A Minacious Appearance (The Elephant and Macaw Banner - Novelette Series Book 8) Read online

  A Minacious Appearance

  The Elephant and Macaw Banner ®

  Novelette Series – Vol. 8

  by Christopher Kastensmidt

  “A Minacious Appearance” © 2017 Christopher Kastensmidt. All rights reserved.

  The Elephant and Macaw Banner® is a registered trademark of Christopher Kastensmidt.

  Cover art by Ursula “SulaMoon” Dorada.

  Cover design by Cristiane Viana.

  All artwork © 2016 Christopher Kastensmidt. All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-TBD

  Visit our website at:

  EAMB.ORG

  To my con posse: Aliette de Bodard, T.L. Morganfield, Al Bogdan, Terra LeMay and Beth Dawkins

  You have inspired me as writers; you have honored me as friends.

  A potoo perched in the crook of a branch, his feathers blending perfectly with the wood around him. He stared at a small fire in the clearing below, a rare sight in his part of the forest. Two men, one white and one dark, slept in nets hung between trees, close to the fire. They didn’t worry him, though, as no man--not even in the brightest daylight--ever spotted him so high among the trees.

  So, he dismissed the fire and returned his attention to something more important: his nightly song. He opened his beak and called out the first note.

  #

  A shrill blast jolted Gerard from his sleep. The sound was followed by a series of whistles, each one lower in pitch and volume than the last. The song gradually faded away before beginning a second, identical series with a shriek. As the cry repeated, Gerard searched in vain for the source. Oludara also jerked awake in his hammock.

  "Any idea where that blighted noise is coming from?" asked Gerard.

  Oludara first yawned and placed a hand behind his neck to stretch. Then he motioned toward some trees.

  "Over there, I think," he said. "An owl, perhaps? Yet I see none."

  "That song is awful. It sounds like the creature is crying."

  "Indeed," said a child’s voice from near the fire, "they say the potoo’s song foretells death."

  Gerard, already on edge from the doleful melody, jerked around and flipped over his hammock. He fell face first on the ground. He righted himself up to see the silhouette of a child sitting on a log near the fire--a one-legged silhouette.

  Certain that Sacy-Perey had returned to plague them, he pulled himself to his feet and prepared a tongue-lashing for the imp. However, as his eyes adjusted to the firelight, he realized that the child was not black like Sacy, but a native. The child also lacked Sacy’s cap and pants; he wore nothing but three brown feathers in a headband that passed beneath his black hair. Oludara stood at the ready, knife in hand.

  "Who are you?" asked Oludara. "And what are you doing in our camp?"

  "My name is Sacy-Taperey," replied the child, his eyes squinting a warning at Oludara, "and what are you doing in my forest?"

  Gerard gulped at the name. Just what we needed, he thought, another Sacy to plague us. Can’t say the other one didn’t warn us. He decided to placate the creature as quickly as possible.

  "We mean no inconvenience," said Gerard. "I have some fine tobacco if you’d like some."

  Sacy-Taperey, or ‘Sacy Number Two’ as Gerard was already beginning to think of him, stuck his tongue out in reply.

  "Disgusting. For all the good they say it does for the health, I find the flavor appalling." Then his face brightened. "But perhaps you have some sweets on you?"

  "As a matter of fact, I do."

  Gerard rummaged through his pack for his box of crystallized fruits. The chief magistrate of Vitoria had gifted them to Gerard after he and Oludara had rid that city of a trio of monsters which plagued it, just one of the many adventures the two had shared in the year since they bested Guy in Rio. He took a few from the box and offered them to the imp, who snatched them from his palm and tossed them up into his open mouth.

  "Delicious!" he gushed out while still chewing. "I’ve never had anything like them."

  "These came from far away," said Gerard. "You won’t find too many around here." The sweets, imported from Madeira Island, were worth a fortune in Brazil, but Gerard considered them well spent if they appeased the demon.

  Sacy-Taperey locked his fingers behind his head and leaned against the log with a smile. Gerard saw something which appeared to be a snake move behind him, and he opened his mouth to shout a warning, but slapped his hand over it in mid-gasp when he realized the movement was Sacy-Taperey’s wagging tail. It whipped back and forth like that of a contented cat.

