D. MacHale - Black Water

“We gotta do something!” I shouted.

“Like what?” Boon answered casually. “It’s okay, Pendragon. This happens all the time.”

It was horrible. Maybe Boon was used to seeing humans dragged off to a gruesome death at the hands of a hungry lizard, but this was alien to me. I’d never seen anything like this on the Discovery Channel.

“But he’s going to die!” I shouted.

“That’s how it works,” Boon said patiently. “Survival of the fittest.”

Even though we were high overhead, I could smell the deadly-sick odor come from the hungry tang. It was getting ready to feed. The human grabbed at the ground, digging its fingers in, desperately trying to pull away. It was futile. The other humans kept running. The cats, too. This guy was left to die. My stomach turned.

Then I saw a black shadow flash back into the clearing. One oFthe cats had returned. It ran toward the tang on all fours and stood up on its back two feet.

“Kasha!” Boon exclaimed.

“Who?”

“She’s a friend of mine,” he answered. “And she hates tangs.”

The cat Boon called Kasha was jet black. Her fur was so black, it looked blue. It was shiny, too. She wore the same dark clothing as the other cats. In one hand she held a long stick. In the other she held what looked to be a coiled rope.

The tang stopped dragging the human. It eyed Kasha warily. The human let out a guttural plea, begging for Kasha’s help.

“Kasha, let it go!” came another voice from below. The other cats had returned. They stood together in a group, on their back legs, keeping a safe distance from the action. Boon pointed to the big, gray cat who had yelled at Kasha.

“That’s Durgen,” he said. “He’s in charge of the group.”

“It’s over, Kasha,” Durgen yelled, sounding bored. “I want to go home.”

Another cat called out, “He’s past his prime anyway. The tang’s doing you a favor.”

The other cats laughed at the remark. Kasha ignored them. She crept closer to the tang and stopped about ten feet away. With her left hand she held the stick out as a threat. She swiped the air a few times, getting its attention. The tang kept its eye on the stick, but didn’t let go of the human. What the tang didn’t see, was that in Kasha’s right hand, she held the lasso. I saw that one end of the rope split off into three threads. Hanging from each end was a ball about the size of a big lemon. Kasha turned her body sideways so the tang couldn’t see that she was getting ready to throw it. She swept the air with the stick again. The tang snarled. It held tight to the leg of the human with one of its talon hands, and held the other up, ready to fend off the stick.

“Hurry up,” Durgen yelled. “I’m already late for supper.”

Kasha flashed the stick once more, the tang swiped at it, and Kasha hurled the rope. The three balls spun toward their target. The tang had no idea what hit him. The three balls wrapped around its neck, winding the vines along with it. Kasha quickly dropped the stick, grabbed the vine with both hands, and yanked hard. The tang screamed in pain and reached for the vine. Of course, by doing that he let go of the human, and the frightened guy scrambled to his feet and fled. When he ran past the group of cats, one of them shouted at him, “What? Not even a thank-you? Where are your manners?” The others laughed.

But it wasn’t over. Kasha was still grappling with the tang. The lizard made a move for her, but Kasha danced away and yanked the rope again, making the tang scream in agony. As long as she held the rope, she could control the tang. But if she let go, the tang could attack. It was a standoff.

Kasha called to the others, “Uh, little help, please?” Her voice was definitely feminine, which is weird to say because she was a cat. She didn’t sound scared, either. But it was clear she didn’t want to be dealing with this tang on her own.

“Come on,” Durgen said to the others, sounding like he was bored with the whole event. “Let’s help her out…again.”

The cats all picked up long sticks of their own and moved toward Kasha and the tang. Durgen said to Kasha, “What if we weren’t here to help?”

Kasha replied, “But you are, so start.”

The cats poked at the tang with their long sticks. Kasha let go of the rope and backed away. The tang made an angry move for her, but the other cats poked it back.

“Easy there, big fella,” Durgen said to the tang. “Party’s over. Go find dinner somewhere else.”

The tang hissed at them and backed away. With a final shriek, it turned and rumbled into the bushes.

“Can we go now?” one of the cats asked Kasha.

“Yes, thank you,” she answered.

They retreated as a group, in case the tang decided to make a counterattack.

“Why do you do that?” Durgen asked Kasha. “Risk your life for a gar?”

“To make you angry,” Kasha replied playfully, and gave the cat a friendly shove.

“I’m serious,” Durgen added. “One day you’re going to get yourself killed.”

“Then you won’t have to worry about me anymore,” Kasha said with a chuckle.

The cats dropped their sticks, got down on all fours, and ran into the forest, once again looking like a pack of jungle cats.

“She’s a friend of yours?” I asked Boon.

“Since we were little,” Boon answered. “Her father is Seegen.”

“Seegen? The Traveler?” I asked in surprise. “He has a daughter?”

“Yes. She doesn’t know it yet, but Seegen told me she’ll be the next Traveler from Eelong. And when that happens, I’ll become her acolyte.”

“Are you serious?” I asked, sounding more surprised than I meant to.

“Yes. What’s wrong with that?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“Let’s keep going. We’re almost there,” Boon said, and continued walking.

I followed, but with a new, troubling thought. There was only one Traveler from each territory. My uncle Press was killed, making me the Traveler from Second Earth. Loor’s mother and Spader’s father died as well, making them the Travelers from their territories. Aja was an orphan. If Kasha was destined to be the next Traveler from Eelong, then I was very worried about the safety of Seegen, the current Traveler. It was suddenly more important than ever to meet him.

Leeandra.

I’m not sure if you’d call it a city, or a zoo, or a fantasy village inthetrees. It was all of the above. When Boon told me we were going to his home, I expected to find a tree house that smelled like cat pee and had clumps of fur piled in the corners. After all, these jungle cats may walk and talk, but they were still animals. I thought Leeandra would be more like a zoo than someplace I would call a city.

Man, was I wrong. I suppose my first clue should have been the sky bridges and balconies. Near the flume tree they were old and unkempt, but the closer we got to Leeandra, the slicker these bridges became. There wasn’t a rotten board in sight. The supports were taut and true. Whoever built these bridges was a heck of an engineer. Also, the farther we walked, the more complex the structures became. The trees held multiple platforms connected by sky bridges at all levels and angles. As I think back on the journey, I can describe it as being like a trip from the country into the city.

We also started seeing more cats. I should probably start calling them klees, but that’s going to be tough because, well, they were cats. I saw klees of all different sizes and colors traveling the sky bridges. Some walked on their hind legs. Others ran on all fours, seemingly in a hurry to get somewhere important. I suppose I should have been scared, because any one of them could have turned me into Tender Vittles, but I wasn’t. It all seemed so…civilized. I figured that unlike on Second Earth, predator cats and humans were able to live side by side. Weird, no?