by Logan Jacobs
“Ow!” I yelled and jumped back as if I’d been lit on fire.
“What is it?” Theora asked and rushed to my side.
On my hand was a tiny, bright blue little crab. It had grabbed onto my palm with one of its little claws, and now it absolutely refused to let go.
“Everyone be careful,” I called out as Theora helped me carefully disengage the little blue crustacean from my skin.
The creature is harmless, dear one, George assured me.
“Yeah?” I laughed. “Tell that to my hand.”
I tossed the little crab on the ground a few feet away from me and watched as it scuttled in the opposite direction. Clearly, the little guy didn’t want to interact with me any more than I wanted to interact with him.
“I guess he’s kinda cute.” I shook my head and turned my attention from the sand to the rest of the island sprawled out before me.
It was a woodland island, sort of like where Jemma and her people hailed from, but the forest wasn’t as thick. Instead, it was more like a field, with trees that sprouted throughout it. I could see pretty far beyond the tree line, but nothing stood out to indicate the island was inhabited by anyone at all.
The trees were absolutely breathtaking, though. They were medium height, about ten feet, with wide, stout trunks that grew out of the ground in a strange spiral pattern, like an old metal staircase. I could tell the roots of the trees were thick and sturdy, and they clutched the soft ground in a similar fashion to a redwood tree.
The trees were fairly spread out, though. Each one was at least ten to fifteen feet away from the others, which left plenty of room for all sorts of flora to grow along the ground.
Tall blades of thick green grass blanketed the area, and it looked so welcome, like the perfect kind of grass to play a game of soccer on when the sun is high and the breeze is gentle.
“There does not seem to be anyone around,” Mira said as she approached me.
“Yeah, that’s what we thought at the last island,” I chuckled. “Until Jemma came rushing out of the forest with the warg on her ass.”
“And then you saved me.” Jemma grinned. “But I do agree with Mira. There does not seem to be anyone around here.”
“Let’s do a little bit of exploring before we make any assumptions,” I suggested.
Most of the group stayed behind on the beach, since I didn’t feel we needed to traipse fifty women around the island until we knew exactly what we’d gotten ourselves into. Jonas stayed behind as well, and the poor man just curled up against George’s side as he worked to get his land legs back.
Sela, Mira, Jemma, and I formed the party that would go out and explore the island while the rest set up camp. We each grabbed our weapons, and then we set off from the beach and headed through the meadow-like forest.
The grass was soft beneath our feet, and we traipsed through the trees in awe. Tiny little flowers dotted the blades of grass, and they grew in between and at the base of the tree trunks. The petals were long and flat, sort of like a daisy, and they were all sorts of colors, from purple and pink to the brightest shade of white.
Curiously, I wandered up to one of the twisted trees. The top branches grew out of like a spout and hung down around us like a curtain, in the same fashion as a willow tree does.
Tiny little fruits sprouted from the branches, and they were spherical and reminded me a bit of tropical passionfruit, although I knew the passionfruit plant looked nothing like these strange trees.
Carefully, I plucked one from the tree and examined it.
“Do you think it is edible?” Sela asked as she tilted her head curiously.
“No idea,” I replied. “I’ll take it back to Jonas and George and see if they know. Let’s not eat anything just yet, though. We have no idea if it’ll be poisonous and, I don’t know about you ladies, but I’m not really in the mood to die today.”
“Seconded,” Mira chuckled.
We continued to admire the strange trees as we walked further into the heart of the island, and then we came upon a bright, open clearing dotted with large, gray boulders. A stream ran calmly through the middle of it, filled with clear water that danced and jumped along the smooth rocks of the stream bed. The brook reminded me of something straight out of the Shire, and there was something strangely magical about it I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
“It is so pretty here,” Jemma sighed as the breeze ruffled her long auburn hair. “Maybe if this island really is empty, we can make it our home base! Then we will not have to be so terrified of the beasts in the jungle anymore.”
