“I am an evil old git,” he admitted. He smiled, then set his warm, heavy hand on the hand that touched him. “And now you should be off. Back to camp, with you.”
“Quinn…” she began, but before she could finish her statement, she spotted Toby hiking toward them over the sand dunes, bearing his pack and a javelin of his own.
“Lovely,” said Quinn with his customary drollness.
“Quinn, we’re all a team, all three of us. And we’ll hunt She together as such.”
“Sasha, I really must insist…”
She stood on tiptoe and kissed him, briefly. “You are not my husband, Quinn. Therefore, you have no say in the matter.”
He frowned. “One day I may have to rectify that oversight.”
She was about to question his statement when Toby reached them. Together, as the team, they were off.
CHAPTER 11
John had three months head start on them, so spending three days walking the plains on the edge of the beach wasn’t likely to have a very big impact on catching him up, Sasha decided. Unfortunately—or maybe fortunately, depending on how one was looking at these things—after three days they saw no signs of She.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Almost from the beginning they found She’s calling cards. Sasha wasn’t even sure why she thought it was She killing the beasts, but she was. The first day of the hunt, they found the half-eaten carcass of one of the Iguanodon youngsters. The following day they stumbled across an adult, as well as a young stegosaur some distance off. In all cases, the carcasses were being systematically picked over by small, opportunistic predators. She had killed for sport rather than food. Or in anger, Sasha thought with a shiver as the horrendous fumes poured off the remains, keeping them at a distance. The stegosaur bore the scars of a horrific battle, bite marks covering most of the body. Some of its tough armor plates had been bitten clear off. Sasha didn’t think anyone but the ferocious She could have done that. Muk, the leader of the Sen, had called She a dark goddess. Sasha was finally beginning to understand why.
On the third day, they were heading back to their camp down on the beach, when Quinn suddenly held up his hand, halting both Sasha and Toby in their tracks. They’d been moving unevenly through a plain of tall yellow grasses as big as they were. “What is it?” Sasha asked, suddenly on alert. She swatted at some insects trying to land in her eyes for a drink of the fluids there. Had he spotted She, or some other great predator?
Quinn raised a finger to his mouth for silence, withdrew his hunting knife, and parted the grasses using the blade. Through the almost perfect blinds they could see the beach ahead, and, a little ways down, their camp. A figure moved in their cave, a large, agile figure examining the weapons that Quinn had been working on, the javelins and spears and primitive bows and arrows. Sasha thought automatically of Neanderthal and wondered if they were in any immediate danger.
The figure emerged from their cave, Quinn’s bow and a quarrel of arrows carried over one shoulder. It was a tall, sturdy young woman with long hair. She looked human enough. Her skin was bronzed from constant exposure to the sun, her hair a sleek dark auburn that Sasha envied, and her eyes all liquid darkness. She was wearing a short, primitive sari of some roughly woven material. Sasha had expected it to be animal skin, then thought better of that theory. Wearing animal skins would only attract predators. The girl—she was Sasha’s age—crouched down to examine the remains of their fire and their footprints leading away from it.
Quinn caught their eyes and made a circular motion with his finger, indicating he meant to circle around the sand dunes out of sight until he was closer to the cave entrance. Sasha nodded and patted the air near her knee to indicate they would stay here. They were working automatically, almost on a psychic level, she realized, just like a tribe of people. Quinn meant to drive the strange girl toward them. She and Toby would capture her. Toby nodded and reassured his hold on his javelin, though Sasha sincerely hoped they would not have to use it. The girl looked fierce and strong, but not dangerous.
Quinn darted soundlessly into the tall grass and Sasha moved closer to Toby. She thought about taking his hand, but he might misconstrue the gesture. “Is Quinn insane?” he breathed in her ear. “What are we going to do with a girl?”
“Talk to her,” Sasha whispered. “Maybe she’s from our world, another visitor.”
“Is that possible?”
“I don’t know, Toby.”
They waited, hardly breathing. Quinn was fast. Less than five minutes later, the girl jerked upright on full alert and glanced at the sand dunes, though Sasha had no idea if she had heard Quinn or sensed him in some other way. A moment later, she bolted right toward them. “Here she comes,” Sasha said, trying to get ready and wondering how she would capture the girl without actually hurting her. Then an idea came to her. She got down on her knees and ducked her head. A few moments later, the girl dived blindly into the tall grass, hit Sasha’s side, and blundered over her, falling right into Toby’s grip.
It was over in seconds. Toby had her locked in his embrace, his arm under her chin to restrain her. The girl made breathy, panicked noises and bit him like an animal. Toby roared and the girl began to fight, loosening his hold on her.
Sasha immediately stood up and held up her hands to show she was unarmed. “Stop! Please! We won’t hurt you.”
To her surprise, the wild-eyed girl stopped struggling. She seemed to be of some mixed racial descent, Sasha noted. Her face was wide and exotic, her coloring dark, yet her uptilted, Asian-inspired eyes bright blue. She was unfairly curvy, in Sasha’s opinion. “We won’t harm you,” she stated again in what she hoped was a kind voice. The girl would be listening to her tone of voice, not the words, after all. She had probably never encountered an English-speaker before. “We just want to talk to you.”
