by Trevor Pryce
“That’s pretty cool.”
“Yeah, except she’s selling it as a jungle gym for froglets.”
They stopped for an early lunch beyond the waterfall, in a glade of horsetail ferns. From there, the trail rose toward the hills, and the sharp scent of eucalyptus wafted around them. They set off again, and soon they were in the eucalyptus forest itself. The graceful trees towered overhead, trunks shedding bark and slender leaves flitting through the sunlight to the ground.
“I hope we see a yellow-bellied glider,” Gee said.
Gliders were nocturnal opossums that lived only in the eucalyptus forests. They had long tails, pointy ears, and flaps of skin that let them swoop through the air from one tree to another.
“They sleep during the day,” Darel reminded him.
“Oh, right.” Gee sighed. “Maybe if we walk really slow, we’ll see them on the way back. Ooh, or the little red bats!”
Darel didn’t have the heart to remind Gee that of course the bats, too, were nocturnal. “I heard they’re nomadic,” he said, a little wistfully. “They travel wherever they want, even outside the Veil.”
Gee gazed into the shadowed woods nervously, his eyes bulging more than usual. “Just as long as nothing from out there gets in here.”
“The Veil will protect us. We’re nowhere near the border, Gee.”
“I guess.”
“The eucalyptus forest is huge,” Darel said, gesturing. “As big as the rest of the Amphibilands put together, even if the only villages are the tree frogs’ by the creeks and the Baw Baws’ in the bog.”
“How do you know all this?”
“A warrior’s gotta learn the lay of the land.”
“You’re weird.”
“But I’m quick!” Darel said, and leaped ahead.
“Hey,” Gee cried, racing after him.
AREL AND GEE HOPPED UPHILL along the forest path until they finally stopped for a rest in the shade of a cherry shrub that was growing from the roots of a eucalyptus.
As they polished off a snack, a hunting party of barred frogs crept through the leaf litter, carrying the body of a brown snake.
Darel and Gee eyed the dead snake. “Where’d you catch him?” Gee asked.
“West of here,” the lead hunter said. “These are the second-baddest snakes in Australia, boys. The only snakes more venomous are the taipans, and they keep to themselves.”
“We don’t usually see brown snakes inside the Veil,” another hunter said, his warty brow furrowed in concern.
“Is the forest safe now?” Gee asked, biting his lip.
“For a couple of strong young frogs like you?” The lead hunter winked an inner eyelid. “Stay near the path and you’ll be fine.”
The hunters waved good-bye, and the two friends lazed around, comparing strategies about how they would handle a brown snake. In the end they decided that one more snack was called for. Then, at last, they set off again.
Darel daydreamed as they hopped along: his favorite daydream of standing in the desolate outback, single-handedly facing a scorpion army that swept forward like the tide, then pulling a sword and cutting them down by the dozen—leaping and slashing and stabbing like the deadliest Kulipari. As always, the daydream ended with Darel in the ornate court of the turtle king, receiving a massive medal for his victory.
The path grew steeper as they approached the Outback Hills, three wooded peaks that rose sharply over the forest.
The first hill, where the wattleflowers grew, fell completely within the Amphibilands.
The second hill also fell completely within the Amphibilands—though Darel’s mom never allowed him to explore that far.
The third hill, however, fell only halfway within the Amphibilands. On the far side of the third Outback Hill, the desert scrub started—and the dreamcast Veil ended.
Darel didn’t understand how the turtle king hid them. He didn’t understand how the scorpions could wander to the border of the Amphibilands and not find it. But he understood that if any frog stepped across that edge, he put himself in deadly peril. So he made sure he knew exactly where he and Gee were.
The wattleflower Coorah wanted grew on the first ridge.
When they reached the top, Gee gulped. “Wow.”
Darel followed his gaze.
The green meadows and valleys and forests of the Amphibilands were behind them. Ahead was the vast Australian outback, all tans and yellows and golds as far as the eye could see. It looked like it could swallow a frog and not notice.