  "I suppose we can be friends now," said Sacy-Taperey. "That is, if you care to tell me your names."

  "I’m Gerard van Oost," Gerard said with a tip of his hat.

  Oludara put his knife away, but remained standing. "I am Oludara. You never answered my question, Sacy-Taperey. Why did you come to our camp?"

  "The potoo’s song brought me here. As I told you, it foretells death."

  "Whose death?" asked Gerard, pulling nervously at his goatee.

  "That remains to be seen. And you never answered my question: what are the two of you doing here?"

  "We are headed toward Santos," said Oludara.

  "And what do you plan on doing there?"

  "We’ll see if they need help battling any foul creatures," said Gerard. He made the comment off-hand, then realized who he was speaking with, and stifled back another gasp. He had become too casually accustomed to Sacy-Perey, and felt as if we were speaking with his old acquaintance. Oludara frowned and shook his head at him, and Sacy Number Two’s eyes widened in surprise.

  "You two go in search of creatures to battle?" he asked. His voice had changed, but Gerard couldn’t quite interpret the sentiment.

  "Only the dangerous ones," said Gerard, feeling hot in the face, "those which murder people."

  Sacy-Taperey gave him a grin which he definitely didn’t like.

  "That’s quite a coincidence," he said, "because a creature has been terrorizing Santos for years. And I can lead you to it."

  At that, Sacy-Taperey jumped up and placed his hands on his hips, as if waiting for them.

  "What is this creature?" asked Oludara.

  "You should see for yourself."

  "Umm," said Gerard. "Best to leave that for the morning."

  "We need to go now," said Sacy Number Two. "The creature only comes out at night."

  Oludara looked none too convinced, but Gerard decided that not following the demon could turn out even worse than following him. "All right," he said, "lead on." He grabbed his weapons and pack and lit two torches.

  "Right this way," said Sacy Number Two, hopping into the woods.

  Oludara frowned at Gerard. "My people have a saying, ‘The spoon, seeing death, ventures his head into it.’"

  "I’m not quite sure what that means."

  "It means don’t stick your head into boiling water!" Oludara rasped under his breath.

  "You’re right," said Gerard. "But isn’t it better to play along with his game than go back to sleep? If he’s anything like our Sacy, he’ll just play some prank and leave us alone."

  "I don’t know, Gerard. This is not ‘our’ Sacy."

  "I know. Just watch my back."

  "You need not tell me that."

  #

  Oludara felt none-too-comfortable as Sacy-Taperey led them through the forest. Although Gerard seemed to think him no more harmful than Sacy-Perey, Oludara had his doubts. The creature’s name and, principally, his one-legged hopp
ing did remind Oludara of their former tormentor, but he was different.

  In the torchlight, they followed the bouncing silhouette for hours. By the time Sacy-Taperey finally paused, the black sky had already begun its transformation to dark blue.

  "The creature is in the clearing ahead," whispered Sacy-Taperey. "Be careful!"

  Oludara readied his bow and Gerard his harquebus, and the two crawled forward and peeked through the trees. The clearing held a pond, and as far as Oludara could tell, only one creature: an equine animal bent over for a drink. From the size, he judged it to be a mule, but from their vantage point, he could see no more than the beast’s haunches.

  Gerard stood up, furious.

  "Sacy-Taperey," he shouted, "you brought us all the way out here to look at a donkey’s arse?"

  Sacy-Taperey snickered and his tailed flicked as he replied. "That thing is no more a donkey than I am a boy."

  Oludara, expecting trouble, hadn’t taken his eyes off the clearing. The mule, alerted by the noise, lifted its head from the water and turned toward them. Only, to Oludara’s surprise, it had no head.

  "Gerard," Oludara said, calling his attention.

  "What is that?" came the astonished reply.

  "That," said Sacy-Taperey, "is the Headless Mule."

  The mule whinnied from a face not there, and flames shot from its neck.

