by Phil Gabriel
With Kitty-Sue getting a ride, I was suddenly the anchor that would slow down our expedition. Of course, John would be much faster than me in the jungle. Sometimes I regretted being raised by humans.
I furled Princess, enjoying the pitter-pat of raindrops on my head. I briefly considered asking Princess to turn into a machete to help cut through the jungle. The problem was that an enchanted object like her blazed so brightly in the magical spectrum that it would be like carrying a spotlight through the jungle. I preferred to sneak into this place.
Also, she probably needed some downtime. With a whispered “goodnight,” I slipped her into my dragonskin bag.
Looking up, I saw that John had already disappeared into the undergrowth. He was so smooth that he didn’t leave any trail to follow, so I had to hurry to keep in sight of him. It was one of the reasons I held the globe that guided us. John was not a team player.
Once we entered the jungle, the steady rain stopped, the canopy above us acting as an umbrella. Relief from the rain was accompanied by misery from another direction. An endless swarm of stinging bugs raced to follow us and feast on our bodies.
Bugs were crawling over my mouth, nose, and ears. Just like in Vietnam, an unprotected human was a tasty target for the bugs. I stopped for a few moments to concentrate, willing the electrons near my skin away to create a positively charged area. Not enough to become a human bug zapper, just enough to confuse the insects. This spell took the tiniest trickle of magic, almost nothing compared to the reserves I now held. And most importantly, almost imperceptible to magical entities.
I closed in on John, able to move faster without the bugs’ distracting stings. He had used a spell like mine in Vietnam, and I expected the same tonight. Instead, when I closed on him, I saw that no bugs were near. Then I caught a very faint citrus smell. It followed him like a personal cloud the bugs didn’t enter.
He looked down at Kitty-Sue still asleep in her sling and smiled. “It seems your friend has a lot of tricks tucked away, even when sleeping,” he said. “Her perfume is keeping the bugs at bay.”
I suddenly regretted not carrying her myself. She wouldn’t have really maintained her Pam-sized body to trick me, would she?
It took about thirty minutes to get back into the rhythms of working through thick jungle. Those skills hadn’t been needed in many years. After a frustrating ten minutes, slipping and sliding on every vine that was on the path, I finally decided to watch how John traveled. By stepping like him, twisting and turning as he moved, it finally became easier to move through the dense brush.
Compared to his unconscious grace, I was like a toddler trying to imitate the dance steps of an expert. It took a lot of concentration, and I could never match the eerie silence of his moves, but at least I could make progress.
Another twenty minutes brought us to a large clearing. There was a wooden house in the center, mounted on large poles to avoid the effects of seasonal flooding. It was inhabited, probably by one of the local farmers and his family. At this time of night, the entire family was sleeping, but they would wake with the dawn in a few hours to start another day of backbreaking work. I wondered briefly if Daeng’s family was near.
Just like in Vietnam, almost no part of this jungle was uninhabited. The human race spreads and grows, ending up in the most unexpected places.
John looked back at me, raising an eyebrow to ask which direction we should take. The globe indicated we should traverse the cleared area and reenter the jungle on the other side of the house. John headed towards the house, intent on taking the direct path.
The only problem was that this family had dogs. John couldn’t have missed the dogs; any danger would stand out to him. However, he was confident that his silent passage wouldn’t wake the sleeping hounds.
He wouldn’t wake the dogs. His noisy fellow magician, however, would cause a ruckus. I followed John closely, stepping in his steps, trying to emulate that silent stride.
I had a spell that would make me invisible and inaudible to humans. But it didn’t work well on animals with senses sharper than a human’s.
I heard the dog wake, the flopping of long ears as he shook his head followed by a deep sniff. In the gloom under the house, I could make out his form, glowing in infrared, as he rose up.
Animals were sensitive to my dragon-scented body: some were sent into a paralyzed state, some ran away, and some reacted badly. This was one of the bad reactors.
