The Hunt

The Hunt                                 

 

 

     The undergrowth whispered slightly at his passing and Kalu chastised himself. Silently, of course. On the hunt, there was no room for error, no allowance for noise. Especially today.

     Leafy foliage blanketed the land around him, shadowed in eternal twilight by the towering canopy above. The thick boles of iron-barked trees pierced the earth sporadically, providing ample cover as he watched the clearing some meters distant, creeping ever closer.

     The sounds of the jungle masked his approach. Cawing birds and the steady patter of water running from the high leaves above onto those below. It was not raining, thankfully, but here the humidity was so great that it always seemed to be.

     Kalu ghosted from cover to cover, tree to tree. A flickering visage swathed in shadow, utterly silent. His lean, corded arms, chest, legs, entire body was coated in a thin layer of black mud, smooth and dry. To both hide his scent and camouflage him to the tones of the pervasive foliage.

     Only the whites of his eyes showed, below where his thick black matted hair was tied back tightly. Them, and the streaks of blue adorning his face, the sacred markings made of the sap from the Elandai tree. He would need the God's help today, if he were to succeed.

     His quarry lay just a dozen meters distant now, right in the center of the clearing. It was a good omen, the dense foliage allowing ample cover for him to approach stealthily, undetected, while the bright sunlight from above would obscure his preys vision from the shadowy surrounding in its glare.

     Deftly, he unshouldered the strung bow from his back, where it rested alongside a thin quiver, packed with cloth to prevent the slim arrows there from rattling. He drew one and knocked it, grasping the bow and shaft both in his left hand, leaving his right free and ready do draw. With this free hand he bent and lifted a short spear from where it lay in the leafy folds coating the ground. It was a narrow shaft worn smooth by use, the grey grains and whorls betraying it as ashwood, from the firelands. Spear and bow ready, he Kalu crept forward, just another shadow.

     The Gryphon laying in the midst of the clearing stretched, hide rippling in feathered and furred muscle, extending razor sharp talons on its forelegs languidly. The scales there gleamed brilliant in the sunlight, while its lions’ hide rear shone with a well-kept coat of short black hair. It's crest and chest were adorned with white feathers so pristine, that new-fallen snow upon a cloudless day still would not have been comparable. As it yawned through a steel-hard yellow beak, scaled tongue curling, Kalu glimpsed its eyes for the first time since he began tracking the creature, not seven days ago. Tracking flying monsters was especially difficult in the jungle. At nineteen winters, the corpse of the thing would be his prize on this, his bloodhunt. And when he returned, victorious to the tribe, he would finally be hailed as a man.

     Kalu snuck closer still. He'd have one chance, one shot before it was on him, rending with its talons.

     None chose the bestial Gryphon as their bloodprey. It was suicide, much better to track and kill the Dire wolf or the vicious Centauri. Those talons could tear apart a horse in heartbeats. Only the most veteran hunters of the tribe sought out the Gryphon, and never alone. Kalu would be the first. And then all would know his name.

     Sliding through the forested ground he finally approached the verge of the clearing. The Gryphon still busied itself with cleaning and grooming it's plumage with lashes of its blood-red tongue. It hadn't seen him, smelt him, nor heard his approach.

     Kalu breathed. That's what his father always told him. Breathe, and let yourself become the forest. The spear went to the ground silently, and the bow rose. Breathe.   The taught string and tensed wood were a part of him, as physical as his own sinew. The curving limbs his own body, undivided.

     It came up. The long shaft of the razor-stone tipped arrow aligning with the creature not a dozen paces away. From such distance there was no chance he could miss. Still, he breathed, and with utmost slowness, almost tender care, he drew the nocked arrow back to his ear in a smooth, fluid motion. The arrowhead alighted upon his distant target, steady and unwavering. The fine crested chest of the beast, inside which the powerful heart pulsed.

     Breathe. Kalu’s heart thudded. The forest around him ceased to be. He was the bow. He was the arrow and the target far. He was the distance between, an effortless all-encompassing flow of being. He was the hunter.

     In a sudden, violent jolt the Gryphons head shot up, fixing him with its inescapable, penetrating stare. Yellow eyes fierce and contracted, focused upon him. With a resounding snap, the arrow flew.

     The Gryphon screamed, crying and shrieking in rage and shick. Crimson blossomed from its chest, the black shaft of the arrow protruding from the center of its feathered chest. Yet it did not fall or falter. The Gryphon lurched to its feet and with a bone-shattering roar, unfurled its massive wings to either side, spreading black shadow across the width of the sunlit clearing. Kalu’s blood ran cold. It was still up, still alive. Possibly even more dangerous, now mortally threatened. But there could be no recourse. His path was clear.
     Gripping the spear from where It lay, Kalu rose, dappling sunlight making the blue streaks across his face ripple and shift. He let the bow fall, useless. With a wordless cry, he drove forth, low weeds and leaves whipping at his ankles as he charged. The spear came up to bear, tipped in a wide head of chiseled stone, chipped to a razors edge. The Gryphon, reeling, thundered forth to meet him.

