Heart of Darkness

[Fildering Dillwithers]

Fildering gasped. The dagger fell from his trembling paw and hit the moist soil with a dull clunk- immediately forgotten.

The hare stared, frozen in place with pure dread. The fox opened her mouth to scream, but no sound escaped her lips as the enormous boa tightened around her, slitted yellow eyes cold and impassive as they focused on its single goal: to feed. Its huge, muscular tan and brown coils tensed on its prey, squeezing the wind out of her.

Fildering took another step back, horrified. He looked frantically to the right, then to the left.

Vera managed a squeak as she thrashed and clawed feebly at her captor, a pleading expression on her face.

Snapping himself out of it, the hare located his fallen blade, picked it up, and charged wildly at the snake, catching it unawares for all its greedy preoccupation with Vera. At the last moment, the reptile caught Fildering's movement out of the corner of its eye, and relinquished its stranglehold on the prone fox in the face of this new, more pertinent threat. It reared up, sibilating vehemently before lashing out at him with its mouth opened wide in a hideous grimace.

Fildering stopped in his tracks, but not for long: as the glistening monster launched like a coiled spring, he threw himself desperately to the side. The serpent's momentum carried it past the hare, who scrambled to put distance between himself and his terrifying foe. Dillwithers locked himself in a defensive stance between the jungle beast and its prey: the dazed vixen who was only just now beginning to rise, ruefully rubbing her throat.

Prey, eh? Not if I can 'elp it, by jove!

Recovering from its recent encounter with the earth, the snake lifted its head gracefully and began slowly circling Fildering, its slithering movements smooth and deliberate.

As it passed him a second time, it struck with lightning speed, using its considerable flat head with all the force of a small battering ram, and connected with Fildering's stomach mid-way. Stars danced in the hare's vision and he was thrown backward against a teak tree, the wind completely gone from his lungs.

The hare crumpled to the earth like a wet dishrag.

Finished with Fildering for the time being, the monster turned back to Vera, who was trying to stand on shaky legs and clearly in no shape for a fight.

The fox took one step back, and the snake advanced. She turned and started staggering along, trying her utmost to run, but to anyone observing her the action appeared hardly more than a poor attempt at the hobbled gait of a mendicant hunchback, and not half as comedic given her current predicament.

Vera stumbled and fell; her breath came out in ragged sobs as the serpent reared its ugly head, a cold semblance of a victor's smile on its reptilian face.

Fildering forced himself up, coughing, and reclaimed his weapon from where it had fallen. With renewed fervor he dashed at the boa's scaly form, raising the dagger high over his right shoulder. He had to hold the handle in two paws to manage the blade in his wearied, bruised state.

"Euuuulaliaaaaa!"

The monster never saw it coming; its back was turned to the hare. With all his might Fildering rammed the dagger all the way to its fine silver cross hilt into the serpent's smooth, scaly back. The beast reared and screeched wildly at the sudden injury; bucking, thrashing, and wriggling like one possessed. The hare was thrown backward, his hold on the handle forcibly released by the snake's mad dance.

Not bothering to look back to confirm whether or not the beast had died, Fildering supported the fox. "Let's get th' deuce out of here, wot? That snake doesn't look dead t'me, an' I'm not interested in staying t' jolly well find out, donchaknow!"

He peered at the fox's leg, which she had been nursing with a pained expression on her muzzle. "Snake got me," she said simply.

"Gah. Hmm, can y'walk at all?" Fildering asked, the effects of his small adrenaline rush still only just beginning to wear off.

Vera shoved his paw away. "Course I can." She stumbled along, putting on a show of independence, then stumbled and fell again.
This was the fox who'd knocked him senseless. This was the fox who had, after binding him, dragged him aboard a rowboat to what could have easily ended in not only a departure from the Zephyr but also a violent divorce with his life. Why had he saved her from that serpent just now? He could have always reported back to the others that she'd been taken and devoured by some jungle predator, and nobeast would've cared; nobeast would've known.

Except one beast.

He allowed himself a proud smile, despite it all, and offered his paw again.

"C'mon, y' can't jolly well stay here, can you?"

This time Vera accepted it. Begrudgingly.

"That's better, wot. Jolly!" Fildering grinned.

Vera did not return the grin and simply resumed movement.

Both fox and hare hobbled through the jungle like a perfect old pair of misfits for some time, headed more or less in a backtrack toward the shore. At long length, Fildering paused to rest, supporting himself against a tree. He recoiled instantly at the sight of an enormous, hairy black spider at least the size of his outstretched paw crawling along the rough trunk. "Yaaah, boo, gerroff!" He jumped back, breathing sharply.

Vera snickered. "Scared o' spiders, are we?"

"Tchah! Ahem, ehm, cert'nly not, wot! Nevah. Harrumph!"

Vera smirked, shrugged, and started to continue. She clenched her teeth painfully as she tried to put weight on her injured leg.

