by Trevor Pryce
Burnu snorted. “The scorpions are invading while we’re twiddling our toe pads. The only question is, how do we get there in time?”
“You ride sailfish,” the king announced, and he gestured with a flipper toward the water.
Four turtles stood in the rippling surf, each one holding the reins of a harnessed sailfish—long purple-and-silver fish with sword-like bills and high, ridged sails.
“Whoa,” Gee said, gulping loudly. “We’re going to ride those?”
“Indeed,” the king said. “Down the coast, through the salt marsh, right into the heart of the eucalyptus forest in the Amphibilands.”
“We’re frogs,” Gee said. “We don’t last long in salt water.”
“You won’t be in the ocean,” the king reassured him. “You’ll be on it. And that’s the quickest way. Yabber and I will follow on our crocodile mounts—which will be a trifle slower, I’m afraid.”
“You’re coming?” Darel asked.
“Of course,” the old king said. “Once I arrive, I will try to protect the Veil.”
“Sailfish!” Burnu exclaimed, grinning toward the water. “Perfect.”
Darel swallowed and said, “I don’t think a frontal attack is the best idea.”
“Sure, Muddy,” Burnu said. “Like you’ve got a better plan.”
“Well …”
“Do I tell you how to look like a dirty puddle?”
“Um, no.”
“So why are you telling me how to fight?” The Kulipari leader shook his head. “Everyone, fall in! We ride to war!”
Ponto swung his bulk onto a fish beside Burnu’s, and Dingo did a backflip and landed on a fish on the squad leader’s other side.
However, Quoba quietly turned to Darel. “You have an alternative plan?”
“Not exactly a plan …”
“What, then?”
“More of a vague idea.”
“Tell us what you’re thinking, Darel.”
“Well …” Darel looked at old Sergu. “How much money does a king have?”
T THE LOWER BARRICADES IN THE Outback Hills, Coorah watched Chief Olba speak to the hastily assembled militia. “We must stop the scorpion attack in the hills,” she croaked. “If they reach the eucalyptus forest, the Amphibilands will fall.”
An uneasy murmur spread through the crowd.
“They will tear down our homes and destroy our farms. They will show no mercy to elderly frogs or tadpoles. We must stop them in the hills.” Olba drew herself up as tall as possible. “And we will! We fight together to defend our home!”
A smattering of shouts and stomps greeted Olba’s words, but nobody sounded convinced. Coorah knew that none of the frogs expected to win this battle—they simply didn’t have any choice but to fight it.
She turned to Arabanoo. “You’re heading to the front?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I heard the scorpions are massing for the attack. I’ve got to leave before my mom stops me.”
“Same with me and my dad,” she said, patting her pouches. “So let’s go.”
“You should stay here, Coorah. You’re going into battle with a bunch of herbs!”
“Who else is there?” She turned toward the hills. “My father’s great at treating diseases, not war wounds. I’ve been praying for the Kulipari to come, but it looks like we’re on our own. I’m needed there, to patch the wounded.”
He sighed. “Just … be careful.”
“I promise I’ll look both ways before crossing the battlefield.”
“Very funny.”
They climbed the path toward the peak of the middle hill, where they intended to meet the invaders. Then they said good-bye, as Arabanoo continued onward and Coorah climbed a lookout tree to survey the battle and respond to any injuries.
As the midday sun shone above her, she watched frogs assemble at barricades and cluster in the tree-tops behind branches woven together for camouflage and protection.
They couldn’t beat the scorpions in open battle, strength against strength. They needed to use the land that they knew so well, setting traps and preparing sneak attacks. If tree frogs fought from the high branches and the burrowers from underground and the wood frogs from concealment, maybe they stood a chance.
A slim chance, but a chance.
On the next hill, Coorah suddenly saw scuttling black shapes. Scorpions. The way they moved set her nerves on edge: Too many legs, and those swaying tails looked like angry snakes, coiled to strike.
Then she realized they weren’t all scorpions. A few platoons of spiders crawled along the edges of a granite outcropping, with bristly fur and white fangs, weaving silken throwing-nets.
