But what does it want?
She didn’t know. But she knew the orb was watching, that she was being tested. It wanted her to prove herself. And there was food involved. Maybe the offering of fish was a promise of more food to come. Maybe the orb wanted her to hunt with it.
If she could get more food from the orb, when nobody else could, the pack would forever follow her, not Alpha.
Behind her eyes she could see their faces, their admiring eyes.
Yes. They will never leave me.
Szcar turned her back on the others and, making sure they were watching, bent to the left stone. Now that they were watching, they would see how valuable she was.
The left stone opened to reveal nothing inside.
Szcar jerked back, screeching. She bared her claws at the light thing.
The light thing just blinked, and patiently reorganized the boxes once more. It bent down, this time to the right stone, and revealed the fish.
Szcar stiffened, her mind reeling. She could feel the gazes of the others pressing into her back, could hear their feet padding over the sand, creeping closer. She couldn't let them see her fail again.
The light thing reorganized the stones, and this time Szcar kept watch over the stone that contained the fish. She kept it up until the light thing became a blur. By the time the light thing stepped back, despite her efforts to watch, Szcar wasn't sure which stone was which.
The others were only a few paces behind her, bunched in a tight ball, emitting a medley of clicks and whines.
Szcar's thoughts tumbled. She groaned and stepped forward to the stones. The others were watching, but they weren't on her side, not yet. There was nothing for it. She had to choose, and choose well.
She bent and touched her nose to the central stone. It glowed, opened, and revealed the fish.
The pack let fly a raucous cry of delight, hopping up and down. Szcar hissed in triumph, turned around, preparing to strut, when blinding pain erupted in her neck. Shadow fell over her from above.
She slammed to the sand, screeching, and whirled away. To the sound of the others' rabble, her toe throbbing with fresh agony, she looked up to see Alpha standing over her.
His eyes said nothing. Nothing at all. It was a look reserved for prey.
Szcar kept low, so low her snout almost touched the sand. She glanced back at the orb and the light thing reappeared.
Alpha started and bawled, glaring between her and the light thing. For a moment she didn't understand, but then she realized that he saw two copies of her, one of flesh, one of blue light.
The orb waited. Some fresh trial had begun. This time the stones had flattened and multiplied into a complex carpet of pebbles, embedded in the sand.
Why start a new trial when Alpha is close? It was for me!
The orb had been appearing to her, not the others. The trials had been for her; she knew it.
But now a new trial had started in Alpha’s presence.
No! He can’t have what is mine!
Szcar whined, betrayed. But she couldn’t move; Alpha warned her to stay, and approached the light thing with his claws spread. The light thing didn't react, just looked at Szcar, waiting. Without warning, Alpha slashed at the light thing's neck. His claws sank right through and came out the other side. Overbalancing, he went toppling forward into the sand and came up with an unguarded, plaintive chirp. He bounced to one side and struck again. He sank through just as before. He bounded back and roared.
Szcar seized her chance, sneaking forward with her head low until she stood before the light thing. At once it turned to the pebbles on the sand and proceeded to hop from one to the other. The pebbles were of two kinds: some light, some dark. The light thing stepped only on the light ones. Each time its foot fell, the pebble underneath glowed.
The light thing hopped all the way to the other side, and a fish appeared in the sand. It was bending to retrieve it when it once again vanished.
Szcar was stepping forward to the first pebble when Alpha charged. She slunk back and lay still, holding her breath. Alpha pressed his salivating jaws to the top of her head. His eyes bored into her, daring her to move, then flickered to Gia, who stood not far away.
After an eternity he backed off and turned to the pebble field. He chirped like a young’un, confronted by the throbbing blue things in the sand. He dipped a toe hesitantly onto the closest light stone, whipping his leg back just as quickly when it glowed.
Another glance at Gia kept him cemented to the spot. He wouldn’t back off now, with them all watching, especially his mate.
But he doesn't know about the other trials.
