by Calista Skye
I can see the tall tree right behind it, which Roti’ax and his friends wanted to hang me from so the dragon would see me. There’s nobody here. But I’m sure the tribe will soon be here with some other plan to bait Troga. Their so-called treasure and the prospect of actually having women in the tribe will be too strong a temptation. Now that Xark’on and I have done the hard work, those lazy cowards just need to get Troga out of her trench. I’m sure they can think of suitable bait. Feels like those guys would sacrifice one of their own for that purpose. Or several of them.
We spend an hour looking for rocks and stacking them in two large heaps far apart. Some of them need two girls to lift them, but most of them are of a size that one girl can lift. And some of them have to be small enough that one girl can throw them thirty feet.
That one girl will be me. I’m the only one of us who’s relatively well fed. And the time with Xark’on did get me in better shape, with all the swimming and the walking and the… other activities.
“Okay,” I say when everything is ready. “This will attract the dragon. In fact, I’m pretty sure she’s close right now. Don’t be distracted by any weird noises. She can make some creepy sounds. And get down if you think she’ll spew fire. Stay away from the edge if she’s close. And, very important: don’t look at her. She can mesmerize you like a male stripper. Um. Don’t tell my mom I said that. Okay, I’ll be the only one to go down in the trench. Nobody follow me, even if it looks easy.”
The girls nod. Eleanor shrugs and looks away.
I take a moment to myself. First, I look towards the cave. Signaling Heidi didn’t work, but that’s fine. I didn’t expect it to. One flickering little torch, miles away, against the sun—it was very optimistic. But at least it helps me not feel too bad about being gone for so long. I tried my best.
Then, I turn around and look towards the treehouse, although I can’t see it from here.
I can’t help missing Xark’on. Did he really plan to kill me all along? He seemed so different from his tribesmen. But the evidence is pretty damning.
“I loved you,” I whisper.
In a different world, who knows? He might have loved me, too.
I take a deep breath. I will probably not survive the next hour. That’s okay. Someone has to do this. After the way those tribesmen molested me, I don’t want these twelve defenseless girls to fall into their hands. And I don’t feel all that defenseless. I feel angry and sad and determined. So, this is the time.
I take a deep breath and look up at the trees. Such a beautiful day this is. It’s actually not a bad planet, and I’m sad to leave it. It made me strong.
“Let’s begin.”
33
- Xark’on -
Only when I’ve walked all the way up to the gate of the village do I realize that it’s the wrong place.
I scratch my head, and the fingers feel wet. Why is it wrong?
And why is the village so desolate? Not a sign of life anywhere.
Then, I remember. I was supposed to go to the trap, not the village!
I turn on my heel and retrace my steps. This was a total waste of time.
But the walk has been good for me. I feel better now. The fog in my mind has cleared, and the pain isn’t quite as bad as it was.
That also means that my worry is much stronger. Caroline used as bait... I want to roar and swing my hammer into every tree I see. She’s the true Treasure, and for a moment I had her. For days even. Many days. And I didn’t see it.
Well, I saw it. But I shied away from the decision I had to make. That I couldn’t use her as bait was clear to me after only a day or two with Caroline. It was a good moment when I fully understood that. But the realization that I also couldn’t use myself has been slow in coming. I blocked it out, deciding to handle that when the trap was done. And then it was finished so soon after, and the bait problem came washing over me like Caroline splashing me in the pond.
I knew that Roti’ax was right when he said that the bait had to be alive and tempting and young. And human. Since it couldn’t be Caroline, it had to be someone else. A Small or a Big wouldn’t do at all. A strong warrior might. Such as myself.
But by then, I didn’t like that thought, either. The thought of giving up Caroline by dying and sacrificing myself for the tribe, although it would make me a revered Ancestor for all eternity. Caroline needs me here. Who will protect her from rekh if I’m gone? Who will hoist her into the safety of the treehouse? Who will keep an eye on her? Who will feel the warmth in his chest when she looks at him with those shiny eyes?
No, I also couldn’t be used as bait. We’d have to either convince one of our other warriors to sacrifice himself for the tribe, or we’d have to kidnap a warrior from another tribe. None of those options were tempting, and so I snapped at Caroline after the trap was finished, worried about that and about the Ancestors and about everything.
And then I stupidly went up into the treehouse, where Roti’ax and his friends ambushed me.
If anything happens to Caroline, it’s all my fault. I should have made it clear to everyone that she’s not bait. I should have demanded that now that I’d built the trap, they had to contribute by providing the bait.
I should have taken her and run away. Gone with her to her tribe. I should have done that the first time she suggested it.
What good is the Treasure to me now? Certainly, they are women. But I know with such strength that it takes my breath away that no other woman will be like her.
Can be like her.
Ever.
The Treasure would be a complete disappointment to me. I have a much better treasure already.
Except I might not.
The trap. Caroline and the trap. She’s in mortal danger.
I fasten my hammer extra firmly to my belt, tighten the straps of the pack, and start to run.
34
- Caroline -
I take off my primitive sandals. I need my feet bare for this.
