The door to the Adventurer’s Club slammed against the wall. The gathered men turned to see who was so uncouth as to make such a racket.
Lord Stanley Rockridge stood framed in the doorway, a shadowy silhouette against the dappled sunlight illuminating the front garden of the mansion. His chest heaved as if he had run a long distance – quite unthinkable for a proper gentleman – and he blinked myopically as his eyes battled against the gloom of the great room to adjust.
“Woolington,” he said in a voice that bounced from the walls. “There you are.”
Lord William Woolington cringed as Rockridge marched across the great room toward the comfortable wingback chair where he had, until moments ago, been enjoying reading a penny dreadful. He liked Rockridge well enough but after such a boorish entrance the other nobles and men of means in the club would pooh-pooh Rockridge for days and now he might be included in their gossip.
“Good afternoon Rockridge,” Woolington said and pretended to return to his reading.
Rockridge dragged a club chair opposite Woolington with a clatter and flopped unceremoniously into it.
“I found the most amazing thing,” he said and commenced digging through the multitude of pockets in his overcoat.
“Good afternoon to you too Lord Woolington,” Woolington said. “So sorry to have disturbed you Lord Woolington. May I join you Lord Woolington?”
Rockridge stared at Woolington with a puzzled expression and then exclaimed loudly as he brandished a crumpled piece of paper he had located in an inner pocket.
“Look at this Wooly,” he said, oblivious to the other’s annoyance.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Oh, bugger that. Just look at what I found.”
Rockridge flattened a large piece of paper, graying with age, onto the small table between them. He knew he could not escape, so ignoring the stares of his fellow Adventurers; Woolington placed his book aside and leaned forward to accommodate his companion.
The paper was quite large and was smudged at the margins where many fingers had touched it over its lifetime. The left side of the paper was ragged as if it had been torn from a book. Dominating the sheet was a garish etching of some monstrous creature seemingly devouring one of a trio of dark skinned natives. Woolington assumed it to be Africa from the style of loincloth and the facial features of the natives.
“Is that a beast or a tree?” Woolington pointed at the creature. “It seems to be a bit of both.”
“That, dear Wooly-”
“Don’t call me that.”
Rockridge rolled his eyes.
“That is the carnivorous Ya-Te-Veo tree. A thing of fearful legend from darkest Africa and I now know how to find it.”
“Do tell.”
“I found an old book in the archives which mentioned the tree. That led me to an even more ancient volume which contained this image and explicit directions to the site of the pictured attack on the reverse.”
With a flourish, Rockridge flipped the paper over to reveal faint words.
“Wait, did you tear this from a volume in the archives? The Royal Archives? Dear God man, that’s vandalism; it’s tantamount to blasphemy.”
Rockridge waved away his companion’s concern.
“A trifle; imagine the fame we will garner by finding this thing. Her Majesty will bestow untold honors on us. What is a mere page compared to the find of the century?”
“We? You expect me to accompany you on some mad expedition?”
“Of course dear Wooly–Woolington. I need your airship after all. Wouldn’t you rather be on a grand quest to gain fame rather than sit here reading some bodice ripper?”
Woolington blushed. “It’s not a bodice ripper. It is a tale of—oh that’s not important.”
He looked around the room. No less than a dozen well dressed gentlemen were staring at him and Rockridge; even the servants stood gaping at them. Perhaps a journey to the bush would be a good idea. By the time they returned the others would have some new gossip to make them forget this scene.
“Oh, all right; I’ll go. But I expect you to pay for my airship’s fuel on this mad quest.”
“Done,” Rockridge said and the men shook hands to seal their bargain.
Three weeks later found the airship Endeavor floating over a valley north of Lake Victoria near the southern Ethiopian border.
“This has to be the place,” Rockridge said consulting his purloined page for the hundredth time.
“You said that for the last six locales.”
“Yes, yes I know. But look, the mountains to the north match the description and the very shape of the savannah matches. Bring us down Wooly; I think we’ve struck pay dirt.”
“This is the last time Rocky. If we find nothing again, I’m sailing for home.”
Rockridge waved off his friend’s concern and leaned over the rail to watch the land come up to meet them.
The men disembarked from the airship but their bearers refused to move beyond the safety of the vessel’s shadow. The dark skinned men pointed at the leafless trees which dotted the savannah and grumbled in their native tongue.
“What’s their problem?” Rockridge said.
“Something about demon trees; they refuse to leave the ship.”
“See? Demon trees, this is the place.”
Rockridge shouldered a pack and hefted an enormous rifle. Without waiting for his companion, he marched off through the waist high grass. Woolington gathered his own supplies and, after hasty instructions to guard the airship, trotted after his friend.
Sweat poured down both men as they hiked. According to Rockridge’s paper, the site of the attack was three miles north of the savannah’s southernmost border. The dead trees were everywhere; their long desiccated limbs reached toward the sky. Woolington wondered what had killed so many trees while still providing a fertile place for the copious grass.
“Look there,” Rockridge said.
Woolington followed his friend’s pointing finger and saw a lone tree swaying in the breeze. It took a minute to realize that there was no breeze; the tree’s limbs were moving of their own accord.
The limbs writhed sinuously, more like the tentacles of some sea creature than the branches of a tree. As they approached they could make out the cracked bark of the trunk and rows of thorns covering the writhing branches.
“Dear God, you were right.”
Rockridge preened at the praise. He dropped his pack and dug through it until he discovered a bulky camera.
“Would you be so kind as to take my picture in front of this beast? Then I’ll take yours.”
Woolington could not believe that his friend had actually been right. They had been on dozens of adventures, all fun but fruitless. This was the first time one of Rocky’s wild goose chases had actually resulted in a goose.
“Of course, but be careful.”
Woolington took the camera and lined up a shot while Rockridge struck a pose in front of the tree.
“Say cheese,” Woolington said.
Rockridge smiled broadly and Woolington depressed the camera’s trigger. At that exact moment the Ya-Te-Veo bent forward, its trunk flexing like a man’s waist and a dozen branches lashed out and snared Rockridge. The man screamed as the thorns dug through his clothing and flesh. He was lifted from the ground and toward the unseen mouth of the monster.
Woolington dropped the camera and gathered up the rifle. The shot was deafening and Woolington felt his heart sink as the bullet ricocheted from the monster’s trunk as if it were made of stone. He prepared a second shot, trying to ignore the frantic screams of his friend who was now halfway into the tree monsters mouth.
A sound from behind him drew his attention. Three of the trees were closer than they had been before. As he stared in disbelief they shuffled closer. He fired another, ineffectual, shot at the new arrivals. Their branches lashed out to snare Woolington. As he was drawn to his doom he knew his friend had missed an important bit of information in the legends; the Ya-Te-Veo was not a singular monster and it hunted in packs.
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