Jane (41 page)

I could see the nest before me. Almost there.
Gather your resolve,
I thought,
death will come quickly.
But he leaped from behind, sweeping me under one arm, propelling us up and up to his nest. Trapped in his clutches I prayed for unconsciousness. It would not come. I felt the coarse fur against my skin, heard the lewd growling whisper,
“Kin-ga tar-zan.”

In the nest, he threw me down on my back and, reaching out a hairy hand, ripped the hide skirt from my body. Kerchak rose tall, showing me the vile weapon of his masculinity, that which would rend me and kill me as it had Alice Clayton. He threw back his head and roared his supremacy, a horror of a sound, I thought, that would surely be the last I would hear in my life.

The arrow that thwacked into Kerchak’s side had barely time to register in either my vision or the monster’s senses when out of the clearing swung Tarzan, a furious titan, a human projectile slamming with such velocity into his mortal enemy that the giant was knocked to his knees. I rolled away, crouching on the nest’s lip as the combat began.

Kerchak snapped off the arrow shaft, and coming to his full height, he turned. Tarzan was ready with a downward thrust of his blade into Kerchak’s upraised arm. But the cut barely fazed him. He merely stared with the outrage of recognition—Kala’s puny
tar-zan balu
had returned to vex him. Never was the disparity of their sizes so clear. The sheer bulk of the monster was matched only by the madness that fueled his being. All Tarzan wielded against him were his wits and the Bowie, and the knife was of no use unless it pierced a vital organ.

“Go! Run!” Tarzan shouted at me. I hesitated, unwilling to abandon the sight of him. “Go!”

I leaped to a close branch, never taking my eyes from Tarzan, his fixed upon the dreadful Mangani. Kerchak’s first blow—his great arm thrashing in a wide arc—knocked Tarzan clean out of the nest. I screamed, for the ground was a hundred feet down. I found him clinging to a branch. But only for a moment. He scrambled upward to a tangled liana, hanging like a monkey by feet and hands above the nest.

Now Kerchak broke off a limb the size of his arm and began savagely beating the thick mattress of twigs and leaves around him.

“Tar-zan!” he snarled. “Kerchak
korag
Tarzan!”

A promise to destroy him
.

“Kerchak
kora—
”

Tarzan’s feetfirst swing smashed Kerchak’s face, cutting short the threat and knocking him backward. But he grabbed Tarzan’s legs and held them fast. Clinging to a limb with one arm and his large-toed foot, the creature dangled his antagonist far out over the clearing.

Then in a feat of inconceivable prowess, Tarzan swung himself sharply upward, stabbing with his knife the arm that held him. The grip suddenly released, he
climbed
the beast’s body! They fell back into the nest, a blurred tangle of furred and white-skinned limbs. Tarzan’s fingers grappled over Kerchak’s face, clawing at the one good eye. Kerchak knocked it away, scissoring Tarzan’s torso with colossal legs. Tarzan landed punch after punch on unyielding flesh. Kerchak lunged at Tarzan’s neck with his terrible fanged mouth, ripping the skin but failing, barely, to sink his teeth into the jugular, rip out the throat as he had John Clayton’s. The beast’s mighty fisted blow to Tarzan’s belly knocked him back, but the punishing arm was laid bare as Tarzan’s blade sliced the length of it. Blood spurted. Kerchak roared in fury and thrust upward with the other arm. The Bowie flew from Tarzan’s grip only to be snatched in midflight by his adversary who now, gracelessly, punched the air with the blade, exultant in his victory.

Tarzan unarmed!

In that moment of Kerchak’s self-delusion I saw Tarzan again retreat to the higher perch. What was he planning? What was he thinking?

Tarzan took flight, diving down on Kerchak’s back. The unexpected assault from above took him by storm. Tarzan’s powerful legs clamped viselike around Kerchak’s middle, the muscular hands gripping his mammoth head. Kerchak thrashed with the knife to no avail, violently bucking his rider, bellowing his rage.

The twist and loud snapping of Kerchak’s neck was sudden, choking the beast’s roar in his throat. The look of stupefaction lasted but a moment, then the one eye rolled back in his head. Tarzan shoved the suddenly inert figure to the brink of the nest and tipped it off and over.

