The relatively balmy, but still chilly, days of Summer gradually gave way to those of Autumn. As the oak and ash foliage changed hue, Ivory’s life settled into a pattern as deceptively stable as Glade’s had once been. She wasn’t pleased that she’d become the chief’s concubine, but the duty brought with it the benefit that she no longer had to accompany the other women in their daily woodland forage. And however jealous she was of Glade’s love, she’d grown to accept her lover’s occasional infidelity. In fact, she was even persuaded to share her connubial love for Glade with Oak Leaf.

As a lover, Oak Leaf was no match at all. It was Glade as ever who took the lead, but as Oak Leaf’s inhibitions shed while her passion grew, she was revealed as a lover whose enthusiasm compensated for lack of practice. Although Ivory appreciated the taste of Oak Leaf’s tender, firm flesh, she also regretted that the woman with whom she shared her body with the shaman was not the husband Ivory had once expected as her due.

Not all Ivory’s life was a constant bout of lovemaking, although it sometimes seemed to be so. There was much to learn from the shaman and most of this was of a practical nature. She was taught the properties of selected herbs and fungi and for which ailments they were most efficacious. She was taught about their non-medicinal recreational use and exactly how they were to be prepared. She was taught how honey and fruit could metamorphose into alcohol. Much of what Ivory was taught was concerned with the care of illnesses and wounds for which no drug was appropriate. She learnt how to set splints for broken limbs and how to identify those ailments for which the best advice was rest and recuperation.

Glade also instructed her apprentice in incantations and dances about which she adamantly claimed there was no mystery or magic. “It’s what people expect from a shaman and it wouldn’t be right to disappoint them.”

The shaman taught Ivory wholly practical skills such as how to mould clay into the shape of casks and urns and then heat them into firm but fragile use. Ivory learnt how to weave reeds into baskets or cord. She learnt how to knap flints and carve bone to make delicate instruments that could be used to sew together wounds or clothing. Glade also taught Ivory some rudimentary words from the many languages at her disposal that she used in her incantations.

“What language did you speak when you lived in the river village?” Ivory asked.

“When we spoke to those from other tribes we still used the language of the Knights,” said Glade. “This was the one legacy of the Knights that survived, although Dignity tried to learn the language of the Forest People. She had difficulty understanding the concepts of forest-life, but she was soon able to talk relatively freely. It was peculiar to hear my tongue uttered by a non-native. She’s probably the only person I’ve ever known who learnt to speak our language and who wasn’t born in the forest. The Knights’ other practices and customs were soon completely forgotten. As the moons passed, we were no longer recognisable as the shaven creatures from the time of our enslavement. My hair grew from stubble until it cascaded over my ears and eventually onto my shoulders. Not all tribes grew hair like mine or even yours. The Knights had straight hair like ours, but it was jet black, darker than even their skin, and shone with a bluish lustre in the sun. Other tribes had dull dark hair that sometimes curled around on itself. Fern’s lover, Mahogany, had hair that barely grew longer than a finger in length and it was so tightly curled that it seemed even shorter.”

Tree Shrew and Glade laboured hard in their ambition to have children but their lovemaking soon became as much an act of desperation as one of pleasure. Glade at last believed she was pregnant when two or three moons passed by when she no longer vented blood between her thighs. She was troubled not by the familiar pains of menstruation but by new more frightening ones. Modesty advised her, as she gripped her baby to her bosom, that these were signs that she would soon show more visible evidence of oncoming motherhood.

Then, after a night of stabbing pain and vomiting, Glade miscarried. This was the first of many such miscarriages that were to blight her in the future.

“It seemed as if I was destined to never have children,” Glade sighed.

“But you did later,” Ivory reminded the shaman.

“For someone who’s made love to as many men as I have and so often, I should now be the mother of an entire tribe,” Glade remarked. “But the first loss was the worst of all. It troubled Tree Shrew even more than it did me.”

