by Неизвестный
That old guy thinks we're on a date, Opal thought. She kept silent, trying to remember what constituted a date, and whether or not they actually were on one. She had asked him to go somewhere with her, just the two of them. Back on the mainland, that definitely would have been a date.
Peter chewed on a stalk of something, staring out at the cows, and mooed again.
She shook her head. No, they weren't on a date.
He offered her a stalk, but she declined.
Opal asked Peter, “Do people eat the cows?”
“Yes, but not raw,” he said.
“Of course not raw. You are so odd.”
“You're the one asking if people eat cows!”
“Well, they don't eat the goats!”
Peter nodded. “I guess we just take that knowledge for granted. Like if I went to the mainland and you had a pet cat, I wouldn't ask if people ate cats.”
In the pasture, some of the cows ambled toward where they stood, leaning on the fence. Opal said, “Let's not talk about E-A-T-I-N-G the animals right in front of them.”
“Are all girls weird like you?”
“Peter!”
“What? I don't have a lot of friends who are girls.”
She punched him on the shoulder. “You don't tell girls they're weird.”
He frowned. “What am I supposed to say about them?”
“I don't know. That they're smart, or funny. You can even say they're pretty, but don't make it all about their looks because that's shallow.”
“You're funny,” he said.
A shadow passed across his face, then hers. They both looked up, and Opal found the shadow maker was only a cloud. No giant owl was dive-bombing them, the day was lovely, and she might be getting the hang of her new home after all.
“Let's get that wax!” she said, and raced to the bicycles.
She had a head start on Peter and cycled ahead of him, excited about what they might see next. With Peter right behind her, she raced past the end of the cow meadow and into a grove of trees that was bigger than any they'd passed so far. It went on for about a mile, and the air smelled fresh, like a pine-scented car freshener, which she realized was a silly comparison, but that was what the forest smelled like.
She rounded a corner and nearly wiped out on a big patch of sand on the road, blown there from the surrounding desert.
Chapter Eleven
As Opal gawked at the sandy desert stretching out before her, Peter dismounted and rolled his bicycle into a shed next to the sand-covered cobblestone road. “We'll go the rest of the way by foot,” he said. “Some parts get really thick with sand and the bicycles will be more of a hindrance. I'm glad you wore something sensible, not like some of the girls from town.”
She tried to tear her attention away from the shocking landscape.
“What?”
“Your shoes. They're sensible, which means you're smart.” He snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Come on, bring your bike in here.”
She looked down at her running shoes, a little scuffed, but still new-looking. “My shoes. Oh, yes, I am a practical girl.” She followed his lead, parking her bicycle in the shed next to his. The truth about the shoes was, she'd tried to wear her new dressy ones with the little kitten heels, but the heels got stuck in the pedals three times before she even left the driveway, so she'd run up to her room and changed outfits several times before settling on the shorts, patchwork tank top, and the zip-up, bamboo-fabric hoodie. Everything was blue, except for the orange and pink sneakers.
Peter wore an olive green t-shirt and camouflage-spotted cargo pants, which would have made someone with less boyish cheeks appear to be a soldier, but Peter looked like a kid on Halloween. His longish hair wasn't army-standard either.
Pointing to Peter's camouflage pants, Opal said, “My father was in the military.”
“What does he do now?”
“He's dead.”
“I'm sorry for your loss,” Peter said. “My father was taken by the sea. He was a fisherman.”
“I'm sorry for your loss. At least you still have your mother.”
“And my cousin, Edwin. He's only four years older than me, but he's really smart, and he teaches me how to do stuff.”
Opal nodded and gazed out at the desert terrain. So, the man who'd lost his fiancee was Peter's cousin, which explained why Peter had been in a suit, looking just as terrified as Edwin when Opal tore out of the dressing room with screaming pixies in her hair.
She tucked her silky hair behind her ear and looked back at the lush forest behind them. Between the forest and the desert was a slim margin, maybe ten feet wide, of dry-looking, angry little bushes. The separation was as neat and tidy as a hand-drawn map, which had to be magic.
“I can see why you call this region the Drylands.” She pulled the bottle of water from her backpack and took a sip.
Peter looked thirstily at the water. He hadn't brought anything but his knife. Just like a boy, she thought. You invite them to a party and they bring a bag of chips, if anything.
“Want some?” She offered him the bottle.
He used the edge of his shirt to wipe the bottle's mouth off very carefully before taking a big drink, then handed it back to her.
Two can pay the cooties game, she thought as she scrubbed away at the mouth with the hem of her own patchwork tank top.
Peter said, “Have you seen cacti before? That's the plural of cactus. We don't say cactuses.”
“Cacti,” she repeated. “Yeah, I've seen cacti. Not in such strange shapes. That one there looks like a pair of pants, walking without a person.”
“I guess it does.” He pointed to a squat, purple-hued cactus with two humps. “That one looks like a butt.”
Opal giggled. “It does.”
Peter dug into one of the pockets on his cargo pants and retrieved two pairs of sunglasses, one of which he handed to Opal. “Don't antagonize the snakes,” he said as he started walking up the sand-covered road.
