The Transall Saga (3 page)

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 water.

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.

And food. It always came back to that. He had to eat.

He chewed on the end of a long piece of red grass. He wondered what his parents would do when they found out he was gone. He was their life. His mom was a member of the parents’ club at school. She never missed a function and volunteered for everything. And his dad ... his dad was so proud of his only son, he had established a college fund when Mark was a baby. He told all his friends that someday his son was going to be a doctor.

I could use a doctor right now, Mark thought. He closed his eyes and dreamed of going home.

chapter
8

Days turned into weeks. Mark didn’t know how many. He did his best not to think so much about home, his parents and the way things had been, and tried instead to concentrate on the strange new world around him.

His ribs had been slow to heal. For weeks his diet had consisted mainly of a variety of insects. He’d managed to find a kind of bland-tasting grub worm that lived in the flowering plants and a jumping red bug that reminded him of the grasshoppers back home, only larger. Once in a while he was lucky enough to find a discarded tree rock that one of the monkey-bears had dropped in the dark jungle.

Now he was making circles again. He still was wearing his bandage and was careful not to push himself too hard, but scouting was important to him. If he wanted to go home, the blue light had to be found.

On one of his rounds he’d discovered a swamp of quicksand not too far into the dark jungle. If it hadn’t been for a screaming bird that was stuck in it and fighting to get free, he might have stumbled into it himself.

Another time, on a round in the light jungle, he’d found a clear pool of water that came from an underground spring. Visiting the pool was a treat for him. It was his favorite part of every day. When he’d first seen his reflection in the pond it had startled him. The person looking up from the water was so skinny his bones stood out like a skeleton’s—a dirty skeleton with shaggy, matted hair.

If he stood just right and looked through an open patch of jungle, beyond the pool he could see the peaks of distant mountains. He’d made up his mind to go there when he was completely well.

The tree house was much different now. In between hunting for food and scouting, Mark had fashioned a wooden ladder by securing rungs to two tall branches with vines. He had also added a second story, a small platform that held his food supplies.

He’d also put a lot of effort into weapons. The best one so far was a spear. It was a long straight pole with a finely carved point. Now he was working on a bow using a strong stick and the shoestring from his boot. He still hadn’t made too much progress with it, and there didn’t seem to be much straight wood for arrows.

He had to hunt for food, and he’d need skins for clothing when his jeans wore out, but he didn’t seem to need weapons for defense. So far the animals in the area hadn’t posed much of a threat. The buffalo creatures came around, but because of their poor eyesight Mark could easily hide from them. They represented a lot of meat, of course, but running up to one of them and sticking a spear in it bordered on suicide. Other animals didn’t bother him, and except for occasional visits from Willie, the monkey-bears didn’t want anything to do with him. To them he was just another animal in the jungle.

Twice, Mark had killed fat-head lizards. He had used some of his match tips to start a fire and had roasted his catch on the end of a green limb. The meat was a little grainy but they were the most filling meals he’d had since coming to the red forest.

Life was simple. Find food, scout the countryside, try to make new things and sleep.

Life was simple. Except that sometimes in the still of the night he could hear the faint call of the Howling Thing. And once at the pool he’d seen tracks that resembled dog prints—only bigger.

chapter
9

Whenever he went out now Mark took the
spear. The sharpened point was four inches long, and it made him feel better to carry the weapon. His circles were getting larger and sometimes he was forced to spend the night away from his tree.

That day he had traveled quite a distance from home. Early that morning he had packed both socks and his boot with food, stopped by the pool for a long drink and then started out.

To anyone else the miles of red forest and never ending trees might have looked the same. But Mark was getting to be an expert at noticing differences. Earlier he had discovered a new meadow where the grass wasn’t quite so red and was short and dry. The trees weren’t as tall there either, and their leaves had an odd orange tint.

Mark continued on, listening for new sounds. His ears had become tuned to every noise in the jungle. He knew even small sounds like the breeze rippling through the grass.

Here, though, something was making him uncomfortable. It wasn’t so much what he heard as the sounds he didn’t hear. This part of the jungle was too still—not even the sound of birds.

Ahead of him a newly broken twig dangled from a larger branch. Mark stopped and searched the ground. There were no tracks but he could see where the grass had been pushed down by something that had recently passed through.

