Max grunted softly as the monster before him withdrew its leafy tentacle from his stomach. He watched as the barbed appendage, covered in his blood, relaxed its sword-like rigidity and resumed writhing.
When he looked down, he saw that blood was pouring from a wound nearly four inches across, running down his hip, and covering his inner thigh.
Max brought his trembling hands to the wound. He sank to his knees. He looked up at the monster before him, now barely comprehending anything he saw.
Another of its tentacles snapped forward, pointing at his neck. He knew that was bad, knew he should do something to avoid what was about to happen to him, but he couldn’t move. All he could feel was the pulsing of the blood rushing out of his stomach and pouring over his hands.
Distantly, he heard the sound of a great shimmering bell. He looked down. A second creature had appeared by his knee.
Max stared at it, vaguely puzzled. He noticed first that it had short, downy fur the color of spun gold. Then he saw that it had the small, narrow face of a young fox, great pointed ears each the size of its face, and massive almond eyes that were a uniform black. Its body was lean, and coiled low on the ground as if it was getting ready to pounce, and it had paws that almost resembled hands. Long, furry, delicate hands with thin fingers that ended in tiny golden claws.
Max waited. As the edges of his vision grew dim, he wondered which monster would strike first. As the black eyes of the small, beautiful thing at his side began to glow, he thought he knew the answer.
The sound of a bell came again, much louder than before. A translucent golden globe appeared around the creature, then expanded to envelope them both.
Strange, Max thought, that I couldn’t feel it pass over me.
Light headed, barely conscious, Max looked back to the walking plant monster that had stabbed him. It was outside the bubble now and as he watched it began to lash at the sphere of light with one tentacle after another. Each time it struck the sphere that same shimmering bell tone filled the air.
Max looked down again at the furry creature by his side. His vision had narrowed to a dim tunnel, but he could still see the creature as it tilted its head to look from his face to his stomach.
Max looked down at the sheet of blood that had washed out of him. It had coated his limp hands, his thigh, and begun to soak into the dirt he was kneeling on.
The sound of a bell came again. As Max watched, a shaft of energy, like a blade of pure sunlight, blazed out of his wound. Then he felt the wound cinch closed, like a fist suddenly tightening.
He screamed. The world went dark.
—
Max woke gradually, becoming aware of the relentless, nauseating pain in his stomach before anything else. Delirious dreams filled his halfwaking mind, each offering an explanation of the pain that had become the core of his existence. Each was tinged with a gentle golden light.
In his first dreams he watched as the green monster stabbed him over and over again with one leafy tentacle. It hammered at him repeatedly, like it was trying to stake him down into the ground.
Later he realized each strike must have been part of a different dream, but in his delirium the strikes came one after another with no reprieve between. He could feel the pain before each strike, all of them commingling with the certainty that there was no way he could avoid what was about to happen to him. The event and its anticipation were one, stitched together by the ever present agony in his stomach.
A growing ache in his knees transformed his delirium. He was running. The creature had stabbed him, but he had managed to get up, to get his legs beneath him and run away before it could strike again. In those dreams he was running through the forest as fast as he could, but the creature was always nearly on top of him. At any moment he expected to feel that green blade plunge between his shoulders or into his lower back. So he ran, endlessly, pushing through the jungle undergrowth as every branch and leaf reached out to scratch and claw at his wound. Soon his knees began to scream with the exertion and those chases ended with him collapsing as the monster loomed over him to drive another tentacle into his stomach.
Once, after a brief period of darkness, of nothingness where the pain had receded before true unconsciousness, Max dreamt that he looked down to see the black bird from the orchard perched on his side. It clung to the lower edge of his wound, its great wings spread out as if to block his path, and its beak was bright with his blood. As he watched, it looked up at him with one bright black eye, its head cocked to the side inquisitively. Then it plunged its beak into his wound.
He awoke with a start. The sudden movement, though slight, caused the pain in his side to flare so bright that it sent a wave of nausea through him. He lay very still then, eyes pressed shut until the nausea had crested and the pain returned to a steady throb.
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As the pain steadied, Max opened his eyes again. He was laying on his back staring up into the jungle canopy. It was bathed in the beautiful golden glow of sunset, and even through the pain in his side Max could appreciate the beauty of that rich, vibrant radiance. It occurred to him only gradually, the understanding filtering into his exhausted, sluggish mind, that the light wasn’t fading as sunset should. And the light hadn’t filtered down through the canopy, but filled the jungle from below, as if the sun had set somewhere in the undergrowth.
