by Trevor Pryce
Pulling him through the water to the platypus burrows took hours of exhausting, terrifying work. Yabber’s long neck flopped his head underwater if she didn’t keep her bill high, and scorpion patrols crashed through the bushes while spiders climbed in the trees.
As night fell, Pippi finally reached the burrows—but she kept swimming under the full moon until she shoved Yabber onto the damp bank beneath the Stargazer burrow that Pirra and her friends had dug. The burrow mouth was too small for Yabber, so Pippi spent the rest of the night widening it, while keeping her ears cocked for any of Marmoo’s troops. Finally, she shoved Yabber through, his shell scraping grooves in the burrow wall.
Then Pippi built a mud wall to hide them, added a few airholes, and collapsed into an exhausted sleep.
When she awoke in the morning and called out Yabber’s name, he opened one eye and murmured, “Platypuses, I mean to say! Hidden depths,” before falling back into an uneasy sleep.
Pippi wasn’t sure how to heal a nightcast-sick turtle, but she figured that bringing him food was a good first step. So she swam in the smoke-shrouded river and swiveled her bill in the silt—until a powerful current slammed against her.
The water crashed and curled, sending Pippi tumbling bill over knuckles, churning through the river. When she shot to the surface in a panic, a tree splashed into the river just ahead of her. The wave washed her backward and another tree fell, and another, as the thunk of scorpion pincers sounded in the woods nearby.
Her heart pounding, Pippi swam desperately away, ducking branches as trees splashed all around her. Finally, she scrambled behind the curtain of vines at the burrow, and watched in horror as the scorpions chopped down the forest.
The day darkened as Darel led the frog refugees into the hills, past spindly shrubs and parched weeds. Weeping softened to whimpers, then to silence.
Finally, Darel told Gee, “That’s far enough. Let’s make camp.”
“Yeah, Marmoo probably won’t send his scorps after us now.”
Darel looked at the wounded frogs behind them. “A few more days of this, and we might wish he had.”
“Effie will help us,” Gee assured him for the tenth time. “They’ve got a little water—and a lot of shade.”
“Not enough,” Darel said. But where else could they turn for help?
He didn’t sleep that night. Instead, he moved from stretcher to stretcher, checking bandages and cleaning cuts. He rocked tadpoles to sleep in sloshing bassinets. The unsettling quiet of the outback spread across the camp as the moon rose and fell. And then, when dawn spilled over the distant mountains, he looked up from the splints he was making and spotted a scorpion stinger swaying above a nearby rise.
He almost shouted a warning—but stopped himself. He’d already surrendered. He’d already lost. The fight was over.
After taking a steadying breath, he crossed quietly to the rise. On the hillside below him, squads of scorpions skittered toward him, trailed by dozens of spiders. Except, on second glance, they were mostly limping, lurching, and stumbling. Every single one of them wounded.
Commander Pigo marched in front of the column, his carapace cracked and his stinger bent. He raised a pincer when he saw Darel. “Blue Sky King,” he said in greeting.
“I’m just Darel, Commander Pigo,” Darel told him.
“Are you?” The scorpion’s side eyes shifted. “In that case, I’m just Pigo.”
“What do you want?”
Before Pigo answered, a crowd of geckos rushed forward, zipping between all the scorpions’ legs, toward Darel. “You’re the frog!” one said in a crackly voice. “The flying frog!”
“I’m not—”
“Did you really visit our village?”
Darel nodded. “We wanted to—”
“Lots of us are hurt!” the gecko said. “Will you help?”
“If we can.” Darel pointed toward Coorah’s dad. “Bring your wounded to him and—”
“Thank you!” the gecko crackled.
Another gecko told Pigo, as she ran past, “Thank you, too!”
“The broken-tailed scorpion saved us from Marmoo!” a wounded gecko said.
Darel inflated his throat in surprise. “He did?”
“Marmoo wanted to eat us!” the wounded gecko said, limping toward the frog healers.
“You saved them?” Darel asked Pigo.
“Not exactly—”
“He did too!” another gecko said.