She put on the sunglasses and skipped to catch up. The temperature rose considerably with each step they took away from the green and purple forest behind them. “You mean don't call them names? Wait. You're serious. Snakes?”
“Don't stare at them, no matter what they do.”
“Don't stare at the snakes. Gotcha.”
“And when you see the wind devil coming, get off the road.”
“Wind devil. Road. Gotcha.”
Opal followed along on the sandy path, sweating. She was beginning to have some serious misgivings about Aunt Waleah's need for freshly-procured bluebee wax as opposed to the store-bought kind.
She wondered if this was the type of errand you sent a person on when you didn't really want them to come back.
* * *
The wind devil was not a devil at all, but a localized whirlwind or miniature tornado. When the swirling column of sand came toward them the first time, Opal's instinct was to run, or grab onto a mean-looking prickly cactus, but Peter assured her they only needed to stand a few feet off to the side and let the wind devil do its work.
She said, “I have a little robot vacuum cleaner back home.”
“Does your robot have artificial intelligence?”
“I wouldn't say so. Not by the way it bumps into things and rearranges the kitchen chairs.”
“Close your mouth!” Peter said, which Opal thought was incredibly rude, but then the wind devil came whizzing past them, blowing sand everywhere.
As the sandy column whirled away down the road, back the way they'd come, Peter explained how the wind devils blew the sand away so the road wouldn't become permanently submerged in sand dunes.
“Is the wind devil magic?” she asked Peter, but she already knew the answer would be yes.
“Island magic,” he said, “not set up or administered by the witches, if that's what you mean.”
“Cool. I can't wait to see the Wetlands. How much further do we have to go?”
He turned to lo
ok at Opal, but with the sunglasses on, she couldn't read his expression. “That's the weird part,” he said. “I don't remember this desert being so big. The land is changing more quickly than the mapmakers can keep up.”
She spotted, behind his feet, a creature with colorful feathers, doing the strangest, wiggly dance. The funny little thing had big, googly eyes and a feathered headdress, not unlike what she'd seen on the giant owl, and the feathers flipped up and down.
Opal laughed while pointing. “What is that?”
Peter glanced back, then startled. “Don't look!” He grabbed her arm and pulled her ahead on the path.
She lagged behind, turning back for one last look. “But it's so adorable! What is it?”
Angrily, he said, “That's a snake, you buckethead!”
“No way!”
She believed Peter when the rest of the snake emerged from the sand. The funny-looking creature had been just the top of the snake's head, and now the fangs were visible, and the whole creature was slithering toward them, faster than she expected a snake to move, but then again, she'd never spent much time with snakes before coming to the island, except for the boa constrictors that those big, tattooed bald guys in the city walked around with, draped around their shoulders.
She found a burst of energy and ran ahead, passing Peter, thanks to her field and track training. They came over the top of a dune and she saw forest ahead, as welcome in the desert heat as a glittering swimming pool.
Peter yelped and dropped to the ground as though shot. The snake slithered away and dove into the sand, feathered head first.
Opal ran back and dropped to Peter's side. “Are you bit? Peter, are you bit? What do I do?”
He gasped, his face turning red and his neck swelling. Opal felt two waves of panic rise up in her and wallop each other down, canceling out. Calm. She had to be calm.
She pulled up the hems of his cargo pants. There on his leg were a set of red marks, where the snake's fangs had struck Peter's shin. She reached for the knife at his hip and took it out of the sheath. “Peter, I've seen some nature shows. Correct me if I'm wrong, but do I need to cut an X over those dots and suck out the venom?”
Gasping, possibly unable to speak, Peter jerked his head and gave her two thumbs up.
She hoped the thumbs-up sign meant the same thing here as back home.
“Wait, no!” she said, as much to herself as to Peter. “That's an urban legend. Or outdated, or whatever. You're not supposed to suck the venom out. Um. Uh. I mean, it probably can't hurt you for me to try, and if I suck the poison and die, then I suppose it serves me right.” She pointed the tip of the knife at the bumps on his leg, which were growing larger and more red by the second.
He pointed again with his thumbs, at the Y-shaped cactus to the side of the road.
“Oh, the cactus? Do I cut some part of it and apply to the wound, or squeeze cactus juice into your mouth?”
He pointed one thumb at the cactus and one at his leg, and she realized why he was pointing with his thumbs. His hands were trembling, the fingers curled into fists.
With the knife in hand, she launched herself at the cactus, miraculously avoiding the large, pointy needles, and cut out a portion the size of a t-bone steak, then dashed back and applied it to Peter's shin.
He trembled and shook, but seemed to relax.
Pleased with herself, Opal patted his leg and said, “Ah, that's better now, isn't it?”
When he didn't respond, she realized his new-found serenity came from him being unconscious. At least he was still breathing, and the swelling in his neck seemed to be lessening.
She pulled up the chunk of cactus and found the bumps on his legs had burst, and a custard-like substance was oozing from them. Her instincts told her to massage the skin of the leg to help coax the substance out, because as far as she knew, Peter was human, and custard-like substance had no business under the skin of humans.
The stuff oozed out, along with some globs of brown and black, which she guessed was the blood trying to clot. She cut another chunk from the cactus and applied it to his leg, desperately hoping for the best, and trying not to vomit.
