Talisman of El (17 page)

‘It’s probably those things from the cave,’ Richmond said. Charlie’s blood ran cold. From the volume of the sound, he could tell that whatever had caused the roar wasn’t far behind.

They were about to head off when they heard a dull thud of footsteps and glanced in its direction.

They saw a beautiful reddish-brown stag the size of a grizzly bear charging towards them. It was running so fast it didn’t seem as if it had any intentions of stopping; but then it staggered, hurtled forward, and crashed, skidding a few feet away from them.

‘Oh no.’ Alex made a move towards it, but Derkein stopped her.

The trio watched as he walked over to the stag, the pocketknife held firmly in his hand. They saw deep wounds beneath the animal’s blood-soaked fur, its stomach rising and falling slower and slower as it waited for death. Apart from the odd bird and squirrel, the stag was the largest animal they had seen since their encounter with the cave creatures. Charlie knew the monstrous sound they had heard moments before had not been the sound of a stag, and he wondered if the others were thinking the same thing.

Derkein turned to them, and a look came into his eyes – so they were all set for what he was prepared to do. ‘You go ahead,’ he said to them.

Charlie looked at Alex, who had a slight shimmer in her eyes; she looked like she was about to cry. The trio turned and walked off.

Charlie glanced round and saw Derkein kneeling beside the stag, stroking its head. He averted his eyes. Even though he knew what was coming, he was still unprepared for the overwhelming feeling of sadness that overcame him when an agonizing wail ripped through the air.

Alex stopped but didn’t turn round. Richmond touched her arm, and in a reassuring voice, he said, ‘It’s in heaven now.’ A faint smile creased her lips, and she looked at Charlie. ‘I don’t like this place.’

‘Yeah, it gives me the creeps,’ he agreed. He looked back at Derkein, who was making his way towards them.

‘You don’t think we’ll really be stuck here, do you?’ Alex asked.

Charlie was about to reply when a movement at the corner of his eyes caught his attention. He turned his head and was stunned to see a boy, maybe ten, eleven, squatting on a tree branch, gazing at them with inquisitive eyes. He had short, spiky, red hair, wearing black tattered trousers, a maroon sleeveless vest, and half-finger, black gloves. Charlie’s gaze dropped to the object in the boy’s hand.

‘That’s my bag,’ he muttered under his breath. The boy looked directly at him, his expression shocked. If ever there were a reaction Charlie would have expected from an Arcadian, it was not that.

A loud roar, like the one they had heard before, ripped through the silent forest, and Charlie’s gaze shifted from the boy to Derkein, who had stopped about twenty feet away from them, staring to the east with a frightened look on his face. Derkein turned his head towards the trio and met Charlie’s eyes. ‘Don’t move,’ he mouthed. When he looked away, Charlie followed his gaze and was slightly dazed at what he saw. Between the trees, something was moving towards them.

At first, it looked like one of the trees had come to life for the object had rough, brown skin like a tree bark, but as it got closer, he saw that it wasn’t covered in bark; it was covered in scales. The two things sticking out of its sides weren’t branches. They were wings.

‘What is that?’ Alex asked. She and Richmond were also staring at the animal, which waddled from side to side, swerving in and out of the trees, as if intoxicated. Although the creature was a good distance away from the trio, Charlie could still hear the scraping of its wings as they dragged along the ground.

Then its head came into view. First, they saw sharp, white fangs, and then huge, black eyes fixed on them.

No one moved.

‘What do we do?’ whispered Richmond, his voice shaky. Charlie stared at the creature whose oblong head was swivelling from side to side, as if it was as curious of them as they were of it. ‘Maybe if we just stay still –’

The beast let out a loud wail and charged towards them. ‘Run!’ Derkein shouted.

The trio bolted.

As they sprinted through the forest, Charlie heard Derkein shouting some way behind them, but another noise grabbed his attention: the sound of flapping wings. Glancing around, he saw the beast in the sky, its wings widespread as it swooped towards them. ‘Duck,’ he yelled.

Alex was the first to hit the ground, and then Charlie went down. He saw Richmond’s legs collapse, but they barely touched the ground when a loud cry erupted.

Charlie looked up and saw the beast hovering above Richmond, its clawed feet gripping his shoulders. With its arms attached to its wings, it looked like a cross between a pterodactyl and a dragon. As the beast flapped its wings and took off with Richmond, who was screaming at the top of his lungs, Charlie pushed himself off the ground and lunged forward, grabbing hold of Richmond’s legs in an attempt to wrench him free.

Charlie felt his feet leave the ground, and he tightened his grip on Richmond as the beast took off with them. He heard Derkein and Alex screaming after them.

The beast lurched as it tried to climb higher, but the weight of the two boys kept it from soaring off into the sky. The boys screamed as they came within inches of a tree. They must have been about thirty feet above the ground. Charlie clung onto Richmond for dear life. He hoped both their weight would tire the beast so it would release Richmond, but it seemed eager to hold onto its prey.

Charlie’s arms began to ache, and he felt his grip weakening, but he was determined to hang on.

Suddenly, the beast cried out and plunged towards the earth. It spun and rocked uncontrollably, dropping lower and lower until it crashed into a tree branch, releasing its grip on Richmond.

The boys hurled forward and crashed to the ground. Charlie lay on his back for a few seconds, staring at the sunlight streaming through the canopy of leaves above him.