  Oludara felt a strange sensation at his side and Sacy-Taperey, shrieking with laughter, turned into a whirlwind which rose into the trees above them. Oludara had little time to consider that, however, when a second blaze erupted from the mule’s neck and it charged them. He and Gerard fell back into the woods. Gerard threw himself behind a bush and Oludara hid behind a tree trunk. The mule stopped at the edge of the clearing, then came pacing into the woods after them.

  Oludara could see Gerard motioning toward his harquebus in askance. Oludara shook his head and pointed toward his own bow. Gerard would only get one shot, so Oludara thought it better to test the creature first with an arrow.

  As the Headless Mule stepped ever closer, Oludara took a deep breath and notched an arrow. He pulled it back and swung out from the tree, aiming at the mule no more than thirty paces before him. Oludara could see the beast’s organs through the hole in its neck. Oludara shot for that, but the beast turned at the last moment and the arrow struck its shoulder instead, burying itself deep into the mule’s flesh.

  The Headless Mule uttered a cry of pain accompanied by a furnace of flames so strong, Oludara could feel the heat even at his distance. The stink of sulfur washed over him.

  The mule lunged toward him, flames blazing, and Gerard sprang from his cover. Instead of the shot Oludara expected, however, Gerard threw a double handful of dirt at the beast’s flames, which, if anything, appeared to make them stronger. A shrill laughter echoed in the trees above them.

  Oludara, running out of options, jumped to the nearest tree and pulled himself up. The mule reared under him and shot flames which burned through his pants from his ankles to his backside. The laughing intensified and as he climbed painfully up the tree, found himself face to face with Sacy-Taperey.

  Between laughs, Sacy-Taperey muttered, "What a pleasure! You two are the best thing to come through this forest in years."

  Oludara scanned for Gerard in the flickering light cast by the mule’s flames and discovered he had also chosen to climb a tree. The mule raged below him, circling the trunk. When Gerard looked to have settled in, Oludara called to him.

  "Why did you throw dirt at the creature?"

  "I thought to smother the fire," responded Gerard. "Plinio wrote of the Chimera, a monster whose fire could be doused by volcanic ash. What do we do now?"

  "Wait until sunrise. If indeed the creature appears only at night, it should leave us soon."

  At that moment, the Headless Mule belched flames at the lower branches of Gerard’s tree, which caught on fire.

  "I don’t think we have that long!" shouted Gerard, drawing his rapier.

  "Wait!" said Oludara. "Let me retrieve my bow and distract it first."

  Oludara scuttled down and ran toward the bow, but the mule caught sight of him and charged. Its hooves cracked the bow and Oludara skidded to a halt before it, his burned haunches scraping the ground in agony. Gerard leapt from the tree but tumbled as he landed; Oludara knew he wouldn’t arrive in time. The mule bent down its headless neck and aimed a blast at Oludara.

  "Begone!" bellowed a commanding voice.

  Oludara and the mule turned in unison.

  A barefoot man with a stout walking staff strode toward them. He wore only a simple cotton cassock, tied at the waist with a ragged sash. The robe had probably been black once, but had faded to a motley gray.

  "By the grace of Christ our Lord, begone!" he yelled.

  The mule took a few steps back, then turned and ran into the forest. A whirlwind descended to the ground and transformed into Sacy-Taperey, who rolled with laughter upon the ground.

  Gerard ran to Oludara. "Are you all right?"

  "A bit burned," he replied, never taking his eyes off the stranger.

  The man wore his dark hair cropped short. His blue eyes blazed out from skin tanned dark by the sun. His round chin showed only the slightest hint of stubble.

  "Are you a priest?" asked Oludara.

  "I am Father Miguel Samperes," replied the man, "Provincial of the Society of Jesus here in Brazil."

  "The leader of the Jesuits," Gerard added in explanation.

  "Thank you, Father," said Oludara. "Your magic is strong."

  "Magic?" Miguel’s lips turned up in the slightest of grins. "Leave it to a Guinean heathen to call that magic." He knelt down beside Oludara and examined his leg. "What you saw was the power of the Lord; I am but its vessel. I wield not magic, but faith." He pulled a canteen from his sash and applied water to Oludara’s burns.

