Dark Eden

there
are
things moving, little glints that shift and glitter. And it’s like you’re looking into the thoughts in its black head, like you can actually see them. You can see them, but you can’t understand them. You can only see they’re there.
    The leopard began to sing.
    Looking straight at my eyes with those blank glittery discs, it opened its mouth and out came that sweet sad slow song that leopards sing, in that sweet sad voice that they have, that voice that sounded just like a woman’s. Everyone had heard it of course: that lonely
ooooo-eeeee-aaaaa
from far out in forest that sounded so human that you just couldn’t help thinking it was human in some way. Everyone had woken up in middle of a sleep and heard it out there. And everyone had thought to themselves, Gela’s heart, I am glad
glad
I’m here in Family with people all around me. And then they’d listened out for the friendly familiar sounds of other groups in Family with different wakings: folk cooking meat and scraping skins, folk building shelters with branches and bark, folk hacking at trees with their stone axes, folk chatting and laughing and arguing and shouting things to one another.
    And that sweet sound of other people awake and busy, that gentle sound, it made the leopard off in forest seem far away, like another whole world, much too far away to think or worry about. It was just an animal after all, just an animal out there beyond the fence, hunting its prey in its own funny way, no different from a bat really, or a tree fox, or a tubeslinker. And so they sighed and rolled over, and got themselves comfortable among their sleeping skins and got themselves cosy and ready to go back to sleep. And it was almost
cosier
for them now than it was before, hearing that lonely leopard out there when they were safe and warm inside the fence, just like it was cosy cosy hearing rain on the bark roof of your shelter when you were dry and warm inside.
    But for me all this
wasn’t
happening out there beyond a fence. The leopard was here and I was here too. And it was singing not to some stonebuck or hopper it had cornered, but to me. It was singing me a lullaby, singing a lament for long ago, singing a song of love, a slowly fading song, slowly fading away, sinking back, peacefully fading back and back into the distance, fading and fading and fading until it was far away, not here at all any more, but lost and forgotten . . .
    And suddenly the beast was coming right at me, hurtling across the few yards of space that lay between us, its jaws open wide wide, its eyes glinting, its head down ready to kill, while its peaceful song lagged and faded behind it, just like its spots. I pulled myself out of the dream. I lifted my spear. I waited for my moment, knowing that I’d only get one shot at this, only one chance to get it right. I lifted my spear, and I readied it, and I told myself to hold steady and wait. Not yet . . . Not yet . . . Not yet . . .
    Now!
    Michael’s names, that next moment felt good! I got it just right. I shoved my spear into that leopard’s mouth and it went right down its big hot throat.
    Wham
– the butt end of the spear caught me in the chest and sent me flying.
Splat
– a great big gout of the leopard’s greeny-black blood came spurting out all over me. That big black beast crashed to the ground and began to thresh about, bubbling and gurgling and clawing at the horrible hard thing stuck in its throat that was stopping it from breathing. Quickly I rolled away from its flailing feet.
Aaaargh-aaargh-aaargh
, went the leopard, trying to knock away the spear,
aaaargh-aaargh-aaargh
. It was drowning. It was drowning in its own blood. Pretty soon it stopped making that noise and just gurgled and twitched a bit. And then it was still.
    ‘Tom’s dick, John, you’ve bloody killed it!’
    Gerry had jumped down from the tree and was running towards me.
    I scrambled to my feet. My head had gone all weird and I didn’t know what to do or think or say.
    ‘Lucy Lu reckons leopards are dead women,’ was what I came out with, talking in a funny bright voice. ‘You know, Shadow People. She says that’s why their voices sound like that and their songs are so sad sad. Of course it’s crap, like everything she says. I mean . . .’
    ‘What are you on about, John, you bloody idiot? You did for it, look! All by yourself! Tom’s neck, you did for it
all by yourself
.’
    I was shaking all over. I couldn’t have been shaking any more,