by S. S. Segran
“Needs batteries?”
“Wouldn’t help. The thing’s broken. Crash busted it.”
Jag sat back with a groan. “We’re up the creek, then.”
“Pretty much.”
They sat for a while until Jag started to crawl out of the plane. “Come on. It’s too stuffy in here.”
Once outside, they reported on the status of the radio. Tegan ran a hand over her face wearily. “At least we got some food here. But no Mr. Tyler.”
“Probably for the best,” Kody said. “There’s no body, so he’s still alive as far as I’m concerned.”
“Maybe the search and rescue teams found him,” Mariah said.
He sat beside the Comanche’s fuselage. “No. If they found the crash site, there’d be some kind of markings and a good chance the plane would’ve been taken away for investigation. They’d also leave emergency supplies in case any survivors returned to the plane. No one’s visited this place. No one knows where we are.”
“Okay,” Jag said, straightening. “Two choices, then. We stay here and build a land-to-sky SOS signal like a smoke fire or something, or we keep walking toward what is hopefully a town.”
“I’d go with whatever the brighter option is,” Mariah said. “But by the looks of it, neither one is great. Why should we stay if the plane’s been here for ages and no one’s found it? Then again, why should we keep walking? Who said there’d be a town around here? Who said we might be heading in the right direction to a town?”
There was an accusatory pause as the others turned to look at Jag. Jag threw his hands up. “Oh, come on! We talked about this. Some support would be appreciated. And besides, we may still be heading in the right direction. We found the plane, didn’t we?”
Kody swiped a finger over the dirt-covered aircraft. “We could write a message in case people find the plane.”
“So you don’t intend to stay here?” Tegan asked.
“No. Mariah’s got a point. Staying put probably won’t do us much good. And we can’t forget about Akol and Huyani and the villagers. If they catch up to us, do you honestly think they’d let us stay here?”
“Oh, Scarecrow, you do have a brain,” Mariah said with teasing affection. Kody gave her a look but eventually cracked a smile.
“Alright, Kode-man and I will write a message. You three . . .” Jag stopped short. “What’s that over there?”
“What’s over where?” Aari asked.
“That thing under there, where the plane’s tail used to be.”
Aari, bemused, looked around until he spotted what Jag saw and went to retrieve it. He came back rummaging through a canvas bag. “Some rotten little critter’s already been through it,” he grumbled, displaying several small holes at the bottom of the bag. “If there was food in there, then we have nothing.” He dug around some more. “Couple of flashlights, but looks like they’re broken. Got some fire starters, a box of matches, a portable first-aid kit . . . Ah, this must be the emergency bag. And—hey, look. A flare gun.”
Jag took the pistol from him. “I remember using one of these last year. Dad showed me how to load one up and fire it.”
“I see only two flares in here.”
“Here, I’ll carry it.” Kody reached out for the bag. Aari passed it to him once Jag handed the gun back.
Mariah nudged at Jag. “You gonna write the message?”
Jag blinked. “What? Oh, right. Yeah.” He found a pair of serrated rocks and passed one to Kody. “Better use these than just writing on the dirt.” The boys began scrawling onto the plane. When they finished, they stood back to scrutinize their message.
“Good enough?” Jag asked the others.
Mariah read out loud. “Left to find a town. Samuel Tyler is not with us. Please send help. Signed Aari, Jag, Tegan, Kody and Mariah.”
“Not great, but it will have to do.” Tegan walked up to the plane, took Kody’s rock and added an arrow. “So they know the general direction of where we’re headed.” She picked up Mariah’s knapsack and tossed it to the other girl, who caught it and slung it over her shoulders. “We should get moving.”
They continued northward, resisting the urge to look back at the Piper Comanche as it slowly disappeared from sight.
21
The sun was beginning to set over the mountains ahead of the group as they plodded along. Tegan gazed up, taking a moment to admire the colors, then asked, “Can we call it a day?”
