B. Larson - Creatures

But Jake was the first one into the cloth tunnel beyond.

“Two points blue team.”

My team all whooped and shuffled quickly to see what the next obstacle would be. The curtain dropped, and at first it looked like there was nothing. It was just a flat circular area. There were no obstacles in sight, just a big expanse black cloth. Of course, I knew right away, and sucked in air over my teeth. Everyone else made similar sounds of concern.

“What is it?” asked Beth.

Jake hesitated, knowing just as we did the dangers that lay before him.

“Holes,” I said, “there are holes out there. You can’t see them, but there are spots in that cloth surface that will cause you to fall right through into a pit.”

“Ah,” said Beth, nodding.

Jake hesitated, but Thomas didn’t. We got there about two seconds after Jake, didn’t bother looking for weak spots in the cloth, he simply started running around the left edge of the black circle. It was a good, but gutsy, strategy. Usually, the holes were in the middle to catch someone who simply scrambled across without expecting the trap.

Jake, seeing he was being left behind took another mighty leap. It looked to me as if he was deciding to simply vault across the entire obstacle as he had done with the tire swing. But this time, he didn’t quite make it all the way to the opposite ledge. His gamble failed just as Thomas’ did. They both found a pit hidden right before the opposite ledge. Neither one of them made it.

Thomas sailed into his hole, front paws first. For a moment. His tail and hind legs were still visible, he struggled, trying to catch hold of anything he could, but then down he went. A buzzer sounded. It was over. Thomas was out of the race.

At that moment, Jake was already in the air. He was coming down hard, his eyes bulging.

“Oh no,” said Beth.

In a desperate move, Jake shot out his tongue the last second, trying to find something to hold onto on the far side. He, like Thomas before him, shot down into a dark hole. From our point of view, he seemed to vanish into the floor. Briefly, his tongue attached to the steel tubing that held up the next ledge, but he couldn’t pull himself up with his tongue alone. His legs were caught up in the net set up at the bottom of the pit to catch people as they fell. He struggled for a few moments, but finally gave up. A buzzer sounded again.

There was a pause. Everyone looked to Urdo. She had been standing between the two obstacle courses watching both contestants carefully.

“Two points blue team,” Urdo said, after only a bare moment’s hesitation.

My teammates went wild with cheering.

“Same ruling as with Haley,” I said. “He touched the goal, so he won the points.”

“At least she’s fair,” said Beth.

Everyone was clapping me on the back as if I had done something. We were ahead, for the first time. Danny’s team on the other side look positively glum. This was a much better performance than anyone had expected from Jake.

When Jake got back to us, he had changed most of the way back into his normal self.

“Jake,” I said, “that was a good run.”

He grinned at me. His mouth was still huge.

The next three races didn’t go very well for our team. Billy insisted on running as an otter. Otters don’t do too well with tire swings… Juan could turn into a lizard, he looked sort of like an iguana, but he said he is actually a blue-belly lizard. He went with just the tail and the blue scaly belly, but when he got to the room with the holes in the floor, he found a new one. Samantha, went as a chicken, which is not as bad as it sounds. I mean a chicken can’t really fly, but with a lot of flapping and squawking and flying feathers, she was able to cross the tire swing obstacle easily. Unfortunately, even though she did make across the room full of holes, she found there was a heavy door other side. She pecked at it desperately, but could not make it through.

We were coming down to the last few races, and we were about five points behind. This is not an impossible lead to beat, but my team was starting to look glum.

“Run me now,” said Sarah.

“It’s not time yet,” I said. “You’re a finisher, Sarah. We need your speed to zip through all the obstacles at the very end and win it for us.”

“I know, I know,” she said. “But people need a win now. I’m fast, I can beat anything they put up against me now, that will get us six quick points. Two for each obstacle.”

“Yes, but there’s no way you are getting past that last heavy door. If we run you last, we will get eight or ten points, instead of six.”

“But first, someone has to make it that far, and open that door.”

“I know,” I said.

“I can do it,” said Beth.

Sarah and I looked at her doubtfully.

“Well, even if I can’t, you have to run me at some point anyway.”

I nodded. Beth smiled and trotted over to the tent, even though she didn’t need to change into anything.

Sarah and I exchanged glances. We were both thinking, both hoping, that this would not turn out too badly for Beth.

I thought perhaps that Danny was in a cruel mood, because he ran Andy against Beth, who was probably their best player. He could change into a gibbon, a type of monkey that is particularly good at obstacle courses. Determinedly, the two of them crouched down at the base of the balance beam, waiting for the horn to blow.

From the very start, Beth was horribly outmatched. Andy zoomed ahead of her, scampering up the balance beam, swinging across the tire swing with smooth grace and hopping over the treacherous holes so fast he made it all look easy. But Beth did not even try to race with him, she focused on simply getting across each of the obstacles. I nodded my head in appreciation as I watched her. She had no intention of winning two points for any of the obstacles, but if she could make it through each of them to at least get one point, she would be doing her part.

And so she did. She was still on the tire swing, carefully swinging back and forth to get momentum enough to leap to the final ledge, when Andy managed to force open the heavy door more than two full obstacles ahead of her.

We forgot about Beth for a moment. All of us shuffled down to see the new obstacle. There were gasps from the crowd. The next obstacle was one that we had hardly ever seen. It was called the dominoes. Large wooden blocks standing on end, sort of like pillars formed steppingstones across the room. Each was easily tipped over. If you did tip one over it would hit the next one, until they all went down and you found yourself in a heap on the floor. The trick was to hop from one domino to the next, quickly and lightly, so that you could make it across before they all fell down.

Andy, of course, was a monkey. He had no problem with this. He hopped and leapt lightly from domino to domino, and made it to the other side before the teetering dominoes in his wake could fall and knock the them all down in a chain reaction. There was a tunnel and then, the next curtain fell. I looked back, thinking of Beth. She had made it past the tire swing now and was carefully crossing the treacherous room full of holes feeling in front of her with her toes at each step to find a new trap. I nodded again, appreciating her approach, she was going to get at least one point for the first three rooms. If she could at least open that heavy door and make it to the domino room, Sarah could fly against the next contestant and get two points per room.

The last obstacle was revealed. There were cries of dismay when we saw it. I had halfway expected a flaming hoop, but this was something else, this was something that I had never seen before. I’ve heard of it, but never seen it. It looked just like a flaming hoop around a tight wire, but instead of flaming, it rippled with blue-white electricity. The hoop spiraled like a giant spring around the tight wire that went through the middle of it. The wire itself was thick and black, like TV cable.