Compared to them, the regiment of ferocious lizard mercenaries looked almost normal. They were at the front of the scorpion army, a solid mass of dull scales and lashing tails and ripping claws. Two huge rock lizards hefted a battering ram, and the mercenary soldiers all hissed in anticipation.
Coorah exhaled softly, then checked her pouches for the hundredth time that day. Everything in place. Now all she needed was for someone to get hurt.
What a cheerful thought.
She glanced toward the burrowing frogs peeking from their tunnels—and without a hint of warning, the enemy attacked.
A wedge of green and brown suddenly drove forward from the next hill, with shields clanking and claws slashing. The lizards. Hundreds of reptilian mouths roared a battle cry that shook the Outback Hills. Sharp teeth glinted, and forked tongues flicked.
Coorah saw a ripple of hesitation pass through the ranks of the frogs—they were fisherfolk and weavers, not warriors—then one brave frog croaked a battle cry at the advancing lizards, and the rest joined her.
The earth rumbled, rocks and battle nets filled the air … and the two armies met with a crash.
HE WAVES ROSE AND FELL AROUND Darel, and the wind cooled his face. He tasted the salt from the water through his skin. His purple fish shimmered in the sunlight, and a beautiful mosaic of colors wavered under the clear water like a field of wildflowers. A coral reef extended endlessly beneath them, with deep green stalks, bright yellow blossoms, and delicate blue spheres.
“Coorah would love this!” Darel called to Gee.
“She’d want to make coral medicine.” Gee pointed out to sea and asked, “What’s that?”
“A manta ray,” Quoba told him. “Watch how she moves.”
The manta seemed to glide through the currents, and Darel watched with bulging eyes, so amazed by the sights that he almost forgot his urgency.
Then Burnu croaked, “Hey, Muddy! Did you really walk into the scorpions’ camp unarmed?”
Darel shrugged. “Well, I had my dagger.”
“That’s crazy,” Dingo called, as her fish leaped over the one that carried Burnu and the two young frogs. “I mean, that’s seriously insane.”
She sounded pretty impressed, so Darel said, “Thanks.”
“How’d a wood frog get that brave?” Ponto asked.
“Well, my dad was a Kulipari.” Darel thought for a second. “And my mom’s a wood frog. We never give up.”
Burno trailed his finger pads in the water. “Your dad was a unit leader? What was his name?”
“Apari.”
Burnu almost fell off their fish. “No way! Really?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Did you hear that?” Burnu called to Quoba. “Darel is Apari’s son.”
A sudden flame of hope ignited in Darel’s chest. “Do you … do you know him?”
“What?” Burnu shook his head. “No. We’ve heard about him, though.”
“Oh. For a second, I thought …” Darel gulped in disappointment. “I mean, everyone says he died, but they never found his body.”
“You don’t know the story?” Ponto asked.
“What story?”
Ponto shifted uncomfortably and didn’t answer. Nobody said anything for a second, then Quoba’s sailfish shot forward from behind and joined theirs.
�
��In the last battle,” she told Darel, “your father saved King Sergu’s life. The Kulipari were exhausted—all their poison burned out—but the scorps were still attacking. The king says he didn’t have a chance.”
“But he did. He survived.”
“Because of your father.”
“What did he do?”
“He’d used all his poison already. He was finished, empty.” Quoba fell silent, and for a moment the only sound was the splashing of the fish. “Yet he managed to reach deep inside and find more power.”
“Nobody knows how,” Burnu said.
Quoba nodded. “Not even the turtle king. But your father did it. They say he glowed with power, as bright as the sun. He beat back the final scorpion attack, and then …”
“He died?” Darel asked, in a small voice.
She nodded.
“But they never found the body.”
“There was no body,” Burnu told him, sounding gentle for once. “Sergu says your father tapped so much power, and burned so brightly, that nothing was left but ash.”
“Except the king was left,” Quoba corrected. “And the Amphibilands was protected. And thousands of frogs lived safe from harm.”
Sea spray misted Darel’s face and felt like tears. He blinked his inner eyelids, then swallowed a few times. His father really was dead; the turtle king had seen him die.