I raised a hand, a spell ready to quiet the animal permanently, when the dog took another sniff of the air, yawned deeply, and settled back down to sleep.
After we had reentered the jungle, I whispered to John, “Was that you?”
“No,” he said, “it was Milady Fox. Without rousing, she sent out a scent that put the dog back into a relaxed state.”
“Yeah,” I said, “she’s tricky like that.”
We came across several more man-made clearings, all traversed the same way. Cutting through the cleared sections was more dangerous, but saved a lot of time compared to circling around them.
Six miles doesn’t seem like much on a map or going down a paved road. But in the jungle? Our progress was measured in hundreds of yards per hour, not miles per hour.
Hell, even a game trail would have been like a highway compared to some of that jungle.
After two hours, we were almost to our goal when we came on a deep ravine. Looking over the side at the river rushing hundreds of feet below us, I let out a groan. The other side of the ravine was almost thirty yards away. Looking to the left and right, I could see no easy way to get across.
“Well,” I said, “this is going to suck.” Using magic to cross the ravine would set off alarms to any sensitive in the area.
John looked at me quizzically as he pulled his grass rope off of his shoulder, careful not to jostle the still sleeping Kitty-Sue. “It’s OK,” he said, holding up the line, “I’ve got this.”
“Isn’t that too short to let us get down to the bottom?” I asked. “Not to mention climbing the other side would take hours.”
“Hours?” muttered John as he walked off a short distance. “How could that take hours? Anyway, I have a faster route in mind.”
Well, it would take me hours. John was a lot nimbler than me. He could probably scale the damned cliff in minutes.
John was busy looking around the edge of the ravine. He grabbed a fist-sized rock and expertly tied a Monkey’s Fist knot around the rock with the end of his rope. He adjusted the loops of his rope on the ground, ensuring there were no tangles, and placed a heavy rock on the end of the rope.
He then took several steps back, holding the Monkey’s Fist in his right hand, wound up like a major league pitcher, took a running step, and hurled the weighted line across the ravine. All without jostling the snoozing Kitty-Sue enough to wake her.
We waited several seconds for the line to land. I squinted to see his target, the limb of a sturdy tree on the other side. Even with my eyesight, magically upgraded to the limits of human vision to 20/5 acuity, I had a hard time seeing the target.
Without a trace of magic to guide it, the line arced over the limb and the weighted end spun around the branch, fastening it securely to the tree.
John nodded in satisfaction and lifted the rock to free his rope. He backed up to the nearest tree and scampered up the bole faster than I could have taken stairs.
I’m stronger than most humans, with agility and reflexes tweaked to maximum, but it still took me several minutes to get up to his level on the tree.
I stood unsteadily on a branch below John, a bit wobbly due to the slickness caused by the constant rain. John stood as though he were on a street corner, not perched twenty feet above the ground on a slippery tree branch. He sniffed at my uncertain posture and said, “Quit playing around, we don’t have a lot of time before dawn.”
With magic, I had no fear of falling. Hell, even a fall from this height could be healed quickly. But I didn’t want to risk using magic this cl
ose to our destination. There was no way to tell if there were sensitives on watch.
I watched as John wrapped his rope around the bole of our tree. He made a complicated knot I had never seen in the Boy Scouts. Watching the knot-work made my eyes water.
“So, you’re going to leave your rope behind?” I asked.
Another look of disbelief. “No,” he said, “of course not. That’s a timed knot. It will release in five minutes.” With that, he shimmied farther up the tree and set his feet on the thin rope and started walking across. He walked with a gait and balance that seemed so natural that it hurt my eyes to follow.
About ten feet out, just where the edge of ravine started, he turned to me and impatiently asked, “Would you like me to carry you across?”
“You know, John,” I said as I reached into my satchel, “this is one of the things I hate about you. You make this shit look easy.”
