by Paul Collins
I smelled the spice again, felt the heat. Liam sagged in his bonds. The fire crackled. The skulls gaped lipless. With a great effort, I tried to move. I was helpless. The sorcerer approached and the chant was sinking into my bones, weakening me. ‘Ewa! Ewa! Death! Death!’ The painted mouth curved into a smile that chilled my heart. I was not strong. I was a coward. If he came closer, I was going to faint and then Liam’s head would join the impaled skulls, his silky hair hanging down, his eyes pecked out.
A huge bird flew down and perched on Liam’s shoulder. I could see its talons digging into his neck. Little trails of blood slicked his skin. It shook itself with a rattle of obscene, naked wings, and croaked, whetting its beak on the stake. A horror from an older world, pterodactyl or pteranodon, eyes glinting with intelligence and hunger.
It was too much. I screamed at it, waving my arms to scare it away, and did not realise that I was free until I stood next to Liam. I could move.
I moved into the darkness. I could feel the fire burning behind me. Sticks cracked beneath my feet. I blundered into branches as I ran, fell and skinned my knees, got up and ran again. It was not black night. There were stars, and the moon was full and huge, tinged red. I heard voices around me, chanting, call ing. Something growled and something else hissed. I thought of that snake and kept going, driven at least as much by fear than by any remnants of reason.
I could taste brass in my mouth. I was winded. I stopped, panting, and looked around me. I had lost the fire and I could see little in the gloom. Leaf mould carpeted the ground. I made little noise as I trod among the biggest trees I had ever imagined.
‘Which tree is the sacred tree?’ I asked aloud. My voice shook. How could I find one tree among all these? It was impossible. Great-aunt Anne was laughing at me. I screamed, ‘Where is the one tree?’ and heard in the silence, ‘All one, sky and plant and child and stone,’ as though the forest was answering me. This world was all one. The trees were all one tree. The forest of trunks around me were a world tree.
I took a deep breath. I staggered to the nearest tree and laid a hand on the bark, and was instantly aware of the forest. A creature that lived nine hun dred years, I felt its age. Old, uninterested. Human, it thought, also aware of me. A brief species. They hardly outlast a flower.
I cried, ‘I need a branch for my friend Liam or he will die!’ And the slow thought answered me, ‘What is it to us if a human dies?’
‘We are all one,’ I said through numb lips. ‘All one.’ It did not reply, but I felt it turn its mind away. Consent had been given. I grabbed a branch and hauled on it with all my weight. It broke, bark wrinkling and shredding like skin. I screamed along with the tree, but I did not stop even though I felt like all my limbs were being torn apart.
Then I ran, stumbling in the night, lost, until I realised that somehow the branch was pulling me, and I went where I was guided. The fire loomed up again in the clearing.
The sorcerer made a grab at me, but I ducked under his arm and dived for Liam, who lolled in his bonds like a scarecrow. Long wounds striped his throat and chest. The bird sprang up from its feed ing, scolding, beak wet, and I hit it with the branch.
It flapped, knocked off balance. Smoke stung my eyes. The drums battered at my senses. The stench of blood choked me. I cried, ‘Liam! Liam! It’s me, Red, let go of the crystal! I have broken the branch for you! Oh, Liam, please!’
‘Blood,’ muttered Liam through the curtain of his black hair. I knew he was right. Blood was streaked across his chest, the reversal spell couldn’t have required his blood. It had to be mine.
I found a splinter on the branch. The drums beat faster, faster, and I seemed to have slowed down. I watched my fingers as they picked clumsily at the wood, stopping to wave the branch at the bird. The sorcerer’s hand closed on the branch and began to drag it away. He wasn’t smiling anymore. Liam, awake at last, called, ‘Lydia, no, get away!’ then I heard him scream as the bird raked his arm with its claws.
The painted mask was close to my face. ‘Ewa!’ it screamed. I was fainting with horror. I thrust my hand, palm down, onto the splinter with all my force.
There was a tearing shriek and a snarling in the dark.
