Maleah and the Goliath: Part I

                                                        Maleah and Goliath

She paused her roam and gazed around. Her eyes surveyed the whole forest and her ears keenly listened to discover the side from which the sweet hum of a bird that reached her. The voice of the bird was so enchanting that she could feel being drawn to the tune and finally she decided to follow the soloist for she hasn’t heard such a beautiful note by a bird in the forests of India. On a barely visible path lit by small gleams of moonbeams and her head torch, she moved ahead trailing the tune. Her name is Maleah Jones, daughter of Jones Birchy, the famous ornithologist and her dream is to be a famous ornithologist cum a renowned bird watcher like her father for she loved birds since her infancy.

On her 5^th birthday, Jones gifted Maleah a pair of lovebirds in an oval shaped steel cage with a hook at the top to hang it at her room. She hated the practice of caging any animals or birds for the pleasures and privileges of humans. So, young Maleah after showing to them utmost love and kindness, released them after a week or two for she wished they could come back to her at the end of the day. But they hadn’t come once freed. It was then she took her father’s binocular and started watching birds to spot her lost lovebirds, but she found many other birds except those lost ones and gradually found an interest in the beauty of the birds and in watching their behaviors. This story, she says, was the inspiration to be an ornithologist and a bird watcher.

The forest which she is in were so crooked and dense for she explored so deep inside. She got exhausted in hiking for so long, streaming the song by the unknown singer, and still she could hear the tune, so powerful and more enchanting. Maleah finally lazed in the root of a big tree and had the final drops of water that she carried in her backpack and scanned the forest around her with her pale and weary round eyes in the light of her head torch. Sweat rolled down her hazel white face which she rubbed off by her sweatband and she unfolded her semi black hair to retie it again properly. Slowly, she closed her eyes when the cool breeze fluttered on her and soon she fall into a lumber.

Maleah’s eyes opened quickly when she felt someone or something being watched on her. Maleah’s eyes zoomed to spot something from her intuition and found a pair of eyes glowing in the dark, staring at her. She stayed put, motionless, and tried to carefully inspect the creature that stood ahead her in the darkness. On hearing a long and loud howls, probably by a pack of Wolfs from somewhere in the forest, the glowing eyes came to light from the darkness and revealed themselves to Maleah with an answering howl.

She decided to remain calm and face the situation intelligently than acting fast. She quickly dig up on for stories that her father has told her about the dangers that he faced on his adventures through the forest, but the growling of the Wolf ahead made her difficult to concentrate. The wolf started towards her, slowly with sniffs and growls. Maleah tried to avoid the eye contact to not challenge the Wolf and slowly searched for the perfume in the side of her backpack. Once she found her perfume, she took the lighter from her pocket and studied the distance of the predator from her, calmly.

Maleah waited for a better start to strike. Finally, she decided to distract the Wolf than attacking and to act from the time she gets on the distraction. She lighted the lighter and sprayed the perfume through the fire like a small fire explosion in the foot of the Wolf in front of her and moved her hand to the left and right passing the perfume through the fire and continuing the mini fire explosion to survive. The seconds she got from the distraction of the wolf, she moved to the backside of the tree and waited for another strike. She tried to control her panting and she could hear her heart thump so hard out of fear.

Maleah pushed opened the perfume bottle with her teeth and dipped her long towel in the perfume. She flamed the towel and swayed it to the Wolf and it went aback. Now there was a considerable distance from Wolf and Maleah. She quickly climbed up the big tree and hides herself in a strong branch. The wolf below the tree gave a big howl and within no time the bottom of the tree was filled with a pack of Wolfs. The Wolf’s continued to roam around the tree sniffing her scent and growling hard each other. Still she could hear the tune, but now it seems a duet like a male or a female joined with the original singer.

Her urge to reach the source of song was so high that she has to get rid of the Wolfs first to reach there. It was then she found some unknown fruit hanging on the tree and there were many of the kind. Without thinking twice, she plucked the fruits and started to throw to the west of her, altogether, at once. The Wolfs on hearing another movement in other side of the forest, paced to that direction giving Maleah time to escape from the scene.

She descended the tree and slowly leaped through the weeds and bushes, trailing the song of the bird and fled the scene carefully and intelligently which builds the confidence in her and learned the power of remaining calm in difficult situation. She moved ahead thanking her father for telling her the tips and tricks to survive when in forest. At times she crawled and paused when met with unusual movement near her.

She found herself in a strange place surrounded by oddly grown pine trees overgrown with thorny bushes and plants at its roots when she came closer to the song. The pine trees are odd in the sense that it grows with a 90 degree bend at the base of their trunks. All of the trees are bent northward and surrounded by a larger forest of straight-growing pine trees. A 100 meter from there, Maleah saw a light from a lamp which clearly shows only a big door. She decided to seek shelter there this night for the forest is going terrible when the time grows darker. She moved to the door and found a wooden board hanging in a wooden log stumped to the ground with a writing which says

      “Behind is your world and you are not going to see it again.

                                                                               Goliath”

She was puzzled and the power in the words made her to think twice before taking another step. She reread the words and made her brain work on it till she found a satisfying answer for her next move. Finally she decided not to enter and turned back to leave. But circumstances made her to change her mind again.

(To be continued)

.