Exile

by S. M. Wilson

  “Has Blaine appeared?” she whispered.

  Lincoln shook his head. She reached forward and picked up the pieces of paper. “What’s this? Oh, wow. Who did these?”

  Lincoln nodded towards Leif. “He did. Seems he’s been keeping his talents secret.”

  A strange smile came across Storm’s face as she looked at the sketch of Jesa. “Looks like that’s not all he’s been keeping secret.”

  Something twisted inside Lincoln. This was the kind of chat he used to have with Storm.

  He’d missed it. Someone to talk to. Someone to confide in. Someone to worry about who wasn’t actually part of his family.

  Someone to worry about who he chose to worry about. He wasn’t obligated to look out for Storm, but he couldn’t help it.

  Her dark-brown hair was swept up in a band on top of her head. Her skin seemed to suck up the sun. When they’d started out from Earthasia she’d been pale from working in the parliament all day. Now she had the honey-coloured skin she’d had the first time he’d met her. Skin that showed she worked out in the fields. A few days on the ship and on Piloria had tanned her skin once again. She suited it. It looked better on her.

  He swallowed back all the feelings he was having. “That’s good for Leif. He’s been so angry. Angry with me, and with you. If he feels a connection to Jesa, that’s good. Good for her too. The journey home will be hard. She’ll be leaving her dad behind.”

  It took a few seconds for him to realize what he’d said. The impact of his words seemed to wash over Storm’s face. She turned away quickly. Lincoln knew he should be cringing. But somehow he wasn’t. The words didn’t feel so out of place.

  His words hadn’t been aimed at Storm. But if they made her think, then that was fine.

  Lincoln still didn’t trust Reban. He just couldn’t. The man who slept beside them at night was still the angry man who’d looked at him with distaste and then sent them all to Piloria, knowing the odds were stacked against them.

  It wasn’t that Lincoln wouldn’t have come. First time around he’d wanted to come, he’d fought to come – anything to win health care for Arta.

  He’d wanted Reban to select him. He’d wanted to be here. But the Stipulators had known far more about Piloria than they’d ever told the Finalists. What was it – laziness? Indifference? – that had sent them here so unprepared? The truth was the Finalists were seen as disposable. And Reban might be Storm’s father, but he’d known all this the first time he’d sent them here. He knew how hopeless their task was, how dangerous. How could Lincoln possibly forgive him, or trust him?

  He watched as Storm walked over and picked up a piece of fruit lying near the campfire and bit into it. Her backpack was already over her shoulder. “Are we going soon?” she asked the others. Reban picked up his backpack and stood next to her.

  Leif and Jesa were sitting together, talking over the sketches. Jesa put the sketch of her father into her backpack and lifted the other hesitantly. “Give me a second.” She disappeared into the shack.

  It only took a few moments. By the time she reappeared she looked a little easier. Blaine had obviously taken the sketch of her and he appeared behind her.

  “Let’s go to the pterosaur nests,” he said. “We’ll go around the edges of the marsh. It will be quicker. Once you reach the nests, it’s only another few hours’ travel back along the coast to Blue Bay.”

  Lincoln shuddered. Blue Bay. Of course, the name was obvious. The first time they’d seen the bay they’d been struck by the bright blue, clear water. But now? When he imagined the bay it was filled with dark-grey bodies and red-streaked water. He’d never have the tranquil picture in his mind again.

  “Anywhere else we can collect some more plants?” asked Lincoln.

  Blaine looked a bit disinterested. “Probably.”

  “I’m not sure about the marshes,” said Storm quickly. “One of the other Finalists got trapped there for days. He said there were horrible creatures in there.”

  Blaine waved his hand. “Of course there are. It’s a marsh. What do you expect? But we don’t need to worry.”

  Lincoln picked up his backpack and looked around. Chances were this would be the last time any of them would be at Blaine’s shack. It was the oddest feeling.

  It was everything it should be. Well hidden, protected from the dinosaurs. Probably one of the safest places on Piloria. But he didn’t want to stay any longer, and if he never saw it again? That would be fine. He needed to get back to his sister.

