I glance at the chief's hut. Every shelf. Every basket. Every wall. Filled with gold. The floor heaped with treasure. Immense riches. A hoard almost the same size as my old one, the one I can soon return to.
Warmth fills me and I find myself grinning.That’smore like it. That would be enough gold to help. More than enough. I could be the mightiest dragon on Xren! The mightiest dragon in space! I can change to my true, powerful form. And then…
“Revenge,” I snarl. “Revenge!”
“Sorry!” the old man whines. “It’s all true! I didn’t lie!”
I shove him away from me and send him falling flat on his face. “First gold. Then revenge! You! Plood!”
One of them comes scurrying to my side.
“Find out from him exactly where the gold cave is,” I command and point to the old man. “The exact location.”
The Plood waddles over.
I rub the gold on the knife. Too little, but soon there will be a real hoard. Likely raw gold, not worked. But if there’s enough of it, that doesn’t matter.
I turn and stride out the gate. Soon I will be whole again.
26
- Morgan-
The Plood walk ahead of us as we make our way up the inner wall of the crater, then squeeze through the inner opening.
I’m not happy about leaving Rosa and Sage behind, but they made their choice. There’s not much I can do to force them. And anyway, their choice may well have been the right one. There’s no guarantee that we’ll reach the Borok village in one piece, or even alive. If I had to place a bet, I’d bet heavily on us not making it, on us four being violently murdered by a dinosaur or one of the giant insects with venom stingers the size of chopsticks.
But we don’t have much of a choice. I can’t stay here, obviously, if they can’t even feed themselves. And life in the Borok tribe is genuinely better than here.
If by some miracle we reach the village, having three other girls there may relieve the marriage pressure on me, too. There will be four bachelorettes, and not just one.
And the thing about the saucer is at the back of my mind. I think we should take it and try to get to Earth. Before, I was alone with that sentiment because the other girls are so happy with their local husbands. But now, I have three others who also want to go home. They can’t really stop us.
“Can we take a rest?” Beth asks as we get the field of boulders on the outside of the crater. “We ate the last of the berries yesterday, and today there’s only been nuts. Not a lot of energy:”
“Sure,” I tell her. “We can take a breather.”
I look at the sun. Now I’m responsible for three more girls, I have to make sure we walk in the right direction. We can’t afford to walk in circles.
I wish I’d paid more attention when I walked with Vyrathion, but my mind was often occupied with other things than navigation. And the sun is hard to see from the jungle floor. But still I have some idea which way would be the right one.
The girls sink down among the boulders while I study the sun through a gap in the canopy. The jungle outside the crater feels different already. Inside, there were sheer stone walls everywhere around you, a sense of being enclosed. Out here, the world stretches away forever in every direction, but you can’t see it because the jungle is that dense.
Beth leans back against a rock and closes her eyes. Quinn is rubbing one ankle, while Abigail picks at the remains of a nut shell. They all look exhausted. The crater kept them alive, but only barely.
"I still can't believe there are other women," Abigail says quietly. "For a while I thought we were the only ones."
"You aren't," I assure her. "There are several in the Borok village. More than enough to make life interesting."
"What are they like?" Beth asks.
I find myself nearly smiling despite everything. "Complicated. Stubborn. Loud. Pretty much what you'd expect after trapping a bunch of Earth women on an alien planet for years."
That earns a few weak laughs.
The sound fades quickly.
Nobody mentions home. Nobody mentions the flying saucer. Nobody mentions the fact that all four of us are walking through one of the most dangerous jungles imaginable with nothing but a handful of Plood for protection.
