Amphibians' End

by Trevor Pryce

  Darel didn’t say much that night; he mostly watched and listened. Partly because he still felt bad that he hadn’t convinced the trapdoor spiders to fight for the Amphibilands, and partly because he wanted to do better with the possums. But mostly because he kept thinking, It takes all kinds. The possums were nothing like frogs, and the trapdoor spiders were even more different—and yet they both reminded Darel of home.

  He slept in a hammock stretched between two branches, and when he awoke, he wandered through the tree-root gardens, sniffing the flowers and eating the occasional bee.

  “Don’t eat too many!” An older possum named Nioka looked up from weeding a patch of bush bananas. “Bees are a gardener’s best friend.”

  “Sorry.” Darel looked at the rows of herbs. “Did you grow all this?”

  “Most of it. I love mucking around in the dirt. It’s peaceful.” Nioka plucked a small banana and offered it to Darel. “Do you want a bite? We eat these raw when they’re young, and cook the older ones in—”

  A patch of herbs rustled, and two little furballs with long tails burst through and scampered toward Darel. It was the fuzzy possum with a friend.

  “Want to come to the water hole?” the fuzzy one asked Darel. “You’ve never seen so much wet!”

  “He’s a frog, fur-face,” his friend said. “He’s splashed more water than we’ve ever sniffed.”

  “So much for peaceful,” Nioka said, shaking his head in amusement. “You’d better go with them, or they’ll never stop asking.”

  Darel smiled at the young possums. “I’d love to.”

  He followed them along a cobbled path that curved from the trees into a shady glade at the bottom of a hill. The cobbles ended at a scattering of saplings. The water still wasn’t in sight. As the little possums raced ahead, Darel crouched down and rubbed some dirt between his finger pads.

  “What’re you doing?” the fuzzy one said, looking back at him.

  “I think the water used to reach this high.”

  “No way!”

  Darel nodded. “Probably not all that long ago.”

  The fuzzy possum grabbed his hand. “Well, there’s still plenty of water. I’ll show you!”

  Three hops later, Darel spotted the water hole. More of a puddle, really. The little ones grabbed buckets with their tails, filled them, and scampered home, leaving Darel squatting beside the puddle. He pressed his hand into the damp soil, making an imprint with his fingers, then watched the mud seep back into place.

  “You’re right,” Nioka said from behind him. “The water hole used to be bigger. Much bigger.”

  Darel turned. “What happened?”

  “We don’t know,” Nioka told him. “When I was a joey, the water welled up from the bottom every spring and refilled the hole, no matter how much of it we used.”

  “That doesn’t happen anymore?” Darel asked.

  “Not for a long time.” Nioka’s muzzle wrinkled with worry. “And now it’s drying up completely.”

  Darel looked at the puddle. “What happens if you run out?”

  “We’ll have to move,” Nioka said with a sad smile. “I don’t know how, and I don’t know where, but without water we can’t stay here.”

  “There’s plenty of water in the Amphibilands—” Darel started. “Wait, do you have a chief or something?”

  Nioka smiled. “Just me, this month.”

  “You’re the chief?” Darel cocked his head. “What do you mean, ‘this month’?”

  “We switch chiefs every month. That way nobody gets stuck with the job for too long.”

  Darel inflated his throat thoughtfully. “So are you the one I should talk to about some big news?”

  “Talk to all of us.”

  Nioka assembled the possums in a hanging amphitheater at the center of the woods, and Darel asked Coorah to tell the story of the Amphibilands, the Veil, and Lord Marmoo. He thought maybe she’d do a better job than he had.

  But before she was halfway done, Nioka stopped her. “Wait! Wait, wait! Are you going to ask us to fight against scorpions?”

  Coorah ducked her head in embarrassment, so Darel said, “Yes, we are.”

  “Do we look like warriors?” Nioka asked, gesturing behind him toward all the furry snouts and big soft ears. “Why do you think we play dead?”

  “With your water running out,” Darel told him, “you won’t be playing for much longer.”

  The crowd shifted uneasily, and Gee’s burly friend said, “The frog’s got a point.”