Gee shivered. “Scary.”
“Yeah,” Darel said, though he didn’t really agree. When he looked at the desert, he saw a stark beauty. “That’s where they fought the final battle of the Hidingwar. Down there somewhere.”
“What’s that?” Gee asked, pointing at a distant shimmering over the dunes.
“A mirage, I guess,” Darel said. “Oh! There’s the wattleflower!”
They climbed the ridge toward a shrub bristling with brush-like flowers, bright yellow with red tips.
Darel cut six blooms for Coorah.
“I thought you only owed her one,” Gee said.
“Yeah, but she’s working on—No!” Darel suddenly croaked, staring into the distance with bulging eyes. “It can’t be.”
“What?” Gee shaded his eyes with his hand. “The mirage?”
“That’s no mirage,” Darel said, his voice barely louder than a whisper. “Those are scorpions … thousands of scorpions.”
Gee looked closer and fearfully inflated his throat. “Th-th-they can’t see us. You know they c-c-can’t see us.”
“Look at them. They’re like the ocean. They could wipe us out in a day.”
“But they can’t f-f-find us. They don’t know where we are.”
“Then why are they heading this way?”
“It’s a coincidence,” Gee said. “It’s a—a—” He fell silent, an expression of horror on his face. He raised one arm and pointed a trembling finger pad. Not into the distance but at the next hilltop, an arrow’s flight away.
Four scorpion warriors were swarming over the peak: inside the Veil.
Three big scarred warriors scanned the countryside, venomous tails cocked and battle nets coiled in readiness. The fourth scorpion, even tougher-looking and clearly in charge, chopped the air with his pincers as he issued orders.
Darel’s throat tightened, and his hands clenched.
Scorpions, inside the Amphibilands! Every instinct told him to leap away, but he breathed the way Old Jir had taught him. In and out, through his fear-clamped throat, until he could think again.
Gee jerked when Darel touched his arm.
“Go,” Darel whispered. “Leap, Gee, as fast as you can. Tell the chief.”
Gee gulped a few times, then bounded toward the eucalyptus forest. He stopped when he realized that Darel wasn’t following.
“C’mon,” he whispered. “Hurry!”
“I’m not going.”
“W-w-what are you doing?”
“I’m going closer,” Darel said, his heart pounding in his chest. “To hear what they’re planning.”
ITH THE STEALTH OF A warrior, Darel hopped through the woodland, tracking the enemy ahead.
But this was no game. This was four terrifying scorpions, armed with claws and stingers.
Moving smoothly despite the terrified beating of his pulse, Darel dropped down the ravine between the first and second hills, gripping branches with his toe pads, skulking through the underbrush. He got into position and vaulted across the gulch, using the skills he’d learned from climbing the banyan tree.
Then he gathered his courage and crept toward the scorpions at the peak of the second hill.
They were still gathered on an outcropping, and at first Darel didn’t understand the sounds he heard, a sort of gravelly chopping, a rhythmic chuk, chuk, chuk.
Darel touched his dagger for reassurance, dropped to his belly, and crawled forward in the fallen leaves. When he peeked throug
h a shrub, he saw a flash of movement.
The scorpions, not twenty feet away.
They were digging. Two of the warriors were digging around the base of a waratah tree with long green leaves and bright red flowers.
The commander was barking orders at them as he paced, his legs clacking over the ground.
“Go deeper—she needs the roots, too.” The commander paced toward the shrub where Darel was hidden. “Dig under the tree, and we’ll tear up the whole thing.”
He was just a few feet from Darel.
Darel stopped breathing. His heart clenched. Through fear-widened eyes he saw the commander’s carapace-armored legs.
And at that moment, more than anything, he wanted to be home.
He wanted to be splashing in the nursery with the triplets or cleaning trash in the marketplace or even tussling with Arabanoo. He wanted to be sitting with his mother in the cool, quiet shop, setting up games like moth-toss and tongue-of-war.
No. He inhaled slowly. Get hold of yourself.
