21: What's Plan C?
The hunting party left the village barely ten minutes after the Beast's roar had sounded over the island. They'd
been waiting years for the hunt to begin anew, and although they had (for the most part) been years of peace, the hunters had not grown complacent. Indeed
they were well prepared for the call, their weapons kept sharp and their nets in good repair. It wasn't often that the Great Beast of the Tree Dwellers
reared its ugly head. Only twice before had the hunters from the village gone after it, and twice they had failed. They knew they wouldn't get another
chance for a long time.
Clive, leader of the tribe since Rolph had left them, led the way. If his pace was slowed a little by age, he was only
driven on by determination. He'd long ago vowed that if he achieved nothing else in life, he'd live to see the Beast brought down at last. His first
two plans to trap it had failed - embarassingly so - but he was confident that this time they would succeed. In his right hand was a heavy spear tipped with
flint; in his left a great wooden cub set with shark's teeth; around his shoulders a string of sausages, to lend him fortitude for the hunt. Behind him
came his three sons - Charles, Andrew and Edward - and Charles' sons, and Andrew's daughters, and Edward's boyfriend (Clive had been meaning to
have a word with him about that) and many of the other men and women of the tribe. They left the village on foot, spears and bows and slings clutched in
their hands, running in determined silence in the direction that the roar had been heard. Only the very young, the very old, the lame and the dangerously
stupid stayed behind in the village. Every able body was needed for the chase.
Except one. Gretchen - arguably the most able of the young women in the tribe - had refused to join the hunt.
This was the cause of some consternation amongst the people of the village, and would indeed be the subject of some Very Terse
Words when Clive and the others returned, but the game was afoot and there was no time to waste on bickering. So the hunters departed, and Gretchen stayed
behind.
But not for long.
Ignoring the stares of the remaining villagers, Gretchen returned to her small hut at the center of the village, beside the
larger one in which Clive and his wife slept. Rummaging around under her cot, she produced a small flax bag, untied it and emptied it on the ground in front
of her. It contained three items.
The first was a knife - not the crude knives made in the village, carved from flint or bone, but a proper eight-inch hunting
knife of stainless steel. Gretchen didn't know from where it had come - she'd found it one day, while foraging near the beach. The second item was a
compass - an old and cheap item made from brass, but the only one in the village. The compass' origin was a little more adventurous than that of the
knife - it was at the age of nine, after listening many times to Clive's story of how they'd come to the Island, that Gretchen had stolen away into
the jungle to verify some of the details for herself. She'd been hoping to find the fabled Beast, or at least see a real live Tree Dweller up close, but
instead she'd found something almost as interesting - the dead pilot, still hanging in his parachute harness, just like the story had said. Gretchen had
climbed the tree, just like Rolph in the story, and rifled the pockets of the skeletal pilot's flight suit, and the compass was the prize she'd come
home with. She'd long ago figured out that it didn't point north - in fact it seemed to always point towards the center of the island, far beyond
Tree Dweller territory.
Both these items she'd kept to herself - telling no one, not even Clive, that she'd found them. She knew one day they
would come in handy, when she set out to discover the origin of the third item in her bag.
She held the object up, turning it this way and that, examining it in the gloom of the hut. Gretchen had known since she was
young that she hadn't been born in the village. Clive had raised her, along with his sons, but she knew she was a foundling. She'd overheard two of
the women talking one night, about the day Clive had found the baby girl in the jungle, hanging in a sling, clutching this... thing in her hands.
She'd had the thing ever since, kept it hidden away long after Clive had forgotten about it. She'd always wondered
where it had come from... until two nights ago, when Clive had told the story again. But this time, with a different ending.
Ten minutes later, Gretchen was on her way out of the village, heading in a different direction to the hunters. The knife was
sheathed on her hip, the compass hung around her neck. And the third object was still clutched in her hand.
It was a statue, carved from some dark volcanic rock, about six inches high.
A statue of a monkey...
NEXT: And It Went Wherever I Did Go
A statue of a monkey...
NEXT: And It Went Wherever I Did Go
