Amphibians' End

by Trevor Pryce

  “We’re bullfrogs. We don’t crisscross the outback. We find one pond and we stick to it.”

  “But—” Darel gulped. “But I’ve finally figured out what the Serpent wants! We know where the water is now, right? In the Amphibilands. And we know that underground rivers connect it to . . .” He inflated his throat. “To somewhere. We just have to keep moving and we’ll find our new home!”

  “We’re staying,” Orani repeated stubbornly.

  “You can’t! This village is dying!”

  “What if Marmoo comes after us?” she asked. “What then?”

  Darel shook his head. “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “We’re not running anymore,” she said. “Anyone who can’t keep marching is welcome to join us, but we’re done. The bullfrogs are making a stand. Right here.”

  Darel tried to change her mind, but she was as stubborn as she was strong, and she kept insisting that bullfrogs simply didn’t wander across the desert. He knew what she was really doing, though: protecting the refugees from being pursued. Sacrificing herself—and her bullfrogs—to give him time to find this “new home.”

  Pigo didn’t pretend to understand amphibians and marsupials and platypuses—whatever they were. He’d pledged himself to the Blue Sky King because he honored strength, and the wood frog was mighty. Not in muscles but in heart. Still, the renewed hope in their eyes when they left the possum village was more than he could bear. So after saying good-bye to the brave bullfrogs and marching all morning toward the scorching dunes, he scuttled beside Darel.

  “My king,” he said with a little bow.

  “You’re never going to stop with that, are you?” Darel asked, slitting his nose like a frog sometimes did. Maybe in amusement.

  Pigo gazed into the desert ahead but didn’t say anything.

  “What?” Darel asked.

  “We’re heading straight in that direction?”

  Darel nodded. “Until we hit water.”

  “Scorpions have ranged this desert for years. There’s no water there. There’s nothing but the killing sands.”

  “There has to be,” Darel said.

  Pigo fell silent. He didn’t want to tell the Blue Sky King that he was wrong—dead wrong—but he was.

  Then, to Pigo’s shock, Darel put a soft frog hand on his shoulder. “I believe you, Pigo. I even trust you. But there’s one thing you’re forgetting.”

  “What’s that, my king?”

  “Two things,” Darel said, his nostrils slitting again. “One, call me Darel.”

  “I’m sorry, my king,” Pigo said, shifting his side eyes.

  Darel smiled. “And two, Marmoo said that we’re living in the new days of legend, right?”

  Pigo nodded. “He did.”

  “In the new days of legend,” Darel told him, “water flows in the killing sands.”

  At those words, Pigo felt a strange stirring in his thorax. Fear? No. Hunger? No.

  Hope? Yes. Yes, he was feeling hope.

  The feeling lasted for the rest of the day—and the next one, even as the Blue Sky King led his refugees into the bleak, barren dunes. Pigo’s scorpions didn’t mind the heat, even though they were pulling most of the stretchers, but his spiders started to sidle uncomfortably at the end of the second day.

  That’s when Pigo looked more closely at the other creatures.

  Most of the platypuses limped heavily, bills low and knuckles dragging. The geckos had stopped interrupting each other. The young possums clung to their parents in silent despair, and the trapdoor spiders trembled under the burning sun.

  The frogs looked worst of all. Cracked skin, torn feet, eyes reddened from whipping sand. And they kept checking the watery boxes where the tadpoles lived. Pigo stayed away from the tadpoles, because he didn’t want to scare them—but he edged near enough to hear the old frog called Jir telling Darel, “If we don’t find water by tomorrow, they’re not going to make it.”

  “We will find water,” Darel promised Old Jir, his heart breaking at the sight of the overheated tadpoles curled together in a shrinking puddle. “I’m sure of it.”

  But as the dunes turned to hard-packed sand, he didn’t smell the faintest whiff of moisture in the biting air. Still, the refugees staggered through the merciless desert. When the broiling sun finally dipped below the horizon, the air cooled, and Darel pushed onward toward the shelter of a clump of red rocks.

  A lone tree rose from the scrub farther on, but Darel knew the outback a little better now. “Farther on” meant a half day’s trek . . . and the tadpoles wouldn’t last that long.

