New Lands (THE CHRONICLES OF EGG) (23 page)

“SHHH
…”

I heard Millicent’s voice in my ear, floating above the fog.

“Shhh…”

I was shivering and wet, and the pain was like a burning rod running through my gut.

I opened my eyes. It was night. I couldn’t see a thing. But I could feel Millicent lying beside me, her body pressed against my back, one arm moving rapidly across my chest, trying to keep me warm.

“Shhh….”

She wanted me to be quiet.

I didn’t even know I’d been making noise.

I shut my eyes again. I just wanted the pain to stop.

I OPENED MY EYES.
It was light now. I could hear the sound of the stream.

I was alone. There was a blanket on me. I couldn’t move. Or didn’t want to. I wasn’t sure which.

I was still shivering. The pain was different now. Deeper and heavier. And it was spreading. Like it was swallowing me.

I didn’t want to be alone. I tried to raise my head to look around, but it took too much effort.

In the corner of my eye, there was a tree.

Something big and red was in the tree.

The thing that was red moved.

I tried to shift a little to get a better look at it. It hurt just to move my eyeballs.

The red thing was a bird. Huge and terrible, with a long, sharp yellow beak.

It was staring at me.

Then it swiveled its head away, looking back over its shoulder.

It unfolded its giant wings and flapped off.

I heard footsteps.

They grew louder. Someone dropped to their knees in front of me.

It was Kira. She was holding something green and dank-smelling in front of my nose.

“Can you eat this?”

The smell made me retch.

“Please.”

She held it in front of my mouth. I opened it and let her stuff a piece inside.

I tried to chew. I gagged.

She had more of the stuff. And water in a skin. She gave me both.

I threw it all up.

She stood up fast. Then I felt her pull me from behind, moving me away from the sick I’d left on the ground. It hurt to be moved like that, and right away, the cold shot through me and I started to shiver. I felt her adjust the blanket.

It was so cold.

More footsteps.

“How is he?”

“I gave him this.”

“Ain’t it. Too green. Gotta be more blue.”

“Did you find anything?”

“Nah. Gonna go lower.”

“That way.”

“Ye’ll stay with ’im?”

“I should look also. There’s not much time.”

Then they were gone, and I was alone again.

“C’MON!”

“Please!”

“Egg, you’ve
got
to!”

They were begging me to do something, but I couldn’t understand what. Their voices sounded like they were under water.

Something kept brushing against my lips. I shook it off.

I just wanted to be left alone.

Someone pulled my jaw down, forcing my mouth open. Then they stuffed something inside and pressed my mouth shut.

I wouldn’t chew.

They moved my jaw for me.

I retched.

They held my jaw shut.

“Hold it in. Please!”

“Please, Egg!”

I tried. I even managed to swallow it.

Then I threw it all up.

We did the whole thing over again.

Then again.

Finally, I kept it down.

They gave me water, and I slept.

I woke a little before dawn, just as the forest birds were beginning to stir. The pain was gone and the fever had finally broken—under the blanket, my clothes were damp with sweat, but I wasn’t shivering, or even all that cold.

Lying on my side, I didn’t see anyone in front of me, but I
could feel a body through the blanket, nestled against my back. I rolled over. It was Millicent. She was sharing the second blanket with Guts and Kira, who were huddled beside her.

Millicent stirred. She smiled at me, then nodded her head in the direction of a water skin just above my head.

“It’s okay to drink?”

“It is now. You got the cure.”

I got up on my elbows and drank from the skin. She took it from me and drank some herself.

“Did you get sick, too?”

“Just a bit. Not like you and Guts. I took the cure before I had any water.”

“How’d you get it?”

“It grows down in the valley. On the bark of some of the trees. Took some doing to find it.”

She reached out and combed back the hair on my forehead with her fingers. “Try to sleep some more.”

I closed my eyes and drifted off again.

SOMETHING PRODDED ME
in the head, startling me awake.

“Da lata.”