“I told Marmoo that eating the geckos was kinder than driving them into the wastelands.” Pigo’s mouthparts lifted in a twisted grin. “So he drove them into the wastelands.”
“You tricked Marmoo?”
“There was a time,” Pigo said, his grin fading, “when Marmoo was strong and clever and . . . a scorpion. But now? When the spider queen strengthened his carapace, she shattered his mind.”
“He forced you out, too?”
Pigo nodded. “Marmoo said that getting wounded proved that we’re weak. So he gave every injured soldier a choice. Stay and be eaten, or leave forever.”
“So you all left.”
“Not all of us,” Pigo said grimly. “Lady Fahlga disappeared, and others . . . stayed and paid the price.”
For a moment, Darel didn’t speak. He looked at Pigo, his sworn enemy, the scorpion who’d killed King Sergu. Sometimes, late at night, Darel still saw the old turtle king lying dead at his feet. But now he saw the cracks in Pigo’s carapace and the pain in his eyes every time his broken tail swayed.
“Come on,” he said with a sigh. “Let’s see if frog medicine works on scorpions.”
Pigo’s mid-legs shifted in surprise. “I can’t—I can’t ask you to help us.”
“You didn’t ask,” Darel told him. “I’m offering.”
“Why? We’re your enemy.”
“You were our enemy,” Darel said carefully. “Are you still?”
Pigo’s side eyes shifted toward the spiders and scorps behind him. For a moment, he didn’t answer, and Darel realized that Pigo was taking the question seriously—and that he’d answer honestly.
“No,” Pigo finally told him. “But we’re scorpions without a lord, and scorpions need a lord. We’re broken and battered and maybe weak, but . . .”
Pigo and the other scorpions suddenly bent their mid-legs, and the spiders unfurled strands of silk.
“. . . we pledge ourselves to you,” Pigo continued. “To our new lord. To Darel, the Blue Sky King.”
EE HOPPED TO THE EDGE OF THE ravine where the trapdoor spiders lived, and for the first time since leaving the Amphibilands, the weight of defeat was lifted briefly from his shoulders. Effie and her people would give the frogs shelter and water. He knew they would.
And not just the frogs. The platypuses and geckos . . . and scorpions. Gee bulged his eyes at the arachnoid form standing beside him. He couldn’t get used to being this close to Pigo without fighting or fleeing.
But Pigo merely looked into the ravine. “He’s very brave.”
“Who?”
“The king.”
Gee blinked at him. “Marmoo? Wait—you mean Darel?”
“I do,” Pigo said with a nod. “After being enemies for so long, he invited us into his camp. That takes a rare kind of courage.”
“Yeah, or he’s a complete wart-head.”
Pigo’s side eyes glinted in what Gee thought was probably amusement. “Yes, or that.”
Gee rubbed his face. When Darel had led the scorpions and spiders into camp that morning, froglings had wept and trembled, while older frogs murmured about revenge.
But Darel had jumped to the top of a heap of rocks and given a speech. “I don’t know what the Rainbow Serpent wanted from us,” he’d said. “I don’t know what it still wants. But I know this—the Serpent is a spirit of rivers, not desert. Of life, not death. There can be no more fighting.”
“So what do we do?” someone had called.
“We look for a new home.”
“In the ou
tback?” another frog had called. “In the heat and the sun and the dust?”
“There’s no water!” a bullfrog had croaked from beside Princess Orani’s stretcher.
“We’ll die!” a tree frog had peeped.
“That’s what Marmoo wants,” a wood frog had said. “For us to die slowly.”
“Keep the faith,” Darel had told them. “We’ve lost too much to stop now.”
Gee shook his head at the memory. “Well, you know what Darel always says?” he asked Pigo. “His finest pearl of wisdom?”
Pigo turned to face Gee, his expression intent. “The king? No, please tell me. What is his wisdom?”
“He says, ‘It takes all kinds.’”
“That’s what the Blue Sky King says?” Pigo frowned. “That’s his wisdom? That’s like saying ‘A bird in the pincer is worth two in the bush.’”