Kerchak was dead all the while he tumbled heavily down. Dead as the bulk of him snapped heavy branches like twigs. Dead when his behemoth’s body crashed with a thud to the forest floor.

Tarzan flew to me, holding me to him, murmuring my name and wordless sounds of joy … I felt surging through every pore the furies that had driven him relentlessly to this moment in time. But he tarried only long enough to confirm I was whole and uninjured, for the Mangani—all of them—were streaming silently from their nests to the ground … and Tarzan was drawn to join them.

I followed after him slowly, savoring the sight of this gentle tribe longing for proof they’d been freed from its tyrant. A cry from above announced the arrival of Jai, her head bloodied, swinging to the Great Bower, and my heart soared with the sight of her.

And Gamla lived! Limping painfully and carrying the club that had wounded her, she was first to reach the reviled corpse. She swung the branch above her head and came down on Kerchak’s face—once, twice, three times, till it was red mash. The others gathered around, jostling and murmuring quietly.
Balu
played with the flaccid hands and feet of their once-feared oppressor.

But when Tarzan came, they made way for him, he stained red and brown with blood. He’d regained the Bowie and, once at Kerchak’s side, he fell to his knees. The blade arched high and drove violently downward into the leathery chest.

Hardly a sound was heard from the tribe as I made my way to the ground. They parted for the naked white-skin female. Tarzan was working with rough, jerking strokes at the body as I came to his side. I saw that in his hand he held the dripping, scarlet heart of the killer. I stared transfixed as he drew the glistening flesh to his mouth, ripped out a piece with his teeth, then thrust the heart high over his head, triumphant in his vengeance. The silent clearing erupted with ecstatic howls and cries of revelry. Mangani fell at Tarzan’s feet in the worship of gratitude.

Something raw and primordial surged through me then. Something ancient and long unbroken. Knowledge that the creatures about me were sisters and brothers in blood. Tarzan I saw with perfect clarity—a mighty, gore-stained savage. A wild, ungovernable animal.

I had never desired him more.

*   *   *

We stood in the shallows of a nearby pool. Tarzan’s eyes were closed as I washed him with cupped hands. His body was coming up in angry bruises. One shoulder was bitten, the skin of his neck torn in several places. He appeared to be still, but when I laid my flat palms on his chest I found him pulsing, tremulous beneath them, his heart pounding a strong, steady rhythm. His eyes still glittered with remnants of violence, and he clasped me fiercely to him, bruising me with a feverish kiss. He grasped my shoulders hard, pushing me to arm’s length, desperately searching my face as though it were a map, something,
anything
to guide him back from the throes of insanity. Instead I lifted my face and licked the fresh wound. He shuddered under my lips.

In that moment all in me that was civilized fell away like a snake shedding its skin. I’d seen Tarzan for the brutal creature he was. An animal mad with the lust to kill. Here he stood, pulsing with heat and sweat and blood. His hands ranging over my breasts, thighs, belly were rough. And I wanted him rough. Craved him inside me. Moving hard.

I drew him onto the shore. He pulled me down, atop him. Pierced me. Sweet fire tore through my body. Snarling, he began to thrust. The world fell away and our coupling, our wild exultant cries, were lost amid the roars and calls and screeches of the great forest canopy.

We were one. The bond unbreakable. Forever.

*   *   *

We came to our senses slowly, never straying far from the Great Bower. I found myself shaken to the bone by my raw carnal raptures coming so soon after a brutal bloodletting. I had always believed Tarzan was in part a primal, feral animal. Never myself. In the sentimental shadow of genteel Lord and Lady Greystoke’s beach hut, our lovemaking had been eager and ardent enough. And while I had reveled in the wantonness of our last joining, it had frightened me.
Had we been possessed by jungle demons? Intoxicated by violence?
The experience seemed to have electrified Tarzan, left him primed, cocksure, possessive. And for a time afterward, I basked in our glorious mating, certain that no other woman who’d ever lived had so sublime a lover.

But when the tumult of roiling black clouds signaled that the rains would soon be upon us, making the swamp to the north impassable, I again came to my senses. The pragmatism and science that had been temporarily usurped by libido once more prevailed.

Kerchak’s carcass had been left where it fell and was, to the contentment of the Mangani, rotting away before their eyes.