"Hmm, hmm, won't do at all, wot, Vera me old vixen. We'll have to stop here awhile while I find something to help th' old leg, wot?"

Vera sat down. "Fine, fine, alright."

"Good show. Righto, what should I blinkin' well look for?"

"I wouldn't know."

"We could cauterize it. Old trick the vets used t' tell stories about back at Galbraith Hall, donchaknow."

Vera edged away. "Not on your life, fluff tail."

"Blast. Hmm, what should we do then, wot?"

"Let's just keep going. There's a bottle of grog back at your camp. I can clean it with that."

"Right, I suppose we should be heading on after you've rested up, then."

A long silence hung in the air. Finally, Vera spoke up.

"Why did you help me? You could've left me and nobeast would've been the wiser. You could've gotten yourself killed."

Fildering winked. "Aw. Didn't know y'cared, old gel."

Vera rolled her eyes. "Pfft."

To be honest with himself, Fildering was beginning to realize one reason why. "I guess you sort of reminded me of m'sister. Same laugh, you know, like she'd do."

There was a short, awkardly silent pause.

He shuffled his footpaws. "Hmm, guess we should be heading out now, wot? Rather make camp before evening hits us, donchaknow."

Vera sighed. "I'm sorry about your sister. She's in a better place now."

"Hah!" the hare laughed. "Hahaha!"

Vera looked at him, puzzled, as if wondering what about hares made them think death was so terribly funny.

"Aye, in a better place f' bloomin' sure. Th' mater an' pater've got their flippin' paws full, that's f'blinkin' sure. Prob'ly eaten 'em out o' blinkin' 'ouse an' 'ole by now, wot! Greedy liddle trifleswiper!"

"Oh, I thought you meant . . ."

"Dead? Nevah!" The hare snickered. "Th' very thought! Tchah, the Dark Forest wouldn't take 'er, wot, not for all th' gold in the world! She'd scoff them out by bally October, aye, an' th' Devil himself'd be on th' first blinkin' boat to Sampetra!"

"Ha, well, I think we should be heading off again, Mister Dillwithers. I think I've rested long enough."

Vera started to help herself up using the broad trunk of a ceiba tree for support. She winced slightly as her leg made brief contact with the tree's rough bark.

Fildering rushed to help her along, and once again the pair set off through the jungle.

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Afternoon, hot and miserably humid, wore on into cool evening. The going was slow, and at every turn they were beset by a large cloud of gnats and mosquitoes. Vera had to stop more than once on account of her injured leg, but at long last they emerged from the roasting jungle and out onto the shoreline. It was cooler out here. Pleasant, even. Quiet, tranquil save for the lapping of the seas on the tideline. Fildering realized that it was also completely deserted.

"I say," he muttered. "We must've come out at th' wrong bloomin' place. Our jolly old camp must be somewhere else along this beach, wot? D'you suppose- "

Vera shook her head, pointing out several packs lying about. "That's our camp." The fox increased her speed to a hop-skip as they entered the clearing.

The campfire had long since burnt out. Fildering scattered the ashes with a footpaw, deep in thought. "Well, what d'you suppose bally well happened here?" he asked, seating himself on a flat boulder.

The vixen sat down on the sand, and Fildering took an educated guess by the look on her face that this turn of events was not at all welcome. "They mustve broke camp and left us." She seemed to say it casually, as though she was used to this sort of thing. Vera began searching through the mess around her for the grog.

"Bally odd, this, donchathink? Y'mean t' say they all just toddled off somewhere without so much as a tally-ho in our direction?"

"I wouldn't be surprised." Vera sighed as she fumbled through a weathered haversack.

Fildering groaned. "Well, dashed rotten fa- wait . . . zounds, is that blood over there?"

"Where?" the vixen asked without looking up, preoccupied with locating her bottle of grog to give this her full attention.

"By that pile o' driftwood yonder," the hare pointed out.

He got up and tramped over to one edge of the camp, then bent over a small rusty-red patch of sand. "Jove. It is blood!"

"Aha, there you are," the fox was saying, mostly between herself and the bottle of grog, which she had discovered half-covered in sand. She held it aloft, and a conquering smile curled around her lips.

Vera uncorked the flask, her smile of victory turning quickly to a grimace of disgust at the foul alcoholic odor permeating the air around her. "But where are the bodies? If they've been killed, that is, there should be bodies," she said passively as she applied the liquor to the wound, clenching her teeth slightly as the alcohol did its disinfectant magic.

The hare was tracing his paw through a shallow, winding groove in the sand that wound its way over a dune, down through another dip and into the jungle. As he took a closer look around, he realized there were more spots of blood, and what was worse, there were more wavy tracks like these, and all led in the general direction of the jungle. Fildering gasped as it dawned on him.

Serpents. Their recent encounter with the hideous boa immediately came to mind.

He slowly raised his eyes to meet Vera's. "Unless they've all been . . . "

Vera nodded in horrified realization. The bottle fell from her paw, and her eyes widened. "Eaten!"