  Blaine walked on ahead and Lincoln lingered a little. Once the others were all walking he did exactly what he had to – he stripped the leaves from the side of Blaine’s shack and stuffed them in his backpack – the more evergreens he had the better.

  He wasn’t going to forget why he was here.

  This was the last day. The last day before they went home.

  And what was home anyway?

  What would she say to Octavius when she got back? Part of her was angry at him. He could have told her at any point that they were related. But he hadn’t. He had kept it secret.

  He could have told her things about her mother. Just like Reban could have. But it was almost as if Reban and Octavius didn’t want to share their memories – as if holding on to them would keep Dalia as only theirs.

  What was it with her family and secrets? And why did they all seem to be kept from her?

  It wasn’t fair.

  She narrowed her eyes as they tramped through the jungle again. This way was a little clearer than others. Almost as if Blaine had used it so much that a path had been worn. Maybe that wasn’t such a good thing? What if other creatures used the path too?

  Hopefully they’d be back on the ship soon. Then, seven days after that, she’d be back in Ambulus City.

  Back in the world of grey, built-up, crammed towers. No green. No space. And her stomach gave a little flip. Maybe no Milo either. She hadn’t seen the plesiosaur at the loch since she’d come back from Piloria the first time. She’d spotted Milo in the sea – in fact Milo had helped her with the final Trial – but since then? Nothing.

  Her heart gave a pitter-patter. The house. The house she’d won. Filled with Kronar’s and Rune’s unruly brothers and sisters. It was official. She was rubbish at being the responsible one. The one who tried to take care of everyone else. Most people wouldn’t believe her, but she felt safer on the continent of dinosaurs than she did in the house full of kids.

  They emerged from the jungle into blistering sun and damp air. Of course. They were near the marsh. It was so humid here that even breathing in was difficult.

  “Stay away from the edges,” Blaine warned them. “Especially the reeds. Walk at least a body’s length away from the edges of the marsh. But keep an eye on the trees. Sometimes raptors shelter in there.” Storm’s hand tightened around one of her knives. It was clear the others felt the same: Jesa had her crossbow out, Leif his spear, Lincoln his axe, and Reban kept both hands on his double-ended weapon.

  The journey around the marsh took a few hours. Every now and then there would be a noise, a grunt from the bubbling mud. Once, Storm thought she saw a pair of eyes staring at her from the surface.

  “What do you think’s in there?” murmured Lincoln as they walked past.

  She shuddered. She couldn’t help it. “I don’t know. Do you think it’s a deinosuchus again?”

  Lincoln flinched. “Please no.” They’d already seen a deinosuchus launch itself from the loch and kill one of their friends. “Could they survive in mud? The loch, it was water, not mud.”

  He grabbed hold of her elbow and moved closer to the trees. “Better safe than sorry.”

  Storm raised her eyebrows. “And if there are raptors hiding in the trees?”

  He gave her a smile. “We have previous experience with raptors. You have knives, I have an axe. We can last at least” – he raised an eyebrow – “maybe ten seconds?”

  She nudged him with her shoulder. “With that attitude, w
e’ll be fine.” She kicked at some of the dried mud they were walking on. “Do you think the virus really worked?”

  Lincoln pulled a face. “I don’t know. I honestly didn’t think it would. Everything seemed so rushed. I just felt that Lorcan’s mind really wasn’t on it. Maybe the head scientists at the other labs were more switched on? But – put it this way – I wouldn’t bet my life on it.”

  “Do you think the other group got the pterosaurs?”

  “Do you think any of the other group are still alive?”

  As she ran her hands through her hair, the band holding it snapped. “Darn it!” She took a couple of steps towards the reeds and made a grab for one – just as something reared out of the swamp.

  She didn’t even have time to think. The familiar grey-green body of the deinosuchus, with its monstrous jaws and rows of teeth, filled her vision. Last time she’d seen that jaw it had been wrapped around the T-rex’s neck.

  Lincoln didn’t hesitate, he yanked Storm back as he jumped forward, swinging his axe at the creature’s jaw.