  “Maybe so,” an older possum grumbled, “but his point isn’t as sharp as a scorpion’s.”

  “We’re asking you to join us,” Darel told them. “To share our land, to share our water, to share our future. And yes—to stand with us against the scorpion army.”

  Nioka scratched his chin with his tail. “We heard that the scorpion lord is more powerful than ever.”

  “That’s true,” Darel admitted. “Marmoo has turned into a . . . a monster.”

  The crowd murmured, and a few joeys clung tighter to their parents.

  “Do you have a plan to beat him?” Nioka asked.

  “Yes,” Darel said. “Our plan is to travel the outback and find allies—find friends—who will beat him with us. We think that’s what the Rainbow Serpent wants. For all of us to join together.”

  “I’m sorry,” Nioka told him in a gentle voice. “But you’ll have to keep traveling, and keep looking. We can’t help you.”

  HE AFTERNOON LIGHT FILTERED through the leaves above Darel as he messed with his bag. He kept his head down, pretending that he was busy packing instead of blinking back tears. So much for his plan. So much for allies and so much for faith.

  “We’re leaving?” Gee asked, strolling closer and chomping on a bunya nut.

  “Yeah,” Darel said, scowling at his pack. “The possums didn’t exactly promise to fight—”

  “They did the opposite, actually,” Coorah said, looking up from her pack, now overflowing with possum medicines. “They promised to keel over.”

  Gee gave a wry grin. “At least they gave us food.”

  “All the bandages I can carry,” Coorah said.

  “It’s like they’re expecting us to get wiped out.”

  “True,” Coorah said. “But look at this!” She held up a pot full of bright blue muck. “How awesome is that?”

  “That’s not awesome,” Gee said. “That’s mud.”

  “It’s blue clay,” she told him. “For sucking poison from stings.”

  “So now you’ll want me to get poisoned,” Gee said, “to give you a chance to practice.”

  “Well . . . ,” she said with a grin.

  Gee snorted and looked to Darel. “Where to next?”

  Darel pulled the drawstring of his bag tight and didn’t answer.

  “Good question,” Ponto said, dropping from the treetops.

  “The crayfish?” Coorah asked. “The cockroaches? The birds?”

  Darel felt his face flush. “I don’t know!” he snapped. “How am I supposed to know?”

  “Well,” Gee said, “you’re the one the Rainbow Serpent told—”

  “To lower the Veil?” Darel interrupted. “Yeah, I know. So now I also have to decide where we go next? Who we beg for help next? Who refuses us next? Why me?”

  He kicked his pack. The Veil protected the frogs, but it also cut them off from the outback—which meant they didn’t know anyone. The trapdoor spiders said no. The possums said no. Who next? And why were Gee and Coorah and Ponto still looking at him? “I didn’t ask for any of this!” he croaked angrily. “I’m not even a Kulipari. It’s not fair!”

  Coorah stood, and Darel expected her to scold him, but she said, “It’s totally not fair.”

  “We should be back in the woods,” Gee said and gave a faint grin. “Playing Kulipari and Scorpions.”

  “And getting scratches,” Coorah added, “that require immediate treatment.”

  “You’re all weirdos,” Ponto
muttered.

  Gee draped one arm around Darel’s shoulders. “We know you don’t want this, D. We know you didn’t ask for it.”

  “But you got it,” Coorah told him.

  “Lucky me.”

  “Lucky us,” Ponto said. “You’re a good leader, Darel.”

  “Not as good as Burnu, though,” Gee teased. “He’d tell us where to go.”

  Darel snorted. Fine, if everyone thought of him as a leader, he’d better pretend he knew what he was doing. “Let’s talk to the crayfish. Marmoo’s got armored troops. We need some, too.”

  When Yabber arrived on the outskirts of the frog village, he started telling the apprentices about Chief Olba. “She was a wise frog, and tough as an old-timer’s shell.” He sighed, remembering the chief’s sacrifice. “But now . . . Yes, well. Let’s find Old Jir, then. Used to be a Kulipari, you know. Not just any Kulipari, either . . .”