He truly and deeply wished to be a father. After Glade miscarried he made love more often to other women, including Dignity. Most of his lovers were Forest Women, such as Duiker, a girl two or three years younger than Glade, and Genet, a woman several years older. For the first time in her life Glade felt the pangs of jealousy, even of rejection. She relapsed into the custom of fucking the men of the village as randomly as she could and slept every night together with Macaque and Dignity.

The life Glade was now enjoying was as idyllic as any she would ever know. It was almost a welcome reprise of childhood. Everyone was accorded equal status and it seemed that the village was bathed in smiles. However, as Glade couldn’t yet know, this was a state of affairs that wouldn’t last forever.

As the moons passed and the villagers mostly forgot their habit of servitude, they were reminded of their shared legacy when more strangers found their way through the forest to the village. Most were not Forest People and had abandoned villages that had been seized from the Knights. The new regime that prevailed after the revolution wasn’t to everyone’s liking.

Mimosa’s tribe had ascended in status from being just one of the many enslaved tribes to one that assumed primacy over all the others. Those like the Forest People who were least adaptable to the Mountain Warriors’ culture discovered that they were no longer so welcome. As the refugees arrived in dribs and drabs, some opting to settle down in the village and others to move on, they carried news of the world Glade had left behind.

A new history was taking shape of the recent revolution and it was one which differed from the account Glade knew from overhearing her captors’ conversation. The story now was that there had been a rebellion led by a martyr who had died an honourable death and was now venerated as the father of the revolution. Glade was surprised to learn that the martyr’s name was Rock Baboon and she wondered whether it was the man of the same name who’d been murdered in her village. Perhaps it was just a very common name. The tale was also of the Mountain Warriors’ Queen who had led the resultant revolt and that it was she who’d assassinated the King of the Knights. This surprised Glade even more. She’d not been aware that Mimosa’s people even had a Queen. But the stories that circulated were undoubtedly rousing. These were tales of her bravery in the face of the Knights’ cruel vindictiveness and of how she inspired revolt among other tribes as well as the Mountain Warriors. The legend of her courage and leadership was further embellished by reports from the more recent visitors who, even though they’d abandoned the savannah, were united in their respect for this Queen. Glade was also stirred to admiration.

Then she discovered that the Queen’s name was Mimosa. And not only this, but that she had been the slave and forced concubine of the wicked and thoroughly evil Queen of all Knights.

This was the first time that Glade discovered how legends were manufactured, of their potency and, most of all, how very untrue they could be.

“Are you saying that this Queen Mimosa was the same woman who shared your hut with Lady Demure?” asked Ivory who wondered how this could be.

“The very same.”

“How can that be?” wondered Ivory. She attached great value to the legends of her tribe and had never once doubted their truth.

“Evidently, Mimosa had chosen to reinvent herself as she would like to be remembered,” said Glade with an ironic smile. “The worst of it was not just that Mimosa was now the person of the highest status in what had once been the Knights’ domain but that her people had resurrected the same hierarchical order that was so alien to my tribe.”

As was to be the pattern for the rest of Glade’s life, when change came, as in retrospect it was so obvious it would, it came unexpectedly. It was while Glade was making love with Macaque and Dignity that she heard a hubbub of excitement from outside their hut. Although it was midday and most people would normally be either hunting in the forest or sheltering in their huts away from the oppressive midday heat, these were the animated sounds most often heard at dusk or in the early morning.

Glade was enjoying cunnilingus and didn’t welcome the interruption. Dignity’s strong white teeth were chewing her labia and her own tongue and fist was busily agitating Macaque’s moist vagina, which had already spurted onto Glade’s chin and cheeks. The smell of Macaque’s pleasure was overpowering and intoxicating, but Glade was intent on returning her tongue to Dignity’s salty sweat-sodden black skin, perhaps even to chew once again on the odorous hairs under her armpits.

The light into the hut was momentarily obscured as Tree Shrew scrambled in. He crouched down by the three women and smiled indulgently at their lovemaking. It was likely that he was tempted to take part as he would have been very welcome to do, but instead he addressed the women with urgency.

“We have visitors,” he announced.

“So?” said Macaque. “Can’t it wait? We’re busy.”

