King of the Woods, or Trivial Pursuit

Part 46 - Anthill

The wind chapped Ray's lips.

His shirt fluttered like a sail.

His asshole puckered.

He liked getting high, but this was ridiculous.

Byron had once told him a story about a man trapped between two tigers. Recognizing that his death was inevitable, the man paused to eat a strawberry and found it sweet. The point was to live in the moment, probably—Ray wasn't sure, because Byron had abandoned the story to get a Pop-Tart.

Being hurled into the sky by a giant tree-man was pretty sweet, as far as certainly fatal experiences went. He savored the moment of carnival ride weightlessness at the top, but the moment passed. There would be a big red smear where he landed, like strawberry jam.

Maybe he was supposed to do some magic. He tried thinking of happy things—his recent sexual experiences, mostly, and salmon skin hand rolls—but gravity did not respond to cognitive therapy. He was too proud to flap his arms.

He reentered the forest canopy like an Apollo capsule. The trees were ready: They gave him no stabs, scrapes, or bruises, and the gossamer touch of countless leaves slowed his descent. He covered his head, bent his knees, and hoped for the best.

He tumbled down a sandy slope without breaking any limbs, but the landing forced grains into his eyelids, nose, mouth, and less comfortable spaces. He cleared out his orifices and sat up, tentatively concluding that he was not paralyzed. He had landed on an enormous mound of dirt, leaving a crater that revealed its porous architecture. No doubt the collapsing tunnels had helped absorb his impact.

"Thanks, Wilson," he said.

The white fringetree's fragrance beckoned. The grove was near.

--

Huntsman ducked beneath a swinging pseudopod made of squirming insects. In this form, the insect spirit fought like a macrophage. It flowed around obstacles, so he put aside any thought of eluding it by leaving the trail. Even if the forest didn't reanimate and devour him, he would be hindered more than the spirits would. No, he would defeat them first, then the boy would be defenseless.

The insect spirit reshaped itself again, shifting its mass into long flagella that whipped at his ankles and corralled him towards the tree spirit - 'Roosevelt,' the boy had called it, and the first one was 'Wilson.'

He leapt into the opening behind one of the tree spirit's wide swings and slammed his boot heel into its face, more to see how it would react than anything. All it got him was a pulled groin-he was getting too old for high kicks, but woe to the fool who told him-and badly bruised ribs. Roosevelt was slow, but powerful enough to stop its club's momentum and even reverse it. Whoever said trees don't hit back was full of crap.

Huntsman winced and counted his ribs. He had been lucky that the tree spirit had a lousy backswing. Lucky that the club was wide enough to spread the impact across his whole side, which would be grape-jelly purple later. He hated feeling lucky. It meant he'd made a mistake

Wilson tried to envelop him, but he put a tree between himself and it. The flagella curved around the trunk, but only on one side—the spirit never split its mass completely in two—and along solid surfaces. When stretched thin, the spirit lacked the strength to hold itself above the ground.

Roosevelt raised its club overhead and slammed it down where Huntsman had been. It attacked again, smashing through branches easily, but the tree trunks limited the angles of its strikes, making them predictable. Visibly frustrated, the tree spirit planted the club like a battle standard and spread its arms wide.