The others nodded wearily. Aari, who’d been heading the group, stepped back and allowed Jag to take the lead.
Tegan slowed down to fall back beside Mariah and Kody, the latter of whom she noticed to be uncharacteristically quiet. Kody looked at the girls, his face expressionless, lost in his own world. No doubt a world far away from here, Tegan thought. She rested a hand on his forearm. “Hey,” she whispered.
He responded with a grunt.
Trying to make light of the situation, she joked, “What, suddenly you’re a caveman now?”
He sighed. She elbowed him. “You’re not gonna poke fun back at me?”
Kody glanced away, neck muscles tight. “Look, I’m not always gonna have a comeback, okay?”
Tegan wanted to retreat into a shell. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I’ll crack jokes when I’m around you guys—whatever. It helps to forget about this whole situation with . . . with Dad. But it just seems weak, distracting myself by trying to make you guys laugh.”
Mariah, on his other side, hooked one arm through his. “That’s you being strong, Kody, not weak. You can put a smile on people’s faces in hard times. You know what my mom says about you, ever since we were really little?”
“What?”
“That the world needs more people like you. People who can laugh at themselves and at anything, not hold grudges, and bring light into a dark situation, no matter how dreary everything seems.”
Kody stared at her for a long while. Then, with a slightly softened countenance, he patted her hand and she let go of him.
The group trudged on in complete silence as they took in their surroundings. A raven swooped down and landed on the ground in front of them, peering at them suspiciously, then took off again.
Ahead, Jag stopped. They had come upon a rock face about thirty feet high and stretching dozens of yards in either direction. Tegan watched as Jag eyed it quietly for a moment, then glanced to his left where something seemed to have caught his attention. He moved toward what looked to be a crevice in the granite wall but was actually an opening just wide enough for him to squeeze through. He slid in, then motioned for the others to follow.
When the five reached the other side, they found themselves within a large enclosure. The rock wall curved around, making a circular shape like a Roman coliseum, lacking only columns and seats for spectators. Creepers and vines hung down ornamentally from the top of the wall. Clusters of trees grew sporadically at various spots across the grounds. At the middle of the enclosure was a large pond. The sun lit the surface of the water, rendering it a deep, vibrant shade of blue.
“This is amazing,” Tegan murmured.
“It’s like it was meant for us,” Mariah said. “Our own haven.”
“I wanna check this place out.” Aari trotted toward the pond and set his pack down a few yards away from the edge. The others followed him and soon the friends were all over the enclosure, excitedly calling out to each other as they discovered interesting spots.
“Look at this!” Kody exclaimed. He scaled one of the huge boulders at the base of the wall and assumed the King of The World position. His friends smiled, glad that his mind was occupied on something other than his missing father.
Tegan was peering up at a grove of black spruce and lodgepole pine trees to the left of the pond. Jag clambered up one of them. The trees were tall, seeming to reach for the sky.
Mariah explored the opposite end from where the group had entered and shouted, “There’s another entrance from this side!”
&nb
sp; “How big is it?” Jag yelled back, perched up in the tree.
“A bit wider than the one we walked through!”
Tegan paid no heed to their conversation and sauntered off to join Kody up on the boulders. She noticed Aari studying the almost-circular rock wall and how it varied in height. She guessed the lowest point to be ten feet and the highest to be forty.
Beside her, Kody suddenly announced that he was hungry. The pair jumped down from the boulders and the group reconvened where they’d left their packs.
Mariah listed off their provisions. “We have two cans of tuna, three cans of chicken soup, one can of clam chowder . . . and one can of Malaysian satay sauce?”
She looked at Kody who’d helped pack the food for the trip to Dawson City. He shrugged sheepishly. Mariah rolled her eyes. “We’re going to have to ration the food in case we don’t find a town soon.”
Kody was aghast. “Maybe there’s fish in the pond?”
The friends went to look, but even with the sun hitting the water, the pond was too dark a blue to see anything below the surface.
