Breath,
but he will not have it.
Breath knocks the open shell to the ground.
Orphan picks it up and eats,
displaying her teeth to Snub in a way
that Snub is coming to learn means
acha
when Orphan does it,
not fear.
Time disappears into
hoo.
Sometimes Snub will
smell the scent
of Silverback
and know that
he has slept here.
acha
and fear.
There come many days of rain,
when Snub, Breath, and Orphan huddle under fronds
the shape of large tongues.
One day Orphan ties the fronds
so that they become one thing
that traps more water than before.
From then on,
Snub looks at her like Orphan
is something bigger than Orphan.
Breath is becoming more than Breath, too.
He stops riding Snub,
only holding his arms up to be held
for comfort
when he scents Silverback nearby.
Snub realizes how much Breath
has grown when she looks
for the white tuft on his rear,
the one that makes him easy for
a mother or a sister to spot
even in the dimmest jungle,
and finds that it is gone.
Where are Silverback and Brother?
Snub wonders if they are avoiding her,
which also means
avoiding the furious question of Orphan.
The constant rain is a cocoon,
draws a tight boundary around the day,
washes dirt away from soft roots
and fragrant mushrooms.
The constant rain makes for
wet dawns,
wet twilights,
wet afternoons
spent watching Orphan
crack open clams
at the bank of the lagoon.
While it is raining,
Orphan is in the family.
Whenever the rains ease off
she stares into the distance,
inside herself, like Snub is
when she thinks of Mother.
It gives Snub a flash of
amrcha
to think that Orphan
might prefer to be
somewhere else.
Orphan has a game for Breath
that only Orphan can play:
she holds on to his wrist and an ankle,
then twirls him
so that he is flying through the air,
hair streaming away from wide eyes
and open mouth.
As soon as he’s back down on the ground
Breath is back to Orphan,
lifting his arms,
begging to be lifted
and twirled
and made to feel like a bird again.
One night Snub dreams she
is screaming and running.
Silverback charges at her,
only now he wears the white-silver hair
of the not-gorilla
that killed Orphan’s mother.
Snub runs and runs,
breathless,
until the jungle changes.
She’s rolling down the slope
of the suffering mountain,
surrounded by hot red
that could make her pop and vanish
like she never existed.
Snub wakes up to an ordinary sky
and the coolness of night
but finds the sound that woke her is real,
that Orphan is shaking her shoulders,
panic on her face.
Snub’s throat is sore from screams.
In the distance are
the war barks of a gorilla—
of a gorilla fighting.
Silverback.
Snub leaves the clearing,
heading toward the sounds.
Breath lopes alongside her,
Orphan cowering behind,
making her chattery sounds.
Fear-odor.
A boulder rises from the jungle.
This is one of Orphan’s favorite places.
She has often climbed it
to sit in the sunshine,
as part of the strangeness of Orphan.
Snub’s race toward Silverback’s scent
brings her barreling up the boulder
to get a view of below.
Rimmed in the dawn light,
Silverback and Brother are
facing down a group of not-gorillas.
The not-gorillas wield elephant bones,
thumping on the rocky ground,
sometimes sending splinters
flipping into the air.
It makes a terrific noise,
setting Silverback and Brother to cringing
even as they bare their teeth in
wragh.
One of the not-gorillas hurls
its bone
in its excitement,
sending it clattering over the stones.
Silverback charges.
He veers to one side before striking the not-gorilla.
The charge opens up his flank,
and one of the creatures casts a sharpened stone,
parting the flesh between two ribs,
setting Silverback roaring
and running back to Brother.
Silverback and Brother were the enemy to Orphan
but they are family when Snub sees
them in danger like this.
She sets her teeth, hair bristling with
feelings of
mrgh.
With not-gorillas blocking the jungle,
Silverback leads a retreat to the only place he can.
To the grassland.
Orphan scrambles forward to yank at Snub’s hair
before cowering back into cover.
We need to flee.
The not-gorillas spread out,
yelling unknowable things to one another
as they bloom across the grass.
Brother and Silverback
threat-yawn and make cries of
wragh
as they retreat into the grassland.
Orphan yanks on Snub’s arm and points.
Snub can see that the grass has bent,
empty in places.
The earth has bald patches.
Then Snub sees an arm in the air,
signaling.
Each of those empty spots is a not-gorilla,
hidden in the grass
to ambush.
The not-gorillas are hunting
like the wild dogs do.
Snub presses Breath into Orphan’s hands.
Startled, Breath bites Orphan’s arm,
hops down to the rock.
He glares at Snub in outrage.
Kneeling, Snub picks up a large rock
and hurls it into the midst of the not-gorillas,
hoping only to make noise.
The rock hits the side of the boulder and bounces,
striking out sideways,
striking one of the not-gorillas,
a young female,
on the temple.
She falls where she stands,
now a thing instead of a not-gorilla.
The not-gorillas cry out,
some of them circling the fallen female,
others—including the silver-haired male—
spreading out, looking up.
Seeing Snub and Breath and Orphan.
Fear chases all plans from Snub’s mind.
