“Are the leaves super shiny green?” I asked Jillian.
“Yup.” She nodded.
“I think I know where a bush is. Be back soon.”
Outside Talla’s hut, I grabbed Jason and told him about the bush at the end of Black Bay, the one I suspected was a deadleaf plant. Sure enough, it was a deadleaf orphan, growing out of place. According to Jason, they usually grew in clumps on the eastern side of the island.
The leaves smelled grassy when cut, but like Jillian warned, they oozed milky juice, making them hard to pack. On the other hand, the fruit smelled awful, and the odor intensified when plucked. The smell was overpowering, almost suffocating.
“I thought the fruit was poisonous,” I told Jason, swallowing repeatedly as Jason packed the fruit in a separate satchel.
“It is,” he said, sounding nasal as he breathed through his mouth. “But maybe we can use the island’s defenses to our own advantage.” Now he grinned. “Thad’s idea. We’re going to sow some seeds around the City. See what grows.”
Sacks full, we headed back. It was frustrating to be so close to the Arches and not visit, but Talla came first.
She was still unconscious.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about Talla’s team,” Jason told me and Thad as we hung our newly washed satchels by the Shack to dry. “A wolf attack is not a good sign.”
“And getting separated from your team is even worse,” Thad added, his voice grim.
A crashing noise echoed through the trees.
Thad spun in front of me and crouched, knife in hand. Jason raised his spear. I stood there, empty-handed, feeling helpless. What could I do, throw my sandal at the wolf?
A long moment later, Heesham stumbled out of the trees. Dirt streaked his face, arms, and clothes, and he was swearing. With a start, I realized it wasn’t dirt that coated his skin; it was dried blood.
“Talla,” Heesham gasped as he stormed closer. “Is she here?”
“Yeah.” Thad answered. Heesham’s relief was obvious. “What happened? Word is a wolf attacked. Was it a pack? Where’s Miguel, and Bart?”
I pressed on Thad’s arm. “Heesham,” I said gently. “Let’s get you something to drink, then you can talk.” Heesham looked ready to fall down, or fall apart. I’d never seen him like this, and it threw me.
Thad looked embarrassed. “My bad. Charley’s right. Are you hurt?”
“Nope. Not my blood.” Heesham looked even angrier.
I grabbed a water gourd, which Heesham emptied in a quick minute. Striding to the clearing, he plopped down on a rock—the same rock where Sabine had sat on my first morning here.
Then he leaned forward, his massive hands clenched. “Talla and I were getting firewood. Miguel and Bart were tracking a rabbit. Wehadn’t made good time. We were still near the rain forest, instead of where we’d planned to be that day. So we were hustling to restock fruit and game, getting ready to launch the next morning. Next thing I know, Bart’s flying at us, telling us to run. Says a giant monkey thing with a ghost face jumped Miguel, that it dropped from a tree and landed on Miguel’s shoulders, and that more animals came out of the trees and took Miguel down.”
Heesham swallowed. “I lit into him right then. I wasn’t buying his pack-of-monkeys story. There aren’t packs of anything on Nil, except us.
“I made him lead us back to where he said Miguel was attacked, but Miguel wasn’t there. Then Bart changed his story, kept insisting we couldn’t find Miguel because he was gone. Said a gate flashed and took Miguel and the monkey thing through it but he hadn’t told us because he didn’t think we would believe him because gates rarely flash in the rain forest.”
“So he lied,” I said.
Everyone jerked their heads to me.
“Sorry,” I said to Heesham, feeling rude, “but two things can’t take the same gate. Remember that girl? The one who died after an outbound zapped her?”
“Two people can’t go, but I don’t know about a person and animal.” Thad frowned.
“No, he lied,” Heesham said, his voice hard. “We started hunting in circles, spreading out, calling out to each other to stay in range. Then Bart stopped answering. Talla and I hooked back up, but Bart had disappeared. So had our food and maps.”
Everyone was silent, listening. The breeze had even slowed.
“Now it was just me and Talla. We kept looking, and next thing you know, we found a dead monkey. Big sucker, with white around its eyes and nose. It’d been stabbed.” He looked at us. “The monkeything with a white face that supposedly took Miguel through a gate was dead. And Miguel’s knife was stuck in its gut.