  Storm hit the ground with a thud. She scrambled, turning around and trying to get back up on her feet. She’d seen how quickly a deinosuchus could move. “Move, Lincoln!” came a scream to the right.

  The creature shook its head, shaking off the axe partly embedded in its snout, blood pouring from the wound. Reban grabbed Storm from behind, hauling her to her feet by her tunic. There was a thrash of its powerful tail. This thing was a monster. Ten times longer than a human. And far too close to Lincoln.

  She fumbled for her knives, but before she even had time to pull one from its sheath something else flew through the air. An arrow.

  The shot was clean and true. It landed straight in the deinosuchus’s eye.

  There was a spurt of something, the creature thrashed from side to side, and then it disappeared back under the mud.

  Storm turned around, her mouth open. Lincoln was the same. Jesa had one knee on the ground, one arm completely straight holding the crossbow, while the other arm was bent from the release. Her face was deadly pale.

  Leif was behind her. He put his arm on her shoulder. “You did it. You did it, Jesa. You did it.”

  Blaine walked around her, putting his hands on the crossbow to make her lower it. Her arms were shaking.

  Jesa struggled to get a breath to speak. “I didn’t have time to think.” She shook her head as Leif helped her up. “I’d already loaded it. I just fired.”

  “And you don’t know how happy that makes me,” said Lincoln, as he crossed the ground towards her. He reached over and touched her arm. “Thank you, Jesa.”

  Storm’s heart was racing in her chest. This was her fault. All her fault. She’d bent to grab a reed to tie her hair – and Lincoln could have died.

  She pushed past Reban, who was gripping his weapon as if he might be about to kill someone. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I wasn’t thinking. I…I just wanted something to tie back my hair.” She knew exactly how pathetic that sounded. She shook her head and felt tears swim into her eyes.

  Blaine shot her a look of disgust and walked over to the trees, plucking part of a thin vine from a trunk. “Here,” he sneered, as he handed it over.

  She could sense Reban bristle on her left side, and Lincoln on her right. She gave a slight shake of her head. They didn’t need any more fighting. They only had to last a few more hours, then they could head back to Earthasia.

  But what about her? Would there be a place on the ship for her? She hadn’t voiced her fears out loud to anyone except Reban, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t still there. And the second question was, did she really want to get on the ship?

  Jesa had put her crossbow away. Leif was walking alongside her, talking quietly. Blaine had already strolled off in disgust.

  Storm stared at the vine in her hand, then took a deep breath and twisted it around her hair. She gave both Reban and Lincoln a nod.

  “Let’s go, guys.” She glanced over her shoulder. “The sooner we get away from here, the better.”

  Something seemed off.

  They crossed the flatlands easily. Too easily. There were barely any grazing dinosaurs in the distance.

  Although they’d been at the pterosaur nests before, they’d never gone too far inland. Inland from here was different from the other parts of Piloria that they’d explored. The green scrubland changed quickly to dark earth, followed by sand. Yellow sand that seemed to stretch on for ever.

  Everything about this was odd. Standing at the edge of a coastline and seeing desert, with only the bushes and flatlands behind them, just didn’t seem right. But, then again, nothing about Piloria was normal.

  When he spun back around he wasn’t sure whether seeing the dark-blue ocean stretch in front of them was a blessing or a curse. It could be either.

  But the dark-grey cliffs were definitely familiar. Leif stood with his hands on his hips and looked from side to side. It seemed quiet. There was only one pterosaur, circling much further out to sea. “Okay, so we know where the pterosaur nests are. But where on earth do they get their water from?”

  Blaine was standing just a little bit away.

  “Blaine?” Lincoln shouted. “Do you know where the pterosaurs get their water from?”

  He looked at them blankly and shrugged.

  “I guess not,” said Lincoln as he kept walking. “Okay, everyone, look for the nearest freshwater pool.”

  “Who says pterosaurs drink fresh water? Maybe they’re different? Maybe they drink seawater?” Storm sounded angry and she looked tired. “I still don’t know about this,” she muttered. “The pterosaurs aren’t nearly as much of a threat as the raptors.”