  "I’m Gerard van Oost," said Gerard, "a member of the Reformed Church and a follower of Calvin."

  "Calvin?" asked the priest, gently wrapping Oludara’s wounds in a bandage. "That’s a venom I would gladly free from your soul by means of a holy baptism."

  "Venom?" challenged Gerard. "You’d clean my blood as the Huguenots were cleaned from France on St. Bartholomew’s Day?"

  "By the grace of God, nothing like that." Miguel finished his bandaging and looked Gerard in the eye. "Do you think the Society of Jesus had something to do with that bloody massacre? Be careful where you cast your stones, van Oost. Do you know that Calvinists captured and killed forty members of the Society two years before that?"

  Gerard flushed red but did not respond.

  "They were on their way here, to Brazil, to help us." Miguel sighed. "We could have used them."

  Gerard started to mouth a protest, but the priest stood up and stared at him, and he closed his mouth.

  "Why don’t we leave the sins of others behind us?" said Father Miguel.

  "Fine by me," said Gerard. "But I believe any man should be free to worship as he wishes."

  "We can leave that question for later, but I refuse succor to no one, not even a Calvinist like yourself." He returned his attention to Oludara. "Those burns aren’t so bad, but sitting will pain you for a day or two. And what is your name?"

  It was so rare a white man to ask his name, Oludara almost choked on the words. "I am Oludara, from Ketu."

  "Interesting indeed," said Miguel. "A white heathen traveling with a black heathen," then he looked toward Sacy-Taperey, "and led by the devil himself. God give me strength, for it appears my work has no end."

  "You know this Sacy?" asked Oludara.

  "I’m well aware of Sacy-Taperey’s antics."

  Sacy-Taperey hopped up and bowed. "Always at your service, Father Miguel."

  "Enough. You be gone as well," said Miguel, waving a hand at him.

  Sacy-Taperey turned into a whirlwind and zagged off through the forest.

  "Oh, how I wish I could do that," sighed Gerard. "And I should add my own thanks
for saving us from the monster."

  "Monster?" asked Father Miguel. "You refer to the Headless Mule? In that, you are mistaken. That animal is no monster, it is a tortured soul. Can you not see it?"

  "A tortured soul which breathes fire from its headless neck," grumbled Gerard.

  "A tortured soul, nonetheless. Now, what brings you two here, besides following demons through the forest?"

  "Oludara and I are partners," said Gerard. "We form the Elephant and Macaw Banner."

  Miguel scowled. "Providing aid to heathens is one thing, but bannermen slavers are quite another."

  "We take no slaves," said Oludara. "Gerard and I lived among the Tupinambá; they are like brothers to us. And I took one as my wife."

  "I would never take a man as a slave," said Gerard, his distaste apparent. "It is a foul practice."

  "Bannermen who stand against the slavery of the natives? I thought, on that subject, we Jesuits stood alone. You two are different indeed. Wait! In Rio de Janeiro, just two weeks past, I heard the tale of an unusual Dutchman who repelled the French pirates last year. I should have realized sooner with whom I spoke."

  As Oludara expected, Gerard glowed at the mention of people discussing his exploits, but Oludara was more interested in something else the Jesuit had mentioned.

  "You walked here barefoot?" he asked. "In two weeks? With no equipment?" He and Gerard had taken six weeks of hiking to cover the same ground.

  "I have walked all the way from Salvador, and the Lord provides all that I need. I came to visit all my flocks along the coast. Those in Sao Paulo of Piritininga will be the last." This made him pause, thinking of something. "Where are the two of you headed?"

  "To Santos."

  "Perhaps it is no mere chance which makes our paths cross. Why don’t you come with me to Sao Paulo instead?"

  "Why?" asked Oludara.

  "My flock there consists of two Tupiniquim villages, good Christian souls who have found God. However, they live in danger. They have been harassed by demons and warring tribes. With mere hundreds, they held off five thousand Carijó gentiles who came to destroy them. Through their faith, they have survived all that, but now face a threat more ominous than all those others combined."