Chapter 1

1

- Alba -

“Damn it!”

A drop of sticky sap hits my head from one of the trees towering above us. I’m wearing a broad-brimmed hat made from woven leaves, but it’s not sap proof, and I immediately feel some of the warm, gummy fluid seeping into my hair.

“How much longer?”

Astrid stops and looks behind her. “What’s the trouble?”

I try to take the hat off, but a good amount of hair is stuck to it. “It’s raining glue, that’s all.”

She shifts the spear to her other hand and looks up at the dense, unbroken canopy of leaves hundreds of feet above us. “Some of these trees should be wearing diapers, feels like. Or we should invent the umbrella.”

I just groan. It’s an old joke that is probably only funny on planet Xren, where dinosaurs run the place and you can only use your hands for carrying weapons. Any size umbrella would be too unwieldy and too hard to use, snagging on every branch and twig. And we have tried it.

Astrid adjusts her own hat. “But yeah, I think we’re almost there. Stay here if you want. Those trees over there are even worse than these ones, judging from the leaves. They look really caked in glue.”

I slowly pull the hat out of my hair, not wanting the sap to set. That would mean cutting the hair off. My small yellow hair clip drops to the ground. “You know, there is such a thing as taking your job too seriously.”

She shrugs. “The tribe expects the shaman to know her way around the local jungle. And we’re only an hour away from the village. Drink some water. I’ll be right back.”

She carefully looks around, then walks on, keeping as quiet as possible.

I pick up my cheap plastic hair clip, which is one of my most valued possessions. Then I watch Astrid vanish among the trees and bushes, her stiff dinosaur skin dress making her curvy figure look shapeless. Well, at least she’s out and about. She’s perked up a lot since the Borok tribe asked her to become the new shaman. Astrid’s the kind of person who needs a purpose to feel good, and I think she’s going to be a great shaman for that tribe of alien cavemen. She’s certainly conscientious, going out in the deadly jungle to find certain plants shamans use for incense and herbs for healing.

“With only me for company,” I mutter as I try to scrape the blob of fresh, green sap off on a tree trunk. “You have to wonder who is guarding who.”

I’m not being fair, of course. Astrid wanted to go out here on her own, but I volunteered to come along. Partly because I didn’t want her alone in the jungle, mostly because I needed a break from the giant cavemen and their village. Not that they’re being anything but polite and kind, but they are aliens and we Earth girls do live behind fences and a gate that stays locked unless we have an official errand like this.

Giving up on getting any of the sap off the hat, I grab a couple of leaves from a nearby bush and place them on the inside to keep the blob away from my hair. I may have to invent some kind of hand-less umbrella after all. Or sap-proof hats.

I open the hair clip and carefully put it back in my hair so it keeps my bangs out of my eyes. The chin-length bob cut is cute, but pretty heavy on the maintenance. And I don't usually trust the other girls with my scissors, so it tends to grow a little long.

The jungle is hot and humid. Little clouds of mist rise from the ground; sap and dew drips from the treetops. The smell is organic and sweet with rot and decay, as well as the scents from hundreds of plants and creatures.

I shift my sweaty grip on the spear and scan my surroundings for dangers. Any movement could be a dinosaur, any flapping leaf could be a venomous insect the size of a couch, any shadow could be hunters from another tribe.

“And on a woman-less planet,” I mutter, “that’s rarely a good?—”

I stiffen. There was a faint yell, sounding human. A thin, bright voice, more like a scream…

Perking my ears up, I stand still for a few seconds before I hear it again. Definitely a scream.

In the jungle, it’s hard to hear where any sound comes from. But that sounded like a woman. The only women in the jungle right now are Astrid and me. And despite my lingering PTSD from the first years on this planet, I don’t really tend to scream randomly. That could have been Astrid.

My heart pounding in my ears, I put the hat back on and walk fast the way she went. If Astrid’s in trouble, she can count on my help. For whatever good it will do — the dinosaurs in this jungle are huge and fierce.

I hurry through the woods, past bushes and trees. Another scream, closer and sounding more desperate, makes me speed up to a run. My primitive backpack pounds against my back and the plants whip around my ankles. “I’m coming!”