* * *
After she got over the initial shock of Peter being bitten and unconscious, Opal surveyed the area and looked for signs of other people, though they hadn't seen anyone since they'd entered the Drylands. She yelled like a madwoman, until she was hoarse. It had taken half a day to get where they were. She considered leaving Peter and riding back on her own for help, but decided to wait just a little longer to see if he'd wake up.
She ate one of the sandwiches from her backpack—it was either cheese or jam or both, but she couldn't tell—and tried to give Peter some water, but he only choked and coughed on the portion she dribbled into his mouth.
When he finally began to moan and move, she nearly cried with relief.
“Peter, wake up,” she said, patting his cheeks.
He suddenly yelped and sat up. His arms flailed, smacking her on the cheek and sending her falling back. As she tried to get up, he stood and spun around wildly, his arms out.
“Peter! Calm down, or you're going to hurt yourself.”
“Opal?” He stopped spinning. “I can't see anything. Are you there?”
She stood and grabbed his hands, partly to calm him and partly to keep him from hitting her again. “You were bitten by a snake. It was so awful, and completely my fault, and I'm really sorry. I was going to suck the poison out, like some nineteen-fifties Boy Scout, but then you pointed to the cactus, I think, and…”
He took the sunglasses off and rubbed his eyes, opening and closing them, but looking straight through her.
“It's all coming back to me,” he said, then, angrily, “You! You taunted the snake!”
“You should have warned me the snakes in the Drylands have cute little feathers like Las Vegas showgirls and do a funny dance with their heads. I'd say this whole incident is about fifty percent your fault. Now what do we do? Is there an anti-venom somewhere? More cactus? Tell me what to do.”
He put the sunglasses back on over his unfocused eyes.
“We wait, and we hope,” he said.
“But your vision. It's all blurry? That's temporary, right?”
“It's a bit worse than blurry.”
She began to cry, hugging him and apologizing.
He pushed her away and said, “Let's get out of the sun. If I remember correctly, the next forest lay just ahead. That way?” He pointed at the mangled cactus to the side of them.
She turned him in the direction they'd been heading originally. “That way. Shouldn't we head back, though? If you can't ride, I could double you on my bike.”
“No, we have to get what we came out for, and we're almost in bluebee territory. Fresh bluebee honey's probably the best thing for me right now anyway. The honey has healing and restorative properties.”
“Again, Peter, I am so, so, so sorry about the whole snake thing.”
“Don't worry. I think some of my vision is already coming back to me. This is you here, right?” He was pointing to the cactus again.
Opal didn't have the heart to say the cactus wasn't her.
* * *
Going the relatively short distance to the trees took a long time, because Opal had to lead Peter by the hand, and he was barely able to put weight on the leg that had been bitten. The sores were still oozing, with green stuff now, but Peter assured her that was the correct color for this point, and he would not be dying from the snake bite. Probably not dying.
As they reached the transition point leading into the forest, Opal said, “Is this the Wetlands? Isn't it supposed to be all marsh or swamp? This looks like regular forest.”
Peter said, “You'll see.”
“Not in this lifetime, not at this pace,” she said, then she wrapped his arm around her shoulder and stood in as a crutch for his wounded leg. “Is that better?”
He sniffed. “You smell pretty.”
Opal felt
horrendously guilty for what had happened to Peter, yet she was a tiny bit glad he couldn't see her blushing.
“How's your vision now?” she asked.
“Not worse.”
“I'm sure you'll be fine. Not that I know anything about snake bites, but you're up and walking, and I'm sure it's just a matter of time. You're probably swollen in your optic nerve or something.”
He laughed. “Were you taking pre-med at your high school?”
“No, but I do watch a lot of medical dramas.”
“I've seen some of those,” he said. “Let's go with swelling around the optic nerve, sure, that sounds likely, Dr. Opal.”
“My last name's Button, so you'd call me Dr. Button.”
“You're the only Button on the island,” he said.
As they reached the forest, the cool air filled her lungs and energized her muscles. “This place smells like eucalyptus,” she said.
“I've always loved the sound of that word. Is this smell what eucalyptus smells like? We don't have that plant here.” He sniffed deeply. “I think my other senses are already getting stronger.”
Opal wiped at her brow, which was moist, but not from sweat. The moisture wasn't rain, either, but something like mist. She looked up at the tree branches overhead, thick with leaves that should have been catching the rain, or turning the water into bigger droplets at the very least.
“You don't have to hold me up,” he said. “My leg's taking my weight now.”
She pulled away from him. “It should have bit me,” she said.
“True.”
She wiped away more moisture, and beads of water collected on her eyelashes.
Something wasn't adding up.
“Peter,” she said. “Is it just me, or are the trees themselves raining on us?”
“Now you know where the name, Wetlands, comes from. Try to steer us under the reddish ones, because they're warm. Avoid the blue-green trees.”
“No way!” She pulled both of them under a yellow-leafed tree, where the water misting down was pleasantly warm, but not hot. There weren't many red trees along the narrow path, which at this point was a third the width of the one they'd started out on with their bikes.