Darel watched the coastline become greener and lusher as they approached the Amphibilands, and when he turned, Gee was right beside him.
“You okay?” Gee asked, after a while.
“Yeah,” Darel said. “I guess I already knew he was dead. I just … wanted to see him again.”
Gee nodded. “He was a real hero.”
“Yeah.”
“Stubborn, too,” Gee said, as the sailfish veered into the salt marsh. “He didn’t care that he was out of poison—he tapped it anyway.”
That almost made Darel smile. “I wonder how he did it.”
“You rescued me from the middle of the scorpion army, Darel. How’d you do that?”
“I didn’t have any other choice.”
OORAH WATCHED AS THE INVADING army of lizards leaped rows of sharpened logs and landed hip-deep in concealed patches of mud.
Swamp frogs released clouds of white fluffy “cotton” they’d gathered from bulrushes, which floated in the air and blocked the invaders’ vision.
Half-blind lizards crashed into pits excavated by burrowing frogs. They stampeded forward and were tripped by the flicking tongues of wood frogs hiding in the leaves. The off-balance lizards slid down a mud chute into a pool, where water frogs tied them with thick vines.
Except that a dozen of the biggest lizards broke through and smashed a battering ram into the central barricade. The barricade shuddered but held.
Wounded frogs cried for help, and Coorah couldn’t watch any longer. She raced into the fray.
Webs and nets twirled overhead, and a spear stabbed the ground a foot away, but she ignored all that. She crouched beside an injured frog to bind a cut, then wrapped another frog’s leg.
While she was treating a head wound, a massive lizard loomed beside her. His tail pounded the ground, and he charged—but Coorah was prepared.
She reached into a pouch and tossed blue lily powder at the lizard’s face. He roared, clawed at his eyes, and disappeared in the whirl of battle.
Coorah turned back to her patients, a blur of bandages and wounds. She used all her training. She’d always worried that she was being selfish, wasting time on something that didn’t matter. Now she was saving lives.
Still, there were too many lizards driving forward, not to mention the scorpions and spiders massed behind them. She couldn’t keep up with the injuries.
Across the battlefield, Arabanoo and his gang lured charging lizards into a trap of sticky sundew drops, where they stuck like flies. Wood frog hunters cut vines tying the tops of a dozen saplings to the ground; when the saplings sprang upward, they hurled vats of quick-hardening mud into the invading army.
Then waves of scorpions and spiders pushed past the lizards. Pincers snapped, tails lashed, and webs darkened the sky.
The frog defenders fell back, then fell back again, until finally, an urgent whistle cut through the clamor: Chief Olba sounding the retreat.
The frog army abandoned the middle hill.
Arabanoo grabbed Coorah’s hand, and they raced with the others for the barricades of the first hill.
Coorah knew the scorpions were too strong, and too many. They were swarming toward the peak of the first hill, the only barrier between them and the eucalyptus forest. Then they’d pour into the Amphibilands without anything to stop them.
Chief Olba sounded another retreat, and there was nowhere to go except to the base of the first hill. So they did. And for a moment, the two armies faced each other, thousands of scorpions at the top of the hill, supported by grizzled lizards and silken spiders, and the bedraggled frogs waiting at the bottom for the final thrust.
For a long moment, a silence seemed to descend on the late afternoon. Coorah wiped her forehead and looked at the ragtag defenders. She saw Arabanoo in the front rank, bloody, with one eye swollen shut.
His other eye winked at her, and she smiled, though she wanted to cry.
Then the final attack began.
URSTING FROM THE EUCALYPTUS forest, Darel watched the scorpion army swarm down the first of the Outback Hills, crashing into the frog barricades.
He saw Captain Killara’s lizards flanking the scorps on one side and a mass of spiders on the other. He caught a glimpse of Chief Olba in lily-pad armor swinging a club and Old Jir slashing with his cane from a hole in a log.
Darel’s heart clenched when he saw Gee’s parents kicking rocks at a knot of scorpions, their powerful legs working furiously—while his own mother opened a bag of stinging flies to swarm the scorpions.
Darel didn’t even need to glance at Gee, who was hopping beside him. He felt him there, felt Gee’s anger and determination as if it were his own.
