Hiccup dangled by his tail and slapped through leaf after leaf, hunting the plump green fruits that hide high in treetops. He stroked a branch with his ropey fingers and came away with nothing but leaf stems, so he howled coldly and dropped onto a lower branch, gazing at the sun dipping behind faraway trees.
Hopper, Ornery, King and a few other spider monkeys hooted above him. King had two plump green fruits in his mouth and three more in his hand as he suspended from his magnificent tail—the most powerful tail in the rainforest. Hopper had tackled Ornery and they fell crashing through the canopy, catching the attention of two poufy females hunched nearby, who were grooming each other’s necks.
“Hey, King,” Hiccup said.
King looked at him but continued chewing, rich leafy juice spewing out of his mouth. He stretched out his lips and pushed a third fruit into his mouth.
Suddenly Hopper flung screaming through the branches as Ornery clenched his tail, and the females flipped their hands up in delighted hoots, and for a moment they captured everybody’s attention.
“King, I will look for nuts. Nuts are good. You want nuts?”
King swept his hand over a branch and pulled away so many plump green fruits that one spilled out his palm and bobbled from branch to branch on its decent to the ground.
“Hopper, Ornery, you want nuts?”
They paused briefly and hovered on the branches, whipping their strong tails from side to side. “Nuts! No nuts for strong tails! Nuts not for us! Nuts!” Ornery then bit Hopper’s shoulder and the chase went on spinning.
Hiccup, his head hung like a dying flower, climbed down the tree to the ground forage.
Spotty was scurrying through the rotted leaves and fallen trees, lifting rocks, frantically howling. “Food? Nut? Where nut?”
Hiccup saw the big plump fruit King had dropped lying beside a mossy, skull colored rock. He grabbed it carefully, turned it over in is hand, then threw it at Spotty. It smacked Spotty’s ear and Spotty leaped with a howl, flimsy tail flailing between his legs, then his feet hit the ground and he scattered about in circles, whimpering frantically, frenzied, until he accidentally stepped on the fallen fruit and stiffened. He bent low, sniffed, grabbed the fruit in his mouth and crushed it between silver teeth, squirting juice down his face.
“Love fruit! Love it!” He chewed more aggressively than those nasty Chimpanzees do, like he tasted life itself, and it wasn’t until the fruit was devoured that Spotty noticed Hiccup.
“Hiccup? Why is Hiccup here below?” And Spotty hobbled over to Hiccup, sliding over a tree root, rustling through the forage. His eyes were enormous black ponds—wide patches of fur were plucked from his head, too, but most embarrassingly his stem-thin tail waggled behind his back. “Hiccup’s tail is strong. Hiccup belongs high, high in the trees! Not below, not below with Spotty and skinny tails.”
Hiccup howled once and squatted. “Me!” He howled again. “I look like a strong tail, but they leave me alone. I feel like a weak tail, and even he sends me away!” Hiccup, his head hung like dying flower, sulked off between two trees and hobbled, hobbled, hobbled away.
“Where is Hiccup going?”
“To hunt nuts.”
“No! Nasty, nasty Chimpanzees want to eat Hiccup!”
And Hiccup hobbled until he was alone.
That night, high in the treetops, when the sun was replaced by the moon, King asked where Hiccup was. Hopper and Ornery asked the females. The females asked King. King descended and asked the weak tails. Spotty said Hiccup had gone to hunt nuts.
Until the sun returned every spider monkey, no matter the tail strength, howled because of the death of Hiccup, a spider monkey with a strong tail but a gentle heart, for whom God made no perch or branch where he belonged.
