Angel Of Mercy

Chapter 21

Koba woke up sometime during the night. This was nothing unusual. If he slept through without any nightmares, that was unusual. But as he started to try and rise without waking his daughter, he froze.

Mary was not in the nest beside him.

The utter panic of every parent who finds his child was not in her bed hit Koba like a punch deep in his gut, and he all but leaped from the nest. The distressed parent was ready to go awaken every single ape and tear the village apart until his little girl was found. But before he could go on an all-out parental panic rampage, he was brought up short yet again.

Mary was not out. She was sitting in a back corner of their hut, an animal pelt drawn around her small body. Her knees were drawn up to her chin. And she was softly crying, her face buried in her arms.

"Mary?" Koba gasped as he rushed to his little girl's side. "Mary! What is wrong?"

Instead of answering him, she only cried harder.

Koba reached out and pried his daughter's arms away as gently as he could. He put one hand under her chin and made her look at him.

"Are you sick? Hurt?" The anxious father ran his hand over his daughter's head and neck. He could feel no fever.

Mary simply shook her head, but remained stubbornly silent

"Nightmares?" Koba asked again. Sometimes, when she was much younger, Mary had the most awful dreams, dreams Koba recognized as something to do with human labs from what Mary was able to tell him. But she had not had any of these dreams for a long time. Unless she had been hiding them from him.

"You want Cornelia? Or Maurice or Luca?" Koba asked, feeling totally helpless. He did not relish the thought of having to disturb Maurice and his human female all tucked cozily in to their nest, but he would if Mary needed the old orangutan. He would even drag Luca away from his guard duties and/or go wake up the Ape Queen. Cornelia was practically Mary's mother, anyway, and Koba knew neither she nor Caesar would mind.

Finally, Mary swallowed hard, scrubbed at her eyes with one little fist, then glared at her Father.

"She's leaving today," the child accused. "She's leaving today, and it's your fault!"

Koba blinked. He did not need to ask which she his daughter was talking about.

"No," he tried to protest. "It isn't my—"

"It is!" Mary insisted. "It's your fault, and Stone's fault, and Gray's, and Cedars and Urko's and Red's and all those others! It's all your faults! You can't wait for her to be gone, can you, Papa. No matter what she does for us. She trekked through the forest to bring us food in the winters that kept the orangutans from starving to death. She came running to us to save Maurice! She saved Monica's little baby yesterday. The midwives had given up until Karin came and did whatever she did. But does that change any of your minds? No! None of You will give her a chance! None of you! And... You're all acting like ...like a bunch of scared humans!" Mary paused for a breath, her normally gentle and kind eyes now looking accusingly at her father. "Uncle Caesar always says apes are better, but he's wrong. We're not, are we?""

Koba waited. He opened his mouth but was at a complete loss for words. He was quite taken aback by his normally gentle daughter's heated declarations. Now he knew what the boys, mostly Blue Eyes and Ash, went through sometimes. But he was even more ashamed to think that they were nothing but the truth, and he had trouble meeting his daughter's accusing stare.

"Papa?" Mary whispered. Her tears had stopped, and She seemed a little calmer as she took Koba's face in her little hands. "I'm sorry. I know that humans hurt you very badly. But did Karin ever hurt you? Did she ever hurt anyone, ape or human?"