Chapter 20
Jasmine
With two sites to dig people free from, nobody looked at me when I slipped away.
I might want people to think I pulled my own weight, that I could help, but lifting boulders was not one of my strengths.
So I shifted my new bow on my shoulder and circled back to my grids to start searching again.
Thinking it had to be a fluke, I released Dove and Hunter from my coat anyway.
“Go on, can you do it again? Find another? Are there more?”
Dove sat down on the toe of my boot and began grooming the silky fuzz on her chest with precise little licks.
Then she rubbed her small front paws over her snout and smoothed her whiskers.
It was very adorable, but useless. Meanwhile, Hunter, insatiable as he was, began scavenging for tasty bugs.
So, with a sigh, I picked up my abandoned stick and started going over my grid again, poking carefully, listening closely, and searching every likely nook and cranny for a sign.
In my concentration, I lost track of the sleara for only a little while.
When I looked up again, I discovered they’d fluttered off in a different direction, uphill where it had been deemed unlikely anyone had gotten trapped.
Those were the last places any of us were supposed to look.
It was where the rockslide had hit first, and everyone had assumed any victims caught in it had been swept further downhill.
Our biggest worry was about those who might have gone over the edge of the plateau, not this area up here.
Then the pair of them began digging at a pile of smaller rocks that had collected against the side of a much bigger boulder.
Their excited noises were not as obvious as last time, but they were making them.
Abandoning my stick once again, I clambered over the rubble to hurry toward them.
As soon as I reached the spot, I knew they’d found another.
A clawed hand had been uncovered by their digging, the scales a warm nutmeg brown.
Instinct kicked in. I shouted Ekkire’s name to alert him, and then I dropped to my knees and began digging.
This naga had been buried; they were probably dead, yet the hand felt warm to the touch.
Then the fingers twitched and my heart leaped in my chest, both in shock and relief.
So they lived? How? That seemed impossible, but there it was.
I freed more of the arm, and it began moving, the shape slender enough that I knew pretty quickly this was the missing female on the list.
Ekkire hadn’t come yet; maybe he hadn’t heard me.
I looked, calling for help again, and discovered they were still too focused on the male and his younglings.
Even my guy, who stood out with his green scales, was absorbed in clearing the debris off them.
They made such a ruckus, they probably didn’t hear me.
Fine. This finer rubble and sand were manageable for me.
I would clear her head, ensuring her survival, and then get more help.
“Hold on,” I called out firmly, squeezing her wrist once.
“I’m going to get you out!” Using my hands and a piece of flat wood I’d found nearby, I dug until her shoulder was free, too.
That’s when I discovered how she’d managed to survive being buried alive: her head was in a crevice beneath the massive boulder.
It had created an air pocket, and as I carefully opened it up, I could see a hint of light.
Somehow, she’d had an air shaft through that crevice that led up to the surface.
If not for that, I had no doubt she would have suffocated. It was a miracle.
The female had twitched her hand when we first started digging her out, but now appeared out cold.
A kind of hibernation she’d gone into to survive?
A deep sort of healing sleep to restore her strength?
These naga had all kinds of nifty survival techniques, but I wasn’t sure if that was one of them.
Regardless, slumbering and preserving air had allowed her to survive.
She was wedged awkwardly against the boulder, her head beneath it though not pinned.
The rest of her was coiled beneath the thick crush of sand and stone.
She must have been high up on the slope above the outpost when the rockslide began.
It had swept her down toward the village with the rest of the moving mass of rock and dirt.
When I cleared another stretch of sand around the opening beneath the rock, her face was fully revealed.
Sharp naga features, a hint of orange freckles across her nose, a horn that jutted sharply from her chin.
Her scales allowed sand to slide right off, but it clung to her dark hair.
Something else did too—a crust of dried blood, if I wasn’t mistaken.
Then she opened her eyes, orange flaring like fire.
Alien, narrow pupils contracted as they focused on my face.
She hissed, and confusion rapidly became fury.
Though trapped, she had one free arm and a lot of will to strike.
I tumbled back, the air rushing past my face telling me just how close those claws had come to taking out my eyes.
“Hey! I’m trying to help you!” I exclaimed, but she fought more, bucking against the sand that buried her.
She rose just enough to free herself from beneath the boulder, her torso twisting.
She was going to strike again, if not at me, then at the pair of sleara that were only now scrambling away from her.
Hunter fought against gravity with rapid beats of his wings, throwing himself into the air and to safety, but Dove was not as fast. The naga female tried to strike again, but she was blocked when Hunter crashed his small body into her arm with a screech.
The pair scrambled to safety moments later, while I yanked my bow free, notched an arrow, and aimed it at the furious woman.
“Enough!” I screamed. “We were helping you, damn it! Calm the fuck down.” I rose to my feet, the bow pulled tight, the arrow aimed at her in a way that left nothing to the imagination.
The threat was real; she sensed it, saw it, and froze in place.
A snarl twisted her features, and in response my body flooded with fear, the urge to flee very real.
This was a predator cornered and ready to strike at anything.
Reason did not return until shouts went up and other naga came rushing in.
Ekkire was among them, and he planted himself solidly between the female and me.
While the arriving Sun Fang males shouted at me to put down my bow, Ekkire said nothing as he took up a defensive position.
His tail coiled and yanked the little sleara out of the way, dumping them safely at my feet.
The rest of him was locked in a stare-down with the naga female I’d tried to free.
The fine hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, tension rising all around us.
This wasn’t helping; this was… If we weren’t careful, the tide would turn against us very quickly.
It wouldn’t matter that she’d attacked me while I’d been trying to help.
All they saw was the human who had attacked their vulnerable female.
It went against every instinct I had, but I lowered my new bow and the sharply fletched arrow Scrai had made for me.
She was still trapped beneath tons of dirt and rock, and Ekkire was here now. He’d never let any harm come to me.
“She attacked me!” the female declared, full of fury.
“She tried to stab me in the back while I was trapped!” The accusations flew through the air like missiles, and various Sun Fang warriors shifted uneasily, staring at me with open hostility.
Then Ilesekh showed up, his face a mask of fury.
He was streaked with dirt from hard work, a testament to his dedication to his people.
He took one look at the female and leveled his bow at me.
As much as Ekkire rose protectively in front of me, it only took one arrow to get through…
I stepped closer to him, not quite touching, and hunkered protectively down over the pair of sleara.
Dove chirped in confusion, but she and Hunter quickly seemed to figure out who the threat was.
I grabbed for them just before they tried to launch into the air, and I could only imagine what havoc they had planned if I hadn’t stopped them.
Arrows most certainly would have flown, and if one of them got hit, they would not survive it.
“No, stay here,” I demanded when Hunter shouted in fury with his little chirp kee kee noise.
It was a distraction, but it did not change the mounting tension this standoff had created.
There was growling, posturing; the still partially trapped female screeched in fury.
I cast my eyes about, looking for a way out, and realized we’d been surrounded.
Only Ilesekh was holding his bow, but that didn’t matter.
I’d seen how fast he’d drawn his, and all of them were armed and deadly.
We weren’t getting out of this unless they let us…
“You dare strike at my mate?” Ekkire’s snarl was so loud, so rough, I barely picked out the words in it.
It carried over the other furious voices, even that of the screeching female, who was rapidly drawing an even bigger crowd to us with the sound.
I saw the faces of more males, but also the females who had already regarded me with suspicion before.
That was her real backup, the true danger.
They were the ones really in charge out here, and if they told the males to kill me, they would not hesitate to do so.
Especially not Ilesekh, who seemed to really hate humans.