Warren Murphy: Air Raid

They crossed the wide stretch of parched land that separated jungle from hill. The earth was hard-packed as they scampered up the side of the valley's central hill. When they reached the top, Chim'bor couldn't believe his fearful eyes.

The trees were now as tall as the ones in the jungle far behind them. A dense forest of blue stretched across the flat hill at the valley's center.

"White sorcery!" Chim'bor hissed.

Sor'acha wasn't listening. From where they hid at the edge of the hill, he spied what looked like blue fruit clinging sparsely to the undersides of some of the branches.

Although the whites were nowhere to be seen, there was still activity at the forest's edge.

Dozens of squirrel monkeys jumped and screeched at the periphery of the blue forest. They had come out of the jungle to venture across the clear-cut plain and climb the hill. Pounding the ground and hissing at air, the monkeys looked possessed by demons. None dared enter the field.

All he saw filled Chim'bor with dread.

"Please, Sor'acha," Chim'bor implored. "Let us leave this place."

But his brother wouldn't budge. "For all the work they have done, the fruit of these trees must be even more sweet than the gualla," Sor'acha insisted.

He thought they should pick some of the fruit, but Chim'bor would not be persuaded. The younger native stayed back while his older brother crept over the hill's edge to the forest of blue trees.

Shrieking, the monkeys scampered away from his feet, clearing a path to the woods. They flooded back in behind him. To Chim'bor, it looked almost as if the monkeys were trapping his brother in the white man's forest.

Sor'acha made it to the trees.

As Chim'bor watched, his brother took the bark in his strong hands and began climbing. He cupped his feet to the rough surface, pushing off. With quick, even strokes, Sor'acha scampered quickly up.

He was halfway to the top when Chim'bor realized something was wrong.

Sor'acha was moving too slowly. As though he was having a hard time climbing. It looked as if he was forcing himself to go higher and higher. As he went on, the struggle to climb became more obvious. It was with great difficulty that he finally made it to the top of the tree. One hand snaked out to a piece of blue fruit.

As his brother climbed, Chim'bor had slowly climbed up over the edge of the hill.

Something was very wrong.

Before he even knew it, Chim'bor was running. He was halfway to the Sky Forest when Sor'acha looked his way.

His brother was still stretching determinedly for the blue fruit. But on his dark brown face was a look of deep confusion. His cheeks bulged as if he was holding his breath.

When Sor'acha finally plucked a single piece of fruit from the rest of the cluster, he held it in triumph for only a second. The breath exploded from his lungs, and he let go of the trunk.

He dropped twenty feet from the treetop, hitting the hard-packed ground below with a bone-crushing thud. Chim'bor ran through the pack of screeching monkeys. The animals parted in fear, scattering as he kicked at them with his bare feet. When he slid to his knees next to his brother's lifeless body, a lone monkey was plucking the blue fruit which Chim'bor now saw was a small cluster of several seeds-from Sor'acha's dead hand.

The other monkeys immediately attacked the one with the seeds, clawing and biting at it. Shrieking, the monkey raced down the hill and across the plain. The other animals chased it back into the jungle.

Chim'bor didn't care about the monkeys. Sor'acha lay flat on his back, his dead eyes staring glassily up at the cluster of blue seeds in the tree high above. He had taunted the demons of the Sky Forest, and they had exacted the ultimate price.

Had he only listened to Chim'bor. Had he only left the blue seeds to the demons of the Sky Forest.

As the tears burned hot in his eyes, Chim'bor looked up. The instant he did, his anguish turned to terror. For, as he knelt over the body of his dead brother, a demon appeared in the Sky Forest.

The screeching monkeys might have drawn it out. More likely it was Sor'acha's theft. Either way, he saw a white shape slowly coming toward him.

It vanished amid the blue tree trunks. Frozen in fear, Chim'bor heard a ragged, heavy breathing coming from among the trees.

The demon reappeared. Closer now.

Chim'bor's heart pounded. He couldn't breathe, couldn't move.

The demon emerged into the light.

It was taller than a Rsual native. It had the limbs and body of a man but no face. The demon was wrapped from head to toe in a strange white garment.

The faceless demon loomed above Chim'bor. It struggled to breathe through an invisible mouth. When it spoke, the demon's language sound almost like that of the whites, who had summoned it to Rsual land.

"Sweet Georgia Brown," the demon rasped, "what do you termite eaters think you're doing here?"

With the words, Chim'bor finally found his feet. More demons were coming out from the depths of the Sky Forest. Some had faces. Tanks were strapped to their backs, clear plastic covering their mouths. It no longer mattered. Sor'acha's body was nothing. The whites and their demons could have the jungle. As more of the creatures emerged from the Sky Forest, Chim'bor ran screaming from them. When the Amazon jungle swallowed him and the Sky Forest and the faceless demons were long behind him, he still ran. He ran all the way back to his village.

After that day, he couldn't stay in the land of the Rsual. Chim'bor left his tribe. He fled the forest to the white man's city, hoping distance would extinguish the flame of constant fear.

He stayed there for five years, working at a boat-rental shop at the mouth of the Amazon. Sometimes he would pilot a charter boat himself.

Every now and then he would hear stories out of the jungle. How the Sky Forest had claimed a few other Rsual lives. How the valley became choked with smoke for a full year, so that no one could see for miles around. And how it had been decreed that the entire region was to be avoided by all future generations of Rsual for the dark magic that had been performed there.

Chim' bor heard it all. And stayed away.

For a long time he and his fears lived a life of self-imposed exile. Then one day the Sky Forest came to him.

A group of whites arrived at the docks in Macapa. They brought with them many provisions stored in bags and crates.

He assumed they were tourists, since these were the only ones still fascinated by the Amazon jungle. If they were tourists, they were part of some strange white adventurers' club, for all the men wore the same strange outfit. They perspired heavily in their corduroy jackets.

Brazilian natives struggled to load their cargo into three rented boats. The last items aboard were three dozen large burlap sacks.

Chim'bor was carrying the last of the sacks to the final boat when it slipped off his shoulder and dropped to the rotted wharf. When it hit, one stitch in a corner seam popped open and a single small object launched free. It rolled across the dock, tapping against the side of a big crate.

The skipper of one of the Amazon tour ships had a small squirrel monkey as a pet. Before Chim'bor had even seen what came out of the sack, the monkey had scooped it up. After devouring it, the animal scurried up to the bag Chim'bor had dropped.

Chim'bor was hefting the bag back into the air when the monkey reached out and clawed at the corner seam of the sack. The bag split open, and dozens of seeds spilled onto the warped dock.

Blue seeds.

When he saw them, Chim'bor dropped the sack in shock. The seam split wider. Hundreds of small seeds scattered across the ancient dock.

"What are you doing!" one of the whites yelled. The monkey threw itself into the pile of seeds. As Chim'bor backed away, the animal was shoveling them into its mouth. It took the boot of a sailor to get the animal to stop.