“There are seven or eight of them,” Tree Shrew continued heedlessly. “They’re Mountain Warriors, like Mimosa, and they want to address the whole village.”

“Do they wish to join our village?” asked Dignity. She asked in good faith, but it was clear she was alarmed by the announcement. No Mountain Warrior had ventured into the village before and she remembered too well their threats to kill her and the other surviving Knights.

“I think they’re a kind of delegation from the Queen,” he said. “You know, this Queen Mimosa we’ve heard so much about.”

“I think we’ll stay here,” said Macaque, on behalf of herself and her lover. “My last memories of that woman aren’t very good ones.”

Glade decided otherwise and followed Tree Shrew out of the hut. At the village’s heart was a gathering of all the villagers with the exception of the refugee Knights. Or all the Knights that is, except Venerable who sat behind everyone else hoping that his shoulder length hair and thick beard might disguise him from the delegation who were sitting opposite the villagers. The Mountain Warriors were a mixture of men and women, all with bushy black hair. They were armed with stone-tipped spears and wore about their shoulders, but not below the bosom, the skins of zebra, cheetah and baboon, intertwined with bright feathers.

“Didn’t they cover their genitals or breasts?” asked Ivory.

“There are fewer tribes than you imagine that believe it shameful to display proof of their sex,” Glade remarked.

The delegation was kneeling and strangely silent. This simple fact was enough to hush the normally boisterous villagers. Glade could see that it would be prudent that one of her company should take the initiative of addressing the visitors and as she had learnt a few words of Mimosa’s language during her enslavement, she could see that the onus was on her.

“We welcome you to our humble village,” she said in as close as she could remember to the mode of address Mimosa might employ. “We wish you fruitful hunting and good eating.”

“You speak the language of the Mountain Warriors?” asked the short slightly tubby woman who was acting as the delegation’s chief spokesperson.

“Only a few words,” said Glade. She then spoke in the most universally understood language: “Most of us speak only the language of the detestable Knights.” And, as she guessed was appropriate, she diplomatically spat on the ground.

The woman was clearly impressed by Glade’s show of abhorrence toward the Knights and spoke almost kindly.

“The Knights’ language will have to do,” she said in a thick accent with a clumsy syntax that betrayed lack of recent use. “You will be pleased to know that after a period of transition after you have all learnt the language of our Queen, you will no longer need to utter the hated hyena barks of our cruel tormentors. In fact, you will be forbidden to do so.”

This declaration sent a shiver down Glade’s spine, as it also did amongst the other Forest People. They were not accustomed to being told what they should or should not do. What language they chose to speak was surely not a decision to be made by people from another tribe.

“I am Lady Geranium, daughter of Lady Diascia and chief of my village,” the woman said. “We come with the blessing of Queen Mimosa to bring you salvation and protection. I would ask you all to bow your heads in respect to our Queen who has brought liberation and order to the world.”

The villagers did so, although rather more from fear than from respect.

“As you know,” continued Lady Geranium, in her rusty version of the Knights’ language, “until recently we were all in the thrall of the evil shaven demons. It is thanks to the leadership, wisdom and courage of our Queen that we are now liberated and need no longer submit to their perverse sexual demands or humble ourselves to the menial chores they were too lazy and stupid to perform themselves. We have all suffered, our Queen as much as any, at the hands of their despised leader and our Queen’s mistress, although such a title is now wholly inappropriate for one of the damned.”

Lady Geranium paused for effect and scrutinised the faces arrayed in front of her, particularly so, Glade thought, at Venerable who must be hoping he’d not been recognised as a member of the damned.

“Nevertheless, despite the heroic efforts of our Queen and her warriors, the demons’ evil yet persists in the world,” the woman continued. “The perverts still roam the savannah and beyond, carrying with them their foul ways and their idolatrous religion. Although we have disposed of all those we have found and trampled into the dust the carved idols they venerated, there remains the risk that they may once again band together and terrorise us. Indeed, there are often reports of evil that can only be attributed to the cruelty of a race of which this world is best totally rid. As long as there remains the risk that even one of their tribe yet roams free, our Queen has sworn to protect all those within her reach.”