Between the trees I spot an open area, which is either a pond or a river or a clearing. On the other side there’s movement and something that looks like a human?—

I stop just before I run out from the trees. I’m on the edge of a meadow with thigh-high grass and flowers and plants.

On the other side there’s a caveman with green stripes. He’s holding onto a boy of about ten. The boy is letting off another thin, piercing scream, clearly in fear of his life. He flails and kicks at the caveman, but the adult is much bigger. He lifts the boy to his face and then bites into his side. There’s blood, and the boy screams again, a blood-curdling scream that makes it impossible for me to just watch and not help him.

Full of fury, I sprint out of the woods and across the clearing, ignoring the many possible dangers hiding in the tall grass.

The boy screams again, a hopeless wail that tells me I’ll probably be too late to help him.

The caveman doesn’t see me until I’m ten feet away, lifting my spear as I come to a stop. “Let him go!”

The caveman freezes, orange eyes piercing me. We stand like that for a moment, me waving the spear in the most threatening way I can manage and the caveman stunned from seeing a woman on his planet.

In a flash I take him in. Big muscles, a wide belt with a sword hanging from it, a mane of tangled hair longer than what I’ve seen on any caveman before. He’s bigger than most, and he looks more dangerous. A wide leather strip is wound around his left bicep, and it can barely contain those bulging muscles.

It rushes through my mind that the Krast tribe has green stripes like his, and they’ve recently been at war with our Borok tribe because they wanted the Borok to give the Krast some of us girls. As if we were livestock.

The man puts down the now lifeless boy. Blood drips from his mouth, and his fangs are red when he growls one word: “Woman.”

His hand seeks the long sword in his belt.

“Stop!” I order with a voice that shakes, thrusting the spear closer to his face.

It has no effect. He quickly draws his sword, calling my bluff.

I’m painfully aware that if I am to have any chance to survive this, I better act now. Either I thrust my spear into his throat and hope to kill him, or I have to get away.

I don’t have it in me to kill like this. So I spin around and run.

“Stop!” comes his deep call from behind me. “Danger!”

Yeah, no kidding. At least I stopped the murder from continuing, although the boy is probably dead already.

I have run about ten paces when I see what the caveman really meant. There’s a dinosaur coming out of the jungle right where I was first standing when I spotted the caveman.

I turn to the side, hoping to reach the edge of the trees before either the caveman or the dino gets me. It’s a velociraptor, like out of the Jurassic Park movies, except these alien ones are more colorful, bigger, and meaner.

“Stop!”

I throw a glance behind me as I run. The caveman is now so close that I hear his breathing.

And there’s not one raptor. There’s four of them, bright yellow like construction machinery, but much more agile and deadly.

They come across the meadow in easy bounds, and I realize they will absolutely catch me long before I can get into the jungle. Which won’t be much of a help anyway, because that’s where these predators live.

“I said, stop!” Something grabs me by the shoulder and spins me around. I yelp, but manage to stay on my feet.

The caveman throws me to the ground and yanks the spear out of my hand. He throws it at the nearest raptor and pierces it through the throat. The monster sprays blood and keels over, making the ground shake. One of the other raptors immediately attacks it and starts ripping pieces of skin and meat off its still living pack mate.

That leaves us with two. I stay down as the caveman puts himself between me and them. He moves fast, hacking and slashing with his sword.

In the chaos I don’t see exactly what happens, but I have a good view of the caveman from ground level. Like most of these guys, he’s wearing a loincloth-slash-kilt that ends a few inches over the knee. As I suspected, they wear nothing underneath that. At least if this guy is like most cavemen.

He looks like he is. He’s all bulging, flexing muscle, his face is too angular and rugged to be conventionally handsome, his voice is the deepest of bass but still powerful, and he has those stripes. And those fangs.

The fight takes maybe five seconds. Then one raptor is on the ground, uselessly kicking up a cloud of dry dirt. The other is scurrying away, dragging one leg.