Alpha pattered over the light stones with such rapidity that his body became a blur, and for a heart-stopping moment Szcar was afraid he would reach the other side. Then his foot came down on a dark stone, and the field of pebbles turned red and vanished. Alpha was left deserted on plain sand, halfway to the orb. He froze and roared at nothing in particular. When the light thing appeared before him he slashed with his toe claw at once, but again it sank right through. Shuddering from head to foot, he bounded back until he stood beside Gia and bellowed.
The others watched. They watched very closely.
Gia’s eyes roamed from the light thing to Szcar, to Alpha, to where the pebbles had been, then once more to Szcar. She gave the briefest huff, and sidestepped away from Alpha.
The others saw. As though attached to Gia’s legs with string, they too took a step away from Alpha—towards Szcar.
Szcar reeled as they congregated about her, little by little, abandoning Alpha over by the Home Valley ridge. His jaws fell slack, his eyes expressionless.
It wasn't over. They stood with her, but she still had to win. Szcar met the light thing again only through sheer force of will. Before she could reach it, it gave her another hard, meaningful stare, and vanished. A moment later the pebbles were back.
Alpha flanked her left side, Gia and Orr and the others her right. Alpha’s shock wouldn’t last; she could sense it ebbing as clearly as she could see the orb on the other side of the pebble field.
She stepped onto the first pebble. It glowed. The angry red didn’t come. She hurried, as fast as her throbbing leg could carry her. One wobble from her bad toe and it would all be over—there would be no simple outcasting now. Alpha would tear her apart.
But the pain in her foot seemed far away, and she jumped over the light stones one at a time. She reached the other side with a last hesitant jump. The orb was close now, so close she could feel something—something in the air coming off it, making her feathers stand on end.
The light thing appeared beside her and the pebbles vanished. A fish appeared in front of her, but it was no blue apparition this time; it was real—she could smell it.
She bent and clamped her jaws around it. The scales touched her tongue and delicious juice ran down her teeth into her mouth.
The entire pack hopped up and down, Gia included. Alpha roared, but none of them paid him any mind.
Puffing her chest, Szcar bit into the fish and tasted flesh. It was done.
I am pack again—
Blinding light burst forth beside the fish, and flames blossomed from nowhere, reaching up towards her face.
Szcar shrieked, wheeling back into the sand and milling her legs until she caught purchase in the sand. The fish lay dropped at her feet.
Forest death. Forest death!
The same flames that turned the grazers black and smoking when the jagged bolts of lightning came from the sky in the rainy season and the forests burned.
She regained her feet somehow. The green light on the orb’s cap turned the same angry red as the pebbles had. The fire and the fish vanished.
The light thing turned to her with an unmistakable look of disapproval.
I angered it. But how?
Her gaze wandered to the spot in the sand that had been ablaze a moment before.
The fire. I must face fire?
She shuddered, head to
foot.
For a long time, nothing happened, long enough for the others to grow quiet and for Alpha to start stalking forwards.
If he made it to her, she wouldn't stand a chance.
Szcar barked at the orb, but it only sat there with the red light blaring. The light thing had frozen. She glanced at the rest of the pack, who crowded forward over the sand. But they wouldn't dare intervene.
Alpha would get to her first. His claws snicked the air.
Her chance was done. She could not face fire. No pack member could ever do that.
As Alpha came within striking distance, the light turned green and the orb shivered. Szcar braced herself, expecting flames yet again.
But no flames came this time. Instead the light thing appeared and bent its tail towards its head. Its body blurred and melted, revolving until it had become a thin glowing ring. From the ring budded off two more forms: to the left, one of the glowing sharp-edged stones; to the right, another form of three sides, like a jagged dune.
Szcar blinked, unmoving.
No fire. This is something else.
But this was far beyond her. Fire, and shapes? The orb clearly didn’t want her to hunt with it. So what did it want? The space behind her eyes hurt.