Someone was stroking my hair. It felt lovely. I was snuggling back to sleep again after my nightmare when Liam said, ‘Lydia.’
He was sitting up. I gaped at him. His eyes were clear and when I touched his forehead it was cool.
‘Liam. You’re back.’
‘You brought me back,’ he said solemnly.
‘Where’s the Calabar Crystal?’ I asked.
He opened his fingers. Coarse sand poured glint ing onto the floor.
I tried to sit up but sank back onto his pillow. I hurt all over. I looked amazed at the red patches on my knees, which would colour into bruises. There was a bright mark in the middle of my palm and I could not close that hand. Had I slammed my hand down on the Calabar Crystal and broken it, braced against Liam’s death-grip? Or had it been pierced with a splinter from the World Tree?
‘It was a dream,’ I said. It could not have been real.
‘You saved my life,’ said Liam, and opened his pyjama jacket to reveal the vertical slashes that the Calabar bird or my fingernails had left on his torso and neck.
‘How do you feel?’ I asked, lamely.
‘All right. Bit battered. I wouldn’t have come back, you know, I didn’t want to at first, and then I couldn’t. And I never saw the Queen ...’
‘If you’d stayed you wouldn’t have seen the Queen, they would have sacrificed you,’ I snapped.
‘There’s Mum, I heard the door. You’ll have to go home. Thanks, Lydia.’
He smiled his beautiful smile at me.
‘My pleasure.’ I got to my feet, biting my lip. I hurt. Had I really sustained these wounds rescuing my friend from the sorcery of Zimbabwe? Ludicrous. But painfully realistic.
‘Lydia?’ asked Liam, settling back on his pillows.
‘Hmm?’
‘I wonder what else Great-aunt Anne brought home from Mrica?’
I should have left him tied to that stake. Really.
Dan had set his alarm and placed it under his pillow so my dad wouldn’t hear it. ‘It’ll be awe some, Josh,’ he whispered. just imagine. We’ll have the whole place to ourselves. We can pretend we’re the only people on earth. We might see some rare dragon lizards and we’ll be back in bed before your dad knows we’ve gone.’
My friend Dan is reptile crazy. He has all sorts of lizards and even some snakes in a special enclosure in his backyard.
We dressed in jeans, T-shirts and spray jackets, threw water bottles, torches and a chocolate bar each into our backpacks and set off into the early morn ing darkness.
It was cold, and for a while I kept glancing back to see the lights of the motel behind us. We crossed the flat area that ran up to the expanse of desert known as Tin Horse Plain. Dan was ahead a little, his torch throwing a bright beam.
‘Hey, what’s the big hurry?’ I called.
‘You’re the one who wants to get back to daddy,’ he teased.
‘Yeah, yeah, okay Lizard Hunter,’ I said, laughing.
The red earth was rough and small rocks and stones tumbled underfoot as we walked. We could hear little desert creatures scurrying in the close-by bushes.
‘Could they be dragon lizards?’ I asked. But Dan’s mind was somewhere else. He stopped, scratching his head then shining his torch over the map.
‘So what’s up, Lizard Hunter?’ I asked. Dan scowled back at me.
Then we noticed the same group of rocks we’d passed half an hour before.
‘We’ve been walking in circles, haven’t we, Dan?’
‘It seemed such an easy walk on the map, I can’t understand where we went wrong,’ he said.
We moved on towards a rock
y ridge and as we looked down into the canyon below, in the early morning gloom Dan and I saw shadowy shapes rising from the dry cracked earth.
Animals?’ I asked.
‘Don’t know,’ said Dan. ‘But they’re still as, so maybe they’re only huge rocks, like pillars.’
In the distance, just for an instant, we saw an orange flash of light. While we were watching, the light moved. It seemed to bob up and down for a few moments before coming to rest very close to where we’d first seen it. Was there something or someone down there in the canyon among the shadows? Maybe UFOs?
Then it started raining and seconds later it was buck eting down.
‘We have to go down there and find some shelter,’ Dan yelled over the rain.