Grappling with this oddity, Max came more fully awake. He frowned. It wasn’t the glow of sunset he was seeing. Cautiously, afraid any movement would excite the pain in his stomach, Max tilted his head right, then left. The light extended in every direction. No, it surrounded him in every direction, like a bubble.
“Ah,” he said, his voice a crackling rasp.
He remembered. This light had appeared just before he collapsed. And it had come from a small, golden creature that had shielded him from the plant monster. But where had it gone?
Max rolled his head to look to his right side again, but found no sign of the creature. He steeled himself and raised his head a few inches to check by his feet. It wasn’t crouching there either, but he realized, feeling slightly foolish, why his knees had begun to ache. He had fallen onto his back, but his legs were still caught beneath him. They had been twisted to the side so long while he had lain unconscious that they had begun to throb. That, he realized dully, had been why he dreamed of running through the forest so long that his knees had begun to protest.
Slowly, trying to move the rest of his body as little as possible, he straightened his left leg, then his right, gritting his teeth as the pain in his stomach twisted with each movement. He was panting and sweating after the effort, but laying straight felt better, more natural, and he took long, deep breaths until the pain in his stomach settled back to the intensity that demanded most, but not all of his attention.
Max was beginning to drift back into exhausted oblivion when he heard a faint shuffling sound near his head. Panicking, his mind still filled with delirious images of the plant monster trying again and again to kill him with green, blade-sharp tentacles, he tilted his head back to look up. Two great black eyes in a luminous golden face looked back at him. Startled, Max jerked away, but the movement jolted his wound. He screamed.
He heard a crashing in the undergrowth nearby. A moment later the plant monster emerged, looming over the sphere of golden light. Its many leafy tentacles writhed as it came forward and when it reached the edge of the sphere it swung one tentacle down like a lash. When it struck the shield and bounced away with a musical booming sound, another tentacle followed.
Max watched, terrified, as the monster battered at the thin film of light separating them. Finally it paused, apparently understanding the futility of its attacks. It paced for a time near Max’s feet, then slipped back into the undergrowth. As it went, the golden-furred creature that had created the bubble came down to sit by Max’s shoulder, but only when he could no longer hear the monster’s shuffling did Max allow himself to relax and look over at the little golden animal that now sat next to him, peering down at his face.
Even in his muddled mental state, he knew that this was a creature for which he had no reference. Some of its features he recognized, even if he couldn’t say where he'd first seen the animals they came from–fox face, raccoon hands–but he had no name for a creature that claimed all of them.
It didn’t matter. Whatever it was, it had saved him.
“Thank you,” he croaked.
The creature made a warbling chirp in its throat, then continued to watch him, blinking its large eyes impassively.
Cautiously, Max raised his left hand until his knuckles hovered near the creature’s head. He hesitated when he saw the crust of blood on his hand, then let his hand drift backward until only one knuckle grazed the top of the creature’s ear. When the creature didn’t react, he continued until he could stroke the creature’s small head with the back of his hand. Its fur was warm and luxuriously soft, and when it didn’t shy from his touch, just watched his face as he stroked it, he nearly wept.
Max studied the creature as he twisted his hand to pet the thing’s head with his fingertips. Its almond eyes were a featureless black, but he could just see the outline of an iris. Its small, fox-like nose was also black, but its fur, from the tip of its ear to each of its claws, was an unbroken, undifferentiated coat of gold.
And it was glowing, Max realized. He had thought it was the light reflected from the sphere surrounding them, but when he let his fingertips hover over the fur of its head, he could see the gentle light it cast.
“Thank you,” he said again, “little brightling.”
Max lifted his hand away from the creature and let it hover over the wound in his stomach. He remembered the shaft of light that had poured out of it when the creature had first appeared, and the blinding pain as the wound had closed in on itself.
“Can you help me with this?”
The brightling watched him, unmoving.
“You did something to me before. Can you help me again? Can you heal me?”
Max let his hand fall to his side as the creature continued to watch him impassively. Apparently it had done all it had intended to. Maybe all it could do.
A wave of exhaustion swept over him. Sleep, he realized, was simultaneously inviting and terrifying. What if his wound worsened while he slept? What if he never woke up? But sleep would offer a break from the pain. At least for a time.
Hopefully.
Max lifted his arm to make a small space by his chest. He looked over at the creature again.
“Come here, little brightling,” he said. “Please.”
The fox-faced creature crawled under his arm to lean one shoulder against his chest. The pressure was slight, but as Max settled his arm around the brightling’s warm body, he felt some of the tension begin to melt out of his muscles. He was asleep almost as soon as the brightling’s chin settled, feather soft, on his chest.