She becomes a creature of reactions,
scrambling over the sunbaked surface
of the boulder
to tumble into the jungle.
Orphan is already moving,
has been waiting for Snub to do just this.
Her hand grips Snub’s neck as she guides them
along elephant paths
toward the areas they know,
where not-gorillas
do not go.
Orphan has Breath’s hand,
is drag-pulling him along,
even though it gives him
a toddling, awkward gait,
half falling with each step.
Orphan leads through a zagging canyon of crossing trees,
letting go of Snub and Breath
to hold one trunk and swing around and grab the next,
slowing at the end to listen for their pursuers.
Snub’s ears fill with tumult:
shouts from the not-gorillas,
crashing branches,
screams of riled monkeys,
screams of riled parrots.
She hopes to hear a sound from
Brother and Silverback,
to know that they are alive,
but she hears nothing from them.
Grabbing a vine that turns into a snake
brings Snub crashing.
She’s suddenly looking up at the sky
as the snake skitters into the brush.
While Snub tries to get air back into her lungs,
she sees the two black lines of the magpies,
fleeing
like Snub and Breath and Orphan are
fleeing.
The lagoon.
Orphan skids to a stop
right at the edge,
sending a spray of dirt
plinking into the water.
The distant voice of a not-gorilla.
Orphan springs back into motion,
making panicked moans,
speeding into the green.
Snub tumbles after Orphan,
They are fleeing in a direction
where the ground is rocky and
where there are no good plants to eat.
It is the direction where once
was the only blue sky
when all the rest was gray.
It is the direction,
Snub remembers now,
of home.
The jungle gutters out
in a stony plateau.
The rocks, a ferocious orange color
when they were first formed
by the suffering mountain,
have calmed to the grays and browns
of ordinary stone, edges softer than before.
Moss and lichen grow on the roughed ground.
Scrabbly weeds poke through cracks.
With a fearful look over her shoulder,
Orphan starts them onto the plateau.
Never one to be left behind,
Breath toddles after on all fours.
Snub snorts to stop them both.
Hooting with worry, she pivots,
looking now toward the plateau,
now toward the jungle,
with its noises of pursuing not-gorillas.
A fern at the edge of the jungle shakes,
then a not-gorilla tentatively steps out.
It is a young one,
a boy the size of Orphan.
When Snub makes a quiet
wragh
to warn him,
the boy jibbers and shrieks.
Silverback would have charged him.
Snub is not a good silverback.
The boy keeps his jabbering attention on Orphan.
More not-gorillas arrive.
The silver-haired one is in the front.
He makes a gesture with his fingers,
as nimbly as Orphan might have done.
The not-gorillas spread out,
always on their two legs.
Some bang their fists on the rocky ground,
like a gorilla would.
Others grip sharpened stones,
like no gorilla would.
Snub’s blood goes solid.
Her pulse flutters at the bottom of her skull.
The not-gorillas are not leery.
They come right near.
Snub’s fear stills her,
brings her motionless over Breath and Orphan,
while out of the side of her vision
not-gorilla feet dart
forward and back,
forward and back.
The not-gorillas shout
what Snub has come to recognize
as their version of
mrgh.
Snub screams back in terror,
one arm on Orphan and one on Breath,
whirling,
trying to keep them all safe.
Hands dart in,
hands with something
sharp in them.
Orphan screams,
Breath screams,
Snub screams.
She feels a bright dart of pain on her side,
and she thinks it is from one of their rocks,
but she realizes it is Breath’s teeth,
Breath is biting her,
not because Breath is angry
but because Breath is being pulled away
and his mouth is how he holds on.
The not-gorillas are trying to take Breath away.
It is just the mouth and one hand
pulling at her hair now,
Breath’s jaw gripping Snub hard enough
that she knows he is drawing blood.
She can feel her muscles pulling
and her flesh tearing, but
is grateful for the pain because it means
Breath is still here.
mrgh.
mrgh.
mrgh.
mrgh.
cowering and biting, snarling and slashing, puny fragile flesh under fingers, little scrap creature hurled against canyon wall, slamming and falling, leg in her mouth and hot salty blood on her tongue, screaming, teeth hitting something hard within muscle, wrenching teeth free, whirling, fingernails and stones on her, Orphan safe to one side, female struggling to keep Breath in her arms, his hysterical eyes on Snub, arms reaching for her, another not-gorilla wrenching Breath’s arm, pulling him in two, trying to pull Breath in two, a vision of little arms and legs, too far from the rest of Breath,
mrgh.
hurtling toward not-gorillas, backbones under fingers and toes, small knobby bones crunching under sprays of blood, Breath is back to her, Breath is whole, Breath is in Snub’s arms, Orphan cowering on the plateau, sobbing into her knees, no saving both Breath and Orphan, one rescued the other taken, flee, across the plateau and away from green, Breath clamps on to belly, hands and feet free to sprint, no sight of not-gorillas, but sound, horrible sound, a slavering tower at her back, propelling past Orphan, seeing Orphan rise to her feet, Orphan fleetly following