I nodded, not quite trusting my voice. Something about this didn’t feel right. We pulled our jackets up tightly about our necks and then stepped onto a narrow path that wound down into the canyon. We walked along as fast as we could, treading carefully on the rough path. There were no trees to protect us from the pelting rain and soon we were drenched. Heavy drops stung our faces. We couldn’t go on walk ing through this. We had to find shelter somewhere.
Around a sharp twist in the winding path we stumbled upon a rocky outcrop. We jumped over a muddy puddle at the entrance to a small cave. It was dark and the air was thick with a strange unfamiliar smell. My hands felt clammy and I could hear Josh’s heavy breathing. We shone our torch beams along the ground, but as we moved slowly forward, some thing flashed over our heads.
‘What the ...?’Dan yelled.
I shone the torch’s beam upwards, and there, hanging from the roof like little black umbrellas, was a colony of bats.
‘Those things give me the creeps, big time,’ Dan whispered.
‘They’re only bats,’ I said, although my heart was thumping like thunder. ‘At least it’s dry in here.’
‘I guess so,’ Dan said.
We found a sheltered area up against one side of the cave and sat down with our backs against the wall. We watched the rain pelting down outside. It was as if the ground hadn’t seen water for months, and was too dry to soak it up. Inside the cave, water was seeping down into the cracks, but the rest re mained on the surface creating huge puddles and small rivers that had nowhere to go. The bats were dry as, hanging up there.
‘Maybe we could be like the bats and hang from the roof,’ I said, but Dan definitely wasn’t in the mood for jokes.
‘We can’t stay here too long,’ he said. ‘Sooner or later the water’s going to run right through where we’re sitting.’
Dan sounded distracted. Was he scared? I tried not to worry. There was nothing we could do but wait.
We were cold, wet and starting to shiver. Then as quickly as it had begun, the rain came to an abrupt stop. From the cave we could see the flashing light again; it was like a beacon, pulling us towards it. What could it be way out there in the middle of nowhere?
I loved sci-fi movies and reading about green crea tures from other planets, but I knew, sure as anything, I didn’t want to see one.
‘We’ve got to check it out, Dan,’ I said. ‘It’s the only thing that’s not a bush or rock anywhere around.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ he said. ‘We’d better get moving.’ We climbed to our feet and, stepping cautiously over puddles and gushing rivulets, headed back onto the twisting path. As we walked on, I thought about how and why we were here. I thought about how Dan had begged me to get up at 4 am to go out onto Tin Horse Plain. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. But right now, I couldn’t quite think of it that way. If it wasn’t for Lizard Hunter I’d be back at the motel sound asleep, not lost in a lonely desert in the middle of the rainy season. And why was there a bright orange light bobbing about in the middle of nowhere?
On top of that, the only animals we’d seen were the bats, not a dragon lizard in sight! But if I were honest with myself, deep down I’d wanted to go, too; I couldn’t blame it all on my friend. But how would we ever find the way back? We had no idea at all which direction we were heading, only that we were going deeper into the steep canyon, towards an orange light. And once it was noticed we were miss ing, how long would it take Dad, and maybe even the police, to come looking for us?
Dad would be freaking out. I checked my watch. It was six-thirty and almost completely light. Probably right about now Dad would be finding our empty beds. I imagined my little sister Ellie still sleeping. But my biggest fear by far was, out here in the mid dle of the desert, they’d never find us. Nobody even knew in which direction we’d gone. It would be like looking for two ants in a truckload of sand.
I jolted myself back to the present. Now that the rain and inky clouds had moved away, a pale sun was beginning to peer through the morning mist. Then Dan came to a full stop in front of me. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.
Just then we heard a muffied groan. It sounded human and was coming from somewhere to our right.
‘What the ... ?’ Dan said. I usually took no notice of Dan’s favourite phrase, but this time his words sounded different. Panicky. He pointed ahead. I couldn’t make out anything for a few seconds and then my eyes focused on a large grey-coloured object.
As we moved towards it we could see it was a car, an ordinary station wagon, but it was lying upside down.