“Maybe,” I laughed. “But if I’ve learned anything since coming to this world, it’s that every island is full of some sort of rabid beast. Nature likes to keep its balance that way.”
As if to prove my point, there was a rustling in the grass near the edge of the clearing, and all of us were immediately on edge. We drew our weapons and turned toward the grass as it swayed and scratched with the sound of some sort of creature. Whatever it was must have been small to hide within the grass, but that didn’t make me any more relaxed. I’d learned quickly even the cutest, smallest creatures could be deadly.
Suddenly, I heard a loud squawk. It sounded exactly like a chicken call, and seconds later, an actual chicken emerged from the grass. It was a female, with white and gray feathers and a very stupid look in its eyes, the way all chickens look.
“What is that?” Mira gasped. “It’s hideous.”
“It’s a chicken,” I replied, and then paused. I remembered the cute little bunny rabbit I’d encountered back on Jemma’s island, the one I’d thought was innocent and harmless until it leapt at me with its crazy red eyes and giant vampire fangs. “Uh, maybe don’t get too close.”
“Are chickens dangerous?” Jemma gasped and shifted closer to me.
“If it is, I will cut its head off,” Sela growled, and she raised her sword high as if to prove her point.
The chicken, though, was completely unbothered. It took one look at the angry warrior, turned away, and started to peck at the dirt in search of a meal.
“They’re not normally dangerous,” I eased her mind. “We eat them and their eggs where I come from, but I’ve learned from experience that creatures here aren’t always the same as the ones back home.”
“Hmm.” Sela was unconvinced. The warrior still looked like she wanted to tear the bird limb from limb, just in case it really was dangerous.
Slowly, I started to approach the chicken. If it really was a normal bird, I’d be ready to dance with joy and do about a thousand backflips. As much as I liked the eggs from the birds of the jungle, they weren’t the same as good, old fashioned chicken eggs. And, if there was a female chicken, there had to be a male. I could start a little chicken farm, and then we wouldn’t have to hunt for eggs and bird meat anymore. That would make our lives a lot easier.
I got within two feet of the chicken and paused. The bird seemed unafraid of me and just looked at me with its bulbous black eyes, but I couldn’t tell if it was unafraid because it was a dumb chicken, or if it was unafraid because it knew it could take my head off if I made one wrong move.
I examined its beak, but I couldn’t see anything to indicate it had some sort of hidden fangs or poison spewing ability. Instead, it just looked like a regular old chicken.
“I’m going to catch it,” I murmured.
“Ben, please be careful,” Jemma warned. Even though the deer woman could hold her own in a fight, she was still skittish when faced with something new. It was her innate nature, whereas both Sela and Mira were ready to destroy this chicken at the first sign of danger.
The chicken and I stared at each other for a long, silent moment, and then the bird dipped its head and started pecking at the grass.
With lightning fast speed, faster than I ever could have moved as a human, I lunged forward, snatched the chicken around its round, feathered body, and lifted it into the air. The creature squawked and spread its wings as it writhed
in my grasp, but it didn’t spew acid or grow fangs, so a broad grin stretched across my face.
“It’s a regular chicken!” I announced. I slipped my satchel off my back and stuffed the chicken inside, then tied it tightly closed. I planned to gather as many of these creatures as I could and take them back home with me. I couldn’t wait until Hali cooked up my first plate of chicken eggs and bacon since I’d landed on this island.
“What do you plan to do with it?” Mira asked with her brow furrowed curiously.
“They lay eggs,” I explained. “We’ll get a couple of them, some males, and then we’ll have a chicken farm that’s in perfect working order. It’s time to start trying to figure out ways to cut back on the amount of effort it takes to do things. That’s how really well functioning societies run. We’ve already got our gardens, and now we’ll add chickens into the mix.”
“Cool.” Jemma grinned as she copied one of the slang words I’d taught her. “I like this idea of little effort. Can we add more animals?”
