The Transall Saga

by Gary Paulsen

  Mark wondered if he should go back to the meadow. He considered his position. At least there was water there. Here there was nothing.

  A piercing howl cut through the darkness. The clicking stopped.

  A shiver ran up Mark’s back. He swallowed and waited. What now? Finally the chattering started again and he moved on.

  Normally he was good at walking. It was something he prided himself on. He could walk for hours without resting. But this was different. His bare feet were being cut to ribbons by the coarse underbrush, and more important, he was hungry.

  He decided to turn back. The meadow area was safer because he could see what was around him. Maybe he’d missed something there that he could eat. It was worth a try.

  Just as he turned, the chattering sound came closer and grew to a deafening roar. Something hit the ground behind him. He spun around and received a crashing blow to the side of the head. A rock the size of his fist knocked him to his knees. Then came more rocks, pelting his body from every direction.

  He covered his head and rolled into a ball.

  Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the chattering stopped. So did the rocks.

  Mark dropped one of his aching arms. He was bruised and sore but nothing felt broken. Above him he saw a flurry of motion. Swinging effortlessly from the branches were small, white, furry animals. He would have called them monkeys but they looked more like miniature teddy bears with long arms and tails.

  One of them had stayed behind. With its sharp claws, it was clinging to a tree about halfway down the trunk, watching him.

  "Get out of here," Mark yelled, reaching for one of the rocks.

  The monkey creature clicked its tongue loudly, rebuking him. It moved up the tree, but only a few feet.

  Mark drew his arm back to throw. He stopped. The object in his hand was heavy like a rock and it felt smooth and round. But it had some sort of outer layer. He shook it. The insides sloshed around. He tried to peel it but the skin was too tough.

  There’s got to be a way. Mark gathered an armful of the tree rocks and headed out of the darkness. When he reached the edge of the meadow he dropped his find in a pile and examined one of them. They were the color of the bark of the trees and resembled small coconuts.

  Mark shook one again. There’s something in there. He reached for his pocketknife. "Oh, please let it be good for food ... ," he whispered.

  There was a soft clicking a few feet behind him. Mark looked over his shoulder. The monkey-bear had followed him.

  "Shoo. Go away." Mark tossed one of the tree rocks at it. Like lightning, the little creature’s long arm shot up and caught it.

  "Hey, that’s pretty good." Mark turned back to what he’d been doing. He tried peeling the rock but only bits of the heavy skin would come off.

  Something hit him in the shoulder. It was the tree rock. The monkey-bear had tossed it back.

  "Cut that out. Can’t you see I’m starving here?" He jabbed the knife into the top of the rock. Only the tip went in and he was afraid to push harder because he might damage the knife.

  "I know there’s got to be a way," he muttered. He took the rock to a nearby tree and pounded it against the trunk. Nothing. Disgusted, he threw it on the ground.

  The monkey-bear waddled over, picked up the rock, inserted one of its razor-sharp claws in the middle and easily broke it open. A thick brown liquid spilled out. The little animal greedily slurped it up from both halves and then scooped out the dark meaty parts with its claws and shoved them in its mouth.

  Mark raced to his pile of rocks. He felt for a soft spot in the center of one and jabbed his knife in. Gradually he worked the two sides apart. He lifted one of the halves to his lips and guzzled down the brown juice.

  It had a pleasant taste—like milk, only sweeter. He drank the other half and then used his knife to dig out the meat. This part wasn’t so great. It reminded him of bean sprouts and he thought about spitting it out. Instead he forced himself to swallow. It might be his only food source for a while.

  He went through eleven of the rocks before he was satisfied. The meal made him feel better. Now maybe he could concentrate on something besides his stomach.

  The light in the meadow was growing dim. Apparently this place had a night. He would have to choose a place to camp for the dark period. The thought of waking up to a buffalo creature—or whatever that howling thing was— worried him. He definitely didn’t want to sleep here in the open.

