The Vorrh

rustled, crawled and flapped, in the infinite depth of closeness. He held his hand before his face to test the old adage. It was true – he could not see it – yet the ebony fluid in his eyes sensed all manner of things swirling within a terrifying proximity. A prayer almost found its way to his lips. It began in the icy fear of his heart, the ventricles white with the frost of anticipation, and travelled outwards to become a pressure, like wind against the meat sails of his lungs. Funnelling up, it passed like a shadow through the rehearsal of his vocal cords, up into his mouth, tongue and lips, before being garrotted by the thin, taut wire of his mind. No heart word would ever pass that frontier unchecked; not even a hollow, sapless tree was allowed to hear that hypocrisy.
    Towards what might be dawn, he slept. By the morning, no creature had worried him, and a vague sense of hope had begun to return. Perhaps he could survive? Maybe he had some deep, inspired understanding of the wilderness. Many great explorers underestimated their gift until confronted by extreme adversity; his inventive mind may be capable of transcending these base afflictions. Other, lesser beings had triumphed before when tested thus.
    He was beginning to feel the warm flood of confidence, when he saw his boots. They had been hand-made in Marseille, adventure boots, worn to confound and conquer the savage lands. The straps that held them in place had been eaten through, gnawed away, so that only stubs remained either side of the nibbled leather tongue. He sat bolt upright to observe the outrage, wiping the morning dew from his eyes and face. It was sticky and pungent. He looked at what he had removed and sank with the realisation that it wasn’t dew: it was saliva. He was soaked in it. He scrabbled to his feet, banging his head and knees against the rough interior of the gnarled oak, causing a shower of dry fungi to crumble and snow about his departure. He lurched out of the tree’s vertical enclosure, flailing at his wet clothes and his soggy hair in a pathetic attempt to wipe the mess away. His indifferent boots became loose and vacant, twisting away from his agitated feet, so that he stumbled over them on the wet, thorny ground, which grabbed at his socks and bare ankles. He yelped, hopped and slid, falling face down into a gully full of mud and harsh stones, the Derringer firing a deafening, burning blast.
    He lay there, hoping he was dead. Nothing had ever been as bad as this; his Paris apartment seemed like a dream he had never had. Then, with the pistol’s fire still ringing in his ears, he heard Seil Kor’s voice, far off but distinct.
    ‘Seil Kor!’ he bellowed frantically. ‘Seil Kor!’ He called again and again, and then got a clear reply.
    ‘Do not move, effendi! Just call, I will come to you.’
    This they did for hours, without success. Sometimes his voice seemed further away, lost in the depths and twists of the vast, impenetrable forest’s endless animal trails. Two or three times, the Frenchman heard something move in the thickets of trunks and leaves, but it was not his salvation; more likely, it was his demise stalking him, the recent taste of his body on its breath. He plucked the reloaded Derringer from his pocket and turned a full circle. Then he saw it. Far back in the trees, a hunched, grey creature was watching him. He could not make out its form; it might even have been human. A twig snapped behind the Frenchman and he span in the opposite direction.
    ‘Effendi!’
    Seil Kor was coming towards him, parting the leaves with a purposeful grace.
    He rushed to the tall figure and flung his arms around him, bursting into tears, his diminutive, brightly robed body shaking against the protection of the quiet black man. He was saved. Then he remembered the thing watching him, and he untangled himself, looking back to see if it was still there. It had moved to a point a little further away, shadowed but still watching. He clutched Seil Kor with one hand and pointed with the other.
    ‘Do you see it?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes, but I wish I did not.’
    ‘What is it?’
    There was a long pause while Seil Kor again made the gesture of moving his hand above his head. The creature moved into a patch of bright light. It was a kind of human. Its skin was grey and wrinkled, like that of a primate deprived of fur. It was motionless in their observation.
    ‘What is it?’ he asked again.
    ‘I fear it is Adam,’ answered Seil