I never felt sorry for the fact, for he was a bully who deserved to die. You can only take so much abuse even when your are only thirteen years old.

One night my father went after my mother in one of his mad carnivals of rage, so I stabbed him in the chest a dozen times, I guess. He didn’t really fight me all that much; I think he was surprised.

I held him by the hairy throat and stabbed until he went limp and crumpled like an empty sack of bloody fur. I even put my foot upon his neck and screamed out my final defiance there.

I was glad that he was dead.

I left him curled on the ground, and no one even went over to see if he was dead. It was pretty obvious.

We left him where he fell for the ants or any thing else that wanted him. No one touched my dead father, and he never touched anyone again.

I yelled at the people standing around to leave me and my mother alone, and they did at least for awhile.

* * *

My mother and I got along fine until I was eighteen. I loved her, and she loved me -- her only son, the one who had delivered her from the madness of her mate.

We could have lived forever in our happiness had not a murderer come into our lives -- a man-beast who robbed me of the only love I had ever known.

The poison of a wicked arrow split my mother’s heart and infected my own. I fell upon her body and sobbed like a baby -- the most beautiful thing in my life was gone forever.

It was at dawn that my mother died. I followed the tracks of the man and found an archer killing a pig. When he had finished his breakfast, I ate the scraps and followed him into the forest. He was the first human I had ever seen.

I followed him all day long, watching as he killed more things -- a hyena and a monkey. All it took was one scratch from a sliver of wood. At night the man slept, and I took the little sticks and the thing that made them fly with death. I captured the poison that had killed my mother.

In the morning, the man began to run, but I stayed close above him in the trees until we came to a clearing with many strange lairs -- and I dropped my rope around his neck.

The man screamed as I drew him up by the neck, but I soon put an end to the noise, stabbing him through the heart with my knife.

Thus my mother was avenged.

I took the murderer’s knife and a few other things he wore. He was lucky I didn’t feel like eating his flesh.

I just left his naked body upon the ground.

* * *

I fell in love with the first woman I ever saw.

She had white skin like my own, and I looked at her from a distance for hours. I did not want to frighten her away.

Her golden hair shimmered like a waterfall, falling about her oval face in waving lines, falling, falling in waves below her waist it tumbled down.

I killed for this woman.

I killed an ape who wanted her for his own.

I kissed her lips, and in that moment she loved me too. It was a burning brand that seared my soul.

She tried to push me away, but I carried her into the jungle.

She only struggled a little while. When she relaxed in my arms, I relaxed too.

We passed through the forest as if by magic to the place I had killed my father. There I fed her and stroked her hair as my mother had once my own to comfort me.

I touched my lips upon her forehead, and she sighed.

That night I made a bed of ferns and grasses upon the ground. I gave her my locket, and we kissed it one after the other. It contained the ivory miniatures of a man and a woman who were my real parents, yet I did not know.

We did not sleep together. I gave her my knife, and she entered the bower alone, while I slept across the entrance in peace.

We spent the next day together, but I returned her to her own people. We kissed at parting, and she murmured, “I love you -- I love you,” and “I shall wait for you -- always.”

I did not understand her language.

I did not see her again until I came to the New World.

* * *

I crossed continents and oceans for my love. I saved her from a raging fire and the blazing lust of another man. Yet in the end, I left her to another.

I never knew my father, and my mother was an ape.

________

The End of Book One

________

Then, I was lost in a lost city where was spread a movable feast until at last I was cast into the sea. I came up from this baptism upon my childhood shore, born again into my apehood where birds soared with brilliant plumage in a tropic garden of blooming flowers, festooned creepers falling in great loops from the giant trees.

In the cauldron of a black village I rose from ape to savage, wearing virgin gold about my arms and feet. We harvested the ivory from many elephants together, and I saved them from the wicked Arabs until I became their chosen king.

We went to the treasure city in the bowels of the jungle fastness, and there men shuffled lower than I had ever been -- half-man, half-ape -- yet without beauty -- form corrupted -- diabolical.

Only the women were beautiful -- symmetrical and well-proportioned -- they had soft black eyes and soft black hair. I could not help but notice in those caverns and dark chambers.

A single slit of sun poured down through a vertical shaft, looking down upon me naked upon an altar of stone. There a jeweled woman hovered over me and sang her song of the jeweled knife.

She was the bride of the darkest caverns, condemned to mate with bestiality. I could not love her even though I was the man of her daydreams ever since she was a little girl.

I could not love her, yet she saved me, and I walked away with her virgin gold.

Then I saw my one true vision -- she of the golden hair -- with a man dressed in rat skin, and I saw red through a bloody mist of murder. Yet I saved them from a lion, bowed my head and turned away in sadness.

I suffered sorrow of a freshly opened heart wound -- like a beast I suffered in silence and alone.

I returned to my own people, completing the cycle of evolution, returned to be once again a brute among brutes. An ape at the beginning, an ape I would die.

Yet, when my love fell into the dark caverns with the beast-like men, when she lay upon the bloody altar beneath the knife of the dark beauty, I returned and took her away.

I said three words, “She is mine,” and bounded through the pits into the sunshine, carrying my unconscious love.

When she awoke, I thanked God and called her “dear” and “dear” again. We had passed through death together, and she thought I was a spirit rising in another dream.

She said, “kiss me, dear, just once before I lose my dream forever,” and I did a hundred times.

I had dropped like a plummet, from civilization, to savage, to brute -- yet I had returned for her.

We walked hand in hand beneath the arching boughs of the mighty forest, as might in a far-gone past have walked our primeval forbears.

I was in the garden with her, then we married. We married in the place of my birth beside the graves of my mother and father, surrounded by the savage jungle that always has been my home.

We left this place forever, yet I still hoped I might someday return.

_______

The End of Book Two