The one who’s still eating his buddy lifts his head, spots the caveman coming towards him, and then bounces into the jungle to save its life

I eye my spear still stuck in the dead raptor. If I sprint for it, maybe I can reach it…

“You can get up now. They’re gone.” He’s standing right behind me.

I get to my feet and brush myself down with hands that tremble. “They gone, but you still holding your sword.” After months in a caveman tribe, my cavemannish is still halting and imperfect. But I usually make myself understood, and while this guy is from another tribe, he doesn’t have much of an accent compared to the guys I know.

He grabs a handful of grass from the ground, wipes the blade clean of watery dinosaur blood, and replaces the weapon in its sheath. “I don’t think I need it right now.”

I look up at him. He has orange eyes, like an owl. Not red and not yellow, just orange. And it’s a powerful orange, clear and piercing.

“Thank you for fight them.”

He looks past me. “They must have followed you for a while. You weren’t being quiet. What is your tribe?”

“I was perfect quiet,” I tell him. “Perhaps it you who attract them with… whatever you doing. On turf that not yours.” Confronted with a caveman eight feet tall and four times my weight, I should probably not be too quick to accuse him of wrongdoing. On the other hand, I don’t want to be too friendly with him. These guys sometimes get weird ideas about how to woo women, ideas that sometimes include ropes and cages.

“Perhaps,” he rumbles. “But they were right behind you. The Borok tribe, is it?”

“Perhaps,” I echo. I suppose I should be grateful for him saving my life, but I can’t forget the screams and the boy. Looking over, I can’t see him, so he must be on the ground. And I think he must be dead. “I will tell tribe of your bravery, man from Krast.”

He looks me up and down, pausing at my chest and hips. The tip of his tongue runs over his lips, and I see the blood on his fangs.

I take a step back. He looks like a predator sizing up prey.

“You know my tribe, then,” he finally rumbles. “Very well, woman. Go to your village with the red mountain in it. And tell the men that they are a disgrace for letting a small female like yourself go into the woods on her own, as helpless and inept as a pup. Tell them they are as pitiful as a band of outcasts. Tell them that Anter’az of the Krast says this.” He turns on his heel.

A flash of yellow in the grass catches my eye. But he sees it too, bends over and picks up my hair clip. Turning it over in his hands, he frowns and works the spring. He has never seen plastic before, and most certainly not any industrial-planet product like that hair clip.

“That mine,” I tell him weakly.

He gives me a strange glance. “Come and get it.”

But I really don't like the way he's looking at me.

He turns and strides back across the meadow.

I let my breath out. At least he won’t grab me and carry me to his tribe. But I’m pretty sure the thought crossed his mind.

Walking over to the dead raptor, it takes me several tries and all my strength to pull my spear out of the carcass. When I turn around, Anter’az bends down, grabs the dead boy, tosses the body over his shoulder, and walks into the jungle.

“That can’t be good,” I say to myself. But I’ve done what I could, and I’m incredibly lucky to have escaped alive. “At least I tried.”

I slink into the jungle and follow what I can see of my own tracks until I’m back at the place where I was supposed to wait. Astrid is there, clearly nervous, visibly tense and worried.

“Astrid, it’s me,” I rasp when I approach.

She whirls around, lifting her spear. “Where were you? Did you hear the screams?”

“I heard. I thought it was you.”

She takes me in, her gaze immediately snagging on the bloodied tip of my spear. “Did you fight someone?”

“Almost,” I tell her. “There were some raptors. Can we go? You got everything?”

She gives me a long look, then slowly shakes her head. “I didn’t have time to collect anything before the screaming started. What was it?”

I look around us, sure we’re surrounded by all kinds of nasty monsters. “I’ll tell you when we get home. Let’s be quiet now.”

Astrid hefts her spear and starts walking back to the Borok village. “Such a crazy jungle.”

I follow her, heart still beating hard. What did he do to that boy? And why didn’t he try to grab me? Would a murderer just turn around and save a woman from raptors, and then not try to abduct her? A witness to the murder, no less? On woman-less planet Xren? A man from a tribe that went to war to get just one or two Earth girls of their own? “Tell me about it. So damn confusing.”