  He rambled on as he led the others through the salt marsh to Jir’s stump, but the old frog wasn’t home. Yabber found him in a meadow beside the eucalyptus forest, standing on a platform woven of buffel grass, watching bullfrog soldiers charge a row of saplings. For a moment, Yabber thought the saplings were weighed down with fruit, unripe bay cherries or satinash apricots. Then he realized the “fruit” was actually tree frogs.

  With a sudden shout, the tree frogs leaped at the bullfrogs, tongues flashing too quickly for Yabber’s eyes to follow. A few of the bullfrogs gave deep ribbits of surprise, but the rest jabbed with their padded spears. A moment later, the field was writhing with battling frogs—a sea of tongues and legs and bulging throats.

  The whole thing looked terribly fierce to Yabber as he stepped beside Jir.

  The old frog didn’t seem to agree. He shook his head sadly and declared, “Sloppy.” Then he raised his voice and croaked, “Watch your flank, bullfrogs! And tree frogs, watch your ani!”

  “What’s an ani?” Yabber asked.

  Old Jir blinked at him. “A what?”

  “An ani! You told them, ‘Watch your ani.’”

  A crash sounded in the battlefield as a huge bullfrog, almost Ponto’s size, suddenly bulldozed through the tree frog ranks. Tongues shot wildly into the air around her, tree frogs cascaded into the air like popworms popping, and the huge bullfrog laughed as she slugged the “enemy” in every direction.

  “Watch Orani,” Old Jir explained. “The bullfrog princess.”

  “I didn’t even know they had princesses.”

  “Bullfrog royalty keep to themselves.” Old Jir gestured toward the rampaging bullfrog. “And do you want to tell her she’s not a princess?”

  “No, no! I shrink into my shell at the thought!” Yabber watched for a moment. “She seems to be quite . . . enjoying herself.”

  “She does, doesn’t she?” Old Jir said, then raised his voice. “Orani! Look behind you!”

  The big bullfrog princess turned and grinned at the trail of destruction behind her. “Just gettin’ started!” she croaked.

  “In the wrong direction,” Old Jir told her. “You’re trying to capture the sapling before the tree frogs capture your puddle.”

  “Oops!” Orani called out cheerily, and started bulldozing in the other direction.

  Old Jir sighed. “She makes Darel look level-headed.” His white eyes shifted toward the dreamcaster apprentices. “So . . . this is the wrecking crew? Here to tear down the Veil?”

  Yabber nodded. “Yes.”

  Old Jir watched the mock battle for a moment. “When do you start?”

  “We already have.”

  “Dreamcasting.” Old Jir snorted. “I forget that it looks exactly like standing around.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “How long before the Veil comes down?”

  “Unwinding a casting as powerful as the turtle king’s is tricky,” Yabber explained. “We’ll work slowly and steadily, unfurling the Veil one strand at a time, until all of a sudden, in the blink of an eye, the entire thing will fall.”

  “And then the age of peace is over.”

  “It’s already over.” Yabber gazed toward the battlefield. “At least the frogs look ready.”

  “But they’re not,” Old Jir told him.

  ONTO BULGED HIS EYES AT SOMETHING Darel couldn’t see, then raised his fist to his shoulder, indicating to the other frogs to stop.

  “Pssst,” Darel hissed to Coorah and Gee, and then he crept up beside Ponto, who’d crouched down behind a thistle bush.

  “There,” Ponto whispered, nodding toward the rock-strewn field ahead.

  For a moment, Darel didn’t see anything but piles of jagged stones. Then he noticed faint paths on the dusty ground, and realized he was looking at a village. The scattered rocks formed little stony houses—sloped roofs, craggy walls, pebbled patios—but nothing moved.

  “Geckos,” Ponto said. “Except . . . they’re gone.”

  “Maybe they’re playing dead, too,” Gee said.

  “They don’t do that,” Ponto told him. “They drop their tails if they’re threatened. They don’t just disappear.”

  When Darel headed closer to the gecko village, the buildings reminded him a little of the Amphibilands’ leaf villages, except low and stony. Then he saw them: hundreds of jagged marks perforating the dry, dusty ground.

  “Scorpion tracks,” Coorah whispered.