“I know!” Gee croaked with a snort. “That’s what I told him! It’s like ‘Cleanliness is next to frogli—’” Movement caught his eye in the ravine. “What’s that?”
Pigo shaded his main eyes. “Spiders.”
“Marmoo’s soldiers?” Gee asked, inflating his throat nervously.
“I don’t know, I can’t—”
A faint call sounded. “Look out, Gee! There’s a scorpion right there!”
“Effie!” Gee shouted happily, and hopped into the ravine.
When Darel reached the bottom of the ravine, he found the spider mothers in a circle around Gee and Effie. “—so we need help,” Gee was saying. “Food and water and a place to stay.”
“Show them,” one of the spider mothers told Effie.
Effie led Gee and Darel along the dry gully, and when they stepped around a craggy boulder, Darel gasped. The trapdoors were ripped open, exposing a dozen holes in the ground.
“Wh-wh-what happened?” Gee stammered.
“Scorpions,” Effie said, her voice tight. “They came a little after you left. Marmoo doesn’t just want the Amphibilands. He wants all the water.”
Darel remembered the gecko water hole. “Did they steal yours?”
“They said our trickle wasn’t worth taking. But they tore apart the trapdoors.”
“Can’t you rebuild them?” Gee asked.
Effie sighed. “Sure, but . . . Earlier this morning, the trickle ran dry.”
Gee groaned and Darel swayed, suddenly light-headed, and reached for the craggy boulder to stay on his feet. He’d hoped the trapdoor spiders could shelter the refugees from the Amphibilands. But if they didn’t have any water . . .
“Maybe Gee and I can find water,” he said. “Frogs are good at that.”
Effie led Darel and Gee into the underground spider village, to the massive cavern that Darel had seen on his last visit. The air still smelled damp and earthy, and Darel felt his parched skin absorb the moisture from the air, but when he hopped to the center of the room, the trickle of water was gone.
“Not a drop,” Gee declared.
Darel looked toward the dark hole in the wall, into which the water had once flowed. He stepped closer and inhaled. “Smells wet, but . . . not watery. I wonder how far the tunnel goes.”
“All the way,” Effie told him.
“All the way where?”
She showed her fangs briefly. “I don’t know! That’s just what the mothers always say. And they don’t know, either.”
“What’re we going to do?” Gee asked with a mournful ribbit.
“Keep moving,” Darel told him, trying to sound more confident than he felt. “There’s nothing else we can do. Except ask Effie’s people to join us.”
“You mean, leave here?” Effie asked, shifting uneasily.
He nodded. “You can’t stay. If there’s no water, there’s no life.”
URLED IN THE BURROW BESIDE A snoring Yabber, Pippi frowned at the last few larvae. Barely enough for one more meal. Well, at least sleeping and eating seemed to be healing Yabber. He’d opened his eyes a few times, and even smiled at her once.
Another few days, and maybe he’d wake up for real and—
Her breath caught. Something felt wrong. Something felt missing.
She shook her bill back and forth but didn’t feel a tingle of approaching scorpions, so she waddled to the mouth of the burrow. She widened the airhole in the mud wall, and a strange scent reached her.
The river didn’t smell like a river. It didn’t sound like a river, either.
She opened the hole enough to stick her head out, and blinked in disbelief. The river was gone. The water was gone. All that remained was a mucky, waterless riverbed.
She stood there for a long time, then checked on Yabber. Still sleeping. She sneaked from the burrow and crept through the stumps of the riverside trees, following the destruction upstream. Without water, she and Yabber didn’t stand a chance. She’d been fighting back tears for days, trying not to think about her family and friends, but seeing the Amphibilands’ forests torn to shreds made her eyes feel swollen and hot.
She blinked a few times, then froze when she heard a scorpion voice in the distance. She couldn’t make out the words, but the tone rang with command.
After a terrified moment, she exhaled. Okay, Pippi. You can do this. You need to get closer. You need to find out what happened to all the water.
She climbed through the dense underbrush until she reached a steep ridge. The voice sounded louder as she followed the ridge to its high point overlooking the central frog village. Her knuckles ached as she poked her bill through a leafy branch . . . Then her bill burned with a thousand tingles.
