Monkey Wars by Richard Kurti

afternoons hurling oranges and kiwis against targets that had been daubed on the cemetery wall.
    Mico knew that once he could reliably hit a target, he would finally be able to take on Breri and his friends, which would be deeply satisfying.
    In fact, one of the surprises of cadet training was the way it improved his relationship with his brother. Whereas before Breri had always dismissed Mico, now they could talk about training and tactics, share jokes about the instructors. Most importantly, Mico could now defend himself. If his brother cuffed him or tried to steal something, Mico would retaliate and Breri relished the tussle that followed.
    The more cadet training progressed and the more they learned about fighting techniques, the more Mico realized that most langurs were like Breri—they loved to fight, and they lived for the rush of conflict. Aggression fulfilled them.
    It was a realization that worried Mico, because there was a part of him that was sickened by violence, horrified at the thought of actually killing another monkey. This wasn’t something he could talk about with anyone else, least of all his parents. Now that he was finally getting muscle and starting to prove himself, Trumble and Kima were showing real pride in him. Not wanting to disappoint, Mico kept his anxieties to himself.
    —
    As the monsoon approached, the cadets were due to start learning advanced hand-to-hand wrestling. But when Mico entered the special training mausoleum one day, he was surprised to see that instead of limbering up, the cadets were sitting in rows, ready to listen to a lecture.
    “What’s going on?” he whispered to Nappo, a wiry cadet with whom he’d become quite friendly.
    “It’s jaw-jaw, not war-war today,” sighed Nappo, who always found the more theoretical aspects of cadet training challenging, and he shuffled up to make room. A few moments later, when all the cadets had arrived, Gu-Nah swung down through a hole in the roof and landed dramatically in front of the class.
    “So, what have I been teaching you?” Gu-Nah boomed.
    “FIGHTING!” the cadets shouted back in their well-drilled chant.
    “Fighting. Yes, sir. Fighting. But, how do you know what you should be fighting for?”
    Silence. This was way beyond anything most cadets had ever thought about.
    “Exactly,” said Gu-Nah. “That is a trickier problem. Much trickier. Which is why the Ruling Council has put a new lesson into your training, to be taught by Deputy Tyrell himself.”
    With perfect timing, Tyrell strode into the room, setting off an excited murmur.
    “So pin your ears back,” Gu-Nah boomed, “put your tails down and listen up.”
    The cadets thumped the ground in appreciation as Tyrell took center stage. He looked out at the faces of the cadets, young and open, ready to receive his wisdom.
    “Don’t worry, this won’t be the boring recollections of an old soldier.” Tyrell smiled, earning a relieved chuckle from the cadets. “In fact, it’s old soldiers that are part of the problem, with their exaggerated stories of heroic battles,” he continued. “Their big talk makes it very hard for a young monkey to know why all this fighting is necessary. So today I’m going to tell you the truth, pure and simple.”
    Tyrell paused, cleared his throat, then nodded thoughtfully. “There was a time, many seasons ago, when the streets of this city belonged to rhesus monkeys. They occupied all the best rooftops and the greenest parks. They were insolent and thieving, but strangely, it was these very qualities that endeared them to the humans, who fed them, allowed them to breed.
    “These were dark times for us langur. We’ve always been a proud troop, unwilling to demean ourselves by sitting on the shoulders of human children, or performing tricks on a leash. The langur are fighters, and we needed to be strong just to survive. Because back then we lived a harsh existence in a derelict button factory by the railway shunting