  The dark part of the jungle didn’t appeal to him much, either. In the end he compromised and decided to look for a spot just beyond the edge of the meadow.

  He found a nice grassy place just inside the shadows and well hidden by the brush. He watched the monkey-bear waddle to a tree and shimmy up to a wide, flat branch the size of a small table. The animal stopped and looked at him expectantly.

  Mark rubbed the back of his neck. "I don’t know. I really hadn’t thought about spending the night in a tree."

  The monkey-bear clicked its tongue and jumped up and down.

  "Oh, all right. I’ll give it a try. I guess it would be a little harder for the bad ones to get to me up there—that is if I don’t fall out and break my neck."

  Getting to the lower branches was easy. He’d done that when the buffalo creature was after him. The middle part was a lot harder because the branches were farther apart. Mark tried a couple of times and gave up. The monkey-bear scurried up to the top limbs and waited.

  Mark shook his head. "No thanks. This is high enough for me. You go on ahead." He wedged his boot, which still held his few possessions, in between the trunk and the branch and then stretched out on his stomach on the wide limb.

  If I’m lucky, I’ll wake up in the morning and this whole thing will all have been a dream. A bad dream, he thought as he dozed off.

  chapter 4

  The warm night was long. Mark dozed fitfully and woke every few hours to the strange noises of the jungle. Twice he fell off his perch. Finally he discovered that if he locked his legs around the limb he was less likely to take a spill.

  The blue light haunted his dreams. Half awake, he recalled a similar energy force he’d read about once in science class. It was a theory some scientist had about what would happen if matter and antimatter ever actually met. Bits of information came back to him, something about the massive amount of power that would be produced and the way it could affect life.

  He didn’t care about any of that, only that it had affected his life and he wanted out of this place. Then, just as the meadow began to fill with the hazy yellow light of a new day, he jerked awake.

  The tube of light. Of course—he had to find it again. It was his way back to Earth and home. He grabbed his boot and dropped to the ground.

  Immediately fierce hunger pains shot through him. Eat. He had to eat, and the only place he knew where there was any food was in the dark jungle. The blue light would have to wait.

  Mark tied his boot to his belt loop with the lace and started walking. The monkey-bear crawled down a vine and landed softly beside him.

  "Where do you little guys keep your tree rocks, Willie?" The name just came. He seemed like a Willie. "You know what I’m talking about, like the ones your buddies tried to kill me with yesterday. There wouldn’t happen to be a great big stash just lying around somewhere easy?"

  Willie cocked his head and clicked his tongue.

  Mark frowned. "I don’t think we’re doing too well in the communication department." He led the way into the shadowy jungle.

  On this trip he paid more attention to the things he saw. The lizards were still there, and there were large flowering plants mixed in with the underbrush. He noticed that the trees in the dark jungle were different from the shorter ones closer to the meadow. Some were so tall he couldn’t see the tops. This kind had smooth trunks with no low branches, and they usually had dozens of vines hanging from them.

  A few yards inside the dark jungle he heard the clicking noise start. It didn’t worry him this
time. He was even prepared for the monkey-bears to bombard him with tree rocks. It would save him from going after them.

  They didn’t. Mark figured it had something to do with Willie, who clicked nonstop and stayed right with him.

  It was getting almost too dark to see. Mark searched the tops of the trees above him.

  They’ve got to be up there somewhere. I guess I’ll have to climb. He yanked on one of the vines to see if it would hold his weight. It seemed sturdy enough. He jumped and tried to haul himself up but his arms were too weak and he slid back down.

  I should have paid more attention to rope climbing in gym class. He moved to another vine. This one was hanging closer to the trunk. He braced his bare feet against the smooth bark, and using the vine for leverage, he slowly walked up the tree at an angle.

  Halfway up he glanced down and nearly lost his balance. He guessed it was more than a thirty-foot drop to the ground. A dizzy feeling washed over him and his palms began to sweat. He closed his eyes until the feeling passed; then he climbed again.