Scorpions packed the stump-covered hillside beneath her, legions of them. One jointed tail swayed so close that she could’ve reached out and touched it. But none of the scorps saw her. They were all watching Marmoo pace in the valley where the ruins of the frog village still smoldered.
Every tree had been uprooted and dragged away: the paperbark tree overlooking the nursery pond, the entire tree frog village. Only the splintered remains of buildings were left.
“—led you to victory!” Marmoo was shouting as he stomped over the ruins of the marketplace. “The frog nation is broken, and all of this is ours!” He gestured with a pincer. “Water! Water is life. Water is power! But my scouts crept over every inch of our new land, and do you know what they found?”
“Didn’t discover me,” Pippi whispered.
“The water of the Amphibilands is connected to the springs and water holes of the outback! Our spoils of war, the prize for our victory, is being lapped up by the worthless and the weak all across the land!”
Scorpion soldiers muttered angrily and snapped their pincers.
“That’s right!” Marmoo bellowed. “The frogs were stupid, as well as weak! They did nothing as their water trickled away into the outback—maybe they didn’t even notice! But the age of the Amphibilands is over, and no water will escape the Arachnilands!”
The scorpions cheered.
“Enough!” Marmoo raised both pincers. “From this moment, nobody gets a drop of water—not unless they pay! Not unless they beg! Now the water is mine. The entire outback is mine!”
With three great leaps, Marmoo jumped from the valley onto the cliff where the waterfall used to spill from the rocks. He bellowed something Pippi didn’t hear, to scorpions she didn’t see, and a creak-snap-thud whip-cracked across the land, louder than a thunderclap.
Pippi’s yelp of surprise was lost in the gasps and shouts of the scorpions.
When she peered toward the noise, she saw a huge wall of lashed-together tree trunks slam across the river that ran beside the marketplace. That’s where all the trees had gone! The scorps had built huge walls with them. With the trees and the broken barricades, and even the walls of now destroyed homes.
The river current struck the wall—the dam, Pippi realized—and splashed and swirled and poured toward the village valley. Creak-snap-thud! Another dam slammed across the river on the far side of the village, and in the distance she heard the thud, slam,
splash of dozens more.
Then with a roar that shook the earth, tidal waves crashed into the valley. Water churned the rubble with pounding tides, hungry waves swallowed the ruins, rushing currents flowed into the valley from every direction, clashing and spraying in white-water geysers . . . until, finally, everything grew still. Except for the cheering of scorpions and the pounding of Pippi’s heart.
Marmoo must’ve been preparing this for days, Pippi thought. That’s what had happened to the river outside the burrow. That’s what had happened to every stream and creek in the Amphibilands. Marmoo had been moving them into position.
Now he controlled all the water of the outback. And water was life.
“Pippi?” Yabber said weakly when she returned to the burrow.
She rushed closer. “Right here! No, no! Don’t go back to sleep until you have some larvae!” She fed Yabber a handful of larvae. “Much better! You look almost amphibian again.”
“Reptilian,” he murmured. “I’m a reptile.”
“I know you’re a reptile!” she said. “But you don’t look that much better.”
“You ridiculous marsupial—”
“I’m a mammal! A monotreme, as far as that goes, because laying eggs is the only smart way to have children, as if you didn’t know. But that’s not important. What’s important is . . .”
She trailed off with a sigh. She needed to tell him about Marmoo’s dam, about Marmoo hoarding the water. But before she gathered her thoughts, Yabber snored. He was sleeping again.
Pippi stroked his shell with fondness and fear. He was getting better, but he’d just eaten the last larvae—and without water, there was no food. Without water, there was no hope.
S DAREL LED THE MARCH ACROSS THE outback, he kept thinking about what he’d told Effie. If there’s no water, there’s no life.
The trapdoor spiders wove shady parasols—and slings and bandages and stretchers—but the sun still scorched delicate frogskin. No water, no life. Despite the tadpole bassinets being wrapped tightly, the water evaporated a little more every hour. Soon the bassinets would dry up completely—and tadpoles still needed water to breathe.