I pulled out a harness and a set of locking carabiner clips. I put the harness on carefully, making sure the straps were tight. Two short safety lines ran from my harness to the locking carabiner clips, which I hooked to the grass rope. I had to assume that John’s line was strong enough for this task. Hell, I wasn’t sure I was strong enough for this task.
“Time’s ticking,” said John, looking at his knot.
“Go ahead,” I said. “I don’t want to cause the rope to sway with my movement and cause you to fall. You get across first.”
He snorted at the idea that my movement could make him lose balance. The bastard could probably walk a skipping rope without a misstep. But he turned and headed across the void.
Of course, challenged by his superhuman balance, I leaped to the rope and walked across like a headliner at Cirque du Soleil. On a rain-slick grass rope as big around as my thumb.
Yeah, right. I clipped my two safety lines on the rope and swung underneath, grabbing it with both hands, and crossed my ankles over the rope. I inched across like a sloth hanging from a branch. The bastard could have anchored the rope a few feet higher to make this a downward trip, but he hadn’t thought of that, so, I inched uphill (up-rope) hand over hand. At least the rain washed the sweat from my eyes.
The little timer in my head hit three minutes when I was halfway across. That was when I wondered how accurate John’s five-minute knot-work was. Did he add a few seconds as a safety factor, or did he cut it short? Knowing John, I hurried my pace.
I avoided looking down. I could survive a fall from this height, but that would require magic and ruin the mission. Without magic, I could survive by speeding up to allow me to land perfectly and spread the impact out over several extended minutes. I had done that the time my chute failed.
Bad luck to think of old accidents. Hell, that hadn’t even been an accident—the chief had sabotaged my chute. He was stunned to find me alive, holding a knife, when he landed. I made sure to make it look like enemy action so his family would be proud.
Even before I was a magician, I had made it a rule. Nobody fucks with me.
I shook the rain out of my eyes and came back to the present. I was almost across, just a few feet from the edge, when the rope untied itself from the distant end.
Hanging in space for a brief, terror-filled moment, I suddenly wondered if the rope was strong enough to hold my weight without breaking, even if it bent across a sharp rock on the edge of the ravine.
The line held, John’s handiwork proving much stronger than anything synthetic. However, it was still slick with rain, and my hands slipped on the rope, letting me slide down.
With a grunt of effort, I squeezed my grip as hard as possible, burning grooves into my palms with my desperate grab. I slowed, then stopped, then managed to get my boot wrapped in a loop of rope. Gritting my teeth, I started inching up carefully. My two safety lines were now at risk of tangling in the rope, which slowed my ascent even more.
I felt a jerk on the rope and had the sensation of sudden movement. A moment of panic and then I realized the rope was being pulled up and me with it.
Above me was John, squatting on the edge of the ravine. He was pulling the rope up hand over hand, apparently without effort. Damn gorilla-strong jungle lords, making everything look easy.
In seconds, I was close enough for him to grab my hand and pull me up to the edge. I took several steps away from the drop-off, then sank to my knees, breathing heavily. I pulled off the safety lines and the harness and stowed them in my satchel.
I didn’t want to use magic, but couldn’t continue without healing. My hands were badly torn, my muscles were trembling, and I was sweating in the heat. A trickle of energy taken from my deceased enemies healed my injuries, flesh knitting and muscles recovering in seconds.
With a deep breath, I stood and looked at John. Comparing his unmarked form and easy stance against my mud-splattered carcass brought a flash of jealousy. John rolled up his rope, placed it on the ground, then stuck one end in his pocket. Like an unnaturally long snake, the rope undulated and squirmed until it had disappeared into his pocket.
“Dawn is less than an hour away,” said John, nodding to the east. “We need to get this done.”
I pulled out the tracking globe and added energy to activate the spell.
“There’s just one problem with that,” I said.
“Yes?” asked John.
“I can’t find the damned armor!”
24
Treasure Retrievers
The crystal globe rested in my hand, stubbornly staying where it was instead of tugging me towards the missing armor.