“Sure,” I chuckled. “But who knows what kind of animals we’ll find on other islands? I’d love a good cow. I’ve missed milk and cheese like nobody’s business.”
“Milk?” Sea raised an eyebrow. “What is milk?”
“You know the liquid you fed the twins after they were born?” I responded.
“If you mean our mother nectar, then yes.” Sela nodded. “You drink that?”
Three looks of absolute disgust covered the women’s faces, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“No, not exactly,” I chuckled. “I don’t drink the stuff that comes from you guys, but I do like a good glass of cow’s milk with dinner, and you haven’t lived until you’ve had a proper grilled cheese sandwich. Cows produce milk from these things called udders, and then we take that and drink it. Or, if you do it right, you can make cheese from it, which is sort of this… well, it’s just really good. Trust me.”
I had absolutely no idea how the hell I could describe cheese to someone who’d never even seen it before. The first thing that came to mind were “lumps of heavenly gooeyness,” and “sex on a plate,” but that didn’t do much to explain the concept of cheese.
“We trust you,” Mira laughed. “I would like to try this cheese when you make it.”
“Good. Let’s keep going,” I told them. “I want to explore every inch of this island and figure out if there’s anyone even living here before we do anything else.”
We walked on through the meadows and trees, and we kept our eyes peeled for any sort of animal or activity. The trees were short enough, though, that I knew no people could approach us without us seeing them.
About half an hour later, and after we’d walked through much of the same field, we came upon a deep ravine. The meadow suddenly dropped off in a steep cliff, and about a hundred feet below us was a valley with a fast-moving stream at the bottom. The rock that formed the ravine was an orange red color, like Georgia clay, and across from us, on the other side of the ravine, I could flat plains. There wasn’t a tree in sight, and the grass changed to a soft yellow, so it kind of reminded me a lot of the Colorado mountains.
My curiosity was piqued beyond belief.
“My king, you might want to have a look at this,” Mira yelled suddenly.
I turned my attention away from the deep, and currently impassable, ravine, to see what the jade haired warrior wanted me to look at.
Mira had traveled about a hundred yards away while I’d been caught up with the ravine and the plains on the other side. The warrior stood in front of a section of the forest where the plant life suddenly changed, and instead of the short, stout trees with the winding trunks, this part of the forest was populated with enormous, thick trunked trees like California redwoods. They stood at least a few hundred feet tall and were probably fifteen to twenty feet in diameter.
Quickly, the other women followed me as I jogged over to where Mira stood, and she pointed at the very base of one of the trees.
“What the hell?” I murmured.
The ground had been dug up and pulled away to create a sloped hole and revealed the base of the tree, the part usually hidden underground. And at the base of the tree was a wide, gaping hole that led straight into the trunk. It was obvious the hole wasn’t natural, though. Someone had carved it into the tree, to allow access inside, to the center.
“It looks like a creature is living in the tree,” Jemma said.
“I found another one!” Sela called out.
In fact, as we looked around, we realized holes were carved into the bases of almost all these trees.
Someone had done that on purpose, yet there were no signs of life. I heard nothing and saw nothing. If there were people who lived in the trees, from the outside, it looked like their homes had all been abandoned.
“Let’s check this one out,” I told the group when we approached the tenth tree with a hollowed-out base.
I slid down into the hole, and then ducked through the opening in the trunk of the tree.
I was inside this massive tree, as if it was a house, and what I saw there only confirmed my suspicions.
The tree trunk had been hollowed out nearly completely. High above my head, maybe forty feet up, was a smooth ceiling, where whoever had built this place stopped and left the rest of the trunk. Light poured down from tiny holes drilled into the walls in a million different places, so the space wasn’t dark at all during the day. The wood of the tree had been carved in such a fashion so ledges came out of the walls. They reminded me of a ferret cage, where the ledges form a sort of zig zag pattern that lets the ferret climb around the entire cage.