     It was easily triple his size, feathered and beaked head towering high, hissing venomously at its attackers’ approach. The long claws retracted in its lions’ paws to the rear extended and tore rents in the earth below as it surged it's massive bulk forward at him, wings beating for balance and purchase against the air.

     They closed the intervening distance quickly.

     The Gryphon’s talons came up, lighting fast, extending out towards him. Kalu dodged left and trusted with both arms right, striking a long bloody gash along its scaly foreleg. The beast screamed again, whirling. He leaped back, narrowly ducking a curving swing of a heavy wing, and was buffeted by a blinding gale of air. Eyes watering, he danced back and felt the air part in the wake of lunging razor-sharp talons, knowing he'd just narrowly avoided death.

     This was not going the way he'd imagined. It was quickly becoming obvious that he'd done significantly less damage than he'd intended. Though as he backed away from the raging creature, his eyes fixed to the bloody wound on its chest. The bright crimson plume had spread, and there was a definite tickle of blood spattering the green leaves below. For the first time he noticed its labored breathing. Its lighting movements were becoming sluggish, as though as each minute passed, its limbs became heavier.

     It was tiring, and quickly. All he had to do was keep it busy, and out of range from its claws. Easier said than done.

     With an unexpected burst of speed, the Gryphons head darted forth, great beak lunging at him. Reflexively, he shoved the haft of the spear before him in defense. The beak scissored shut on the wooden shaft, cleanly and easily slicing through the hard wood. Kalu stumbled back, remiss at the loss of his weapons reach. But the monster gave him no time. It pressed the attack, lunging again and again with beak and claw and wing, each of which he only narrowly avoided. With a jerk he tossed aside the blunt, useless end of the spear to the ground and tightly gripped the remaining length, tipped with its sharp head.

     The Gryphon backed off a pace, tail lashing and blowing hard like a lathered horse. With a surge of its forelegs it reared tall and proud, towering over him where he crouched nimbly. Its huge wings spread wide, blocking the sun and outlining the creature in resplendent rays. For a moment he faltered. The beast looked so perfect, the aura of light splayed about its form like something sacred and divine. It drew back its wings with a ripple of corded muscle, slowly, almost reverently.

     With a titanic gust of wind, the wings slammed forth, issuing a gale at Kalu, tearing him from his feet and sending him tumbling helplessly through the air.

     The world lost all meaning, a crazed haphazard jumble of vision, the leafy earth below spinning around and around until there was no sky nor ground. They had become one, inseparable.

     With a monumental slam everything went dark. When he blinked awake again Kalu was propped up against the bole of a tree and he could taste blood. The Gryphon was there still, in the midst of the clearing. It staggered to the side, still watching him with fierce, proud eyes. With a jolting shudder, it slumped over to the ground, utterly spent and weak from blood loss.

     Kalu pushed himself upright, which he immediately regretted. Pain lanced through his head, causing him to grip the back of his skull with his right hand. It came away wet and red with his blood and his vision swam before he forced it to refocus.

     Taking a few careful, shaking steps he took up the shortened half of the bladed spear where it lay on the ground, torn from his grip in the tumult of his flight. The blood made his hand slippery, but he gripped it all the tighter and strode over to where the magnificent beast lay dying.

     It was breathing hard, feathered chest fluttering. It looked up at him with one eye from where it lay on the soft green earth and in its gaze,  he saw its understanding. The knowing of what was to come next.
      It was said by the shamans that now and then, there come great animals, imbued with the spirits of men or perhaps even the gods themselves that had complex minds, beyond the complexity of mere beasts. In that moment when their eyes connected he believed it. The very soul of the creature resonated in the air between them and he saw through those windows into a thing beyond his own comprehension. And he blinked, and it was gone once more.

     Kalu rested the tip of the brittle stone blade against the pure white plumage, at the base of the powerful neck. The eyes told him. That it was time. That it was alright. His wrist flexed, and the blade went in with slight resistance. Hot warmth encased his hand, mixing with the blood on the wooden handle from his palm. Beings entwined.

     He raised his head and gave a long, low cry of mourning and exhaustion. Greif for the loss of the beast, even though it was by his hand. For all living things were sacred, so it was known. And then it was done, over. Yet the grief that remained in his heart at the slaying would remain there forever, as a reminder.

     There came a high electric whine from the edge of the clearing opposite him, some meters distant. He recognized the sound.

     The air rippled there as if in heat shimmer, a mirage.

      A bulky shape became apparent, showing translucent in the air, like pristine suspended water. It resolved and became distinct as the integral refractor shield powered off. The stealth suit was large, eight-foot-tall and built like a solid barrel with mechanized arms and legs, buzzing actuators resounding around the clearing now that the active camouflage had turned off. From the center of the dull, matte grey neckless torso of the machine, several glassy lenses regarded him silently, telescoping in and out as they adjusted focus. The buzz became a low permeating vibration as every side of the clearing pulsed with distorted light and dozens more refractor stealth fields powered down. There must have been half the tribe there.

