Luana Read Free Page A

above, Ohoh and Wu nearly fell off the branch with laughter. Chaugh, who knew man-sister’s abilities a little better, merely growled knowingly.
    Jukakhan coughed, snarled. The sound would have chilled the blood of a normal man, but Luana could read the lion’s eyes.
    “I still keep my opinion—but I modify it, too.”
    “As well you’d better,” Luana grinned. “If I’d used the other end you’d now have a hole in you large enough for a fanged one to pass through.”
    “True enough,” agreed Chaugh.
    “All right, brother,” Jukakhan replied playfully, cuffing the panther on the side of his head. “I have confessed my error; let me be, now.”
    “Yes, let it be, you two great corpulent shouting idiots!” chittered Ohoh. He bounced back and forth on his branch above while Wu watched tolerantly. Taunting the big cats was the young chimp’s greatest pleasure at times.
    “And you, chatterbox,” Jukakhan called, “mind your manners or one day I shall set sentiment aside and have you for breakfast.”
    Ohoh ripped off a large brown nut and threw it. It bounced off Chaugh’s flank and the panther started.
    “You and what five others, blowhard?”
    Luana giggled, a high, musical tinkling like water running onto metal plates. Her brothers were pleased. It was an odd sound and one they had tried to copy, without success. Nor could they properly analyze how it affected them. Nonetheless, they were pleased.
    Luana continued to grow. When her too small rags finally succumbed to the subtle onslaught of weather and dry rot, she made small bindings for parts of her body from animal skin. She still foraged in the trees with Ohoh and Wu for fruits and edible leaves, a pastime which Jukakhan and Chaugh found unbearably insulting. They could not understand how, now that she was a fine hunter, she could continue to eat weeds and roots. Luana continued to eat vegetable matter from force of habit, which was just as well for her. A diet of pure meat and fish would not have been good.
    Her brothers’ protests and arguings would vanish when she took up the metal claws and went with them to the hunting places. Working together, the three of them rarely failed to bring down a fine wildebeest or impala or wart-hog. Then a good hunt would be followed by a better meal.
    Nor would any other predators ever dispute their kill. Luana was a strange, threatening figure to most, and Jukakhan and Chaugh were true giants of their kind. The three roamed at will, crossing territories with impunity. Somehow Luana would convince a territory master that they meant no challenge, and so they passed where others would have been called to fight to the death. Even the Great Pride took no exception when the three crossed its section of veldt and forest, the females merely snarling irritably and keeping a closer eye on their cubs. Not a few eyed the towering Jukakhan with something quite other than animosity.
    Wu had continued to age. A day came when the old chimpanzee was startled by a harmless tree-lizard. She jumped quickly for a nearby branch, but age and decaying strength betrayed her and she crashed to the forest floor far below. All mourned, but only Ohoh disappeared.
    They searched for him all along the Rift Valley, through new mountains where Luana found a strange shiny thing, and among the tallest trees of the thickest jungle. Luana had begun to fear that he had, made indifferent by misery, fallen prey to some other unknown predator.
    The three of them were dividing the first haunch of a fresh-killed buck antelope when Ohoh finally reappeared.
    “Where have you been, big mouth?” Jukakhan rumbled. The big cat was unable to show emotion but his growl was far from threatening.
    Ohoh didn’t reply immediately. Instead, he settled himself in the crotch of a tree, peeled a banana with careful deliberation, and threw the peel at Chaugh.
    “Out killing elephants, oh slayers of sparrows!”
    That was the time both Chaugh and Jukakhan were