“Are we on top of it?” asked John. “If it’s right below us, the globe will tug straight down.”
“No,” I said, “the spell is omnidirectional. I think crossing the ravine triggered an obfuscation spell to mask the location.”
“A concealment spell intricate enough to fool both of us?” asked John.
I pursed my lips in anger. “Yes. I wish Akiko could have come. She’s an expert at this kind of spell. Even if the location was out of phase with reality, she could find it.”
The concealment spell was designed to confuse human senses. How could we get around that?
I watched John. He was stroking the softer-than-mink tails of the sleeping Kitty-Sue. At my look, he pulled his hand away, looking slightly guilty.
“Let’s wake Kitty-Sue and get her advice,” I said.
“Kitty-Sue,” I said, “wake up. I need you.” Despite all the movement and jostles of our trip, she had remained fast asleep until now.
The tiny fox in the hammock created by John’s sling wriggled and yawned. She said, “Are we there yet?” in her small voice.
Then she shook herself awake. In a flash, she had escaped John’s embrace and scampered to the ground.
She quickly moved through her stages of transformation: from two-tailed fox to partially human four-breasted half fox to her favorite ninety percent human form—the one with almost no body hair, fox ears, slit eyes, two beautiful furry tails, and two breasts.
“OK, boss,” she said, stretching her arms above her head, “I’m awake.” Turning to John, she continued, “And I thank you most kindly for the ride.”
John, ever the gentleman, even though he had been raised in a jungle, kept his eyes above her collarbone. “You are most welcome, milady.”
Kitty-Sue looked back and forth between the immaculate John, who was unknotting his shirt and putting it back on, and my bedraggled state. The bastard didn’t even have wrinkles in his shirt.
“So, boss,” said Kitty-Sue, “did John use that rope of his to drag your sorry ass through the jungle? Because that’s what it looks like.” She took the sting out of her comment with one of her mischievous grins.
“We all have talents,” I said. “The gentleman gorilla here can walk out of the most savage jungle looking like he stepped from a GQ photo shoot. You can sleep through miles of jungle trekking—”
“And what’s your talent?” Kitty-Sue interrupted.
“My talent is bri
nging you all together to accomplish a mission.”
Kitty-Sue gave me a doubtful look, but kept quiet for a few moments, before asking, “So your talent is begging for help from the right people?”
The memory of Daeng, Lady Jane, John the ape-man, Akiko, and even the Nang Tani tree spirit flashed through my mind. Where would I be without the assistance of others?
John’s impatient look stopped my urge to banter with Kitty-Sue. “Yes, Kitty-Sue,” I said, “and now I need your help. My location spell stopped working, now that we are close to our goal.”
“So, your hocus-pocus lost its focus?” she asked. “OK, show me this broken compass you’ve been following, and I’ll see if kitsune magic can find what you’re missing.”
I held my hand up, the globe dangling from the thong, and poured energy into the location spell. The sphere remained pointing straight down.
“Why don’t you just follow the globe?” asked Kitty-Sue in a puzzled voice.
“Because it’s pointed straight down, Milady Fox,” said John. “And Scott assures me the object is not below us.”
“Straight down?” said Kitty-Sue, tilting her head. “Can’t you see it’s pointed that way?” I followed her pointing finger, but the finger was also aimed straight down.
I was ready to respond that I knew the treasure wasn’t underneath us and that the globe was only reacting to gravity when my eyes unfocused and I saw the globe tilted far from vertical. It was aimed to the northeast, away from the ravine. It was like looking at one of those holographic cards that changed depending on the viewer’s angle.
I suddenly had a headache and was unable to focus on the globe. I blinked, and the globe was back in the straight down position. The headache receded.
Kitty-Sue watched John and I strain to focus on the globe and said, “Do I have to lead you two? I can’t believe a powerful magician and a monkey man can’t make this work.”