I can hear the girls roll the first large rocks into the trench and the satisfying crashes of them hitting the bottom.
The trench is glass, after all. Sand that Troga melted with her fire. And glass can be broken.
The rocks hit the bottom of the round trench with hard smashing sounds, just like thick glass being shattered and then cracking.
I throw my own rocks as hard as I can at the other side of the trench where it’s almost vertical. And sure enough, where they hit, they leave milky white roses of smashed glass.
I’m glad Xark’on forced me to practice with the throwing stars. My aim is pretty good now, and I’m able to throw them harder than I would’ve been able to just a couple of weeks ago.
I take my time to aim well, painfully conscious that time is not something I have a lot of.
The idea is that the girls use their rocks to smash the trench on the other side of the sharp turn that forms the point of the star. That way, whatever happens on this side of the broken patch of trench will be much harder for Troga to hear when she listens to the vibrations in the glass. The glass will be broken and can’t transmit the vibrations anymore. And the monster might not be able to hear the less loud sounds of my smaller, more accurately thrown rocks.
The crashing sound of the large rocks on the other side of the sharp turn stops, and I realize with a chill what it means: Troga is there, and the girls are hiding.
Then there are more crashes further away. The second group of girls are throwing their large rocks into the trench, trying to lure Troga away from the first spot before she starts to come towards me.
And hopefully the first group of girls still have some rocks left to keep Troga running uselessly back and forth between the two broken patches of her trench.
We’re counting on her not immediately using her fire to start melting the broken glass and fixing it, but it’s the kind of thing we have no control over. I never claimed that this plan was foolproof.
I’m out of rocks, and on the other side there is
now a nice line of white, smashed glass running all the way from the upper edge down to the bottom. But I’m hoping I won’t need that lower part. In some places, the glass is so smashed up, it’s fallen away, revealing the sand beneath.
I have one last rock in my hand.
I’ve rubbed the back of my new white dress with what little fat the girls could scrounge up from the meat Xark’on had tossed over to them. That was not entirely fresh fat. So not only does the dress now look like it’s soaked in grease, it also smells of rancid dinosaur fat. But it’s slippery, and that’s the point.
I sit down on the edge and use my hands to propel me down into the trench, making sure to not think too deeply about what I’m doing and just making sure to get an accurate start.
Then, I’m sliding fast down the glass wall, sitting on my butt like on a tiny toboggan down a snowy hill.
I slide up the other side a little to the side of where I’ve smashed the glass. It’s hard to control my slide, and I start to slowly rotate away from the broken patch. I’d like to slide as high up as possible, but it’s now or never.
I hit the already broken part as hard as I can with the rock, see the glass fall away, then slam my other hand into the little patch of sand that’s revealed behind it.
And then I’m hanging there by one arm, with the hand buried in cold sand, halfway up the side of the trench.
I feel the broken glass with my bare toes and find a foothold for one foot. The other foot kicks uselessly against smooth glass that’s probably cracked but not falling away.
Fine.
Holding the rock as if my life depends on it, which it does, I smash and hack away more glass over me, making more footholds and handholds so I can climb up. I got the idea from Xark’on’s way of climbing out of his hole when he’d dug it too deep to jump up from.
It works. The glass isn’t too thick, maybe about as thick as the glass in a masonry jar. The sand underneath is hard packed and gives me a good grip when I bore my fingers into it.
I’m distantly aware that the nearest group of girls are smashing Troga’s trench again, so my time is running out.
But I can’t hurry this. If I slide down from here, I won’t reach the edge on the other side.
I slowly make my way up the glass wall, smashing handholds and hoisting myself up and trying not to think of the trail of blood I’m leaving. The glass has sharp edges.
When I get about four feet further up, I can use the footholds I’ve smashed and dug, and then I feel more secure, and I make a little faster progress. But the wall is also steeper this close to the upper edge. I must concentrate.
I can hear the more distant group of girls throwing what I think must be their last batch of rocks, and then I hear yelling and screaming—many female voices together—like the rocks have stopped working and they’re trying to attract the dragon’s attention in any other way.
That can’t be a good sign.
I keep climbing up the glass wall, and there’s only about two feet left.
I hear an ululating chuckle that I’ve heard before, and there’s a gust in the air that smells of sulfur and fire and death.
Troga is here.
I keep climbing, smashing another handhold, sticking my toes into another foothold, ignoring the pain where the glass is cutting into already lacerated skin. My life is at stake—and the lives of all those other girls.
My back is prickling because I can’t turn and see what’s happening behind me. But I’m sure the dragon is looking at me.
There’s only a short distance left now. I dig my hand into the last handhold I’ll need, and both my feet find purchase in holes of their own.
I itch to turn around. But I feel in my bones that if I do, I’m dead. I have to climb systematically these last couple of feet.
Then, I’m far enough up to swing one leg over the edge. I can hear the dragon breathing in. It’s a sound like strong wind screaming around a corner of an old house. I’m pretty sure that if I can hear that, it means there’s some fire coming.
I’m up on the edge, and I use what little momentum I have to roll myself away, fast.
