Dragon Sleeping (The Dragon Circle Trilogy Book 1) (22 page)

“Formalities?” she encouraged. She still had the feeling that the prince was avoiding speaking about something.

“Only when you eat the enemy have you truly vanquished him,” he explained with that same smile. How could he smile when he talked about something like this? She wanted to shiver. It was almost as if the prince was trying to fool her somehow. But he had been trying to help her. She had to remind herself of that.

“You would only have to take a bite,” he continued, his voice soft and reasonable. “It could help you in a place like this. The People are fiercely loyal.”

“Are you going to stay for the meal?” she asked. She would feel so much better if he was here, but she had no right to insist.

The smile actually disappeared from his face. “I’m afraid—I’d rather not. If the People allow it, there are certain things I’d rather avoid.”

Mary Lou felt a rush of relief. No matter what the People had asked him to say, she knew the prince would understand. “So you feel it, too? The way they’re eating their enemy—it’s almost like cannibalism.”

“I’d never thought of that.” The prince seemed to grow paler still. “Actually, I’d like to avoid eating altogether. I don’t need to do that anymore, you know, eat or drink. And I don’t like to be around others who do. Sometimes it’s too painful to watch things that remind me that I was real.”

Too painful? She looked away from him, out over the tops of the trees. The leaves had turned a russet brown against the brilliant red of the setting sun. Maybe she didn’t understand the prince as well as she had thought. She would try to do better.

“You’re real to me,” she said quietly.

“The celebration is coming to you,” the prince’s voice called back to her over her shoulder, so soft it was almost a whisper.

She turned back to the encampment and saw the Chieftain striding toward her, a large bowl carried in each hand. Steam rose from the bowls into the cooling evening air. Mary Lou was all too sure what was in those bowls: the victor’s stew, full of what was left of the vanquished.

“I can’t,” she whispered to the prince as she turned back to him. “How can I tell—”

She stopped. The prince was gone.

She didn’t know what to do. She wished he wouldn’t disappear like that. Still, from what he had told her, his comings and goings weren’t entirely in his control. But who did control them? The People?

“Merrilu!” The Chieftain’s smile was so broad that his face looked like nothing but teeth. Before now, Mary Lou had never realized how sharp the People’s teeth were, sort of like a whole mouth full of fangs.

The leader of the People held the bowl under her nose. Mary Lou had expected the stew to smell terrible. Instead, the odor reminded her of meat loaf.

She wished the prince were still here. She wished anybody could be here to tell her what she should do. But the prince had already encouraged her to eat this stew. Just one bite, he had said. It was important to the People. And the People had protected her. She didn’t know how she could survive in this strange place without them.

Only one bite. That would be all she would have to take for the People to be happy. How different was this from all those times her mother had ordered her to clean her plate? If she could get past lima beans, she could eat anything.

The Chieftain handed her the bowl and a squat wooden utensil shaped like a broad spoon.

“Merrilu!” he cried.

“Merrilu! Merrilu! Merrilu!” the People called from the surrounding trees.

If she could just close her eyes and think of anything but those red- furred creatures. She smiled and nodded at the Chieftain, which seemed to please him no end. All the People called her name, over and over again.

Merrilumerrilumerrilu.

Her stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten in quite a while. The smell of the stew filled her nostrils. Her mouth was watering.

The Chieftain bowed before her, and then retreated, walking backward toward the rest of his tribe.

She looked down at the stew, scooped out a single piece of meat with her spoon. The piece was coated with thick brown gravy. She turned the spoon to her mouth.

Don’t think about it, just eat it.

Merrilumerrilumerrilu.

She opened her mouth and placed the stew on her tongue. The gravy was surprisingly pungent, spiced with something Mary Lou had never tasted before. The People were going wild around her, screaming her name ever more loudly and quickly.

Merrilumerrilumerrilumerrilumerrilumerrilu.

She took a deep breath and sank her teeth into the meat. It was hardly cooked at all. Sour juices spilled out over her tongue.

She gagged. She couldn’t have this thing in her mouth. She felt whatever was left in her stomach rise up in her throat.

