Angondra Holiday Special

by Ruth Anne Scott

  The sun slipped by overhead, and the day disappeared. In the depths of the forest, Chris noticed only a change in the quality of the light, and a drop in the temperature. The golden sunbeams streaming through the trees turned to grey, and the animal life chattered to quiet. Night was coming.

  Where could she spend the night? A pile of sticks and leaves sounded pretty good right about now, and the memory of Marissa’s stew of meat, herbs, and roots made Chris’ stomach grumble. She should have eaten that stew when she had the chance. Who knew how long it would be before she got a hot meal like that again?

  But she couldn’t go crying over spilled milk now. She had to keep her thoughts clear to find food and water for herself. Thirst started to gnaw at her, though. That was a much more pressing problem right now than food. She ought to head downhill. If she kept going down, she would find water. And she could follow a river or stream—where? To the Aqinas?

  Then, out of the corner of her eye, a shaft of light caught her eye. It was different from the rest of the grey sky falling into dusk. A rainbow of glorious color split the cloud cover and illuminated the canopy. The trees opened up, and she hurried toward the place. At last, she was getting out from under those trees.

  She struggled up a rise and broke out onto bare ridge stretching up to a headland overlooking the countryside all around. She rushed up the slope to the very pinnacle and gazed out at thousands of miles of empty wilderness. Nothing moved in that trackless land. No plains or mountains interrupted the view. As far as the eye could see, the same dense forest covered the entire planet.

  If the Lycaon territory covered so much forest, how could she find any of the other factions? She would travel for weeks just to get out of that forest. But she couldn’t turn back now. She had to press on.

  She fell back on her first strategy, to find a river or stream and follow it out of the forest. She went back down the promontory and into the trees, but as soon as the canopy closed over her head, night set in and she couldn’t see more than a foot in front of her face. She had to find a place to spend the night.

  With night, the air turned freezing cold. It cut right through her shirt, and when she rubbed her arms with her hands, the cold fabric chilled her hands until they ached. Her teeth chattered, and she stumbled through the crumbly loam underfoot.

  She searched everywhere for some shelter—a fallen log, a hollow tree, an overhang of rock—but nothing offered her any protection from the cold. In the end, she had no choice but to rely on the Lycaon and their methods. She kicked a bunch of fallen leaves and debris into a big pile at the base of a tree and crawled into it. Dirt and leaf meal sprinkled into her eyes and mouth until she choked, but as soon as the leaves closed around her, they trapped her body heat and she stopped shivering.

  The ground under her still chilled her, but the cold wasn’t so bad. Hunger and thirst pushed sleep just beyond her reach, and her mind raced around and around trying to come up with some solution to her predicament.

  How long could this go on? She couldn’t travel even one more day without food and water. She couldn’t sleep like this another night. She wasn’t sleeping now. Where was her four-poster bed with the down comforter when she really needed it? Where was her dog Tanner and Riccarton, her cat, to keep her warm? She'd grown soft with comfortable living these last few years.

  Her heart ached at the memory of the life she left behind on Earth. When would she get it back? What if Marissa was right, and she never got off this planet? Why did the Romarie have to take her instead of the lady next door? The lady next door didn’t have any family or pets or a business to run. It wasn’t fair.

  But she couldn’t drown in self-pity. She peeked out of her leaf pile. Was it dawn yet? But black night still covered the forest. She couldn’t even make out any stars in the sky above the canopy. She tucked her head back inside her pile of leaves.

  What would she do when she got....wherever she was going? What would she say to the next human woman she met? “Marissa told me there was no way off this planet, but I didn’t believe her. Can you help me?” That didn’t sound very good. They would laugh her out of the room.

  Or they might be so disgusted with her for scorning the Lycaon’s hospitality that they would refuse to help her at all. They might send her back out into the wilderness to fend for herself. But Marissa insisted the Angondrans wouldn’t do that. Her friends made their homes with these aliens, so they wouldn’t do it, either. They would take her in.

  So why couldn’t she be happy that the Lycaon took her in? Why couldn’t she accept the honor of staying with the Alpha family? It couldn’t be the little stick houses they lived in, could it, that she couldn’t stomach? It couldn’t be their animal nature, or their garments made of animal skins. She couldn’t be so shallow as to reject them for that, could she?

  Would she be happier in the city on the plains, or a house in the treetops with the feathered Avitras? What if Marissa was right, and she really couldn’t get off this planet?

  Chapter 6

  She must have dozed off, because she started awake and choked all over again on the dust and leaves. She fought her way out of her pile of debris and stood spluttering and coughing in the misty morning. At least that night was over. She set off once again right away and wound her way downward, always downward, into deeper darkness and thicker stands of trees, away from the bright sky in search of water.

  Time disappeared without the sun to guide it. She pressed on and on. Most of the day vanished under her feet, but she couldn’t stop. Unbearable thirst drove her forward. She had to find water, and soon. She couldn’t last the day without it. The sun touched the treetops. It must be close to noon. She couldn’t go on this way. She needed food and water. Then something like music tickled her ears. It soothed her, but her heart sank at the sound. Was she hallucinating in her dehydrated delirium?

