.Friday Flyer | Serialized Stories | A Kill at Kilbury - Part 1
- Shikhar Sumeru
- Jun 11, 2021
- 7 min read
Updated: Aug 5, 2021
Copyright © 2021 Shikhar Sumeru
All rights reserved. No portion of this story, its parts, or any other section from this website, may be reproduced in any form without permission from the writer. For permissions contact: TellTaleArt09@gmail.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
"It is always darkest before dawn. And, that's when strike the denizens of the dark."
- An updated version of the old adage
Prologue
The narrow forest path, adorned on either side by tall deodars and pines with far-spread smaller oaks, was eerily quiet. The thick boughs – barring those of the pines – made for a gigantic green sunroof on the forest land, growing only marginally thinner around the only manmade establishment in the Kilbury forest range of Nainital, a protected area, home to hundreds of species of birds, reptiles and mammals, including predators and prey alike.
A medium-sized, single story, antique-looking jungle lodge – painted considerately in forest green, so as not to stick out like a sore thumb – stood on the northern outskirts of the dense woods. Whoever had decided on the location of the lodge, clearly had a penchant for solitude. The nearest population was a small village – replete with resorts mushroomed in recent years -- called Pangot, located not less than five kilometers westward and at a lower altitude.
The northern flank of the lodge compound extended to a slope leading to a barely motorable forest road that met the concrete road below, about a kilometer and a dozen hairpin bends downwards. Circling the entire hill that housed the Kilbury Forest range, the concrete road extended to Nainital, a good twenty kilometers southwards from this junction of kachha and pukka paths.
From the junction, the forest lodge was accessible through the bumpy and barely motorable forest road, meant strictly for four-by-four transmissions, and certainly not meant for the faint hearted. Sinuously navigating the dozen or so hairpin bends that circled around treacherous rocks – some of which towered above thirty feet and had edges sharper than a sword – the forest road joined the concrete road below. These rocks provided perfect hiding places for predators, lying in wait for an unsuspecting prey, pouncing upon it from above or from behind, finishing an unfair contest before it could even start.
Contrary to the northern side, the southern and eastern boundaries of the forest lodge branched out to several square kilometers wide forest range. Picturesque forest tracks leading to the famous Naina peak and a pedestrian track to Nainital, shortening the distance between Pangot and the lake-city to a bare six kilometers, invited trekkers and locals alike through these hinterlands. While most of them had the wisdom to walk in groups and set foot only where the sun shone, out of ignorance, desperation or sheer foolhardiness, once in a while a loner often miscalculated the sunset time or lost his way. And the next day, search parties needed to be dispatched, only to return empty handed, for ever since the days of Corbett, these greens were known to be the den of the apex predators. And, denizens of the dark were not known to be forgiving.
Part 1: The Hunter and the Hunted
The eerily quiet narrow forest track roofed by deodars was rapidly losing daylight. Atop an intersection of deodar branches about thirty feet above the ground, overlooking the pine tree near the rock at the highest hairpin bend, among the soft green cedar cones, sat a mother dove, carefully distributing its earnings of the day between its fledgling infants. The nest – built of painstakingly selected twigs and sticks -- was barely noticeable from below, unless one was looking for it. A slithering hiss, with eyes devoid of lids, about half a dozen feet below the intersection of the branches knew exactly what it was looking for.
Not all predators needed to have four limbs and a roar. This one came with barely shining, cylindrical body under a meter long, and the collage of dark spots on a muddy off-white background, perfectly camouflaging on a tree trunk. While the mother dove had been busy feeding her young, the Himalayan pit viper – the only known member of its brethren to have survived the cold up to an altitude of 15,000 feet – had found a meal of its own.
Like any snake, regardless of its stealth, the pit viper could not help flicking its tongue, for how else it would judge the surroundings. And, that was when the mother dove spotted the danger: a fork of needle like twigs snapping in and out from behind a branch. Painful shrieks and vigorous flapping of the wings followed, but the dove knew the outcome of the contest. There was no time to move the nest. While she could fly away from the danger, never to return to the spot, the fate of her underlings would not be so fortunate.
