Movement caught his eye—something crawling toward them about fifty feet below their perch. Not crawling, exactly. It appeared to be oozing toward them, inching along. He couldn’t make out the particulars of the shape, but it seemed quite large, seven or eight feet wide, and flattish, a motley green in color (or else it was covered in lichen). Every so often it lifted what Rosacher supposed to be its head, exposing a ridge of liverish flesh marked by dark round splotches. He thought about waking Jarvis, but no threat being imminent (the creature’s pace was glacial), he resolved to keep an eye on it and let the old man sleep. Two longish wires (feelers, he realized) poked up in the interstitial area between two scales adjoining his, distracting him. The insect or whatever-it-was never showed itself, however, and he fell into a drowsy reverie, making idle lists of things he would do if he intended to put his plan into action…and was jolted awake by a blow to his leg and Jarvis yelling at him to lend a hand.
The creature had closed to within six feet, lifting itself off the scale, revealing more of its liverish underside, including a lipless slash that Rosacher assumed to be a mouth. It waggled and rippled like the tip of a dark tongue, and emitted glutinous grunts as if its mouth were full of mush. Jarvis fended it off with one of the poles, jabbing at the dark splotches with the hook—they weren’t discolorations, but furred bulges. Rosacher grabbed the second pole and began jabbing as well. The creature’s strength nearly knocked him down, but he persevered and, after several minutes of strenuous effort, they succeeded in diminishing the thing’s enthusiasm for the fight. It lowered its head and retreated, backing away, following the same track it had used in its approach.
Jarvis, leaning on his pole, said between gasping breaths, “Haven’t seen one of them for ages. Thought they’d died out.”
“What in the hell was it?”
“Devil’s tongue. Amarga lengua. Folks had lots of names for them. They’ll sneak up on you and numb you with poison. Then they’ll ooze all on top of you, cover you like a shroud, and when they leave, won’t be nothing left of you, not even a stain.” Jarvis grinned and brandished his pole. “Told you these would come in handy.”
“Is that why you brought them?” Rosacher asked, incredulous. “But how could you have known? You said you hadn’t seen a…a Devil’s tongue for years.”
“No, that’s not why!” Jarvis pointed up at the wing. “I thought we might take down a few nests. The tourists loves them. They’ll pay right handsomely for the fancy ones.”
This incident marked for Rosacher the beginning of his conversion, although an observer might have said it had begun long before. It was a subtle process, a gradual ascension into a state of faith, of unquestioning belief. Over the next several years (years actually lived, not skipped over and half-remembered), as he constructed the foundations of his religion and the temple that would house it, he could not put from his mind the serenity of the view from Griaule’s eastern side. Time and again he visited the ledge where he and Jarvis had stationed themselves and let that serenity pervade and inspire him, filling his head with odd thoughts and insights that would drift about in his brain for days or weeks until it became clear how they applied to some issue at hand.