The girl grew very still. She tilted her head as if she were thinking about what Sasha was saying. She glanced at the bow still slung over one of her shoulders, then said in heavily accented English, “I no stealing, only borrowing!”
CHAPTER 12
The men wanted to drag the English-speaking native girl back to camp by force and interrogate her, but a sharp look from Sasha changed their minds immediately. Instead of forcing her, Sasha invited the girl back with them, promising her that she could keep Quinn’s bow if she’d spend a little time talking to them and answering her questions. The native girl, whose name was Naja, agreed to come back to camp with them, but only because Sasha had invited her, and only if she could keep the bow and quivers close at hand.
As Quinn set the loin of an unidentifiable reptile to roasting over the fire, Sasha asked Naja all the pertinent questions. Naja was reluctant to answer at first, but Sasha offered her more weapons, and this Naja accepted, much to Quinn’s chagrin, seeing how he’d worked so hard on making them. Naja, it turned out, was on the run from her own people, called the Moja, who meant to sacrifice her because, unlike most of her tribe, she had red hair, and the “red-hairs” were routinely sacrificed to Bolaja, “the One Below.” She said this while watching Quinn tend to the cooking fire, commenting that she could not believe that Quinn had lived to see adulthood—Quinn, whose ginger hair caught and held the flames so well she called him “the man with the fire hair”. Sasha thought it was rather appropriate, considering how fiery Quinn’s temper could run. She had to suppress a smile at how annoyed that made Quinn.
To Sasha’s intense surprise, Naja knew Dr. John Ulysses—“the man with sun hair,” as she called him. He’d been with Naja’s tribe for a short time some months earlier. That was how Naja had come to understand a little English, though she admitted to wanting to improve herself. She called the bow and quarrels a “great gift,” as the bow would bring her “much meat”. Sasha had to assume that in this world, there was no greater treasure.
She did not learn a great deal about John, much to her disappointment. He had joined the nomadic Moja for a short time because he’d been lonely from his travels. Sa
sha could understand that. She couldn’t imagine being trapped on this alien planet with no one human to communicate with. John had earned his keep by acting as the Moja’s witch doctor, treating the injured braves who hunted the big beasts, though his desire to find the Valley of Song had pushed him on after a time. The Moja’s bloodthirsty traditions did not sit well with him either. But all this was more than two months ago. He’d stayed with the Moja for a little over a month, so by Sasha’s estimation, he was only a month ahead of them, which relieved her greatly. She thought it was possible they might catch up to John in a few weeks if they didn’t linger in any one place.
After the four of them had consumed the roasted beast and the course, potato-like roots that Naja had dug from the sand and declared edible, Sasha went down to the shore to toss berries to Dotty, who’d surfaced to offer her greetings. Naja followed her. She was cautious, until Sasha explained that Dotty was “pet,” not “enemy” or “food”. It was an unknown term to Naja. She was fascinated by the concept of keeping animals for companionship only. Sasha suspected that her tribe was so busy keeping themselves alive, they’d never even considered domesticating animals.
“What other animals you keep as ‘pet’?” Naja asked with interest.
“At home I have horses.”
Naja frowned.
“Large, tame grass-eaters.” When she saw that Naja did not understand, she stretched her arms out to indicate the size. “They have long faces and long legs and hair like you and I have.”
Naja laughed and Sasha could see her trying to imagine the animal. “You eat this animal too?”
“No! Quinn is so much like you,” she said with a reproachful grin. “He wanted to eat both Newton and Dotty!”
“Quinn is your mate?” Naja asked suddenly, observing her.
What an unexpectedly odd thing to say! Sasha turned to look more closely at the young woman standing beside her, a woman no older than she. “No, we’re not married.”
Naja did not understand the concept of “marriage” anymore than “pet”. She said only, “He is your man?”
Sasha was at a loss for words.
Evidently afraid that Sasha did not understand, Naja added succinctly, “He is the one you make your young with?”
Sasha flushed and looked out to sea where Dotty was playing amidst the whitecaps. She fed Newton a berry from her pocket. It was silly to be so mortified, she knew. They were just two girls engaged in “women talk,” as they called it back home. She had known young women who were just as straightforward as Naja, though she’d never been one of them. She’d never had the courage to be like that.
“Why are you upset?” Naja asked with genuine concern. “Does Quinn not give you meat? Is he a bad hunter?”
“It’s not that,” she answered. Naja was just curious, she knew. But until now, Sasha had never really thought of Quinn as “hers”. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. When Quinn had confessed those things about poor Percy to her, there was a brief moment when she wondered what it would be like to hold Quinn’s child to her breast, to watch him grow into a man before her eyes. It was a ridiculous fantasy. Sasha said, “It’s….I don’t know what it is.”