“Let’s get a fire started, then we’ll come back to the food,” Aari said.
They spread out to gather wood. Tegan worked on clearing a spot for the fire, and collected some kindling. Aari and Mariah hauled some rocks over, and Jag heaved several large logs. As he dumped the last one, he looked around. “Where’s Kody?”
His answer came trotting toward them, carrying a few broken branches that were long and sharp. The others stared at him. Jag scratched the back of his neck. “Um, Kody? You know those things burn up pretty quick, right?”
Kody looked at him as if he were crazy. “Who said anything about these going into the fire? They’re my insurance, the same way they were last night. Remember when we tried to sleep and heard all the roaring?”
The friends decided to let it go. “I think we should make a bonfire,” Aari said, tapping one of the rocks with his shoe. “We’ve already made a pretty big pit for it, and the stones will make a good barricade. What do you guys think?”
Kody raised his hands. “You know what, man, I don’t care. I just want the dang food.”
As they got to work, Mariah looked up and gaped at something, her eyes turning into full moons. The others followed her line of sight. At the opening in the rock wall where they’d entered stood a honey-colored lynx, its white stripes glowing in the light of the setting sun. Its golden-green eyes bore into the friends and it turned around in frantic circles, hissing urgently.
“What’s the matter with it?” Mariah asked.
“No clue,” Tegan said warily. “It’s not attacking us.”
“Well, something’s bothering it. You think we’re in its territory?”
“I’m pretty sure we’ve crossed into different territories since leaving Dema-Ki, and we haven’t had an incident. The lynx would either attack us or leave us alone.”
“Then what is it doing?”
“That’s wicked,” Aari grinned. “I’ve never seen a lynx in the wild before.” He watched it closely. “Hey, that looks like the lynx Akol described. Remember? Ticks, Tikes, Toes . . .”
“Tyse!” Mariah exclaimed softly. “He’s right. Tegan, we saw her before, when we first went looking for the guys.”
Tegan narrowed her eyes, trying to get a better look, then sat back in amazement. “It’s her, alright. Is she following us?”
The lynx was anxious, sitting on her hind legs and clapping her paws in the air. The friends were mystified. In a seemingly desperate attempt, the cat leapt up and made odd sounds in her throat but the strange display only served to confuse the teenagers further.
The lynx growled, obviously upset at the group, then craned her neck and stared straight up. She didn’t look down, so the friends looked to see what had caught her attention. In the darkening sky, a golden eagle soared overhead, gliding in large circles around the site. When the group looked back down at the cat, all they saw was her tail as she sprinted back through the crevice.
“That was weird,” Kody remarked.
The eagle above them suddenly swooped down. It flew around the perimeter of the enclosure, screeching. The friends gawked as it hovered not ten feet in front of them, flapping its wings and creating a great gust of wind as if telling them to leave. It cawed angrily, then soared right over their heads, did a turn, and flew back over to a tree at the top of the rock wall, settling onto a branch.
Not knowing what to make of the whole thing, the teenagers swapped silent glances and continued to place the logs to start the fire. They lit the kindling with a couple of matches from the emergency bag from the plane. As soon as they had the flames going, the girls unpacked the sleeping bags and spread them in a semi-circle under a large tree not far from the pit.
“This is decent,” Mariah said.
“Food,” Kody grumbled. “Let’s crack open the tuna cans.”
The group washed their hands in the pond, then passed the tuna around as they sat on their sleeping bags. Once done, they rested back under the tree. Disappointed as they were that they didn’t have more food to spare, the friends were grateful for the little they did have.
“Ninety-nine bags of burgers on the wall, ninety-nine bags of burgers,” Kody sighed.
“Take one down, pass it around, ninety-eight bags of burgers on the wall,” Tegan continued. Soon they were all singing, counting down to seventy-eight where they decided to stop and crawl into their sleeping bags. They lay with their feet facing the fire and watched as flecks flew from it. Then, one by one, they nodded off until they were all in deep sleep.