  After the refugees reached the red rocks, Darel looked after everyone as well as he could, then slumped to the dirt in an exhausted sleep.

  When he awoke, Pigo and the scorpions were gone.

  Darel didn’t say anything. He just stood and stared at the place where they’d been. He looked at all the abandoned stretchers with nobody to pull them, at Old Jir barely breathing, and at Ponto still wrapped in a spiderweb body cast. At all the wounded creatures, clinging to life, who’d followed him into battle—and into this terrible land.

  His eyes burned and he wanted to cry, but he was too dry to make tears.

  As the camp roused, Gee hopped up beside Darel and sat in silence. Then Coorah did the same. Quoba and Burnu joined them next, then Pippi’s sister waddled over, with Effie crawling beside her.

  Nobody spoke for a long time.

  Then Dingo croaked, from the top of the red rocks, “Hey, why did the scorpion cross the desert—”

  “Nobody’s in the mood for jokes,” Burnu snapped at her.

  “—dragging logs?”

  “What?”

  “The scorpions.” Dingo pointed toward the lone tree off in the distance. “They’re coming back with firewood.”

  Darel jumped to his feet, shaded his eyes from the morning glare, and caught sight of Pigo leading his scorpions closer. “Are those branches?”

  “Definitely logs,” Dingo said.

  “Why logs?” Coorah asked.

  “To get to the other side,” Dingo said.

  Nobody laughed. Not even Dingo. Instead, they stared in silence as Pigo and his scorpions came closer and closer.

  “They’re roots,” Pigo announced when he reached the rocks. “Of the mallee eucalyptus.”

  “You marched the entire night,” Effie asked, her spider eyes dubious, “for a bunch of roots?”

  Pigo hefted a long, gnarled root onto his shoulder. “We hacked them from the ground with our pincers.”

  “What are they for?” Darel asked.

  “This,” Pigo said, striking forward.

  He tilted the root over a tadpole bassinet like he was going to smash it. Frogs gasped in fear—then water flowed from inside the root, and filled the bassinet. The scent of fresh, clean, cool liquid struck Darel where he stood. Other scorps filled the rest of the bassinets, then passed around the remaining roots. Enough was left for one sprinkle per frog, one lick per gecko, and one sip for everyone else.

  Enough to keep them alive for another day.

  HE SUN BEAT DOWN, STRETCHING THE minutes into hours, and the hours into a painful, stumbling daze. The refugees dragged themselves past withered bushes and lifeless plains, too weary to raise their heads when scouts located a dry spring in a patch of dead trees.

  “On the same straight line,” Darel said to himself. “Still following the underground river.”

  Nobody listened. Nobody cared. They just kept struggling across the dry scrub . . . until a strange shape rose from the farthest dunes.

  “What’s that?” Gee mumbled, tugging a platypus’s stretcher with Darel. “Looks like a—”

  “A red moon,” Effie said, dragging a stretcher beside them. “Peeking over the horizon.”

  “There’s only one moon.” Gee snorted weakly. “Silly spider.”

  “I didn’t say it was a moon. I said it looked like—”

  “It’s a rock.” Darel stopped. “It’s a rock tower.
And I’ve seen it before.”

  “I’m pretty sure that if you’d been here before,” Gee told him, “you would’ve mentioned it.”

  For a long moment, Darel simply stared at the distant rock, remembering his dream of a rainbow arching over a red tower. Then he cleared his throat and croaked, “Listen up!”

  A handful of frogs and platypuses looked at him, but everyone else kept dragging themselves along, heads bowed and shoulders slumped.

  “Attention!” Pigo roared, snapping his pincer. “The king speaks!”

  With slow shuffles and pained sighs, the rest of the refugees turned toward Darel.

  “I’ve seen that before!” Darel called out, pointing to the red rock tower. “The Rainbow Serpent showed me that in a dream. We’re almost there! We’re almost home! Head for the rock!”

  A ragged cheer sounded, and the refugees trekked onward with renewed determination. They walked for hours, and at midday they reached the immense shadow that the rocky tower cast across the scrub. There was still no scent of water, but at least the shade gave the refugees just enough strength to continue moving.

  Darel marched ahead of the others, desperate for a whiff of dampness in the air. Except, as the sun lowered toward the dunes, he smelled nothing but drought.