  “Gee, hop onto a roof and keep your eyes peeled.” Darel scanned the village. “Coorah, look for any sign of life—any geckos who might need you.”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “I’m going to follow these tracks.”

  He stalked through the stony ghost town, backtracking a few times but finally stopping outside a flat, sprawling rock that covered a craggy hole in the earth. He sniffed at the darkness. It smelled moist. He squeezed under the rock, then blinked until his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

  “What is it?” Ponto asked behind him.

  Darel jerked in surprise and whacked his head on the rock. “It’s the geckos’ water hole,” he said, rubbing his sore spot. “Empty now. And look at the tracks.”

  Ponto grunted. “Scorps in and out, over and over.”

  “Scooping up all the water,” Darel told him, “and dragging it off.”

  “So what happened to the lizards? There aren’t any bodies.”

  Darel shook his head. “Either they ran off or . . . Marmoo took them.”

  “Took them? Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Darel said. “But it can’t be good.”

  The next day, the midday sun burned bright and harsh on the outback. Brown twigs crackled under tender toe pads, scratchy shrubs dotted the parched earth, and the air seemed to suck the moisture from Darel’s skin.

  “I need a water break,” Gee croaked.

  “Once we reach those trees,” Ponto said, nodding toward the horizon.

  Darel blinked his stinging eyes toward the acacias in the distance. “Looks good. Shade.”

  “Too far,” Gee grumped. “My skin’s going to peel off halfway there.”

  Darel slitted his nostrils as a hot wind blew from the east. Sand stung his skin and dry, pointy-edged leaves swirled past, occasionally jabbing him or—judging from the occasional grunt—Coorah or Gee. Or Ponto. But of course the big Kulipari refused to admit that flying vegetation could hurt him.

  They hopped for hours, until even Gee was too tired to keep grumbling. The distant acacias didn’t seem to get any closer, and Darel almost worried that the trees were a mirage—except that everyone else saw them, too. So he kept his mouth shut and staggered onward, over the burning sand, under the scorching sun.

  Coorah made them stop twice to sprinkle the last of the water from the possum village on their skin. Finally, as the sun turned orange and sank toward the horizon, they reached the first cluster of acacia trees.

  They flopped down in the shade, not too close to the thorny trunk of the tree, and Ponto unstrapped a waterskin that had a wide mouth. He passed it to Coorah, and she dunked her head
inside for a minute before giving it to Gee, who did the same.

  “How much farther to the crayfish?” Gee asked, his skin now glossy again. He passed the waterskin to Darel.

  “Don’t they need rivers or lakes?” Coorah asked, scanning the horizon. “I don’t see any water.”

  “Some of them live in swamps,” Ponto replied. “Some in the rain forest, some in the button-grass fields. We’re not looking for any old crayfish—we’re looking for burrowing crayfish.”

  “They actually tunnel?”

  “Yep,” Ponto ribbited. “Old Jir says they live in underground mazes, and all you can see of their villages are lumpy chimneys sticking up from the ground. They’ve got two big claws, and a curving tail—”

  “Like scorps?” Gee asked.

  “A little. But their tails curve downward—and don’t sting.”

  “How many legs?”

  “Eight.”

  Gee narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Do they have carapaces?”

  “Sort of.”

  Darel grinned as he rubbed a few beads of water into his skin. He knew where this was going.

  “Wait a minute,” Gee said. “Are they arachnids?”

  “Nah,” Ponto said. “Crustaceans.”

  “Which are what, exactly?”

  Ponto stretched out in the shade. “A kind of arthropod.”

  “So are arachnids! We’re killing ourselves crossing this deathscape to beg a bunch of arachnids for help?”

  “They’re not arachnids,” Ponto said.

  “Arachnids, arthropods—same thing.”

  “You’re an amphibian,” Coorah told Gee, “and so are salamanders, but that doesn’t make you a salamander.”

  “There’s no such thing as a salamander,” Gee scoffed.

  Darel closed his eyes, and Coorah’s and Gee’s soft croaking faded into the background murmur of the outback—the whisper of the dry wind and the faltering song of an occasional cricket. Rough-edged leaves shook in the breeze, until the dry rustling turned into the splashing of water . . .