  Then she listened to the music closer and recognized it. She fought off the exhaustion threatening to drag her down. She had to move. She would die if she laid there any longer, and the sound gave her one last glimmer of hope.

  She started forward, toward that wonderful sound. The sound drove her mad. She put out her hand from one tree to the next, when she almost fell headlong down a sheer cliff to an expanse of stony rubble below. She dug in her heels and clawed the crumbly soil for support, but her foot hung in mid-air over a towering canyon of sheer rock.

  At last, she dared to look over the edge at the rocks below. Trees and brambles dotted the ground between the rocks, and light glistened on ripples of water snaking through the canyon. The soft musical sound she heard higher up thundered against the canyon walls and echoed in her ears. The river crashed over waterfalls and giggled through deep pools.

  Chris caught her breath. This was so much more than the stream she hoped for. This river would turn into a major waterway when it left the forest. It would lead all the way to the sea, through continents and into the territory of the other factions. It would lead her where she wanted to go.

  She stepped back away from cliff edge and skirted around to her left to find a way down. The cliff stretched as far as she could see in both directions, but she didn’t care. She followed it with her spirits soaring to heaven. She’d done it. She’d escaped.

  After an hour or more of searching, she found a path down the cliff to the boulder field. She spent another hour picking her way over boulders and between puddles of algae to a rivulet of clear running water. She knelt down on the hard stones and lowered her parched lips to the blessed water. She touched the silver liquid to her lips. Then she cupped it into her mouth, and at last gulped it down in mouthfuls.

  When she sat back on her heels and gazed across the water at the woods on the other side, her eye fell on a patch of low-growing moss wedged between the rocks. Tiny blue balls dotted the grey-green surface, and Chris held her breath to stop the apparition from vanishing before her eyes.

  She picked her way across the treacherous riverbed. She s
tepped from one teetering rock to the next. She dragged her eyes away from those tantalizing blue beads to place her feet at each step, only to lock her gaze on them again.

  Closer and closer they drew, but still she dared not hope they were what she thought they were. They might be poisonous, and she’d be dead out here in the middle of nowhere. No one would know where she was or how she died.

  But she didn’t care. Her stomach told her to hazard everything on this one slender chance. She tiptoed across the river, and her hands shook when she plucked the shiny blue berries from their bush. They dropped into her palm, hard and taut with juice, and pearls of river foam clung to their dusky skin.

  She popped the first three into her mouth and bit down. The juice squirted down her throat and pricked her tongue. Oh, she never tasted anything as good in her life! She clawed handfuls of the berries off their bushes and crammed them into her mouth as fast as she could. She would probably give herself a gut ache, but she didn’t care. She would suffer any torture to satisfy her hunger—and what a way to satisfy it!

  She ate as many of the berries as she could find, and at last her hunger faded. She drank some more water to wash down her meal and sat down on a rock to rest. Her legs and feet burned from walking. She sighed and looked around the canyon.

  These sheer walls wouldn’t let her follow the river bed very far. She would have to hike back up to the tablelands to follow it. But at least she could come down to the water’s edge for a drink and something to eat. She could follow the river wherever it led her.

  But right now, she had a different problem. Where was she going to spend the night? She couldn’t spend it down here, and she didn’t care much for the idea of spending it inside a pile of leaves again. If she was going to spend any time near this spot at all, she would build herself a sturdier shelter, something more like the Lycaon’s dwellings.

  She hated to imitate them, but they must have learned a thing or two about living in this landscape. Marissa said they were nomadic and moved around. They kept their dwellings simple and temporary. In retrospect, with the benefit of a full stomach, their practicality made sense. How could she think them squalid and dirty? Wasn’t Marissa’s food good enough for her?

  The sun sank below the cliff rim, and the canyon fell into shadow. In an instant, all the warmth vanished from the world. Chris definitely couldn’t spend the night down here. But she couldn’t force herself to stand up. She would rather freeze to death than to take one step away from the precious water and berries. She might wake up in her leaf pile again and find out it was all a dream.

  Then, out of the shadows across the pool, two glistening black stars pierced the gloom. She stared at them, but they never wavered. She blinked, but they didn’t. Her scalp prickled. Would some fearsome creature leap out and tear her limb from limb?

  The last light sparkled on those two unblinking points. Dense foliage surrounded them on all sides so she couldn’t make out the shape behind them. But the longer she stared at them, the more certain she became that two eyes watched her from a hiding place beyond the water.

  She tore her gaze away from them just long enough to look around. A stick stuck out between some rocks nearby, but it was too far away. She would never reach it before the creature attacked. Instead, she bent down and picked up a baseball-sized stone from the riverbed at her feet. She kept her eyes locked on the creature the whole time.