Moving closer we saw that the sides of the car were bashed and dented and the back bumper was hang ing off at a strange angle. Then we saw it, the orange flashing light that we’d first noticed from the ridge. An emergency lamp was lying on the ground next to the car and its orange light was flashing slow and steady. We both started to creep a few steps forward.
Then Dan grabbed my arm. ‘What if ... ?’ he asked.
‘You mean what if there’s someone dead in there?’
‘Yeah,’ said Dan. ‘What then?’
‘I don’t know, but we’ve got to look.’
We saw broken glass and battered metal scattered down a nearby embankment. The car had rolled quite a way before ending up here.
‘There must be a road up there somewhere,’ I said.
‘Hello,’ I called out, as we came up behind the car.
‘Anyone here?’
For a few long moments there was silence. Then came a vmce.
‘I’m here ... here ... in the front.’
Dan and I moved forward and peered around the front door, which was bent and open. There was a man lying awkwardly on the inside of the car roof. Sticky blood was oozing from a gash on his head. He gave another loud groan, before looking up at us.
‘Am I glad to see you two,’ he said in a croaky, gravelly voice, looking at Dan and then at me. This guy thought he’d been rescued. How were we going to tell him that we were lost and didn’t have a clue where we were?
‘I was hoping ... like crazy that someone would see my emergency lamp,’ he said, slow pain-filled words, hiccupped with despair. ‘I had it resting on the, the ... window, but it fell and rolled out of the car. I didn’t know if it was still working.’
I could see the man was in pain, bad pain.
‘Can you move, Mister?’ I asked. Then I realised how stupid my question sounded. If the guy could move he would have obviously been out of here long ago.
‘Only my arms,’ he said, ‘but my legs are killing me.’
I didn’t know much about people in car accidents, but I thought it was good that this guy could at least talk to us.
‘By the way, I’m Mike ... Mike Powell.’
‘Hi, I’mjosh and this is Dan,’ I said.
‘Are ... your parents around?’ Mike asked, winc ing with the effort of talking.
‘Not quite,’ I said. ‘We got up early to go lizard hunting, then we got lost. We saw the orange light and walked down into the canyon when it started raining. We took shelter in a cave for a while
but figured there must have been something down here.’
‘We have no idea where we are,’ Dan said.
‘So ... where are you staying?’ Mike asked.
‘At the Desert View Motel,’ Dan replied. ‘At the junction.’
‘I think that’s . .. about ten kilometres from here.’
‘So you know where we are?’ I asked.
Mike groaned. ‘Yes, I know exactly where we are.’ Then he became impatient.
‘Look, my legs are totally ... stuck, boys. I can’t move them at all. There’s a road up there behind us. The motel is probably about forty minutes walk to the right. It will be much faster that way than coming down the ridge.’
Then, like talking had been too much effort,
Mike’s eyes fluttered closed and his head slumped to the side. I checked the pulse in his neck. His heart was beating and he was breathing, but he was totally out to it. I looked at Dan. He’d gone stark white.
‘Dan, listen to me. You run back and get help and
I’ll wait here with him.’
Dan seemed to snap out of it. ‘Sure thing,’ he said, with a look of relief on his face.
I watched him scramble up the steep embank ment. He turned and gave a quick wave, then he was gone.
Time crept by. Mike didn’t move or stir, but I kept checking he was breathing and I could still feel his pulse, although I thought it was weaker.
Finally, much later, I heard voices and then saw two police officers along with Dad, Dan and Ellie edging down the embankment. Dad gave me the biggest hug.
‘TheRoyal Flying Doctor and the State
Emergency Service are on their way,’ said one of the police officers, as he checked Mike’s vital signs. ‘You boys did a great job.’
Minutes later the Royal Flying Doctor’s Cessna circled low over us, and landed on the road behind. Then the state emergency crew arrived in a big response vehicle.
We watched as they cut away the damaged car door with the jaws-of-life, and in no time the Royal Flying Doctor people were freeing Mike from his car. He had IV tubes snaking into his arm and a bandage around his head as his stretcher was lifted into the plane.