“Have to havesomethingto be righteously upset about,” I agree as I close my eyes.
Sleep takes a long time coming. The night is just too quiet.
When I wake the next morning, Callie’s side of the floor is empty.
2
- Theodora-
I look for Callie everywhere. Not that there are many places to look. She’s not walking on the beach, and she’s not within thirty feet of the saucer. That means she’s not inside the carefully disguised barricades that Sprisk made, and that’s alarming.
I check the raptor carcass. Nothing left but bone and tiny scavengers that scurry away when they notice me. No sign of Callie. The dread hits me, heavy and sour.
It’snotlike her to just leave without a word. She would never do that. If she changed her mind and wanted to come with Cora after all, she’d just say so. My stomach turns cold.
Damn, I never noticed before how wide and empty the beach is. And how cold the air blows.
She could be out getting fruits or nuts, but why so early? We never start working before we’ve had a while to light the fire and eat something and chat while we wake up. I try to find herfootprints, but I was never a tracker, and the thick, tall grass around the saucer doesn’t show me anything useful.
I search through the saucer again and again, hoping she’s just found a new spot to sleep that I somehow missed the first time, despite the saucer not being that big. But she’s not in there.
Otis comes stalking, nearly impossible to spot despite his red fur because he makes incredible use of the terrain and the bushes, staying hidden until he’s ready to attack. He never pounces on me, but I can see that he wants to. His whole body is tense, tendons standing out on his legs and his freakishly long tail pointing straight backward. Those huge eyes stare right through me.
I tense up too. One day he will strike. I’m sure of it.
“Hi, Otis. Did you see Callie today?”
He stares at me for five more seconds. Then he blinks, and the tension is gone as he relaxes and proceeds to punch a loose leaf with one paw.
“No, huh? I’m sure you could track her if you wanted. But I don’t know how to ask you to.”
I throw some leftovers from last night’s dinner on the ground for him to enjoy, then go to find a piece of raw meat that I really should save for myself. I toss it on the ground, and Otis attacks that first. Cooked meat was never his favorite.
At noon, I give up. Callie has never been gone for this long. None of the girls have. Ever.
She must have followed them. Maybe she was awake for hours, worried that she’d made a mistake. Nighttime can be like that. And then she made her decision, realizing that the girls wouldget further ahead with each minute and that she really should get going without having to deal with my bullshit first.
I shake my head, nose clogging up. “No, that’s not it. You would never have done that. You would have told me.” But my voice isn’t steady when I say it.
I go back into the saucer and check her spot. When we were abducted from Earth, Callie and I had cell phones in our hands, and they came with us—until the space station, where the gray Vyrpy aliens took everything. So none of us had anything from Earth when we were dumped here. But Callie’s mug and wooden spoon are in their usual place. All the stuff Cora and Sprisk gave us is still here. If she left on purpose, she brought nothing with her.
Of course, there’s a chance that she answered the call of nature in the middle of the night and got lost in the woods. Maybe she was more drunk than I thought.
Sprisk warned us about making sounds in the jungle, which we never did anyway, because you instinctively feel that you don’t want any of the monsters to know you’re there.
But this I can’t stand. I go outside and funnel my hands in front of my mouth. “Callie!”
The yell sounds thin and weak against the constant roar from the surf.
Just as I’m about to call her name again, the jungle stirs.
It’s not Callie.
Something taller. Broader. Moving like it owns the ground.
I back off as liquid ice fills my veins. It’s not her. It’s a caveman.
He’s Sprisk’s size, so a good eight feet tall and nearly as wide. All muscle, of course. But this one doesn’t have the spikes that Sprisk does, and he doesn’t have the chameleon-like skin. This is how Cora described regular cavemen, with stripes and fangs and long iron swords. The stripes on this one are powder blue. His eyes are, too. I know that because he’s staring right at me.