The only sounds he could hear were the wails of a tortured beast, running water, and his heartbeat. He raised his head and looked at Richmond, who was lying on his stomach. ‘You okay?’

Richmond nodded. ‘I think so.’

Charlie saw the beast thrashing about on the ground not far from them. The top half of its right wing appeared charred.

Charlie got to his feet. He could neither see nor hear Derkein or Alex, and with everything in the forest looking similar, he had no idea which direction they had come from. Hearing Richmond wince, he glanced at him and saw him hobbling on one foot. Charlie went over and supported him.

‘Where are we?’ Richmond asked, his voice dripping with pain.

‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ Charlie said. He and Richmond started off, hoping they were heading back to where they had left Derkein and Alex.

They walked for ten minutes – the cry of the beast like a mere whisper in the wind – before coming to a stop. The sound of running water got louder the farther they walked. ‘This isn’t right,’ Charlie said. ‘I don’t remember hearing running water where we were before. We must be going the wrong way.’

‘Please tell me we’re not going back,’ Richmond pleaded. Charlie didn’t get to respond as a familiar noise erupted in the distance. They turned round and saw the beast hurtling towards them at full speed. The boys quickened their pace. Soon, they came upon a river. They stared down at the wild rapids that swelled and dipped, exposing and hiding boulders. Hearing the wail of the beast, they turned around and saw it staggering slightly as it maintained its course behind them.

They hurried along the bank.

‘We might have to jump,’ Charlie suggested.

‘No way am I jumping!’ squealed Richmond.

Charlie glanced back at the beast. It was only a matter of seconds before they became dinner. Just then, an idea popped into his head, and he stopped.

‘What are you doing?’ Richmond asked, panicked. ‘You ever played dodge ball?’

Richmond blinked. ‘What?’

‘We can’t outrun it, so we have to dodge it – make it go overboard.’

‘But what if it stops?’

Of course, there was a good chance it would stop, but Charlie couldn’t think about that. The beast charged straight at them.

‘You go left, I go right,’ Charlie instructed. ‘Ready?’ ‘No,’ Richmond cried.

Just as they were about to dive out of the way, a blaze of fire rose up from behind them. It was in the form of a phoenix, its wings spread wide as it hovered above them.

The phoenix firebird charged at the beast, which roared in pain.

Over the noise, the boyscould just about make out Derkein and Alex’s voices in the distance. They tried to make a run for it, but the creatures were tussling everywhere.

Finally, seeing a clearing before them, they made a move. Almost immediately, they stopped as the beast tumbled before them, its wings fully extended. As it swivelled around, Charlie heard a thump as its left wing struck Richmond.

Then he felt a crushing blow to his chest that sent him flying backwards and over the bank.

The cold torrents pinched him all over as the river swallowed him. He kicked his way to the surface, water gushing into his mouth as he fought for air. The river knocked him into a rock, and he caught hold of a branch dangling from the bank. Coughing and spluttering, he caught sight of Richmond floating towards him. With one arm outstretched, he grabbed hold of Richmond as he swept by.

As Charlie clung to the branch, the water beating hard against them, he thought about Derkein. The last thing he wanted was to give him reasons to turn back and head home, but if they survived through this, he had no doubt that was what Derkein –

A loud crack snapped him out of his thoughts, and he looked up. Little by little, the branch started to break. Charlie’s eyes opened wide with fear. Within seconds, the branch snapped, and the river swept them away.

Richmond slipped from his grip as they drifted downstream.

Charlie fought against the flow, trying to get to him, but the current grabbed him, spun him around, and slammed him into another rock. He let out a cry and gripped his arm. The current peaked, almost tossing him into the air before his bruised frame rammed into yet another rock, and he went under.

The river turned him repeatedly, suffocating him as water filled his lungs. The cold waves rendered him stiff, numbing the pain in his body.

He had no strength against the water. He longed to sleep. A rainbow of light flashed before him; and then there was no more river …

Blast from the Past 

A FLASH OF PAIN woke Charlie, sharp as a blade. He opened his eyes and saw a thick canopy of trees above him. He felt more than one pain: the stabbing pain in his right arm, the throbbing left temporal pain, and the pain in his entire body where the cold waves had used him as a hockey puck.

Everything came rushing back: the beast, the phoenix firebird, the river ….
Richmond!

‘He’s awake,’ he heard Alex say. He watched as she tossed wood into the fire near him. Relief flooded through him when he saw Richmond – wrapped in a blue blanket and eating what looked like black grapes, except they were the size of apples– sitting on a log beside Derkein on the other side of the fire. Looking up at the tree above him, he saw a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt hanging over the fire on a stick supported by two branches. When he tried to move, which was a mistake as any movement was a fuel for pain, he felt something soft enclosed around him.

‘What am I wrapped in?’ he asked in a husky voice. Moving wasn’t the only thing that caused him pain. Every word he spoke made his eyes sting.

‘It’s a blanket,’ Richmond said. ‘It was lying next to you when we got here.’

Charlie let his gaze drift over the dark forest. The trees looked different, the surrounding denser than he remembered. ‘Where is here?’ he asked.

‘Why don’t you tell us?’ Derkein sounded angry. ‘What were you thinking? Do you have any idea how worried we were?’

‘What are you talking about?’ Charlie tried to move but to no success.

‘I’m talking about you running off. It was by some miracle that we found a log lying across the river. It took us two hours to find you. When I saw you lying there, I thought …’ Derkein sighed in frustration.