Xavier's Arc

Chapter 5 of 21

The thing came out of the trees on four heavy legs, wider than the tiger, its jaws already open. Xavier's heart slammed. The tiger under him spun and bolted along the tree line. Xavier gripped the red fur and held on. Berry shouted from the reeds behind him, "Stay on the hard ground, boy! Follow the moss!" But Xavier didn't know this ground. He had tracked the tiger for weeks, yet always on foot, always slow. At this speed the swamp was a blur of dark water and darker mud. The predator crashed after them. Its breath was loud and close. Xavier squeezed his knees and turned the tiger left, toward a stretch that looked solid. He was wrong. The front legs plunged. Mud swallowed them to the shoulder, and Xavier pitched forward into cold, sucking bog. It closed over his chest. The tiger thrashed beside him, sinking, roaring, its head straining up. He knew this. He had drowned in this same bog once and lived. Blue flower roots. Xavier reached, arm dragging through the muck, and his fingers found a thick clump of stems near the moss edge. Blue petals, gold at the rims, bright even in the dark. He hooked the roots hard. They held. Behind them the big predator hit the same soft ground and bogged down too, bellowing, thrashing worse than the tiger. Its weight worked against it. It sank fast. Xavier hauled on the roots. He pulled his own chest free, then wrapped both arms around the tiger's neck and pulled with everything he had. "Come on," he gasped. "Come on, get up." The tiger scrabbled, found the root clump with a front paw, and lunged. Together they dragged onto the moss and collapsed on solid ground. The predator did not follow. It sank to its neck, then its snout, then went under. The bog closed flat and quiet. Xavier lay on his back, chest heaving, mud in his mouth. The tiger pressed against his side, shaking. Berry came through the reeds, slow, his gray sweater black with swamp water. He crouched and looked at the flat mud where the hunter had gone down. He didn't smile. "You learned the ground the hard way," he said. "You'll learn it faster now, or the next one takes you both." Xavier sat up. He set a hand on the tiger's wet shoulder, and it let him. They had fallen together and climbed out together. That was new. But Berry was right, and Xavier knew it. The bond had saved them, and the bond had drawn the thing here in the first place. He looked at the tree line. Somewhere in it, more were coming, pulled by the same scent. He could ride now. He could pull them both from the mud. He still could not tell hard ground from soft at a gallop. Until he could, every ride was a fall waiting under him.