     The first one took a clanking step forth. It's face panels peeled apart Mid-stride, and a tall muscular man stepped out from the frame of the lurching exosuit, fluidly continuing his stride while the machine fell silent and still. He was powerfully built, wide shoulders and bulging arms, a long-braided crest of midnight-black hair falling from his head and clad in simple soft grey breeches. Across his dark skin were the sacred markings, long blue digital lines in a haphazard circuitry around his arms and torso, wrapping around his neck, straight and angular. Their architecture mimicked those clumsily marking Kalu’s own face, blackened still buy the mud.

     The man came to a stop, granite chiseled face hard, but his eyes alight. He and Kalu stared at each other for a long time, before the man raised both hands in a gesture of welcome, taking in the dead Gryphon and Kalu where he still knelt by it, forearms coated in its blood.

     “Kalu, my son.” said his father.

     “You have done well.”

And there was pride in his voice.

 

Reviews

[JayG]

Have your computer read this aloud and you'll hear what the reader gets—a verbal storyteller's words, stripped of the emotion that storyteller's performance would give it.

If I could hear the narrator, the story would be filled with emotion, as that narrator changed intensity, tempo, and used all the tricks of that marvelous instrument, the human voice. But I can't.

If I could see the narrator, their changing expression would illustrate the proper emotion. Their hands would dance as they visually punctuated. Their body language would amplify and moderate, making the story live as it flows onward. But their performance is invisible...to me. You, of course, can hear the performance, and literally feel the gestures and other visual detail. So for you it lives. But for the reader...

See the problem? It's not one of talent or potential, or the story. It's that you, like so many hopeful writers, are using what you know, and were taught in school—coupling the nonfiction writing skills we're given with the verbal storytelling skills we use every time someone says, "So how was your day?" But those skills are inappropriate to our medium because the reader can neither see nor hear you. It's a trap we all fall into because no one tells us that our training in the art of writing is meant to make us employable, and so we write endless reports, essays, and other nonfiction applications. Even the few stories we were asked to write were graded by teachers who had probably not sold a word of their own fiction, or studied the craft of fiction for the page.

The solution is simple enough: add the tricks of the trade to your present writing skills. They're easy to find, both online and in the local library's fiction-writing section. So time spent there would be a wise investment and will help you trade in the sturdy cart-horse we're given in school for a flying beast like Pegasus. Instead of telling the reader a story, show them. Make the reader live it in real-time. Remember, if we write a horror story our goal isn't to make the reader know the protagonist feels fear. It's to terrorize THE READER. Make them worry. Make them feel love. Make them CARE.

For an overview of the issues we need to be aware of, you might want to dig around in the writing articles in my blog. It was created to help the hopeful writer.

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/

[AlphaGemini]

Thank you for your insightful review - I am an aspiring writer and I use these shorter pieces to learn while I also work on longer ones. Showing and not telling is of course like many others one of my most hard-practiced points, and I admit I still have a way to go. I'll read your guides, thank you :) Are you a prolific author or just a connoisseur?

[JayG]

I've sold in novel, short story, poetry, and article form. And, I owned a manuscript critique service before I retired. SO I have a bit of experience. Art the moment I have twenty-four novels on Amazon. But I am not setting the world on fire.

So, forget what I did (though the articles on my blog were originally written for one of my publisher's newsletters, so might be worth a look as background on the issues involved). What matters is that fiction requires a very different approach from the writing techniques we learned in school because we learned only skills meant to inform the reader (which is why you wrote so many reports and essays). Fiction's goal is to entertain, and requires a character-centric, not author-centric writing skill-set. It also needs an emotion-based, not fact-based approach, none of which was even mentioned in our school days.

Check out the local library's fiction writing section, and look for the names, Dwight Swain, Jack Bickham, or Debra Dixon on the cover (or look on Amazon) they're pure gold.

Hope this helps

[Delmar Cooper]

Thanks for sharing this action filled story, it was fun to read and I appreciate all story tellers. Practitioners of nearly lost arts don't get the respect they deserve. There are a few errors that can be easily corrected to the writer's credit and the reader's appreciation: a few misspellings, such as shick for shock and greif for grief; the possessive apostrophe "s" is omitted in some places. Small potatoes in a good rousing tale.

[AlphaGemini]

Thanks! I just hope the contrasting end to the story wasn't too jarring with the sudden appearance of high-tech. Sorry about the mistakes, with these shorter pieces I'm not as diligent as perhaps I should be, I just want to get it done and posted. Thanks again for the review :)

[Delmar Cooper]

" I just hope the contrasting end to the story wasn't too jarring with the sudden appearance of high-tech."
This comes to mind about your transition into technology from magic: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", Arthur C. Clarke. Your step across that threshold could have been more graceful I agree, but it is only a step and not a giant leap.