The shapes glowed in turn: a line joined the ring's edge to its center; another line ran from one edge of the stone to its opposite edge; and a final line traced the longest edge of the three-sided dune.
The glowing stopped. Szcar waited, but the light thing did not reappear. She sensed that she was supposed to do something, that the orb was watching carefully—another trial.
None of it meant a thing. She could only stare.
Stillness stretched out. The others stared alongside her. Nothing happened.
At last the shapes vanished, and the light on the orb’s cap turned red and winked out.
Szcar jumped at movement beside her, expecting Alpha’s killing blow to come from behind. A gentle chirp sounded at her flank, and Orr’s snout met her neck. Gia and Kiff were close by, also chirping, making sure to keep their heads lower than Szcar’s.
The pack had beaten Alpha to her side.
Alpha stood behind them, his gaze murderous, but now he was powerless.
Szcar knew she had failed the last trial, but she had beaten him, and that was all that mattered. In the face of the strange new world the orb had brought with it, he was nothing special.
Szcar was so preoccupied with her new entourage that at first she didn’t notice the orb rising up into the sky. By the time she saw it, the orb was but a dot in the big blue above, and finally vanished altogether.
I failed. But what did the glowing lines mean?
The pack stared upward for a long time, and at last grew bored and headed for Home Valley, surrounding Szcar all the way.
* * *
After the orb's departure, they hunted on the same plains, drank at the same watering hole, nested in the same valley. Szcar coordinated hunts and they killed more often, the nests in Home Valley now orbited her and Orr’s, and one night Alpha simply vanished into the desert. Barring those things, everything was the same.
In one small way, however, things had changed. When the sun fell from the sky and the twinklers emerged in the black above, the pack grew quiet, their green eyes aglow in the dark. Once, the twinklers had been but a patchwork of fireflies against the darkness. No more. Somewhere up there was an orb that played games for fish, hatched fire from air and sand, and championed wit over tooth and claw.
When the new clutches hatched and little’uns skittered around Home Valley, they too learned to look upon the silent sky. Szcar made sure of it. They had all failed, but the trial stood. One day, the orb might just come back, and maybe one of them would pass.
A Word from Harry Manners
Among my bedroom knick-knacks are the following: The Complete Dinosaur Encyclopaedia, too many physics textbooks, a bobble-headed figurine of Albert Einstein, several science fiction and fantasy books I wrote, and a “magic” hat that I wear when writing.
Can you guess what kind of child I was?
Until I was fifteen I was certain I would become a palaeontologist. I still wouldn’t hesitate if somebody offered me the job. The Palaeozoic world was all around me: the pictures on my walls, the books on my shelves, my fossil collection, figurines, bedsheets, desktop wallpapers—everywhere.
I first tried my hand at writing with dinosaurs in mind. I spent most of my prepubescence tapping away on my computer, writing terrible fan-fiction sequels for what I will insist to this day is the greatest movie ever made, Jurassic Park. I’m not talking about the odd piece of flash fiction, I mean five-hundred-page novels. They’re still on the net somewhere, I think.
All little boys love dinosaurs, but with me the fascination stayed. It introduced me to other things like geology, astronomy, genetics, and pretty much all the science I knew before college. It wasn’t a great talking point with classmates, but I was content to keep that private passion for myself.
A well-known quote from the great Ray Bradbury goes, “I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.” I’m not sure when I first read that, but I filed it away in my head, and dug it out whenever I was picked on. Those words gave me permission to not abandon what I loved in the name of “growing up”. My mind was a world all my own, and it could be wonderful.
It’s a good thing, too, because the Palaeozoic world is endlessly captivating. The sheer scale of it all, not just the creatures that inhabited it but the variety, the enormity of time that separated the ages—the gap between the eras of Tyrannosaurus Rex and Stegosaurus is greater than that which separates T-Rex from us. Great supercontinents, oceans, mountain ranges and rift valleys, all gone now, obliterated by entropy.