A distinct hint of menace was carried by Lady Geranium’s words that reminded Glade of Mimosa’s unswerving beliefs. She glanced at Venerable as did others in the village, which unfortunately alerted their guests to the same individual.

“As I said, the Queen has sworn to defend all those within her realm who are under threat from the demons,” continued Lady Geranium. “I shall leave in this village three of our number who will execute this task and who shall instruct you in the customs of the Queen and her subjects. We shall construct shrines to the worship of spirits whose eyes will watch over you when the warriors cannot. For this service, the Queen expects from her grateful subjects only a small tithe. A trifling price I’m sure you’ll agree for the security of knowing that the demons shall never again plague the world.”

From then on, Lady Geranium elucidated in detail what duties were expected of the village. These principally required the villagers to put aside a proportion of the harvest from the forest and the river that would be collected by the Queen’s representatives every other moon. This was in addition to the duty of feeding and housing the three warriors who would now be permanent guests in the village. As the woman continued, Glade felt bit by bit the slipping away of the way of life that had grown so organically amongst the villagers. It resembled very much the rule of the Knights, different only that instead of enslavement in the direct service of their new masters, duty was now required from a distance. As she studied the stern gazes of the warriors surrounding Lady Geranium, it was obvious that the village could only survive if it agreed to her terms.

What troubled Glade more than anything else was whether she should also surrender to Queen Mimosa’s rule and whether there was another choice. There was also the nagging and increasingly stark concern about the safety of her beloved Dignity.

At last, Lady Geranium paused to signal that she’d finished her prepared speech. She smiled at the company gathered around her, but it wasn’t a warm smile. Rather, it was one of triumph.

“The demons are sly,” she resumed. “They infiltrate innocent communities, confident that, no longer shorn of their hair and hidden amongst other races, they can pass unnoticed. They pretend to be from another dark-skinned tribe: sometimes even the Queen’s own. However, we have become expert in identifying such devils in our midst. We know that the villagers who shelter these monsters do so in pure ignorance and are therefore blameless. Even here, so many days’ walk from the next village, there is such a menace.”

Lady Geranium nodded at her fellows, three of whom stood up and waded through the villagers who’d been sitting cross-legged during her address. Everyone knew where they were heading, including Venerable, who meekly surrendered himself to the three warriors.

His act of placation wasn’t enough. He was grabbed forcefully by the shoulders and dragged roughly to the front. Although he didn’t struggle, he was punched several times in the face by a Mountain Warrior who wore a head-dress of a leopard’s skull and appeared to be more senior than the others. Venerable’s face was soon a bloody wreck. One eye was dripping blood and his nose and lips were burst and bleeding profusely. He was then punched in the stomach so that he fell onto the ground as a huddled wreck in front of Lady Geranium.

“It may surprise you to know,” said Lady Geranium conciliatorily, “that this man who has inveigled his way into your village is a demon. They are clever tricksters and I am sure that none of you knew that you were harbouring such evil in your company. He will not survive the day, but he will be questioned before he is dispatched. It is certain that where there is one such as him, there are others. It is our service to you and our duty to the Queen to hunt out all such demons and dispose of them.”

Glade regarded the frightened trembling black bundle at Lady Geranium’s feet that already seemed less than human. What little dignity he had was lost as he evacuated his bowels. This unconscious act earned him a kick in the face that sprawled him face-down onto the dust. Would the same treatment be meted out on Dignity and the other Knights?

The villagers dispersed, not one of them looking quite as grateful as Lady Geranium supposed at her promise of salvation. Glade was anxious. Would the new visitors find Macaque and Dignity before she had the chance to warn them?

“Pssst!” she heard. She looked about her and spotted Tree Shrew standing in the forest shadows. He signalled towards her urgently. Although Glade’s original intention was to go straight to Macaque’s hut, she dashed over to him. She was glad to return to the comforting shadows of the tall trees.

“Did you hear what they’re going to do to Dignity?” she asked in a low whisper.

