Monkey Wars by Richard Kurti Page A

time’s always the worst.” Papina smiled.
    Mico coughed the water from his airways.
The first time?
How often did she think he was going to do this? But the one thing Mico was starting to learn about Papina was that she was very determined.
    As they made their way through the city streets, Mico’s eyes darted about nervously, checking every shadow.
    Trying to make him relax, Papina started pointing out various landmarks across Kolkata, and even though she was just repeating things that Twitcher had told her, she liked playing the role of a worldly monkey. When they were halfway there, she darted through an archway and down an alley that opened onto a small piece of scrub ground dotted with beekeepers’ sheds.
    “Fancy a treat?” she asked, and without waiting for an answer, scrambled over the fencing and headed toward the hives.
    The bees were silent in their hives, but it still made Mico nervous to be near such deadly insects. Anxiously he crept closer, until he found Papina sitting under one of the hives that had a long dribble of honey running down its front leg. She dipped her finger into the honey and offered it to Mico.
    “Here…Try some.”
    The taste exploded in his mouth, sending waves of pleasure through his body; it was so much more powerful than the sweetness of fruit.
    “How do the humans do it?” he asked. “Why don’t the bees sting them?”
    “They’ve got special clothes.” She pointed to the netted hats hanging on the side of the shed. “But they look pretty stupid when they wear them.”
    Mico swung over to have a closer look, then plucked one of the hats down and plonked it over his body, vanishing completely under the nets. Papina started giggling, which set Mico off as well—this honey was pretty strong stuff.
    —
    Buzzing from the sugar, they set off again, and by the time dawn was glimmering in the sky they were just a couple of streets away from Temple Gardens.
    Instinctively Mico hung back. “Maybe this is far enough.”
    “Oh no. You’re not backing out now,” Papina said as she reached under a market stall to retrieve a squashed pomegranate.
    Mico knew he must be out of his mind to be doing this—time and again dire warnings of rhesus barbarity had been drilled into him, yet here he was, about to walk right into the heart of their territory.
    Papina squeezed the pith between her fingers and started to make a white mark on Mico’s forehead—the Universal Sign of Peace.
    “That won’t help,” Mico said. The sign hadn’t saved Papina’s father; why would it save him?
    “Trust me.” But Papina could feel the tension under his fur. “When I came to the cemetery, you promised to protect me.” She clasped his hand and whispered, “The promise works both ways.”
    A few moments later, they were standing on the edge of Temple Gardens, Mico gazing up in wonder at the enormous statue of the monkey god. But if Papina was expecting his first question to be about Hanuman, she was wrong.
    “Where’s the wall?” he asked.
    “What wall?”
    “To protect you, to keep other monkeys out?”
    “But we don’t want to keep monkeys out,” Papina replied with disarming simplicity.
    She waved her arm across the tranquil gardens. “So, do they look like monsters?”
    Mico remained silent; everywhere he looked, he saw rhesus monkeys fast asleep, in the trees, under the shrubs, in the nooks and crannies of the statue.
    “Do savages sleep so peacefully?” Papina wanted an admission from Mico that he’d been wrong.
    Mico wasn’t convinced—they might be peaceful now, but when they woke and found a langur in their midst it could turn very ugly. He looked up at the sky where the light streaks were getting broader by the heartbeat.
    “I have to go back.”
    “No! Not yet.”
    “There’s no time—”
    “How do you know we’re not cannibals unless you stay for breakfast?” Papina demanded.
    “But my parents will think I’ve gone missing!”
    “So? Just make up an excuse. Say