She dropped the bowl, spitting out the barely chewed piece of meat. She was going to throw up. Whatever happened, she didn’t want the People to see that. It would be like spitting in their faces.

She had failed the initiation. She had let them down.

She ran to the edge of the platform. The People were still chanting.

Merrilumerrilumerrilu.

Hadn’t they seen what had happened? She wanted to hide, like she used to run to her room when her mother started to accuse her. But the camp was all one flat platform, completely open on this side. Maybe, she thought, if she found the place where she had climbed up, she could go down to someplace quieter among the trees.

She saw one of the swaying bridges off to her right. Why didn’t the People stop chanting her name? Maybe, if she could just step out onto the branch here, she could cross over to the trail through the trees without having to go back and face the People on the platform. She’d explain this to the prince, somehow. She just didn’t want to be here now.

She waved back to the People, hoping her gesture could somehow mean “I’m all right. But don’t follow me.” And she stepped from the platform out onto the thick tree limb.

Merrilumerrilumerrilu!

The People’s chant was growing closer. She looked over her shoulder and saw they were moving as a group, one great wave of creatures that would surround her and pull her back into their middle.

Couldn’t they understand that she wanted to be alone? She almost laughed at the thought. Without the help of the prince, she and the People didn’t understand each other at all.

Maybe there was some way she could show them that she wanted to be by herself, someplace quiet. Sign language, maybe, could tell them how upset she was. Or maybe they’d simply recognize the misery on her face. She turned around on the branch so that she could see the approaching tribe.

Her loafer slipped on the bark. Her shoes were never meant for climbing. She grabbed a small branch to steady herself. The new branch bent strangely as she shifted her weight. Her foot shifted under her. She felt as if she might slip down both sides of the limb and land on her rear end. She pushed her right foot toward the top of the broad limb, pulling again on the supporting branch to regain her balance.

Leaves ripped free in her hand as the branch snapped away from her.

She couldn’t keep her balance. Both her feet slid from the limb below her. She was falling.

Merrilumerrilu
. The People’s voices followed her down as she crashed into another mass of leaves immediately below. Another good- sized branch whipped into her stomach, knocking the breath from her. She grabbed at the branch as she fell again. She held on, gasping for air, as her body swung beneath her. But her fingers held no strength. They slid down the smooth bark, and she crashed, back-first this time, into another mass of leaves.

And she stopped.

She lay on a bed of branches, limbs from two or three trees intersecting so thickly that they easily supported her weight. She groaned. That meant she was getting her breath back. She shifted ever so slightly to get a better look at where she was. She could no longer hear the People call to her. She guessed she had fallen maybe thirty or forty feet, although the branches and leaves above her had broken her descent into a number of small falls rather than one big one. She was surprised that nothing felt broken or torn. She hated to think how many scratches and bruises she’d have.

Maybe, she thought, it would have been better to face the People, after all.

She laughed. It hurt a little. She still didn’t have much air in her lungs, and she might have bruised her ribs in the fall. She groaned a second time.

Still, all the groaning in the world wasn’t going to get her out of this. It was too quiet here; the only sounds her breathing and the wind. She wished now she could have heard the People’s nonstop chatter in the distance. She shifted again, ready to grab onto one of the thicker limbs if this set of branches gave way like the ones above.

Her resting place held as she turned herself over. There, perhaps ten feet farther down and ten feet to her right, were the worn bark and tied vines of one of the People’s tree trails.

She would have to crawl across her temporary resting place, then push herself through the jumble of branches to drop down to the trail. From there, she could climb back up to the platform, and safety.

Another noise, the howling of an animal, rose from below. She hoped it came from the ground and not the nearer trees. She wondered if the People would come looking for her, or if she had offended them so much that they wanted nothing more to do with the strange girl from Chestnut Circle.

She heard a second, fainter howl, as if in answer to the first. She remembered the setting sun above. The forest was growing darker around her. She should get over to the tree trail while she could still see her way.

