Progeny

The Big Man

Smoke. I smelled smoke. A campfire maybe. Darren and a few others slowly and quietly inched forward. All that was heard was the sound of nature, heavy breathing, and pounding heartbeats. Then a loud snap echoed through the trees, sending creeping birds flying out of the branches. Darren was suddenly lifted off of the ground. There was a large mass of light brown ropes that encompassed him. After that, were the sounds of yelling and feet stomping towards us.

———

Everyone was frantically trying to decide what to do. Too much noise. We could've all hid behind the trees, and the people wouldn't have known that there were more than one of us. But the group began panicking and shouting. They all scattered and ran separate ways. I didn't leave. I rushed to a tree and started climbing. I made sure to stay hidden while being able to watch everything unfold. Seven men appeared with axes and cross bows. Oh crap. Darren was going to die.

"Psst", I heard a sound somewhere in the trees. I looked around but found nothing.

"Psst!" In a tree, not too far from mine, John was calling out to me. My eyes widened. He was supporting his balance on the branch by wrapping his legs around the tree trunk. His hands were full of pine cones, and I violently shook my head 'no'. If they were stones, then maybe they would do some damage. But those things would only alert the men that we're up here.

I almost peed on myself when a pine cone slipped out of John's fingers. I quickly hid myself from view as the men stopped talking.

"There are more of them", I heard one of them say.

"How many of you are there?!" I wish I could see, but I wasn't going to risk getting caught. Darren kept yelling, telling them to release him.

"I'll cut your tongue out of your mouth if you don't stop yelling", another man said. Suddenly, I heard more sounds of pine cones hitting the ground. John you idiot. I looked at him, and his face was panicked.

"Who goes there?!" A man called as he was nearing us. I took a pine cone from my tree and threw it in another direction. All of their heads turned to where it landed.

"They're still here! Look! I see one!" He was pointing at something in the bushes.

"Come out!" Then two boys slowly stood up, their hands above their heads. My pine cone gave them away. Oops? Their eyes were wide, and a man grabbed them both by their arms. Another man walked towards us, where John's pine cone fell. After scanning the area, the man slowly looked upwards.

"Up there! They're up in the trees!" He shouted. Then his head snapped towards me. I gulped. I didn't have any ideas, so I just stayed frozen in my spot. There wasn't much I could do up in a tree.

"Get down here!" One of the men yelled. John and I made our way to the ground. The man that found us, grabbed both of our arms and roughly pulled us towards the others.

"Where are the others?" A really large man, the size of a tree itself, stepped towards us. I felt that he was the one in charge.

"Who are you?" I asked. His nose flared, and I adverted my eyes to the rise and fall of his chest. I heard a few of the other men chuckle lowly. The man in front of me had a big black beard and big bushy eyebrows. Everything about him screamed scary. He looked to be in his mid fifties. He placed his right knee on the ground and rested his arms on his thigh. Our eyes were now level.

"You reek" he said while scrunching up his nose in disgust. The men were now openly laughing at me.

"You would too if you were on the run" John responded. The men went quiet and stared at him. The big man slowly turned his head to look at him.