“Ben, what do you see in there?” Jemma called down curiously. She, Sela, and Mira were still topside, on the edge of the hole, and peered down at me like they thought I might get sucked into a dark vacuum and disappear forever.
“Come see,” I told them. “There’s nobody in here.”
Slowly, the women slid down the dirt hillside and joined me in the hollowed-out tree trunk, and they all stared up at the ledges that rose above us in astonishment.
“Oh, my goddess,” Jemma breathed with wide chartreuse eyes. “How did they do this?”
“I’m not sure.” I shook my head. “I guess we’d have to figure out who ‘they’ are before we can get a straight answer. Come on, let’s climb up and see what’s above us.”
I hopped up on the first ledge, where I was faced with what looked like the sleeping quarters of some sort of animal. There were leaves and pieces of torn up cloth that formed a sort of circular bed, like a dog bed someone in my world would have bought, and in the center of the bed were all sorts of random little things: pretty shells, shiny rocks, little bits of what looked like silver of some sort. I even saw the familiar swirl of sea glass. It was small, clearly a fragment of whatever the water dragon had actually coughed up, and looked like it had been smoothed out by the waters of the ocean. I guessed it washed up on shore at some point, and whatever creature lived here had snatched it off the beach and put it in its little treasure trove.
“A treasure hunter?” Mira asked with a quirked brow as she stared down at the little bed.
“I guess so.” I shrugged. “Come on.”
We hoped from ledge to ledge and explored this strange little tree house, and it reminded me more and more of the hollowed-out trunk the Lost Boys in Peter Pan used as their home base.
I still had no idea what kind of creature could have done this. Most of the beds seemed clean, like someone took the time to keep them organized every day. I had a feeling someone must live there, but we still saw no one.
On one of the ledges, there was a smattering of bones and the ashy remnants of a fire, where food seemed to have been cooked. Two sticks were placed on either side of the fire, with a third that ran between them, like a spit. The bones were completely clean, devoid of any meat, fat, or muscle, in a very animal-like fashion, but even Nerissa’s people never cleaned their bones so well.
Slowl
y, I knelt down and put my palm over the ash.
It was still warm.
“We’ve got company,” I said to the women. “Feel this.”
Mira, as always, was the first to heed my words, and she quickly brought her hand down over the ash.
“Still warm.” She nodded, wiped her palm on her trousers, and then looked around curiously. “But where did they go?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I sighed. “Let’s go back outside. Maybe they just went on a hunting trip or something.”
We hopped down from ledge to ledge, but Sela, Mira, and I were a little clumsy as we climbed, since we weren’t used to the jumping and leaping. Jemma, though, was a lot more comfortable in this type of environment, and I watched appreciatively as the auburn-haired woman leapt gracefully down to the floor, then turned to look back up at us.
“You seem right at home here,” I chuckled when I reached her once more.
“Yes.” She nodded. “I believe whatever creature inhabits this island is similar to my sisters and I in some way.”
“Like a woodland creature,” I mused. “Cool.”
“I am not sure what a woodland creature is,” Jemma replied with a furrowed brow. “But if I am one, then yes.”
“Sort of,” I laughed as I ducked my head and exited the tree trunk, right out into the bright sunshine once more.
Dead leaves snapped and cracked under my feet as the sun warmed my face, and I was just about to turn around and march further in the direction we hadn’t explored yet when a loud, high pitched yell assaulted my eardrums like a dog whistle.
“Ayeee!”
My body registered the sound first, and my heart about stopped in my chest at the strange, warlike cry. I whipped around to follow the sound just in time to see a blurry flash of gray leap from one of the redwood tree trunks straight toward me with a crudely made battle ax in hand.
“Woah!” I cried out.
I heard the same cry echo around the forest from others as they leapt down from tree trunks and branches to attack the other women, but I didn’t have much time to try and help, because I had my own attacker to deal with.