  Lincoln gave her half a smile. That was easy for her to say, when her shoulder hadn’t been raked by one. He still wasn’t quite sure how he felt about using the virus either, but the one thing he was certain of was he needed to ensure his place on that ship home. “Keep looking, slacker. We’re not done yet.”

  The search took longer than anyone expected.

  After a while, Reban gave a shout. “Over here!”

  By now they’d moved away from the cliffs and coastline. The watering hole was close to a large patch of bushes and trees, one of the last before the land gave way to desert.

  Jesa frowned. “How do we know this is the one that the pterosaurs use?”

  Reban smiled. “We don’t. We wait.”

  “Why don’t we just dump the final vial of virus and leave? Does it really matter if it’s their watering hole or not?” Leif opened the silver carrier and took out the bright-blue glass vial. He held it up. It glimmered in the bright sunlight.

  The attack came out of nowhere. They hadn’t even noticed the creature in the air above them.

  There was a squawk. A noise. And the hard flap of wings. The huge pterosaur blurred Lincoln’s line of vision just as Leif let out a yell.

  Lincoln was caught so off-guard he reached for the axe he didn’t have any more. The pterosaur’s huge claws fixed on Leif. One on his backpack, the other on his shoulder. And the creature wasn’t finished. It flapped its enormous wings, keeping everyone back. Leif continued to yell. Lincoln winced as he heard the claws crunch against the bone in Leif’s shoulder.

  Reban jumped forward, lashing out with his double-ended weapon. But the sharp beat of the pterosaur’s wings carried too much momentum. Reban couldn’t get near the body of the bird.

  Storm’s first knife fell to the ground, swept away by the strong wings. Lincoln lunged forward, trying anything to reach Leif, but the thudding wingbeats swept him clean off his feet.

  Leif’s legs crumpled under him, the pain too much. And Lincoln didn’t think any more. With even more determination, he leaped again.

  This time, its wingbeats weren’t enough to deflect his weight – just put him off target a little. Instead of landing straight on the pterosaur’s back, he landed sideways across the creature’s body. But the action was enough to dislodge the pte
rosaur from Leif’s shoulder.

  There was a sucking noise. The sound of tearing flesh. Leif swore as Lincoln was thrown to the ground. The pterosaur soared into the air with an angry hiss. But something wasn’t quite right.

  The flight path of the pterosaur wasn’t smooth. If Lincoln didn’t know better he’d think it was drunk, or unwell. It seemed to stutter and stop, every few seconds plummeting towards the ground, then flapping its wings madly to rise into the sunlight.

  Storm and Jesa were on the ground. Storm was pressing tightly on Leif’s shoulder and her hands were already covered in blood. “Get me something – anything to put over this,” she said through gritted teeth to Reban.

  He moved quickly, disappearing into the bushes. Blaine’s head flicked from side to side. There were deep lines in his brow.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Lincoln.

  Blaine didn’t answer, just lifted his head, almost as if he were trying to catch a scent in the air.

  Lincoln bent down next to Storm. He nodded at Leif. “How’s he doing?”

  Blood was still seeping out from under Storm’s palms. “Ask me in a minute.” She looked up at Blaine. “What on earth is he doing? Why isn’t he helping?”

  Leif stopped squirming under Storm’s hands, making a gasping noise and sagging on the ground.

  Jesa squealed. “Is he dead?”

  Lincoln gulped and pressed his fingers to Leif’s neck. He shook his head. “No. I think he’s just passed out with the pain. We need to get him patched up. It can’t be good losing this much blood.” He glanced towards the bushes. “Where’s Reban?”

  Just as he said the words, Reban emerged from the bushes. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Had to look about, I couldn’t find leaves big enough.” He had a few large, fringed palms in his hands.

  The blood-curdling scream came out of nowhere. Another blur. Something came hurtling through the bushes towards them. Lincoln automatically crouched over Leif, trying to protect him. Jesa yelled and jumped to her feet, fumbling for her crossbow. Storm seemed frozen. Reban didn’t even get a chance to turn around. The thick tree-branch hit him on the back of his head, sending blood spurting around them. His body crumpled to the ground.