Act like a Kulipari.
The eight gleaming legs shifted on the other side of the shrub, and Darel imagined the scorpion’s many-eyed gaze scanning the woodland, then falling on him. He imagined the poison stinger blurring forward to strike.
Instead, the commander clattered away. Darel almost wept in relief, thrilled for once to be a wood frog, blending invisibly with the forest floor.
After a long, slow exhalation, he realized the scorpion commander was speaking again, explaining to one of his soldiers: “… because this isn’t an ordinary waratah tree.”
The soldier looked at the tree. “If you say so, Commander Pigo.”
“Well, the tree is ordinary,” the commander growled, “but she is not.”
“She, sir?”
“Queen Jarrah.”
The soldier snapped his pincers in disgust. “The spider queen.”
“Don’t worry,” the one called Pigo said. “Lord Marmoo will kill her the moment she’s no longer needed. But right now, she’s useful. She can read imprints in the tree.”
“Huh?”
“Her nightcasting frayed the outer layers of the Veil here,” Pigo said, “but we can’t go farther into the froglands until we bring her this tree. Because you know what happened to this tree, soldier?”
“No, sir.”
“The turtle king’s spell seeped into it. After she gets this in her web”—with a foreleg, he kicked an exposed root of the tree—“she’ll tear down the Veil completely.”
“The turtle’s not going to stop her?”
“He’s old and frail. By the time he realizes what’s happening, the Amphibilands will be ours.”
A coil of panic tightened in Darel’s stomach. The spider queen knew how to rip the Veil apart! After she tore it down, the scorpion army would rampage through the Amphibilands, destroying every village and shop and home, leaving no frog alive.
He backed away through the underbrush, his mind blank with terror, and—
A crashing sounded nearby, and with a new spike of fear Darel realized that he’d made a stupid and potentially deadly mistake. He’d seen the commander and three scorpion warriors from the first Outback Hill, but now there were only the commander and two warriors on the outcropping.
So where was the fourth? Patrolling through the underbrush directly toward him, that’s where.
Darel dove into a pile of leaves and went absolutely still.
The crashing grew louder until the scorpion skittered into view, holding his battle net against his armored body.
“Soldier!” Commander Pigo barked from above. “You call that stealth? Every enemy within a mile will hear you.”
“I already met the enemy, sir,” the soldier said.
“Frogs?”
“Yes, sir.” The soldier stepped onto the outcropping. “A hunting party, coming this way. They caught one glimpse of me and fled like cowards. I chased them, trying to sting the leader, but—”
“That wouldn’t have stopped them,” Pigo interrupted. “Killing a leader doesn’t stop frogs.”
“What?” The soldier looked baffled. “You can’t keep fighting if your commander is down.”
Pigo snapped one of his claws in disgust. “Frogs do. They have no honor, no respect for commanders and kings.”
“Disgusting,” the soldier said. “But I couldn’t catch the leader, in any case. I kept getting turned around.”
“You were running into the Veil,” Pigo said.
“There’s good news too, sir.” The scorpion soldier tossed his net to the ground. “I grabbed this.”
Inside the webbing wriggled Gee.
“Ah, a nice chunky frogling,” Commander Pigo said, his mouthparts clattering. “Just in time for dinner.”
EEKING FROM UNDER THE PILE of leaves, Darel felt his nostrils close and his throat tighten. They’d captured Gee, and they were going to eat him.
Darel watched Gee’s eyes bulge with terror, and he saw the scorpion warrior smack Gee until he stopped struggling. Darel wanted to blink and discover that none of this was really happening. He wanted that more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life: a do-over, a second chance.
Except after he blinked—first with his inner eyelids, then with his outer ones—nothing had changed.
Okay. Darel exhaled slowly. Despite all the training and practice and daydreams, despite knowing a scorp’s only weakness was its underbelly, he wasn’t ready.
He couldn’t fight off one battle-scarred scorpion, much less four. He’d have to use stealth. He’d creep through the underbrush and cross the outcropping without being seen. Then he’d cut the net with his dagger and drag Gee away.
