The Vorrh

The arrow shrieked and trembled to a halt, piercing the path six feet before him.
    * * *

    Ghertrude was holding Cyrena, one arm around her sobbing shoulders. She was glaring at Hoffman and holding back her own tears, which were slowly distilling from shock to rage. Maclish had dragged them out of the cell and into the small office where they now sat.
    ‘What’s wrong with ye?’ he snarled. ‘We got your cyclops and now ye scream at it?!’
    ‘That thing is not Ishmael,’ said Ghertrude, gritting her teeth and pushing away from her distressed friend, standing to match Maclish’s aggression.
    The doctor moved towards her and, in a puzzled voice, said, ‘Not Ishmael?’
    ‘But ye said ye slept with it,’ said Maclish, pointing at Cyrena.
    She looked up and out of her tears. ‘Slept with
that
?’ she said, each word turning from disbelief into anger, so that the questioned inflection at the end of ‘that’ sounded like a blacksmith’s hammer striking a flame from a frozen anvil. She was on her feet: her eyes had become terrible. Every part of her previous pain and her immediate disappointment was hurtling in a tornado of fury. She was ready to fight and her stance – her eyes, teeth and nails – were sprung for the next word; even Maclish took a step back. Ghertrude had never seen a human being like this, let alone a close friend.
    The doctor shrank. Maclish recognised the sudden animal; he had seen it in the war. It had been rare and lethal, and he held it in respect.
    ‘I am sorry, miss,’ he said in clear, cold words, lowering his arms to his side. She panted for a few moments and her humanity and her colour flooded back. Ghertrude moved to her side and guided her towards the door.
    After they left, the shaken doctor sat on one of the creaking chairs, and mopped the perspiration from his forehead with a large handkerchief. Maclish came back in. ‘She said we can keep the money, but we aren’t getting any more.’
    The doctor just nodded and said, ‘What are we going to do with that thing?’
    ‘Take it back or kill it. Nobody wants Loverboy here,’ said Maclish, guffawing at his own joke.
    Doctor Hoffman saw nothing to be amused about.
    Loverboy stood naked, four feet high, in the straw at the back of the cell. His skin was deathly pale, with a yellowish tinge. He had long, thin limbs, and his torso was squat and square. His head grew out from his chest, so that his forehead sloped into his shoulders, putting his tiny mouth level to where human nipples should be. His single eye was level with his armpits, and it blinked, sphincter-like, in the gloom. He did not think much of humans; their only value was in terms of food. He had eaten one two years ago, and their sweet flesh was greatly prized among his people. But they were dangerous to hunt, and many of his tribe had died in the process.
    He knew he was the first of his kind to be taken bodily out of the forest, and he did not understand how it had happened. Unseen from the dense undergrowth, they had watched the humans devouring the forest year after year; nothing had ever entered and dragged one of his kind out before. He feared what he had seen so far, and did not understand the cave they kept him in. He did not understand the actions of these tall, ugly creatures; they seemed to use all their emotions at once. He hated the one with red fur: it was known to be cleverer and faster than the herd that it kept for work and food. The screaming ones intrigued him, females he thought, with hideous, extended heads. He became erect thinking about them, and it surprised him. He would have liked to undress one and play with it before he cooked and ate it. But that was for another time. Now he must escape and get back into the Vorrh.
    * * *

    The Youngman sat on a tree stump by the side of the stream. He was large and quiet. He had his father’s strong nose, but it looked out of proportion in his long, weak face, which had only recently given up the heat of acne; it had begun to cool to a moon-like paleness of craters and dead eruptions. He came to this place to think, to get away from the bustle of the city and the snug, noisy chaos of his family home. He stared at his hands; the little fingers were working again. So were the thumbs, and he rotated them like surprised puppet worms from a meaningless children’s play.
    He had just been involved in some accidental street complications; at least, he thought – he secretly hoped – it had been