With the hiss only a few inches away now, the bird did the only thing it could. Reluctantly, it flew away, leaving the young ones screaming and wailing, more because of their food supply cut off, for they were unaware of the imminent, more menacing threat. The mother dove kept flying, shrieking on and off, but without leaving its eyesight off its home. Perhaps it wanted to not leave the side of her family or wanted to make one last-ditch effort of saving them. Whatever the reason, fate did seem to offer her an olive branch.
As the pit viper loomed over the nest, ready to pounce its prey, a pair of deep-set red eyes winked, keenly observing the deodar junction from the pine tree near the rock. The horizontal movement of the translucent eyelids spoke of the presence of a raptor. The bird of prey was a shade above a foot, with short, rounded wings and a narrow and somewhat long tail. The grey and white underparts with brown horizontal lines across the belly and the red eyes meant that another mother bird – a female shikra, an extraordinary hunter -- was looking for dinner for her young offspring. And, instead of settling for the fledglings of the dove, had found a jackpot in the small snake.
With its naturally-built night vision goggles -- the unique infrared sense of head pits, capturing thermal images of the objects in front and imprinting on the brain – the pit viper sensed the danger, but it was too late. There was no time or space to turn, or hide.
The tables had suddenly turned. The hunter had become the hunted.
With a swift action of wings, the shikra pushed the pine tree branch, flapped its wings, and eyes locked at its target, set out on a mission. There was no flapping of wings once the predatory bird had the initial thrust. Like a missile equipped with a homing device, the shikra flew past the bough of deodar leaves, its aim true, its flight plan perfect. Before the pit viper knew, a pair of razor-sharp talons and a spiky beak were deep inside its spineless body. The reptile hissed, and hissed hard, aiming to inject its deadly fangs into its assailant. The lethal dose of enzymes only caught the tree trunk, however; for the small size of the attacker made her agile, navigating her way around in the close quarters of the branch with super speed.
The wings flapped again and the small, but sharp predator emerged through the thicket of deodar branches. Only this time, its claws had the prized possession, hanging helplessly, hissing and aiming to inject its fangs again. Only, there was nothing but air to inject the fangs into.
The mother dove had observed the unique development from afar. She was still cautious to return to the branch junction. She knew, however, that she would eventually need to. For her young ones had seen a struggle far beyond their age.
The curiously fantastic development had also been witnessed by two pairs of eyes, via a long high-powered zoom. At the first hairpin bend in the forest road, set atop the rock behind the pine tree, a tripod had been carefully balanced and aimed at the deodar branch junction for hours. The man and woman behind the tripod lay motionless, speechless, talking to each other only via typing messages on their phones. The unique events of the Kilbury forest range had been imprinted to the swanky looking camera’s memory card.
“Did we get it?” the woman, camouflaged in a forest-colored jacket and of tallish appearance, slowly whispered to the man, holding his arm.
The man dressed in similar disguise and about the same height as the woman, looked at the camera, then at his shiny blue-dialed wristwatch tied on the right hand, and subsequently glanced at the woman.
“Yes. I got it, honey,” he declared.
“There is that egotistical narcissism again. I found the nest,” the woman said, protesting vehemently.
“And, I climbed this Everest of a rock and suggested we waited hours.”
“I am sick of it! A decade together, and you still behave like a child. Let me know when you decide to grow up,” the woman said, moving towards the edge of the rock to find a ledge to climb down.
“I will, mom,” the man replied sarcastically.
Both of them looked above forty, appearing to have seen the world together, a large part of it anyway. Going by the nick name of the ‘creator couple’ in the start-up community, the man and the woman were Rajesh Kumar and Suparna Srinivas, the co-founders of a slew of new-age ventures.
The woman had managed to climb down the rock. As she turned towards the forest lodge, she yelled without turning back, “The investors must be waiting. Show up on time for once, unless you would rather pitch your idea to tigers and leopards.”
“I just might; they kill you quicker than a hyena,” retorted Rajesh, stressing on the last word, and turning towards the figure of the woman that looked like a silhouette in evening light.
Suparna turned and their eyes met. However, unlike the romance of a decade ago, there seemed to be mutual contempt.
No story can be all good, just as no tale can be all shitty. There will be parts that make you laugh, just as there could be some that make you cringe (hope there were few and far between)
What did you like? What did you not?
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