  Finally, the refugees arrived at the base of the rock tower, and Effie stared in awe and whispered, “The whole thing is one rock. A single rock sticking up from underground.”

  “Not from underground,” Quoba told her.

  Darel looked closer, and a bubble of wonder expanded in his chest. The tower didn’t rise from the flat desert. Instead, it stood upright on a mound of boulders: huge round stones directly beneath the tower, then smaller boulders scattered around the edges.

  Most of the refugees stared in awe, but a few of the geckos scampered toward the boulders.

  “Cool!” a gecko crackled.

  “Shade!”

  “Don’t tip the whole thing over!” Effie warned. “Are those rocks steady or—”

  “Sturdy as a stump!” another gecko said from the space between boulders.

  “Not going anywhere!” the first said.

  “Well,” Effie said, “can you find any—”

  “No water!” a third gecko reported. “Not inside.”

  Coorah stepped up beside Darel, her eyes bulging at the tower. “It’s amazing,” she breathed. “It’s impossible.”

  “It’s dry,” Gee told her. “Unless we can drink rock, we’re in trouble.”

  The bubble of wonder in Darel’s chest popped and was replaced by dread. They weren’t just in trouble. Without water, they were dead. Every platypus, every tadpole, everyone. Dead.

  “I don’t—” He blinked his tearless eyes. “I don’t understand.”

  “The good news,” Dingo said, craning her head to look upward, “is that this thing makes an awesome gravestone.”

  “I don’t understand!” Darel repeated, almost wailing. “The underground rivers all lead here. You saw that! The Rainbow Serpent told me—my father drew tunnels in the cave paintings! I can’t be wrong!” He fell to his knees. “There’s water here, there has to be . . .”

  “I don’t smell any,” Gee said gently.

  “Then I did all this for nothing? I helped Marmoo invade? I helped him kill the Amphibilands.” Darel choked on a sob. “I dragged wounded soldiers, dying friends—tadpoles!—across the desert. I trusted the Rainbow Serpent all for nothing?”

  “Not for nothing,” an eerie voice whispered from above. “Dragging across the desert gave us time—”

  “Ghost bats!” Gee shouted. “Watch out!”

  “—to get reinforcements.”

  A legion of ghost bats swarmed around the massive rock tower and dove toward the refugees. Half of the bats gripped black pebbles in their claws, and for a second, Darel didn’t understand. Pebbles wouldn’t do much damage.

  Then the bats opened their claws to drop the pebbles—and Darel gasped.

  They weren’t pebbles. They were paralysis ticks.

  IPPI CLAWED MUD FROM THE BURROW wall, then wriggled her bill back and forth in the dirt. Nothing. She smacked her dry mouth and clawed more mud. Still nothing. She dug deeper and deeper until she felt a faint tingle—then she lunged forward and grabbed a beetle in her mouth.

  “Took wong enuff,” she mumbled, keeping a firm grip on a wriggling leg.

  After a full day of searching, she’d only found two beetles, and neither of them was juicy. She sighed. Platypuses were no good at hunting in the mud. She needed a river.

  But the river was gone.

  In the main chamber, she plopped the beetle in front of a dozing Yabber. “Dinner time, Yabber!” she said, trying to sound cheerful.

  One of his eyes opened. “I just ate.”

  “That was this morning. It’s dinner now.”

  “When’s the last time you ate?”

  “Breakfast,” she lied. “I’m still packed.”

  “When’s the last time you had a real drink of water?”

  “Uh . . .” She’d been weak from thirst for so long that she couldn’t remember. “I soaked plenty from the dripping wall. And we need you to get stronger, so you can dreamcast us out of here.”

  “Just a few more days,” he told her. “I mean to say, that nightcasting almost killed me. I’m still weak. But once I—”

  Crrrrrrg! The burrow walls gave a violent shudder. The floor quaked, the roof shook, and clumps of dirt thudded around Pippi and pelted Yabber’s shell.

  “Cave-in!” Pippi yelped, steadying herself. “C’mon, c’mon—outside!”

  She tugged Yabber toward the door, clawed through mud, and shoved him through the doorway. As the walls collapsed completely, she lunged from the burrow and tumbled to the dry riverbank, where she bonked painfully into Yabber’s shell.