Meanwhile, I had come to a momentous decision. I could do nothing that might harm the Mangani. If that meant never revealing the “living missing link species” to the world, so be it. In fact, I had barely scratched the surface of my study of
P.a.e.,
and subsequent expeditions would be carried out with secrecy and precaution. There was no telling how many years, or decades, it would take to complete the work. And perhaps by then a way might be found to protect their existence.

Yet Kerchak’s corpse enticed and tempted the scientist that I was. Beneath the decomposing fur and leathery skin was a skeleton—some of its bones broken but otherwise complete. I could not be certain when—or if— I might acquire so perfect a specimen again.

I therefore asked Tarzan to strip as much flesh from the bones as possible, and with the Bowie I dissected out the larynx and voice box. These we packed in salt and minerals, hoping to preserve the soft tissue, though I was not at all optimistic. Of course the bones of the face had been crushed and it was hard to know what would be salvageable. We set the carcass down at the borderlands between the Mangani’s forest and the jungle.

When we returned to the bower, we found the warmest of welcomes, with every member of the tribe gathering around us with grave solemnity.

“Tarzan
ben gund,
” Jai intoned, and the others responded with a guttural chant of the same words.

I understood none but his name, but Tarzan appeared surprised.

“They wish to make me their chief,” he told me. “Great chief.” It was, I thought, a proud announcement.

The males and females alike began touching him imploringly. To my dismay, he did nothing to correct them, just smiled sweetly and returned their caresses, even lifting a tiny
balu
into his arms. I was dumbstruck watching the scene, seeing him gaze around with such warm affection.

These are his people, his kin,
I thought.
But could he actually consider such a thing?

Our eyes met then, and I saw a moment of confusion there, as though he’d been caught in the act of a petty crime. He
had
been contemplating staying!

The breath went out of me and I looked quickly away. But my expression had betrayed me. A moment later I heard Tarzan say to the Mangani, “Jai
gund vando
.” Jai good chief.

There was concerned murmuring, but then Gamla spoke, “Jai
gund vando
.” She pulled Jai into a rough embrace. One by one the others grasped or nuzzled Jai, assenting to her leadership.

Tarzan caught my eye as if to assure me,
I’ve said no to them. I am yours,
and I nodded my affirmation.

But I’d seen that moment, brief as it was, when the man had in his heart accepted his title as chief of the Mangani.

We never spoke of it again, but it worried me. It raised doubts and uncertainties about the journey home. Even Tarzan’s feasting upon Kerchak’s still-warm heart had not given me so much pause as his fleeting moment of desire to stay among the Mangani.

When we returned to collect my specimens, we found that the army ants had done their job well—Kerchak’s bones had been picked altogether clean. I found, as expected, that delicate folded muscles of the vocal cords had badly decomposed. But the larynx was made of sterner stuff—tough cartilage—and was largely intact.

The greatest part of our task became the fashioning of two carriers that would safely convey the top and bottom halves of the skeleton back to England. The sturdy bark of the mango was stuffed with tufts of fluff from the silk-cotton tree, rare in this season, harvested by Jai, Gamla, and the other female Mangani and delivered to us as grateful offerings. Many times I found them gazing at all that remained of their torturer. I had not observed the species long enough to recognize the varying emotions in those simian expressions, but I think in those days I learned the appearance of profound satisfaction by studying their sweet faces.

Tarzan hunted a
pacco
and with its supple hide fashioned sturdy straps to close and protect the cases and the pouch and the Claytons’ journal, now filled with my scientific observations.

We’d been postponing the inevitable—our good-byes. Even now, memory of that parting brings me to tears. Jai was, of course, the most difficult to leave, as Tarzan was forced to make her understand that we would be gone for a protracted time and that we would be nowhere to be found. There were no words in the Mangani language for such a thing, and when she did finally understand, she wept, a sound that was as heartrendingly human as it was primal.

The Mangani in their farewells could not understand our need for a hasty departure. They were unsatisfied with warm and fulsome embraces and in the end compelled us to stay another day, insisting on languid sessions of delicate grooming and sharing of succulent foods. But when the first raindrops penetrated the canopy, we knew we had tarried too long. We slipped away the next morning before the bower had come fully awake.