Forest of the Pygmies Read Free Page A

had a vague awareness of movement and of being connected. They clung to that contact, because it was the one manifestation of their humanity; as long as they were holding hands they were not totally lost.
    Green, they were immersed in total greenness. They began to plunge earthward like arrows, and when impact seemed inevitable, the color diffused, and instead of crashing they floated down like feathers, sinking into surreal vegetation, into the warm, moist, cottony flora of another planet. Dissolving in the mists of that atmosphere, they metamorphosed into transparent medusas. In that gelatinous state, lacking bones to give them form, or strength to defend themselves, or voices to call out, they confronted the violent images passing in rapid succession before them—visions of death, blood, war, and a destroyed forest. A procession of ghosts in chains marched before them, dragging their feet among the carcasses of large animals. They saw baskets filled with human hands, and children and women in cages.
    Suddenly they were once again themselves, in their familiar bodies, and then before them, emerging with the terrifying clarity of the worst nightmares, they saw a threatening three-headed ogre, a giant with the skin of a crocodile. The heads were different: One had four horns and the shaggy mane of a lion; the second had no eyes, was bald, and breathed fire through its nostrils; the third had the skull of a leopard, with bloody teeth and the blazing pupils of a demon. All three had gaping jaws and iguana tongues. The monster clumsily thrust its colossal paws at them, trying to claw them. Its hypnotic eyes bored into them, its three muzzles spewed a thick, poisonous saliva. Again and again Alex and Nadia eluded the ferocious jabs, unable to flee, feeling as if they were mired in a swamp. They evaded the monster for a time that seemed infinite, until suddenly they found they held spears in their hands and they began blindly, desperately, to defend themselves. When they subdued one of the heads, the other two came at them, and if they succeeded in driving back those two, the first returned to the attack. Their weapons broke in the struggle. Then at the final instant, when they were sure to be devoured, they made a superhuman effort and turned into their totemic animals—Alexander into a jaguar and Nadia an eagle—but before that formidable enemy, the ferocity of the first and the wings of the second were impotent . . . Their cries were lost in the bellowing of the ogre.
    â€œNadia! Alexander!”
    The voice of Kate Cold brought them back to the known world, and they found themselves sitting exactly as they had been when their hallucinatory voyage began: in the market in Africa, beneath the straw roof, facing an enormous woman dressed in yellow and blue.
    â€œWe heard you yelling. Who is this woman? What happened?” Alexander’s grandmother asked.
    â€œIt’s nothing, Kate. Nothing at all,” Alexander managed to get out, his head reeling.
    He didn’t know how to explain to his grandmother what he had just experienced. Má Bangesé’s deep voice seemed to reach them from the dimension of their dreams.
    â€œStay on your guard,” the seer warned them.
    â€œWhat happened to you?” Kate repeated.
    â€œWe saw a monster with three heads. It was invincible . . .” Nadia murmured, still dazed.
    â€œStay close to each other. Together you can save yourselves; separated you will die,” said Má Bangesé.
    The next morning the International Geographic group flew in a small plane to the vast nature preserve where Michael Mushaha and his elephant safari awaited them. Alexander and Nadia were still feeling the impact of their experience in the market. Alexander concluded that the rolled leaves the sorceress was smoking contained a drug, but that did not explain the fact that Nadia and he had had identical visions. Nadia did not try to rationalize what had