  Then she saw them. A dozen scorpions standing directly over her burrow, lashing at the ground with their stingers. Making the earth shake, making the walls cave in.

  Pippi whimpered . . . and another squad of scorpions surrounded her.

  “You can’t hide, you duck-faced freak,” Marmoo snarled, shoving through his scorps. “Not from me. I own every leaf and ditch in the Arachnilands, and soon I’ll own the entire outback.” His melted mouthparts shifted into a horrible smile. “Water. You think water is the key to life?”

  Pippi gulped and trembled.

  “Do you?” Marmoo roared.

  “Y-y-yes?”

  “It’s also the key to death.” Marmoo turned and glared at his squad. “Bring them! And if the turtle starts to dreamcast, sting the platypus!”

  Two scorpions grabbed Pippi with sharp-edged pincers, and she was so scared that she almost fainted. She panted and shivered as the scorpions dragged her and Yabber along the reeking riverbank, past smoldering fire pits and clear-cut woods.

  When the scorps finally shoved her around a weedy corner, her eyes widened. A massive dam stretched across the dry river directly in front of her. It was built of thick logs lashed together with ropes and vines and spider silk. It was even larger than she’d thought, and it creaked as water lapped against the other side.

  “No,” Yabber gasped, then turned to look at Marmoo. “What are you doing?”

  Marmoo backhanded Yabber with a pincer, flinging him shell over heels. “Whatever I want.”

  Yabber hit the ground with a thud, and Pippi yelped “Hey!” a second before the scorps shoved her after him.

  “What is this?” Yabber asked.

  “It’s the dam,” she said. “Like I told you.”

  “There’s a reason the frogs never built dams.” Yabber angled his long neck toward Marmoo. “The Veil may have drawn too much water here, but . . . the intention was never to hoard it. Because water is life. Water is free. You can’t block—”

  “Water is mine!” Marmoo roared, kicking Yabber with his forelegs.

  The crack of the blow rang out, and Yabber was hurled into the air, spinning wildly. He slammed i
nto the dam wall, then slumped to the ground with a groan, dazed and wheezing.

  Marmoo scuttled closer, his stinger raised to strike.

  S THE GHOST BATS SWARMED CLOSER, Darel reached for his dagger—then froze. He didn’t want to fight them; he didn’t want any more bloodshed.

  “Wait!” he shouted. “Stop!”

  “Reinforcements,” a red-eyed bat whispered, swooping at him. “We warned you.”

  “Emperor Marmoo said you’ve suffered enough—”

  “—and now we can feed,” another bat hissed before sinking her fangs into Pirra’s tail.

  Pirra shrieked, the red-eyed bat slashed Darel’s arm, and a cluster of bats landed on the still-unconscious Ponto. The pock-pock of falling ticks sounded around Darel as bats flickered toward fleeing geckos and wrapped trapdoor spiders in leathery white wings.

  “Scorpions, guard the tadpoles!” Darel yelled, vaulting upward and swinging his dagger. “Archers, fire!”

  “Geckos!” Coorah shouted, pegging a bat with her slingshot. “Hide in the rocks!”

  Darel parried the red-eyed bat’s claws in the air. “Platypuses, close ranks and get your spurs up!”

  “Ch-ch.” The ticks crept closer. “Ch-time to feed-ch, suck the blood.”

  “Possums!” Gee bellowed, jumping past Darel and clubbing the red-eyed bat. “You know what to do!”

  The possums keeled over as Darel landed on a tick that was crawling toward the triplets. “Frogs,” he shouted. “Attack!”

  “Kulipari!” a frog with cracked skin and swollen eyes shouted, grabbing a stone for a weapon.

  Another frog raised her crutch like a spear. “Kulipari!”

  A white-lipped tree frog caught a bat’s wing with her tongue, and three burrowing frogs heaved themselves from stretchers to fight, while Darel’s mom guarded the bassinets and the triplets collected rocks as ammunition behind her.

  But many of the frogs barely moved. They were too weak.

  “They’re dying of thirst,” one of the bats hissed. “Easy targets for our—Aah!”

  Dingo’s bow slugged the bat. “Did someone say ‘Kulipari’?” she asked, spinning her bow into a blur, smashing ticks left and right.