Glowly's Arc

Chapter 4 of 16

Glowly wiped the blood from her palms and looked at the jungle behind them. Both rafts were gone. To cut new vines she needed the thick tangles that grew inland, past the tree line. She stood. "We need more vines. Come on, before the tide turns." Nova hopped up and followed, her big coat dragging on the mud. They pushed into the green. Thorns snagged Glowly's sleeves. She reached for a low vine and yanked. It tore free with a wet snap. "Faster," Nova said. She scrambled up a slick trunk like it was a circus rope, balanced on a branch, and cut a high coil no one could have reached from the ground. She dropped it at Glowly's feet and grinned. "Chalk hands. I don't slip." They worked until their arms were full. Then a low growl came from the shadows. Glowly froze. A cat slid out of the ferns, taller than a dog, its dark fur marked with pale stripes. Its yellow eyes fixed on them. It stepped closer, slow and silent. "Don't run," Glowly whispered. Running would end them. The cat crouched to spring. Something moved between Glowly's boots. A small wolf pup pushed forward, gray and black, smoke curling off its fur. It had trailed her since the jungle's edge, and she had not stopped it. Now it planted its paws in the mud and bared tiny teeth. It looked ridiculous, half the cat's size. But it did not back down. The striped cat paused. The pup snarled, high and furious. Glowly used the moment. She swept up a fallen branch and swung it hard, shouting. Nova dropped from the trunk beside her, screaming and waving her arms, her coat flaring wide. The cat flinched at the noise and the sudden size of them. It turned and vanished into the ferns. Glowly's heart slammed. The pup trotted back and pressed against her leg, shivering. "Grab the vines," Glowly said. "Now." They ran back to the bank with all they could carry. Glowly knelt and lashed the coils together, tighter than before. Nova pulled each knot square with her chalky fingers. The pup watched, ears up. When the water began to climb the drowned rocks again, the raft was done and it held. They pushed off. The new raft rode low but steady. Glowly poled while Nova leaned into the current, and the pup sat at the front, ears flat against the wind. The far shore grew closer. Glowly could see it now, dark against the sky, and beyond it the drowned steps her father had marked. The raft grated onto solid ground. Glowly stepped off onto the southern shore for the first time. She had crossed the flats. But the water ahead ran deeper and faster here, and something long and green watched them from the shallows, its ridged spine breaking the surface.