  She hefted the stone in her hand. It was perfect; round, smooth, and heavy. It sent a surge of adrenaline through her. She squared her shoulders and gritted her teeth. She would have one shot at this, but if she hit it hard enough, it would probably run away without a fight.

  She did this once with a brown bear in the mountains near her home. One good hit with a rock stopped it in its tracks and sent it running for the hills. Most wild animals didn’t want to fight something that would fight back. They wanted easy prey.

  She wouldn’t be easy prey. She never had been, and she wasn’t about to start now, not when she finally found food and water to help her on her journey. She eased herself up off her rock and planted her feet wide.

  The eyes narrowed at her in malicious rage. The branches swayed around it. Chris pulled her hand back and cocked her wrist. She wound up all her strength to send the rock smashing through the undergrowth.

  But at that moment, the creature broke cover and charged toward her. It rushed at her so fast she never got her weapon launched before he struck her with all his weight. Chris recognized him halfway across the pool, but the sight of him only enraged her even more. It was Turk.

  He’d followed her. He was probably laughing all the way at her hunger and thirst, at the night she spent in a pile of leaves. He probably got a good chuckle out of her staggering halfway across hell and gone trying to find her way out of that wilderness.

  And now here he was, attacking her the way she always knew he would. He was dangerous. She knew that the moment she laid eyes on him. She didn’t care what Marissa said about him and the rest of the Angondrans. She would never trust him. He was a killer, and here he was to prove it.

  The moment she recognized him, she changed her strategy. She didn’t hurl her rock at him. There wasn’t time. Instead, she gripped it tighter and waited for the impact. His arms closed around her, and he knocked her backwards onto the ground.

  A stick stuck in her back and sent a lightning bolt of pain through her, but she paid it no heed. She brought her rock up and slammed it with all her might into the side of Turk’s head. He bellowed in rage, and his lips peeled back from sharp pointed teeth. He snarled and snapped in her face, but she didn’t waste an instant. She drew back her hand and hit him again, harder this time.

  Turk roared into her face, but he kept control of himself. He reared back just enough to get hold of her wrist. He smashed her hand down on the gravel, again and again. Chris shrieked in pain, and her hand fell open. The rock tumbled out of her grasp and joined all the other rocks in the riverbed.

  Chapter 7

  The fire crackled, and sprays of sparks floated up through the trees into the star-speckled sky. Chris studied the face across the fire. “How long have you been following me?”

  “Since you left,” he replied.

  She looked away.

  “You made quite a racket,” he mused. “I never heard anybody make so much noise just walking out of the house.”

  Her head snapped around, but he wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t even smiling.

  “Why didn’t the others come after me?” she asked.

  “No one would come after you,” he replied. “You’re not our prisoner. If you want to leave, you can leave.”

  “Wasn’t anybody worried about me going into the woods by myself?” she asked.

  “Only Marissa,” he replied. “But when she told Caleb to follow you, I asked him to let me go alone.”

  “Why did you do that?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I wanted to see what you would do. I wanted to see if Marissa was right about you, that you couldn’t survive out here by yourself, or if you would be able to handle yourself. I was curious.”

  Chris stared into the fire. “I suppose Marissa knows enough to be able to handle herself in this wilderness.”

  “Marissa would never be foolish enough to go out into the woods by herself,” he replied. “She knows enough to stay in the village.”

  Chris frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean? Doesn’t she know how to survive out here?”

  “Marissa has certain capabilities we don’t have,” he replied. “And we have certain capabilities she doesn’t have. Marissa, and you, and all the other human women, don’t have the adaptations we have for survival in the deep woods. You’re a different species.”

  Chris dropped her eyes. “Oh. I see.”

  He regarded her across the fire. “You lasted a lot longer than I thought you would. I thought you’d be dead within the first day. I didn’t think you ha
d the stamina or the wits to find your way this far.”

  “Would you have let me die out here, then?” she asked. “I suppose you would have stood back and watched while I walked over the edge of that cliff, or frozen to death during the night, or died of thirst if I couldn’t find water.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “What did you think was going to happen? If you wanted help from the Lycaon, you never should have left the village. You had no idea where you were going or how you would survive. You left the village purely out of spite.”

  “And it was out of spite that the Lycaon wouldn’t send anybody after me,” she grumbled.

  He smacked his lips. “How many times do I have to tell you? You’re not our prisoner, or our slave, or anything else. You’re free to come and go as you please. If you want to throw your life away, go ahead. None of us will try to stop you. We have better things to do. Marissa told you the same thing. We aren’t Romarie.”

  She couldn’t look at him. His words stung her heart. “So now you’re here. What are you going to do?”

  “The question is what are you going to do?” he asked. “You found the river, and you found the berries. You can go on if you want to. I won’t stop you.”

  She turned her head to one side, but as he said, he had capabilities she didn’t understand. He could see her well enough in the dark to read her mind. “I won’t go back to the village.”

  He sat up straighter. “Alright.”

  Her words burst out in a rush. “You and your people and Marissa shouldn’t have been so nice to me. It would have been easier.”