22
The night was quiet. The fire crackled by the friends’ feet; a tad smaller but still burning brightly. There was no wind, and it seemed like nothing stirred inside the enclosure or around it.
Jag slowly opened his eyes. He didn’t move, and kept his chin tucked in his sleeping bag. He could hear the snapping and popping of the fire and looked around without moving his head. He saw Tegan’s dark hair on his left and Mariah’s lighter tresses beside hers. He knew Kody was on his right and Aari was on Mariah’s other side. By their steady breathing he could tell they were all asleep.
So why then had he woken up?
He sat up and blinked at the flames, then licked his lips uneasily. The scent in the air was wrong. His pulse throbbed in his neck, an awful sensation that he only felt as every single one of his sense heightened.
Something didn’t feel right.
He reached into his sleeping bag, pulled out his hoodie and shrugged it on before zipping it up. Something out of the corner of his eye moved. The eagle that had perched on the tree high up on the rock wall was still there, its wings spread as the wind picked up. All Jag could see was its silhouette, and for some reason it made him more than a little nervous.
Then the large bird launched into the air and flew around the enclosure as it had earlier, keeping close to the rock wall. It soared back around a second time and swooped right past the group, creating an enormous gust of wind, and screeched sharply. Jag flinched and covered his ears.
Mariah, Tegan and Aari jolted awake, then caught sight of the eagle up in the sky. “What’s that crazy thing doing?” Aari complained groggily.
Jag kicked out of his sleeping bag. “We need to get out of here.”
Mariah rubbed her eyes. “What’s the matter? It’s just an eagle.”
“No, I’m serious. Something’s wrong. We need to get out of here, now.”
His friends didn’t ignore the alarm in his usually calm voice and wriggled out of their own sleeping bags. Kody was still in deep sleep with his cluster of long sticks at his side. Jag grabbed his shoulder and shook him. The other boy half-opened his eyes and glared up.
“We’re moving out, Kody. Get up.”
Roused by Jag’s uncharacteristic urgency, Kody quickly obliged.
Jag moved to the base of his own sleeping bag to roll it up and pack it away. Beside him, Tegan did the same. He checked to see
if the eagle was still flying around but couldn’t find it. He shifted uncomfortably; the fire was hot against his back.
As he put his sleeping bag away, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Slowly, he looked toward the opening in the wall the group had squeezed through earlier in the evening. Two glowing red embers hovered in the darkness, a few inches apart. Jag strained to see what they were, but the firelight didn’t reach far enough.
Unsettled, he leaned closer to Tegan and whispered, “Look.”
Tegan saw the red orbs and breathed in sharply. “What is that?”
“I don’t know.”
The others didn’t notice and continued packing. Jag and Tegan kept their heads together, staring at the red lights. Suddenly two more pairs, exact replicas, appeared on either side of the first.
A gasp sounded, and Jag heard Aari and Mariah talking quickly in quiet tones. He and Tegan looked over their shoulders past the fire. At the other entrance in the rock wall were three more glowing pairs of red orbs. Kody strained to see what the fuss was about and started.
“What are those?” Aari asked softly.
“More on this side,” Tegan murmured.
Jag caught sight of a log the length of his arm in the fire, one end of it aflame. He grabbed it and hurled it as far as he could toward the first entrance.
It landed on the dirt several feet from the entrance. The friends went stiff. The fire glinted off three separate sets of large, sharp teeth and cast stretched shadows onto the rock wall. The middle pair of orbs drew closer toward the burning log.
In the fire light the friends saw the face of a scarred, angry timber wolf. Only the front of its body was visible, but it was frighteningly large. The dark gray muzzle was matted with dried blood and clumps of fur were missing on its face. One ear was torn, the other heavily scratched. Foam lathered around its jaws and dripped to the ground at its massive paws. The flames reflected in its eyes.
The animal turned its head slightly toward the other half of its pack as they closed in from the opposite entrance, circling one side of the pond toward the group.