  At the first limb he came to, he stopped. He sat for a long time just clinging to the vine and trying not to look down.

  Willie had climbed past him and was clicking at him from the top branches. Mark looked up and saw him swinging back and forth from one limb to another. Above Willie, Mark spotted a cluster of tree rocks dangling from the end of a long branch and half hidden under the wide leaves.

  He tied the vine around his waist and worked his way up to the next limb. Once he made it to the end of the long narrow branch, the tree rocks were easy to pick. He pulled off every one he could reach and let them fall to the ground.

  With no warning there was a crack and Mark felt himself falling. He grabbed at air, swung backward and jolted to a stop midway to the ground.

  The vine he’d tied around his waist held. He fastened his arms around the closest limb and clung to it.

  Willie crawled down to see what was going on.

  "I think," Mark said, taking a deep breath, "that’s probably enough shopping for one morning."

  chapter 5

  "It could be anywhere." Mark threw up his hands. He had managed to find the clearing where he’d first awakened in the tall red grass. But the blue light didn’t show itself.

  His stomach made a loud rumbling sound. He was hungry all the time now. The tree rocks were good but they were mostly liquid and only took the edge off his appetite. He wanted something solid. Pizza. Pizza would be good. Thick crust smothered in three different kinds of melted cheese. He would kill for a pizza.

  "Stupid." Hearing the word aloud caught him off guard. He said it again, slower. "Stupid. Daydreaming isn’t going to get you anywhere. Think. Think about all the tons of stuff you read in those how-to-stay-alive books. Use it."

  Mark concentrated. The problem was all those books were for Earth. He was sure he had come to another planet—Earth—like, perhaps, but so strange. Still, some things would work. The handbooks all said to check out the surroundings. Food was usually not too far away. Bugs were always handy. He made a face. The fire bugs deserved to be food but how would you eat them without ripping your tongue out? Okay, what else? The screaming birds. No, too difficult. Maybe later, after he had more time to think and plan and get some kind of weapon. The fat-head lizards. They were slow and would be easy to catch. But then what? He’d have to figure out a way to cook them. And what if they were poisonous? What if anything was poisonous? No, he’d stick with convenience foods for now. Stuff he knew hadn’t killed other animals. Life here seemed similar to Earth life. Food might work the same. Whatever other animals could eat, he could eat. Maybe.

  What else had he read? There was the usual stuff on keeping warm. He rubbed his bare arms. Unless the weather changed he wouldn’t have to worry about that. Shelter. He really didn’t need a house but he didn’t want to sleep on that stupid limb forever, either.

  He opened a tree rock as he walked back toward the big meadow. His spirits were higher and the ideas kept coming. Until he located the light, he would live next to the dark jungle, because that was where the tree rocks were, and the buffalo creatures didn’t seem to go there. And, of course, there was Willie. It was nice to have company.

  In the meantime, he would make circles, wider and wider every day, hoping to find the mysterious blue light.

  chapter 6

  The fire bugs had been easy to collect. The only trick was making sure none of them got on his skin while he was concentrating on catching the others.

  Mark had eased up to the outer edge of a colony and picked off the stragglers. With his knife he sliced their pincered heads off, stabbed them through the middle and deposited them safely in a sock.

  For lunch he had four tree rocks and more than a dozen of the long crunchy insects. The first one was the hardest to swallow. His mind and his stomach fought over the idea until the hunger pains won out. He closed his eyes and pretended he was munching on the trail mix he’d packed for his hike.

  "Break’s over." Mark tied a knot in the top of his bug sock and dropped it on his dwindling pile of tree rocks. "Back to work, Willie." The monkey-bear slapped the ground with his thick black palms and followed Mark to a tree just inside the dark part of the jungle.

  Mark had chosen this particular tree because it had two strong limbs that forked into a perfect V. For the better part of the morning he had been hauling dead branches to his tree and arranging them across the two limbs to form a floor.