I hear the same whooosh I heard the first time when Troga burned Xark’on’s back, and the world turns intensely white all around me. I clench my eyes shut, but it doesn’t help —the light goes right through my eyelids.
I just keep rolling away, over the rocky ground, ignoring the pain from everywhere, until my hip hits something hard, and I stop.
There’s shade now.
I open my eyes, looking down myself, afraid I’ve been burned to a crisp and the pain just hasn’t hit yet.
But I look okay. Even my back doesn’t feel bad, and the backs of my legs are bruised but not burned.
I close my eyes again, just leaving tiny slits so I can look at Troga without being hypnotized.
I can see her there, down in her trench. Only the top of her head with her eyes. The smell of sulfur is very strong. In the spot where I rolled over the edge, the rim is burned black and the glass is gone. I rolled away just in time.
I scramble to get to my feet and run a little ways into the jungle, but not out of sight for Troga. I have to make sure that she can still see me. Because I’m not done. The most dangerous part is still ahead of me, and I have to get it over with before I lose my nerve and before I let the thousands of little signals of pain in my hands and feet overwhelm me.
I run towards the trap, keeping my distance from the trench, but I’m not as far in among the trees as I itch to be.
There’s the site with the trap. There’s the tree, and there’s the rope hanging from it. I run over there. Only when I get to the trap, carefully avoiding the innocent-looking patch of ground with the hole under it, do I see that Troga’s not going for it.
She’s there, in her trench, and she’s looking at me. I don’t dare focus on her too much, because I don’t want her to mesmerize me again with her beauty, which in fact isn’t that great when I’m looking at her from the corner of my eyes.
But she’s not coming. She’s swinging her head back and forth, looking up and down her trench.
I’m pretty sure that if she wanted to burn me, she could do it right now. That first day, Xark’on took me onto his back and ran for that exact reason. I doubt he was wrong about that. I think maybe she wants something more this time.
I stand still and just watch the dragon, making sure to treat her like the sun and not look directly at her.
Nope. She’s not coming. If she leaves now, there won’t be another chance.
I take one of the iron stars out of my chest pocket and slowly walk closer to Troga, ready to hit the deck if I hear that noise of a storm blowing past a rickety old house.
Fuck, I must be crazy. That monster is deadly, and here I am, walking towards it, not scrambling madly away. I thought my suicidal days were over, but here we are.
Well, I did promise the girls I’d do this. And I think they’re watching me.
I get so close to the dragon I can smell her, like a thousand matches being extinguished right under my nose.
I think it’s close enough. I could hit a pretty narrow tree stump from this distance back when Xark’on was teaching me. Shit, it feels like weeks ago.
I hold the throwing star the way he showed me, wind up, and try to pretend I’m just practicing. Aiming is pretty hard when I don’t dare look to closely at the target. But I have to do it for just one second.
The little star spins through the air and hits Troga right in her left eye. I actually aimed for her snout, which is bigger. But at least I hit her. I’ll take it.
For a second, she’s not moving, and the star seems stuck in her eye.
Then she screams, the most horrendous noise I’ve ever heard. Dactyls screeching is like a sweet whisper compared to this noise of a million cars braking with their wheels locking up, except they’re extremely angry cars.
The dragon writhes and screams and thrashes her tail wildly, and with her one good eye she’s
now focusing on me. If I thought that those yellow eyes could see through my soul before, I had no idea how intense they could get. It’s like an icicle boring into me.
So, I turn and run.
And now she’s coming after me. I can hear it. There are new screeches, which have to be her claws on the glass as she climbs out of the trench.
Then it’s quiet, and I decide on a route which will take me around the trap. I pick the right side, and now I have to decide how close I want to get to the tree with the rope. It’s perfectly placed to bait Troga, but—
There’s a snap, and I trip and fall headlong forwards.
But I never hit the ground.
I’m hanging ten feet up in the air. In a net, like that first day.
Someone’s placed a trap right under the tree. I went right into it, and now I’m dangling here, helpless.
And Troga is coming.
I strain against the tight net, but any movement seems to only make it tighter around me, and just like last time I was caught like this, I have to expend a lot of effort just breathing. And my breathing is fast. Because I’m stuck here like a tied-up mouse being offered to a cat. I get the feeling Troga enjoys playing with her prey.
Her movements are smooth and oiled as she approaches me on clawed feet. A yellowish liquid is running from the eye I hit, and now I’m pretty sure I blinded it. Yeah, she’s not going to like me after that.
My throat is raw with panic. This is exactly the situation I was trying to avoid. Except worse, because now the monster hates me.
A tiny part of my mind has the resources to think that someone else placed that trap there. There wasn’t one yesterday, I know that.
The monster sees that I’m helpless and makes that chuckling sound again. But now it’s joyless, just full of menacing expectation. This thing looks like a dragon, but it’s just a dinosaur with a mean streak. There’s no particular intelligence in it.
I struggle against the raw, thick fibers of the net. It smells of rotting plants, but the rope it’s made from is thick. I manage to kick one leg out of the net, but the rest of my limbs are held tight against my body.