“I still had to go.” The words sound weak when I say them aloud. Not because they're untrue. Because they don't solve anything. I had to go. He had to go.
And somehow that was enough to pull us apart.
The jungle grows warmer as the morning wears on. The air hangs heavy beneath the canopy, and sweat slowly dampens my dress as I follow Clyde through a maze of roots and hanging vines.
The Plood move with their usual strange certainty. They never seem to hurry, yet they never seem to get lost either. Every so often one vanishes into the undergrowth, only for another to appear somewhere else a few minutes later.
I still have no idea how many of them there are.
“Do you even know where you're going?” I ask Clyde.
He glances back at me with those enormous black eyes and keeps walking. I sigh and step over a root. “I'm choosing to take that as a yes.”
At least one thing is clear. The Plood haven't forgotten the girls. They delivered the message. Somehow they found me. Somehow they found Vyrathion. And now they're leading me toward whoever carved those words into a piece of bark. That means somebody is alive. Somebody is waiting. The thought keeps me moving whenever the jungle seems determined to trip me, scratch me or cook me alive.
We cross a narrow stream and climb a muddy bank on the far side. The Plood spread out as they walk, forming a loose cloud around me. After a while I realize something has changed. The jungle has gone quiet.
I stop. A few nearby Plood stop as well.
The silence isn't complete. Water still trickles somewhere behind us. Leaves still move in the breeze high above. But all the living sounds have vanished. No insects. No distant calls. No rustling in the undergrowth.
My stomach tightens. “What is it?” I ask quietly.
Nobody answers. A branch snaps somewhere ahead. Another follows a second later. Something large is moving through the vegetation.
I feel my pulse jump. For one ridiculous instant I expect Vyrathion to emerge from the jungle. The thought appears so suddenly that it almost makes me laugh. Of course it isn't him.
The bushes part. A dinosaur steps into view.
It stands nearly twice my height at the shoulder. Mottled green and brown skin blend almost perfectly with the jungle around it, and its heavy jaws are lined with enough teeth to make every instinct in my body scream at me to run.
I don't run. Partly because I know that's a terrible idea. Partly because my legs have suddenly forgotten how.
The animal sees me immediately. Its head rises and our eyes meet. Around me, the Plood go completely still. Not one of them moves. Not one of them tries to flee.
The dinosaur takes a step forward. Then another.
I can hear my heartbeat in my ears.
The creature lowers its head slightly as if considering me with its yellow eyes. For several awful seconds I'm convinced this is themoment it charges. Instead its gaze slides past me and settles on the crowd of Plood surrounding us.
Its nostrils flare. The dinosaur studies them. One of the nearby Plood slowly turns its head toward the predator.
That is all. No threat display, no sound, no movement. The dinosaur simply stares back with its dead, reptilian eyes.
Several long seconds pass. Then, to my astonishment, the creature stays like that. It seems almost to have forgotten all about me.
Clyde and the Plood walk in a wide circle around the dino, and I follow, ready to bolt the moment that thing moves.
But it doesn’t. The jungle closes behind me and there are no sounds from behind me as I half-jog ahead.
Slowly the world resumes. Leaves rustle softly in the canopy. Small creatures move in the bushes and there’s the distant call of a different kind of dinosaur.
I finally remember to breathe. “What the hell was that?”
Clyde blinks at me.
I look from him to the other Plood and back again. A possibility occurs to me, and the more I think about it, the more sense it makes.