Unsurprisingly, I leapt at the chance to be included in this anthology. It really is something to tick off on my list of goals in life, and I thank Samuel for such a wonderful excuse to travel back into my childhood.
You can find me on Facebook or Twitter or through my website (all easily found via Google). My other work ranges across sci-fi and fantasy, horror and magic realism.
You can get a free e-copy of volume 1 in my post-apocalyptic trilogy, Ruin, at—
http://www.harrymanners.net/books/ruin/
Glitch Mitchell and the Island of Terror
by Philip Harris
Chapter One
An Unexpected Landing
BLACK SMOKE BILLOWED from the front of the Cessna. There was a dull thump and moments later, oil splashed across the windshield as the engine sputtered and coughed. The plane pitched forward.
Dwayne "Glitch" Mitchell clutched the arms of his seat. "Scarlett, I thought Air Force captains knew how to fly!"
The woman sitting in the chair beside Glitch gave him a withering look, then flicked a switch on the instrument panel. "Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Cessna Tango-Nine-Eight-Charlie-Papa. Our aircraft has been struck by lightning. Attempting an emergency landing. Last known location 8 miles north of Welldon Air Force Base… 500 feet, heading 220 degrees."
Dark gray clouds swirled around the Cessna. Lightning flickered across the surface of the clouds, the light painfully bright. Wind buffeted the plane, and it lurched sideways. Rain spattered the windshield.
Doctor Grace Zheng appeared from the back of the aircraft, seemingly unperturbed by the chaos around her. "Captain? Now might be a good time to use these parachutes."
Scarlett glanced at the altimeter and shook her head. "We're too low. We'll never get out in time."
A red light on the console began to flash, accompanied by a high-pitched beeping. Scarlett pulled back on the yoke. The engine note rose and something metallic groaned as the nose of the aircraft tilted up.
As the clouds around the plane thinned, and Glitch began to convince himself they might actually get out of this alive, there was a sharp crack. A shower of sparks burst from
the console and three more red lights joined the first, their warning sirens forming a discordant harmony. The engine crackled and popped. Smoke engulfed the front of the plane.
There was another crack, this time from the back of the aircraft. The smoke from the engine cleared and the dark, gray expanse of the Pacific Ocean opened up just below them. Anderson hauled on the yoke again, but the aircraft barely responded.
"Captain…" said Dr. Zheng, her clipped British accent now filled with concern.
Ahead, an island rose up out of the ocean, a circle of cliffs topped with a thick covering of forest. The cliff face looked dark and solid, and they were heading straight toward it.
The Cessna dropped again and the ocean rushed up to meet them.
"For God's sake, strap yourselves in!" shouted Anderson.
Glitch yanked on his seat belt until he could barely breathe. Zheng darted back to her seat at the rear of the aircraft.
Anderson leaned back in her seat as she pulled on the yoke. The engine spluttered. The plane slowly rose and the ocean began to recede but the cliff was still rushing toward them.
"Come on, come on," muttered Anderson as the plane climbed steadily upward.
Glitch let out an exuberant whoop as the Cessna's nose passed over the top of the cliff. The skies ahead were clear and blue. His excitement faded when he saw the look of fearful concentration on Anderson's face.
There was a crunch as the back of the plane hit the trees. The aircraft pitched forward and its nose slammed through the canopy. The sound of splintering trees and tearing metal filled the cockpit. Thick branches battered the windshield, cracking it. The plane tipped forward. Glitch covered his face as the nose of the aircraft hit the ground.
The windshield shattered, and glass exploded into the cabin. The impact snapped Glitch forward in his seat. A chunk of metal flew past his head. Earth, rocks, and shredded vegetation formed a cloud around the nose of the aircraft as it bumped and bounced along the ground. And then there was a dull thunk and the Cessna stopped. Glitch was hurled forward again and the seat belt seemed intent on slicing him in half.
The Jurassic Chronicles (Future Chronicles Book 15) Page 11