Feather Woman of the Jungle Read Free

power she had turned him into the form of image for he had trespassed her jungle. She explained furthermore that we too could change into that of images if we disobeyed her. But of course, when she told us like that I hastly interrupted that it was too risky to live in her jungle and that we would leave there for another place because we did not want to turn into images at all. But with great annoyance, she replied at the same time that willing or not, once we had come to her jungle we would not be allowed to go away without being tested or if we attempted to leave there after she had gone away we would turn into the images at once.
    Now, as we heard like that from her again, another serious fear came into our minds. We did not know what to do again more than to agree to what she had told us to do. Immediately this Feather Woman or the Jungle Witch had explained to us like that, she walked back to her changeling ostrich and mounted it. She started to ride it along on a rough narrow path which was behind that hut and her birds were making great noises as they were following her. To our surprise and fear was that after a few seconds we did not see her and her birds on that path. Whether she was disappeared with her birds or sunk into the ground, we did not understand but that was another fear and embarrassment to us.
    After this Feather Woman or Jungle Witch had disappeared,I went back to that images. I was looking at them with wonder. When I noticed well, I saw that they were real human beings in appearance although their bodies were mud. And when I touched their bodies were warming as if blood was in them. Sometime they seemed as if they winked and sometime as if they attempted to move the heads, arms and legs. So that showed me that in fact, they were alive although they were partly mud. Again I noticed their surroundings and I saw that there were plenty of broken and worn-out whips were lying all over the ground and in the front of them and that showed me as well that the Feather Woman used to flog them whenever she liked.
    Having seen all that again, I went back to the hut, Alabi and I sat down quietly, every one of us supported his jaw with left palm and we were looking at every part of the jungle which was as quiet as a grave yard. After a while, just to expel our fear and sorrow for some time, I went around the hut, I collected some wood and brought them to the hut. I made fire in the fireplace or hearth which was in the hut. After we warmed our bodies for some minutes and we forgot our fear and sorrow then we went far away from there. We collected plenty of big fresh fruits and brought them back to the hut. Then we roasted some of them in the fire. But to our fear again, as we were eating that nuts, all that images were seemed that moment as if they were begging us to give them from the roasted nuts to eat as well.
    When it was night and when the jungle had become too dark, we made big fire near the hut before we slept that night. But it was hardly in the following morning when I saw that this old woman, the Jungle Witch, rode her changeling ostrich to the hut. The noises of her birds woke Alabi, for he was still sleeping. Having noticed us that we were still in there, she rode direct to the images and when she came down from the ostrich, she put down the bunch of the strong whipswhich she had put on the back of the ostrich. The whips were more than one hundred. Then as both of us stood up, held the pillar of the hut, kept quiet and were looking on with great fear. There we saw that she took one of the whips, she walked to the extreme right of the images. She started to flog all of them as she was walking up and down in front of them. She flogged every one of them from head to feet until the whole whips were torn into pieces. As she was flogging them it was so she was snorting and sneezing repeatedly. And with her snappishness, so she was abusing and scorning them despite they were seemed as if they were sobbing as she