Time’s Eye

The soldiers came in once a day to give her food and water and scrape out her dung. Sometimes they held her down and pushed their fat penises into her body. Seeker didn’t care about that. She wasn’t hurt, and she had learned to let her captors do what they want, while she kept an eye on Grasper. She had no idea why the soldiers did what they did. But whether she knew or not didn’t matter, of course, for she had no power to stop them.

She could break out of here. On some level she still knew that. She was stronger than any of the soldiers. She could rip open that netting with her teeth and hands or even her feet. But she hadn’t seen a single other of her kind, save Grasper, since the day of her capture. Through the holes in the net she could see no trees, no welcoming green shade. If she did break out there was nowhere for her to go, nothing waiting for her but clubs, fists and rifle butts. She had had to be taught that brutal lesson.

Suspended between animal and human, she had only a dim grasp of future and past. Her memory was like a gallery hung with vivid images—her mother’s face, the warmth of her nest, the overwhelming scent of the male who first took her, the sweet agony of childbearing, the dreadful limpness of her first child. And her sense of the future was dominated by an inchoate vision of her own death, a fear of the blackness that lurked behind the yellow eyes of cats. But there was no sense of narrative about her memories, no logic or order: like most animals she lived in the present, for if the present could not be survived the past and future meant nothing anyhow. And her present, this helpless captivity, had expanded to encompass her whole consciousness.

She was a captive. That was all she was. But at least she had Grasper.

Then, one morning, something changed.

***

It was Grasper who saw it first.

Seeker woke up slowly, as always clinging to her ragged dreams of the trees .She yawned hugely and stretched her long arms. The sun was already high, and she could see bright glimmers pushing through the gaps in the netting.

Grasper was staring up into the tent’s apex. There was light on her face. Seeker looked up.

The Eye was shining. It was like a miniature sun, caught in the net.

Seeker stood up. Side by side, their gazes fixed on the Eye, mother and child walked forward, fully upright. Seeker raised a hand toward the Eye. It was out of reach, but it cast shadows of the two of them, on their floor of trampled dirt. It gave off no heat, only light.

Seeker had only just woken up. She badly needed to urinate, to defecate, to groom to get rid of the night’s ticks, to get some food and water. But she couldn’t move. She just stood there, eyes wide, one arm raised. Her eyes began to prickle with dust and cold, but she couldn’t so much as blink.

She heard a soft whimpering. Seeker couldn’t even turn to look at Grasper. She had no idea how much time went by.

Her hand was before her face. She hadn’t consciously raised it; it was like looking at somebody else’s hand. The fingers clenched, opened; the thumb worked back and forth.

She was made to raise her arms and twist them at shoulders, elbows and wrists; she bent and flexed her legs. She walked up and down, as far as the netting would let her, first upright, then knuckle-walking. She probed with her fingers at every orifice in her body. She fingered her high rib cage, the shape of her skull, even her pelvis. It was as if somebody else was doing this to her, exploring her in a cruel grooming.

The man-apes were released, just for a heartbeat. Panting, hungry, thirsty, they reached for each other. But then the invisible grip closed around them again.

This time, as patterns of light pulsed over their heads, Grasper got down on her haunches and began to examine the floor, digging in the dirt. She found twigs, bits of reed. She rubbed the twigs against each other, split and folded the reed, banged pebbles together.

Meanwhile Seeker marched to the netting wall. She took hold of the net and began to climb. Her body proportions were like those of her ape-like ancestors, and she could climb better than any of her human captors. But as she clambered up the net, fear gathered, for she knew she wasn’t supposed to do this.

Sure enough, one of the soldiers came running. “Here, you! Get down from there!”

A rifle butt smashed into her face. She couldn’t even scream. Despite the grip of the Eye she fell back from the netting and clattered on her back to the ground. Her mouth full of coppery blood, she tried to raise her head.

She could see Grasper, sitting on the gritty ground. Grasper held up a reed, tied into a knot. Seeker had never seen such a thing.

Again she was forced to stand, despite the blood that dripped from her mouth, and stared up at the Eye.