Chapter 26
- Morgan -
The Plood walk ahead of us as we make our way up the inner wall of the crater, then squeeze through the inner opening.
I’m not happy about leaving Rosa and Sage behind, but they made their choice.
There’s not much I can do to force them.
And anyway, their choice may well have been the right one.
There’s no guarantee that we’ll reach the Borok village in one piece, or even alive.
If I had to place a bet, I’d bet heavily on us not making it, on us four being violently murdered by a dinosaur or one of the giant insects with venom stingers the size of chopsticks.
But we don’t have much of a choice. I can’t stay here, obviously, if they can’t even feed themselves. And life in the Borok tribe is genuinely better than here.
If by some miracle we reach the village, having three other girls there may relieve the marriage pressure on me, too. There will be four bachelorettes, and not just one.
And the thing about the saucer is at the back of my mind. I think we should take it and try to get to Earth. Before, I was alone with that sentiment because the other girls are so happy with their local husbands. But now, I have three others who also want to go home. They can’t really stop us.
“Can we take a rest?” Beth asks as we get the field of boulders on the outside of the crater. “We ate the last of the berries yesterday, and today there’s only been nuts. Not a lot of energy:”
“Sure,” I tell her. “We can take a breather.”
I look at the sun. Now I’m responsible for three more girls, I have to make sure we walk in the right direction. We can’t afford to walk in circles.
I wish I’d paid more attention when I walked with Vyrathion, but my mind was often occupied with other things than navigation. And the sun is hard to see from the jungle floor. But still I have some idea which way would be the right one.
The girls sink down among the boulders while I study the sun through a gap in the canopy.
The jungle outside the crater feels different already.
Inside, there were sheer stone walls everywhere around you, a sense of being enclosed.
Out here, the world stretches away forever in every direction, but you can’t see it because the jungle is that dense.
Beth leans back against a rock and closes her eyes. Quinn is rubbing one ankle, while Abigail picks at the remains of a nut shell. They all look exhausted. The crater kept them alive, but only barely.
"I still can't believe there are other women," Abigail says quietly. "For a while I thought we were the only ones."
"You aren't," I assure her. "There are several in the Borok village. More than enough to make life interesting."
"What are they like?" Beth asks.
I find myself nearly smiling despite everything. "Complicated. Stubborn. Loud. Pretty much what you'd expect after trapping a bunch of Earth women on an alien planet for years."
That earns a few weak laughs.
The sound fades quickly.
Nobody mentions home. Nobody mentions the flying saucer. Nobody mentions the fact that all four of us are walking through one of the most dangerous jungles imaginable with nothing but a handful of Plood for protection.
Everybody is thinking about it anyway.
I force myself to stay focused. We cannot afford mistakes. Not now. Not when I finally found them.
"Five years," Quinn says after a while. "You really lived with cavemen for five years?"
"No. Less than a year. We were in that saucer for years first."
She shakes her head. "I don't know how you're still sane."
"I'm not entirely sure I am," I tell her. "I did some weird things recently. This here doesn’t even rate in the top ten."
That earns another polite laugh. I haven’t told them about Vyrathion, so they don’t know what I mean. And if they’d known, they would probably have gone straight back inside the crater.
For a few minutes we simply rest. The jungle hums around us. Creatures rustle in the bushes. A distant dinosaur calls from far away, answered by another even farther off.
The silence gives me ample time to think about him. I have to focus to not break down again
Still, something else gradually starts to bother me.
At first I can't put my finger on it. A twig snaps somewhere among the trees.
Then another. The sounds aren't especially loud, and under normal circumstances I probably wouldn't even notice them.
But there is something deliberate about them.
The noises don't blend into the background the way jungle sounds usually do. They seem connected somehow.
I sit up straighter.
Beth notices immediately. "What is it?"
"I'm not sure."
I listen again. A few seconds later I hear another crack of breaking wood. Then another. Not close together. Not random either. Whatever is making the noise is moving.
My stomach tightens. "Clyde," I say.
The Plood turns his enormous black eyes toward me.
"Do you see something?"