“I do,” Naja said. She glanced back at their camp, but Sasha noticed that her gaze was wavering from Quinn to Toby, who was busy stringing a new bow for the purposes of their frequent hunting expeditions. Since watching Quinn do it, Toby had gotten very good. He had stripped off his shirt, and Sasha could tell that Naja was admiring him, calculating his worth as a hunter. “Quinn has chosen you. And you him. That is good. Quinn is a hunter and will give you strong sons and much meat.”
Sasha looked at the girl. “Do you think so?”
“Yes,” she answered immediately. “He is good and fierce. He will be good to your young. You go to him at night and take him.” She made a fierce snatching motion.
Sasha laughed. She had a fantasy of going to Quinn in the night and spiriting him away. The idea made her giggle so loudly that Naja flashed a beautiful and mischievous grin that seemed to light up her whole face. “Is that what women in your tribe do, Naja?” she asked. “Do they take the men they want?”
“Yes. Good hunters with good spears who bring much meat are rare.” Suddenly she lost her fierce grin. “But take care with hunter Quinn.”
Sasha stopped giggling. “What do you mean?”
“Your man has fire hair. Your young may have fire hair as well. And then you will all be hunted.” She looked sad.
“Hunted?”
“The Moja will take your mate and young and give them to Bolaja.” She indicated the sea. “Take hunter Quinn and go to lands where there are no Moja. Eat good meat and make strong sons.” She sounded very authoritative, as if these were the greatest things in the world, the things to strive for in life, and maybe they were. Sasha was fiercely jealous of the Moja. Their life seemed so simple compared to her own.
Then Naja smiled again and the dark mood was broken. Her blue eyes flashed with a sly predatory light. “And now you will tell me about Toby. Is he a good hunter too?”
CHAPTER 13
The following morning, the four of them started out again, hoping to pick up She’s trail. Quinn took the lead as usual, but this time, instead of walking single file with Sasha in the middle, Sasha walked alongside Quinn while Naja fell into step beside Toby and practiced her English on him. For the first time in days, Toby seemed more like himself, less stiff and aloof. To pass the time, he showed Naja how to string her own bow, and Naja asked many questions about this new hunting method. Sasha wondered if it was the beginning of something good for Toby.
“Sasha, stop daydreaming and be careful,” said Quinn, taking her arm and steering her away from the edge of a ravine. She turned her attention back on Quinn and blushed. After that, she endeavored to pay better attention, hoping she looked more like a huntress than ever in her braids, toting her javelin—even if she was in danger of falling into holes in the ground.
“You seem rather quiet,” Quinn stated some time later. He razed down some tall grasses with his knife. “Daydreaming again?”
Ahead of them, in a large clearing, roamed a herd of giant hadrosaur with long, bony crests rising like backward crescents from their foreheads. Although they were strictly herbivorous, and weren’t especially dangerous (at least, according to the periodicals she’d read), she knew from past observation that they spooked as easily as horses. They would need to be on guard as they passed the giant beasts. It only took one hadrosaur to set off the whole group, and then they’d have a dangerous stampede on their hands. “I was thinking about the hadrosaur,” she said, pointing.
She mentioned the danger they presented, hoping to impress Quinn. He agreed they ought to make a wide berth around the creatures. Then she added the potential dangers of the Moja tribe that Naja had warned her about. What if the tribe followed them in an effort to take Naja back? Naja had said that her tribe had sacrificed so many red-hairs to their god that there were scarcely any left anymore. “We need to protect Naja, in case they come for her,” she told Quinn with absolute authority. “And ourselves. We should have a vigil stationed at night from now on. We need to be aware of our surroundings at all times.”
“I think you’re right,” Quinn said, sounding impressed. “But if the Moja come for Naja, don’t you think they would likely take me first?”
“If they took you, it would be terribly inconvenient.”
“How so?”
“Because then I would need to rescue you.”
“You would rescue me, Sasha?” he said, barely able to conceal a little smirk of amusement.
“Yes, of course,” she answered, jabbing at the open sky with her javelin. “I’m not afraid of anything!”
Thankfully, nothing untoward happened to them that day. Neither She nor the Moja put in an appearance. But dark storm clouds began rolling in later that day, darkening the sun and setting the air electric. It was just the beginning of the Storm Season, as Naja called i
t.
They decided to camp early in one of the caves, only just making it as the first rain began to fall, and the first forks of lighting cracked the slate grey skies. Quinn went seaside fishing along with Naja, leaving Sasha to tend to the cooking fire and keep it from going out in the rain. She watched the two of them disappear over a sand dune and felt a spark of irrational anger. She ought to be the one going with Quinn to catch fish! But Quinn and Naja were the best fishermen and could bring the most fish in the least amount of time before the storm rolled in. That left her and Toby to tend to the camp. She didn’t know why she should be angry about that, but she was.
Toby watched her but said little. She wished she could talk to him as she had in the old days, but something had changed between them. Something had shrunk, or grown, or made them different people. He seemed more at ease with Naja than anyone. She was both happy and sad about that.
Planet of Dinosaurs, The Complete Collection (Includes Planet of Dinosaurs, Sea of Serpents, & Valley of Dragons) Page 14