  When the branches were fitted together as closely as possible, he went to the edge of the meadow and broke off long sticks from the tangled underbrush. Using a pattern he’d seen in an army survival manual, he wove the supple twigs into a loose mat and placed it on the floor.

  "Almost finished. All we need now are some of those big rubbery leaves and presto, the master bedroom is complete. No more hitting the ground in the middle of the night. Come on, Willie. We’ll get the leaves and some extra tree rocks for tomorrow, and then we’ll have just enough time to make a small circle around the outskirts of the meadow."

  Mark discovered that his eyes adjusted more quickly to the shadowy jungle this time. He even spotted a group of monkey-bears before they saw him. They were startled, and scrambled to the tops of the trees.

  "I wish I could get up there that fast," Mark muttered. He chose a sturdy vine and began the long process of walking up the side of the tree.

  Willie climbed over him, grabbed another vine and swung up into the branches of a tall tree.

  Mark studied his vine. "There’s got to be an easier way." He dropped to the ground. "An extension ladder would be good." He shrugged. "So would a helicopter."

  He tied a loop near the bottom of the vine and put all his weight on it. It held. He tied another loop a little higher in another vine next to his and stepped into it. Back and forth he went, tying loops to create a makeshift ladder, until he had climbed into the low branches.

  "Okay. Now what? There won’t always be rocks in this tree. And I can’t take my ladder to the next one." Mark scratched his head. He watched Willie swinging back and forth on the vines. It looked so easy.

  Mark yanked on one of the higher vines, testing it. Before he could talk himself out of it, he pushed off.

  It wasn’t as bad as he’d imagined. Twice more he swung out, swept back and landed lightly on the limb. The third time he pushed off, he swung out halfway to the next tree, reached for another vine—and missed.

  chapter 7

  Everything on him hurt. Mark rolled to his side and nearly screamed. Something inside him had ripped apart.

  A large flowering plant had helped to break his fall but every time he moved, even a fraction of an inch, searing pains racked his body.

  He tried not to breathe, not to blink.

  It was raining again. He could hear the soft, comforting sound of the drops hitting the leaves.

  A drink of water, even the bitter stuff in the puddles, would taste good right now, he thought. Get up. Get to the w
ater.

  He forced himself to stand and nearly passed out from the pain. Taking short, ragged breaths only when absolutely necessary, he moved toward the meadow a few halting steps at a time.

  Near his tree he lowered his aching body to a large puddle and drank. He could feel himself starting to fade.

  With effort he stood and turned to look at his tree. There was no way. If he tried to pull himself up to his bed, he might make the damage inside him worse.

  He stumbled to the tall grass in the shadows, sank into it and allowed the blackness to take over.

  The clicking. It was high pitched and loud and next to his ear. Make it stop, he thought.

  He groggily opened his eyes and stared dully into Willie’s furry, round face. The monkey-bear squealed and patted Mark’s head.

  "You haven’t got any aspirin, have you?" Mark sat up, his breath hissing with pain. It was his ribs. Maybe he’d cracked one—or more. He’d heard somewhere that cracked ribs hurt like blazes when you took a breath. He had to tape them up in some way.

  He felt inside his boot for his tattered shirt, tore it into strips and tied the pieces together. Then he wrapped the makeshift bandage tightly around his ribs. They still hurt, but the pain seemed more under control.

  He was hungry. But then he was always hungry. Judging from the way his stomach was growling, he figured he had probably slept through a meal or two.

  Next to his tree he could see his stack of tree rocks. Inching to his feet, he slowly made his way to the pile. His stash of fire bugs was still in the sock where he’d left it. He ate and lay back down.

  Tomorrow he would have to find a new food source. The tree rocks were out of his reach for now. Scouting for the blue light was also out of the question for a while. He would just have to take it easy and try to be patient until his ribs healed.

  To take his mind off the pain, he forced himself to think about ways to make his existence here more bearable. When he was able, he would build a ladder for his tree house. And some kind of weapon would be nice, in case he ran into that howling thing on one of his trips into the dark jungle.