It was a man’s voice, deep and rough. I opened my eyes to see a pair of copper-skinned legs right in front of me, the calf muscles thick and ropy. I followed his legs upward with my eyes.

He wore just a loincloth on his lower half. A thin rope circled his waist, a knife dangling from it in a sheath. The rest of him was draped in a jaguar skin, complete with a hood made of the animal’s head, its upper teeth sticking out above his painted face.

The black hole of his rifle barrel looked straight down at me.

He lifted his bare foot and shoved me in the forehead with his heel.

“Da lata!”

I stumbled to my feet along with Guts and the girls. Half a dozen warriors with rifles surrounded us. They’d already taken all our weapons except Guts’s hook.

Soon enough, they had that, too.

O
ne of the Moku warriors barked an order.

“Put your hands on your heads,” Kira translated as she raised her arms. We all copied her except Guts. Bright red blood streamed from his mouth, where he’d been clocked with a rifle butt for not giving up his hook fast enough.

“Nuts to that,” he spat, along with a fair amount of blood.

“Don’t be stupid. They’ll shoot you.”

If it had been anyone but Kira telling him, he probably wouldn’t have done it. But he put his arms up, grabbing his stump with his good hand to hold it over his head.

The Moku who must have been their leader—he looked older than the others, had thick scars across both cheeks, and was doing all the talking—gave an order to the man next to him. The man knelt down and began to empty the contents of Kira’s pack onto one of our blankets.

As he did, the leader stepped over to stand in front of Kira.

“Da gi Okalu?”
His voice was sharp and cruel.

“Ke, Okalu.”
Her voice was flat, but she stared back at him with hate in her eyes.

The leader took a step back and handed his rifle to one of the others.

Then he drew a black stone knife from a sheath at his waist.

My heart started thumping hard in my chest. I turned my shoulders toward Kira, the muscles tensing in my arms and legs. On the other side of her, I saw Guts lower his head like a bull about to charge.

The other warriors raised their rifles a little higher, ready to shoot any of us if we moved to help her.

Just then, the warrior searching Kira’s pack spoke up. Everyone turned to look at him.

He was holding up the firebird necklace.

The leader’s eyes widened in surprise. He lowered the knife.

Then he took the necklace. He held it up in front of Kira as he asked her a question.

She answered. This time—even as he faced her with a knife in his hand—she couldn’t quite get the hate out of her voice.

The leader glared at her for a long moment. Then he lowered his eyes, putting the knife back in its sheath so he could examine the necklace with both hands.

He traded a few words with the man who was searching Kira’s pack.

After that, he asked Kira a series of questions. At first, her voice rose at the end of her sentences, like she didn’t quite understand what he was asking her. But pretty soon, her tone turned flat again.

Finally, the leader reached some kind of conclusion. He carefully put the necklace in a small leather sack that hung from a cord around his waist. Then he issued several orders to his men. Two warriors with machetes headed off into the trees while the others herded us into a tight cluster and sat us down.

Then they ate our food as they kept their rifles trained on us.

“What’s happening?” Millicent whispered to Kira.

Kira shook her head. She looked a little bewildered. “Possibly I don’t understand Moku. But I think he believes we fell from the sky.”

“That’s crazy.” Guts had his mouth pressed to the tail of his shirt, sopping the blood.

“Yes. But it stopped him cutting my heart out. So I think it is better if he believes it.”

The leader barked at us, gesturing with his knife. We didn’t need a translator to understand we had to quit talking.

HALF AN HOUR LATER,
the two warriors returned with a ten-foot length of tree trunk, newly cut, its branches hacked off. The Moku stood us up in a line, placed the trunk across our right shoulders, and used long strips cut from one of our blankets to tie us to the trunk by the wrists.

Then they marched us straight downhill. It was a steep slope with a lot of brush, and tied together like that, it was hard going. Guts was in the lead, and I was last, just behind Millicent. Without our hands free to keep our balance, we were constantly pitching over, and whenever someone fell, they dragged the others down with them.