Black Gods, Green Islands (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Black Gods, Green Islands

The welcoming embrace of the sun invited them to join him for a morning walk through the forest. He was a warm host, leading them until the blue of deep forest slowly became, in his fullest power, a mottled smear of emerald.

They came after a short walk to a large clearing beside which grew a holy mapou tree. It was a huge pylon that seemed to be an ancestor of the forest. Gionda stood before it and, lifting her delicate head, she bleated a call to its distant leaves. She pranced to its base and without lowering her head she withdrew. She turned left and bleated and, moving quickly, she circled the clearing, repeating her call.

The hunter stood in the center of the clearing, watching the beauti ful creature move in the ritual. He looked up at the great tree, its trunk bound halfway by tie-tie vines. The parasite orchid fretted it with clusters of spiny leaves and sprays of pale yellow ﬂowers. Above the vines the trunk was a smooth naked shaft of gray to near its top, where the branches and leaves burst into a dark green ball. The hunter remembered tales of his childhood that told of men who climbed such trees. In the leaves, it was said, they had seen the frowning faces of gods - they fell in one long cry of dying.

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