He doesn't answer, of course. He never does. But several of the other Plood have already gone still. Their attention has shifted away from us and toward the jungle surrounding the boulder field. One by one they turn their heads as though tracking movement between the trees.
The girls notice it too.
Abigail rises to her feet. "Morgan?"
I don't answer immediately. My eyes are moving from one patch of jungle to another, searching for whatever the Plood have seen.
For several seconds I find nothing. Then a figure slips between two tree trunks. I only catch a glimpse of him before he disappears again, but it is enough. Human-shaped, but bigger. And moving with purpose.
Every muscle in my body locks tight. "We have to leave," I say urgently. “Back inside the crater!”
The girls are already getting to their feet. We barely manage three steps before a tribesman walks out from behind a tree directly ahead of us. He carries a sword and wears little besides a loincloth, like usual with these guys. He stops when he sees us, and for a moment nobody moves.
Then another man emerges from the trees twenty yards away. A third appears farther up the slope. A fourth steps out from behind a boulder.
My blood turns to ice.
"They found us," Quinn whispers.
The first tribesman simply stares. He isn't looking at me specifically. His gaze moves across all four girls, lingering on each of us in turn. More movement catches my eye. Men are appearing throughout the jungle now, emerging from the undergrowth and stepping into the open.
The Plood react before I can think of anything useful to do. They hurry together from every direction and form a loose circle around us. Clyde ends up beside my shoulder, staring outward along with the others.
For a brief moment I feel a flicker of relief. Then more tribesmen arrive. They emerge from every side of the clearing in twos and threes. Some carry spears. Others have swords. Some have huge sledgehammers that look new.
As they draw closer, I begin to notice that they have different colored stripes.
Different tribes. The realization lands heavily in my chest. Sage was right. The problem was never a single tribe discovering the crater. Every tribe in the region must have learned about the women hiding there.
The ring around us grows steadily tighter as more men arrive. Fifty become a hundred. A hundred become more. The jungle seems incapable of running out of them.
Yet nobody attacks. They simply gather and watch.
By the time the movement finally stops, perhaps twenty Plood stand around us in a defensive circle. Outside them wait hundreds of tribesmen, packed among the trees and boulders, their weapons in their hands and their attention fixed entirely on us.
For the first time since leaving the crater, I find myself wishing Vyrathion hadn’t let me come with him that day in the Borok Village.
The tribesmen continue to arrive until the jungle seems packed with them.
They stand among the trees, on boulders, along fallen logs, and halfway up slopes where roots claw through the soil.
They all have weapons, but none of them look particularly interested in the Plood. Their attention remains fixed on us.
I move closer to Beth and Quinn. Abigail edges nearer as well. The four of us end up standing almost shoulder to shoulder inside the ring of Plood.
"This is bad, right?" Beth asks quietly.
The question would almost be funny if the situation weren't so awful.
"Yes," I tell her. "This is basically the worst case scenario."
Nobody argues.
Across the crowd, a large tribesman pushes his way forward. He has a necklace made from claws and teeth and enough scars to suggest a long career of making terrible decisions and somehow surviving them. Several of the warriors step aside for him immediately.
A chief.
Before he can reach the front, another man emerges from a different part of the crowd. This one has white stripes across his chest and carries a spear decorated with feathers. He starts shouting the moment he sees the first chief.
The two men begin arguing. And I understand what they’re saying.
They're talking about us, and how to divide us as spoils. The main problem seems to be that there’s only four of us, while they were expecting five. And they are five tribes.
The feathered chief points directly at Abigail and says something that makes several warriors behind him nod in agreement. The scarred chief immediately starts shouting back. His arm sweeps toward Beth and then toward the rest of us.
"They're dividing us up," Quinn whispers.
Nobody answers because everybody can see it now.
A third chief arrives. He pushes through the crowd with six warriors behind him and immediately joins the argument.
The volume doubles. Fingers stab in our direction.
Warriors shout over one another. One chief gestures toward the jungle behind us, another toward the crater, and a third repeatedly points at the girls as though he is listing livestock at a market.
I suddenly understand why nobody has attacked yet. They haven't decided who gets what. The thought makes me feel sick.