She inched forward, trying to keep her weight above a large branch that pointed in the right direction. The mass of branches swayed but held. She grabbed a joint between the branches and pulled herself along, kicking with her legs like she was swimming. It was quiet again. Leaves rustled. Small branches snapped as she crawled toward her goal. But the howls were gone. Why did she feel like something was waiting for her down below?

There was a groaning sound, like a door with rusty hinges. One of the branches was giving way underneath her. The foliage that supported her was dropping away. Her feet still rested against a substantial branch. She pushed out with her legs, wrapping her arms around another sizable limb as a mass of branches and leaves fell from where she had been a second ago. She hung from the great tree branch, her feet dangling in the air.

She heard the limbs crash on the forest floor, some distance below, followed by a chorus of howls.

Something
was
waiting for her below.

But she had almost reached the trail. If she could simply swing herself forward, she could drop right on the vine-lined path and get out of this place.

She swung, feeling her sweat-damp fingers once again slipping over the too-smooth bark. She let go when her feet had swayed to their farthest forward point, and fell straight toward the trail, and the huge trunk the path wound around.

She yelled as she hit the trunk, her hands in front of her to break her fall.

Her cry was answered by a new series of howls. She looked down and was surprised that she could see the ground, maybe forty feet below. She hadn’t realized she had fallen so far.

She pushed herself away from the tree and cried out again when she tried to put her weight on her right foot. She must have twisted her ankle. At least, she hoped that was all it was. The howling cut off abruptly as a dark figure stepped from the shadows below to look up at her.

The thing below stood like a man, but looked more like a great, shaggy dog. It held a bowl in one of its paws. Mary Lou realized it was the same bowl that had held her stew.

“You feeeast withhout usss,” the creature said in a slow, grumbling voice. “Youu should inviite usss to the parrttyyy.”

“Too mucchh foood forrr succhh aa sscrawwnny creeeaturrre,” a second voice called from the darkness.

“Nooo neeeed tooo coook,” a third voice added. “Ggllladd tooo eeeat rrrraww.”

“Whyy donn’t youu comme dowwn annd joinn usss?” the creature with the bowl called up. “Wee cann havvve ourrr parrrtyy herrre.”

Mary Lou looked away from the creature below. Maybe, if she leaned against the tree trunks on her way, she could manage to climb back up to the People’s camp.

“Vverrry wwelll,” a new growl came from below. “Ifff youuu willl nnott commme tooo meee, I willl vvissssitt youuu.” Mary Lou glanced back down as she heard a rustling below. The creatures were moving across the ground, dim shapes in the gathering shadows. Their leader smiled up at her, its great teeth putting the tiny fangs of the People to shame. “Unnlliike ourrr ffourr-leggedd brrotherrrs, I cannn climmb a treee.”

“Merrilu!” the People called from somewhere overhead. “I’m here!” she called back. “Here!”

Two more of the doglike things had leapt into view. They seemed quite agitated.

“Theeyyy folllowww!” one of them barked. “Theeyyy folllowww!”

Mary Lou was startled by the fear she heard in that cry. Maybe these things would be scared away by the very thought of the Anno.

“She’s up here, hey?” another clear male voice called from down below.

“Wolves!” a second voice, this one female, added. “If you offer us any resistance, we will shoot you. And we are very good with our bows!”

These creatures were wolves? The things howled below her, six or seven voices joining in the chorus, as the leader stalked away, still on two legs. The other wolves that Mary Lou could see followed on all fours.

“Mary Lou!” a call came from below. She recognized that voice. Two figures came out of the shadows. One of them was Todd Jackson!

“Merrilu! Merrilu! Merrilu!” the People screamed as they streamed down around her.

“Todd!” she tried to call out over the frenzied calls of the Anno. But their calls of “Merrilu!” seemed to drown out everything. She turned to her would-be saviors. A moment ago, she couldn’t wait for them to arrive. Now she wished they would just shut up!

“Please!” she called to the People. “Could you stop your calling for a minute?”

But their cries of “Merrilu!” grew in intensity, as if it was some war chant. She saw that many of the Anno carried their bows, and a few even held spears taken from their enemies. Poison sticks.