Raising his spear, Mark moved silently through the trees. Whatever was out there was close.

A horrible squeal broke the silence. Mark froze.

It was close. Somewhere in front of him.

He hustled up the nearest tree and waited.

Nothing came his way. Still, he waited. He’d learned not to take chances.

Finally the birds came back and the sounds in the forest returned to normal. Mark dropped to the ground and picked his way through the brush. Two hundred yards in front of him he saw another clearing with low grass. Staying in the cover of the trees, he listened. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

The clearing was empty. It was dry, and light red like the last one except for one dark splotch of color on the other side.

Mark skirted the outside, staying well hidden in the brush. The dark color intrigued him. He reached down and touched it.

Blood.

Mark ducked back in the trees. Any animal that had lost that much blood had to be big. And what disturbed him even more was that whatever killed it had managed to carry the whole thing off without leaving even a tiny piece of the carcass.

Get away. He had to get away. There was no time to lose.

He turned and was about to rush back around the clearing when he spotted something in a tree.

Quietly, almost reverently, he walked to it and pulled it from the trunk.

It was an arrow.

chapter
10

Mark couldn’t sleep. Before dawn, he was sitting on his mat in the tree house turning the arrow over and over in his hands. It had colorful black and red feathers from birds he’d never seen. The shaft was painted with a black zigzag design, and the point was made of a sharp, chiseled rock skillfully attached with a piece of water-shrunken leather.

Finding the arrow changed everything. It meant that he was not alone in this place. There were other beings here who could think and hunt and make weapons.

Mark considered his options. Maybe it would be safer to avoid them and move deeper into the dark jungle. They would never find him there. But what about the blue light? He couldn’t stop searching for it. It was the only link to home and his mother and father.

Spontaneously his mind conjured up smells from the barbecue his dad had cooked in their backyard the day before Mark left to go on his hike. He remembered how comical his father had looked in the chef’s hat, which kept sliding down over his ears. The way his mother had kept stealing glances at Mark told him she was worried. She had pretended to be happy, but he could tell.

All that seemed like a hundred years ago. What would they think if they could see him now, ragged and dirty, with thick, tough calluses on the bottoms of his feet? His mother would be shocked. Now he behaved and thought more like an animal than a human, sneaking around the forest. Doing his best to survive.

Willie climbed down from the top branches and sat beside him. Mark stroked the monkey-bear’s soft white fur. "What should I do, boy? For all I know, these people, if they are people, could be a worse threat than the Howling Thing."

Still holding the arrow, Mark reached for his homemade bow and climbed down from the tree. He wouldn’t think about them now. If nothing else, he had a new weapon. He would study the arrow and design more like it.

The first time he tried to shoot it, his string was too loose and the arrow just plopped into the dirt about twenty feet away. The second time, after he had pulled the shoestring taut on the bow, it flew in an arc across the meadow.

He ran after it. This is so great. On his trip to the pool that morning he would gather any small rocks he could find to use as tips. Then he’d come back early from his scouting trip and hunt for feathers. He shot the arrow again. This time he hit the bush he was aiming at dead center.

He retrieved the arrow and went back to his tree to pack a small supply of food for his trip. Along with his tree rocks and his sock of edible insects, he took a long strip of lizard jerky. He’d discovered that if he hung the thin pieces of meat over a limb to dry, he could take them with him on his travels and they wouldn’t spoil.

Proudly he reached for his spear. Today he would have two weapons.

But what he needed was a quiver to hold his new arrow. He jammed the tree rocks and jerky in his boot so one sock would be free. Then he tore holes, one on each side near the top of the sock, and tied on a long piece of his old bandage as a strap. He placed the arrow gently in the sock and slung the bow and quiver over his shoulder.

As usual he went to the pool first. He looked for rocks but there weren’t many, and they were too smooth and round to be used for arrowheads.

He studied the arrow again. The shiny rock used for the tip was different from any in the area. That meant that the owner of his arrow didn’t live around here. He must have come to this part of the jungle on a hunting trip from some other part of the planet.

Mark looked at the mountains. Maybe the arrow people came from there. Suddenly he made up his mind. He wanted to find these people or aliens or whatever they were. Anybody would be better than being alone. That day, instead of circling, he would scout in a straight line.

That morning he had been worried about whoever had left the arrow. Now he was curious, almost desperate, to find out more about them.