The Sky And The Forest Read Online Free Page B

were not good eating; their watery acid pulp could not deceive a healthy stomach for a moment. Children ate them during their games, but no sensible person ever did. Loa stared harder at the strange woman. The scar-tattooing on her cheeks and upper lip was of an odd pattern. She was terribly thin, like a skeleton, her bones standing out through her skin, and her breasts fallen away to empty bags although she was a young woman, not yet the mother of more than two children or so. And her body and legs and arms were covered with scratches, some of them several days old, some of them fresh, but altogether making a complete network over her. She was calmer now, but Loa's next question threw her into a worse panic than ever.
    “Why were you in the forest?” asked Loa.
    Her face distorted itself with fear.
    “Bang bang,” she said, and repeated herself. “Bang bang.”
    That was almost too funny to bear, to see this amusing woman shaking with fright and to hear her say “bang bang!” She goggled round at the laughing throng and took a grip of herself. When she spoke again the intensity of her emotion made her voice a hoarse whisper, but silence fell on the crowd and every word could be heard.
    “Men came,” she said. “Many men, at night. We were all asleep. Bang bang. Bang bang. Men were killed, women were killed. My man was sleeping beside me, and he woke up and took his spear. Everyone was shouting. Other men of the town came running into the house. Some were wounded. We stood by the door with spears and we would not come out although they shouted to us to come out. Houses were burning so that we could see out. Bang bang. Bang bang. Fire in the night, like red lightning. My man fell down and he was dead. Still we would not come out. Then our house burned. They were waiting for us outside the door so I would not go out when the men did. I jumped up and caught the roof beams of the house. Not all the thatch was burning so I pulled the thatch aside and climbed through the roof. I stood there and all the town was burning. Bang bang. Bang Bang. The thatch was burning beside me and so I jumped. I jumped far, very far. The old clearing was beside our house and I jumped into it, right into the bushes. I tried to run through the bushes, but I could not go far, not in the dark. I lay there and saw the flames and heard them shouting. My baby -- I think I heard her cry too.”
    Delli stopped speaking, her hand to her heart again. A babble of talk rose from the crowd the moment it ceased to be repressed by the dramatic nature of Delli's utterance. The fantastic tale must be discussed. Loa waved his arm for silence.
    “What did you do?” he asked.
    “I lay there,” said Delli, “and daylight came while the flames were still burning. I climbed an old tree trunk and looked into the town. The people were gathered at one end, with the strange men round them. Some of them were pale men.”
    “Pale men?” demanded Loa.
    “They had not faces like ours,” said Delli, struggling wildly to explain something beyond all experience.
    Her hands went up to her own face in feverish gestures trying to convey an impression of features quite different from the broad nostrils and heavy jaws which characterized the only human faces she knew.
    “They wore clothes -- so.”
    Delli flung one arm across her breast and her hands fluttered as she tried to give a mental picture of an ample cloak.
    “And they were pale men?” asked Loa. Clothes were something he knew something about, for he wore a leopard-skin himself and women often wore bark-cloth gowns, but pale faces were something else. “Were they like the little men?
    “No! Oh no!” said Delli.
    The forest pygmies were often of a far lighter shade than the village-dwelling natives, inclining to pale bronze, but they had the same kind of features as the rest of Delli's world and Loa's world.
    “They were big men. Tall men,” said Delli, “with thin noses; and their faces were --