Darel screamed “Kulipari!” and, despite the heavy backpack, took the longest leap of his life.
He arced into the air. A rain of arrows shot past him, and for a moment he thought that a regiment of enemy archers must’ve appeared behind him. Then he realized the arrows were all coming from Dingo.
She was standing on a boulder, her eyes black and her skin glowing a bright orange-red with black stripes. And her hands were a blur, a stream of arrows flying from her bow so fast that they looked like a single, endless arrow.
The spiders returned fire, but she danced effortlessly around their webs, shouting insults and felling scorpion after scorpion. She’d tapped into her poison. She’d transformed from an ordinary frog into something else.
Into a Kulipari.
And she wasn’t the only one.
Burnu streaked forward, a blur of black and yellow-green, directly into the center of a seething mass of scorpion heavy infantry.
His boomerangs flashed and spun, and scorpions fell. He grabbed a scorp, rammed him into the ground, then sprang over him. He caught his boomerangs in the air and threw them again, landing with both feet on another enemy warrior.
Without any fanfare, Quoba quietly infiltrated a scorpion phalanx, and her staff blurred until the lead scorpion realized she was alone. The scorp turned—and caught Quoba’s staff across her head so hard that her carapace shattered and she fell in a lifeless heap.
Quoba seemed to melt into the ground, then reappeared beside a red-banded scorpion threatening Coorah and Arabanoo. She bashed two of his legs, leaving him for Coorah and Arabanoo to finish off. Darel smiled when she drifted toward Captain Killara and his lizards.
And Ponto?
Ponto was a glowing yellow-and-black scythe cutting a path through the thickest scorpion positions. Enemy soldiers flew like popcorn in the air above him. Then he grabbed two scorpions by the tail and hurled them at the spider archers.
Darel saw all of tha
t in an instant, as he launched himself into the battle.
He landed on the largest of the scorpions threatening his mother and slammed him into a moaning heap. A second scorpion’s stinger whipped toward him, but Gee smacked the attacker so hard with his stick that he flattened the two scorps behind him, too.
“You’re alive!” his mother called, her eyes shining when she saw him.
Gee’s dad shouted, “Gurnugan!”
“You are so ponded,” Gee’s mom said. “Where have you been? How did you—”
“We brought the Kulipari,” Darel interrupted, adjusting his backpack. “They’ll keep the scorp army busy while Gee and I …”
Darel’s mom touched his face. “While you what?”
“While we end this,” he told her.
He leaped into a nearby tree, clung with his toe pads, and shouted above the clamor of battle. “The Kulipari have returned! The Kulipari are here!”
“And we’re giving the scorps free dance lessons,” Dingo called, doing a handstand on top of a particularly evil-looking scorpion, then backflipping into the fray, dodging and laughing until ten scorpions were hot on her heels.
She led them directly into a tree trunk that Ponto was swinging like a bat. The wood cracked against the pursuing scorpions, and they were flung through the air over the battlefield.
“Run, little scorplings!” Burnu shouted, reaching behind himself to catch one of his returning boomerangs without even looking at it. “Run while you still can!”
He traded blows with an elite spider guard, then spun away to dispatch an entire squad of scorpions. The spider guard’s eyes glowed as he bared his fangs to plunge into Burnu’s back—then they bulged even more when Burnu’s other boomerang smacked him in the neck.
Quoba had disappeared in the melee near the lizards, and Darel smiled at her absence—and at the thrill that passed through the frog army when they realized they weren’t alone.
Standing on the tree branch, Darel felt the eyes of hundreds of frogs on him. With the arrival of the Kulipari, a momentary hush seemed to fall over the battlefield. Darel filled his lungs and shouted, “You all know me, and you know I’m an ordinary frog. But I left the Amphibilands, I left the protection of the Veil—I walked into the heart of the scorpion camp, and look at me! I’m still alive. They’re strong, but we’re stronger. Wood frogs and tree frogs, burrowers and swimmers—we’re stronger! They think they can steal our land? They think they can turn our forests into deserts? Not while I still breathe. I will fight them—and I will win. Who’s with me?”
