Alan Foster - Exceptions to Reality

So far he had managed to avoid the stinging trees, but between the inevitable slips and falls and the occasional inimical thorn bush he was pretty well torn up. In the dank confines of the forest, several of the cuts were already beginning to fester. There was a warm wet soreness under his heels where several blisters had popped. Yesterday he’d found a leech on his right ankle and in a paroxysm of disgust had unthinkingly and unwisely pulled it off. Despite his best efforts, the bite continued to bleed.

His hat was gone and so was much of his food. Several times exhaustion and desperation had overcome his pride and he had shouted out the guide’s name. If Schneemann was secretly dogging his footsteps, waiting for his client to admit defeat, the German was taking his time about it. Surely the guide wouldn’t simply abandon an outsider to fend for himself in dangerous country like this? No reasonable professional would do such a thing.

But a crazy man might.

There was a slight break in the trees ahead, barely visible through the rain. Covey angled toward it, hoping to find a stream that flowed east toward the sea. Perspiration blended with rainwater stung his eyes. His damp breathing came in long, labored wheezes now.

Someone jabbed a white-hot fishhook into his right forearm.

He howled and looked down at himself. Two narrow lengths of vine lay snugged against his bare, wet flesh. When he tried to pull away, they clung to him like green steel. Forcing himself to stand absolutely motionless, he contemplated the growth that had trapped him.

It wasn’t a stinging tree, thank God. Inspecting his arm, he made out two parallel sets of backward-curving thorns running along the underside of each vine. These natural hooks were deeply embedded in his skin. Little bubbles of blood rose from the spot where each thorn had penetrated. They continued to swell until rain washed them away.

To his horror the vines seemed to contract around his arm even as he was studying the phenomenon.

“Don’t move.”

The voice startled him and he jerked involuntarily, sending fresh agony ripping through his flesh. Trembling slightly from the pain, he forced himself to stand motionless.

She glistened in the rain, naked and supple as a cream-colored seal. Her auburn hair was neatly combed and unmatted, though the rain made it stick to her exposed skin. She had deep, dark eyes and a slim, though mature, body. Her mouth was small and moist, and her leonine muscularity reminded him of slow-motion film he had seen of professional marathon runners.

Transfixed by both pain and surprise, he stared as she gently disengaged first one vine, then the other, from the meat of his upper arm. She offered him a half smile.

“Wait-a-while.” Gripping it carefully by the edges, she held up one vine for closer inspection. He flinched away. “See? The thorns are barbed. Once you’re hooked, the only way to free yourself is by backing up slowly. Move in any other direction and the barbs only dig in deeper.” Her smile widened. “It’s also called lawyer’s cane.”

A shaken Covey sat down and felt gingerly of his injured arm.

She eyed him with palpable curiosity. “What are you doing out here?”

He tried not to stare at the raindrops slithering down through her breasts and crotch. “I was looking for you.”

Her smile vanished and she peered around anxiously. “Why?”

He managed a filthy grin of his own. “I’m a writer. I was looking for inspiration for a new book.” When he lifted his arm, pain lanced through him and he winced. “I think I should’ve stuck to rewriting my old ones. My name’s Covey. Mike Covey.”

She was watching him closely. “No one told you my name, then?” He shook his head, momentarily too tired and too full of self-pity to care about much of anything else. “I’m Annabelle.” She looked to her right. “That’s my daughter, Leea. Leea, come say hello.”

The girl was a slightly taller version of her mother, only blue-eyed and with hair that verged on the color of night. When her mother called to her, she was sitting in a nearby tree, her legs dangling from a thick lower branch. As an exhausted Covey looked on, she lowered herself to the ground with an effortless grace and agility that was breathtaking.

Had she been there all along? he wondered. Would she have watched in silence as he’d torn his arm to pieces trying to free himself? She slowed as she approached, while the mother regarded him with a strange mixture of curiosity and sadness.

“Where’s your home?” he asked. “Do you have a lean-to or a cabin out here, or something?”

“We build shelters when and where we need them. We move around a lot. Is this how you find your inspiration, by asking questions?”

“I can’t say, not having found any yet.”

Shading her eyes, she tilted her head back. “Soon the afternoon rain will begin. The Big Wet is coming. If you don’t get out of the forest before it starts, you’ll be stuck in here till March.”

As he sat and watched, the two women quickly and without a single tool cobbled together a passable shelter out of the forest material at hand. When Annabelle directed him to crawl inside, he did not object. He was too worn out to object to anything. Then they left.

Just as he had decided they didn’t intend to come back and he would never see either of them again, they returned bearing armfuls of fruit. There were also large, white, fat insect grubs the taste of which, despite his hunger, he felt obliged to decline. Using fingernails and teeth, they peeled the various fruits as deftly as any monkey.

Later, with his belly full and feeling considerably better, he lay back against the gray rock that formed the rear of the shelter and gazed out at the monotonous scree of falling rain. As always there was no need for a fire. To make conversation he asked the woman about the rain forest. She had an answer or explanation for everything. Sensibly he did not try to inquire about her past or how she came to be in her present situation.

“I need to find certain plants to treat your wounds,” she told him the next morning, “or you’re going to develop some severe infections. A couple have already started to ulcerate.” Crawling to the shelter’s opening, she glanced back in at him. “Don’t try to go anywhere.”

“Fat chance of that,” he murmured.

They had been gone less than an hour when a shape returned. The daughter entered wordlessly. In the warm confines of the shelter, he could not avoid her nor did he try to. Her nipples brushed his bare arm as she sat down next to him, folding her thighs up against her chest and clasping her arms around her knees. Outside, the early-morning drizzle obscured the rest of the world.

“Tell me,” she whispered in a small voice, “about the city. Mother’s told me a little, most of it bad. But I don’t see how any place so interesting can be all bad.” Her voice overflowed with eagerness. “I want to know.”

So without a moment’s thought or pause, he told her, describing life not only in the cities of his own country but in those of other lands as well. He tried to impart to her some of the excitement of Chicago, the glamour of Los Angeles, the culture of New York. She listened raptly, hanging on his every word, only occasionally interrupting with a question.

Her manner of speech was devoid of guile and long words but otherwise proper and correct. Apparently her mother had not wished her to dwell entirely in ignorance green. She had been given some home, or rather forest, schooling.

Eventually he felt secure enough in her presence to ask a few questions of his own, keeping an eye on the opening in expectation of the mother’s return. “Leea, how do you come to be here, to live like this in this place?”