“Only if they find her,” said Tree Shrew. “I sneaked off as soon as I caught the gist of what that woman was saying. I warned the others about what was coming and they’ve all fled into the forest.”

“Thank the spirits of the canopy!” said Glade with relief. “But they’ll be hunted down and killed. They’ve got to get a long way from here!”

“The Knights and some other villagers are running through the forest to gather by the great bark tree. We must get there too before the Mountain Warriors have the opportunity to get organised. Thankfully, they aren’t as skilled as us in navigating through the woods.”

Glade nodded. “I’d be wise to go now too. It is better that we flee singly and not in a group. To do so would just attract attention. Be careful who you talk to. Some villagers might be more eager to earn the favours of our…” Glade hesitated as she comprehended the implications of her own words, but she continued nevertheless. “…of our new masters, than to protect the Knights. I don’t think everyone has forgiven them.”

“Do you really think so?” asked Tree Shrew ingenuously.

“Don’t tell everyone,” Glade continued. “It may be the Knights they want to kill, but I don’t think a person who obstructs the Mountain Warriors will be shown any more mercy than was shown Venerable.”

Glade hastened into the shelter of the forest and glanced back only briefly at the village where she had lived for nearly a year. She was already remembering her days there with sadness: a life which only that morning seemed set to last forever. She knew well the great bark tree where she was to congregate as did any of her tribe who’d wandered the forest and were familiar with the trees of the forest that were most fruitful. None of the other tribes could have found their way through the dense foliage as easily as the Forest People. The Knights would make somewhat slower progress. She paused only to pluck fruits or scrabble for mushrooms to replenish her energy, but she had never before rushed through the thicket with such haste. Her fear was that she was being followed, or, if not her, someone else from her tribe who was following Tree Shrew’s directions.

She caught up with Modesty and her child before she’d run half-way to her destination. There was no sign of Dignity and Macaque, but there were three Forest People and two other Knights in this company. These Knights were a couple, like Modesty and Venerable, who’d survived the revolution because they’d shown kindness towards their slaves, but they were younger and childless. Modesty was agitated and kept glancing back over her shoulder.

“Have you seen my husband?” she asked Glade as soon as she greeted them. “Is he coming from behind? I thought he might be with you.”

Glade was tempted to lie. She could see Modesty’s distress and didn’t want to worsen it. But what could she say?

“He’s dead,” she said at last. “He was killed by the Queen’s emissaries.”

“You saw him being killed?”

Glade lied, but only to emphasise the futility of Modesty’s concern. “Yes,” she said. “But he died quickly. He is even now with the spirits of the river.”

As she spoke, she envisaged not his death, which she described more as that of Flying Squirrel when her people first met the Knights, but the suffering he was no doubt still enduring as the Mountain Warriors interrogated him. Modesty would know as well as Glade that this would not be painless, but rather more like the torture the Knights once used to inflict on their slaves. He would already be welcoming the prospect of death.

Modesty collapsed into a wailing grief that startled the monkeys in the trees above them. They launched into a cacophony that reciprocated Modesty’s misery.

“My husband was a good man!” she wailed. “He didn’t deserve to die. Many Knights did, but not him. His happiest days were when he lived in the river village with you Forest People. Even before the revolution he loved your tribe. He said that, instead of being our slaves, you should be our mentors. Your peaceful ways and your tolerance were an inspiration to him. And now he is dead. Dead!”

The other two Knights, Fortitude and Mercy, were embarrassed by Modesty’s outburst. The Knights had no tradition of expressing anything more than respectful comfort to the dead. They were too young, in any case, to know the right thing to say. Glade handed over the young child to the couple to take care of and showered Modesty with hugs and kisses that at last pacified her.

“We must hurry,” she told Modesty. “The Mountain Warriors will be looking for us. You must think of your young son.”

Modesty nodded. Tears had dampened her face as it had Glade’s shoulder and bosom.

“At least we knew some happy days together,” she said philosophically. “Perhaps my husband didn’t die in vain. He showed that even though my tribe was cruel, we could also be capable of kindness and of living together in harmony with people from other tribes.”