As the scorp warriors dug and the commander paced, Darel told himself to start moving. His legs refused to budge, though, and his hands refused to stop trembling.
He closed his eyes and exhaled, trying to calm himself. A Kulipari never left a fellow warrior behind, and Darel wasn’t about to abandon his best friend.
He crept slowly around roots and hillocks, his belly on the ground, going absolutely motionless when one of the warriors raised a shiny black head. The foreign scent of desert wind blew over the Outback Hills from the dunes, and Darel imagined he could hear the shuffle of thousands of scorpion feet.
Soon that wouldn’t be only in his imagination. Soon they’d come.
And with that thought, Darel realized what he and the other frogs needed to do: Warn the turtle king.
The turtles lived in the Coves, not far north of the Amphibilands, protected from the scorpion hordes by a mangrove swamp and protected from the spider armies by the turtle king: Sergu, greatest of the dream-casters. And the fact that the turtles rode crocodiles into battle probably didn’t hurt.
In the old days, the turtles and the frogs had worked and traded and played together. But since the Hidingwar, no turtle except Sergu could find the Amphibilands, and no frog except the Kulipari would dare leave it.
Except now some frogs must dare.
Now Darel needed to convince the chief to send messengers racing across dangerous territory, to beg old King Sergu for help.
But first he needed to save Gee.
Twenty minutes later, he was crouching in a spiny-branched shrub, his skin blending with the sunburned leaves.
Fifteen feet away from him, in the shadow of the now-fallen waratah tree, Gee lay on his side inside the battle net. He was unconscious but breathing steadily.
Darel reached for his dagger. He needed to hop across those fifteen feet, slash a hole in the net, and drag Gee into the underbrush. All without the scorpions noticing.
His fingers closed on his dagger, the long muscles in his legs tensed …
“Throw the tree on the cart,” Commander Pigo barked. “We’re done here. We’ve done more than enough for the spider queen.”
Darel froze as two scorpions clattered closer. They dragged the tree onto their cart, and a third scorpion grabbed the net with Gee.
“Move
out!” Pigo ordered. “Double time!”
They secured the tree with leather straps, then followed a dusty trail down from the outcropping. The wooden wheels creaked, and the scorpions’ many legs clattered on the ground.
Darel swallowed his dread with a loud gulp. He didn’t have time to jump back to the village—and even if he did, what could anyone do to help Gee?
Nothing.
He hopped across the outcropping, almost falling into the hole where the tree had been. He caught himself, then raised his head to watch the cloud of dust from the cart drift above the hills.
Scorpion scouts and the spider queen’s night-casting were bad, but Gee being dragged away was worse. The hunting party would warn the chief about the scorps, so Darel knew exactly what he had to do.
“Okay,” he muttered. “Don’t mess this up.”
With nothing but his dagger and a heart full of fear, he started tracking the scorpions. Their trail led into the ravine and up the third hill. Darel followed it easily, staying well behind the scorpions, waiting for his chance. Maybe they’d stop for a break and leave Gee alone. Maybe they’d stop for the night, and Darel could free Gee while they slept.
By the time Darel reached the top of the third hill, the sun was setting, a blood-red smear across the desert. Despite the coolness of the air, the desert seemed to radiate heat.
Or maybe that was just nerves: He was at the very edge of the Veil. Another few steps, and he’d leave the Amphibilands behind.
Darel thought about his mom saying, “I trust you.” Then he started hopping … through the Veil, into the deadly distance.
HE PLANTS GROWING ALONG THE path were gnarled and spiky, with none of the lush green of home. At least the dusk gave Darel some cover as he followed the sound of the creaking cart.
The hills flattened into a desolate plain. The earth underfoot grew dry and cracked and turned to hard-packed dirt.
At first Darel’s senses were alert to every sound and smell, his heart beating frantically and his hand twitching to his dagger every ten hops. But after an uneventful hour, he started to relax … and even get a little sleepy.
