“There’s a lot of them,” she says.
I wipe my nose. “They’re harmless. Well, these ones are.” I get the roll of bark out of my dress and hold it up. “Are you one of these? Need help urgently?”
The girl comes closer, still holding her spear in a ready position. “Yeah. I’m Sage.”
“Morgan. Where are the others?”
“In the camp,” Sage says. “Are you alone?”
I look at the dozens of Plood around me. “Pretty much. I mean, right now, I am. But there’s a lot more girls in the tribe I came from. They’re safe. I can take you there if you want.”
The girl looks me up and down. “How are they safe? Is it a caveman tribe they live with?”
I find that I’m not a big fan of her tone. But in my state of mind, I’d be offended by a children’s Christmas choir. “Being safe means something else here than in Ohio, Sage.”
“Uh-huh.”
We look at each other for a second.
“You saw me break down just now,” I address the T. Rex in the cave, the thing we’re both thinking about. “That was about something else. Not about the tribe I come from.”
“You sounded pretty sad.”
“And I am.” I shrug, feeling too tired for this. “So are we going to just stand here?”
She doesn’t move. “How far away is that tribe of yours?”
I tilt my head to the side. “Pretty far, I think. A few days’ walk. How did you survive here?”
“We were dumped in a valley,” Sage says. “With cliffs on every side. There weren’t any cavemen. Or dinosaurs. Until about a year ago.”
“What happened then?”
She finally lowers her spear. “Cavemen came. Well, there was just one. He… actually, let’s go and see the others. Do these haveto come with us? I mean, all of them? We’re fine with one or two. But they have this mind-reading thing going on.”
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I’ll try.”
I look at Clyde. “You can come along, but nobody else. Okay?” In my mind I form the image of just Sage, Clyde and me while the others stay back. It’s a bit of a challenge.
“We’ll see if it works,” I say and straighten my dress. “We ready?”
I follow Sage as she makes her way through the undergrowth. There’s a fair amouny of ducking under branches and vines, and after a while we have to squeeze past boulders and move through stone arches until we’re in an irregular tunnel that consists of huge rocks.
“This is why nobody bothered us for so long,” Sage says as she squeezes through between two boulders. There’s just barely enough room for Sage, and it looks so narrow that I stop.
“I’m worried I’ll get stuck,” I tell her. My voice echoes hollowly from the rock ceiling.
“Bend your knees a little,” Sage says from the other side. “Suck your tummy in. Don’t breathe until you’re through.”
Both of the rocks have sharp protrusions that almost meet in the middle at waist height, but there’s maybe eight inches of room between them.
Well, the only way past is through.
The rock behind me scrapes along the small of my back and the one in front does unpleasant things to my internal organs, but it’s not as bad as I feared. I slip through in a half second.
“You’ll be bruised tomorrow,” Sage says. “But cavemen can’t pass through.”
Neither can dragons,I think to myself. A sharp barb hits me right in the heart.Damn.Meeting Sage took my mind off him for a moment.
