Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch [59]
A peculiar, red-spotted crab scuttled by my foot. Felix was collecting big, white, curly shells and stacking them up by the boats. Next to the cage, Martin and Abel and Dag were splitting wood, making stakes. Waves, white tipped, came coursing in. The edges of the beach where it joined the forest were strewn with fallen debris. I wandered about looking at things with my telescope, red and blue birds in the trees, the rocks at sea, the ravine, till I strayed too close to the trees and was suddenly scared, looking into the pale, fluttering green within. The trunks of the trees were silver streaks. The silent echo of something infinitely denser and darker brooded deeper in, a hollow howling like a throat.
I heard voices.
The hunting party had only been gone a couple of hours and here they were coming back already.
Everything about this landing was different from the others. They were excited, there was something in their faces. There were more tracks, they said, on higher ground. Need more stakes, more rope. A lot of rope. The plan was changed. We’d stay here a day or two, set up rough camp on the beach. “We four,” Dan said, “we’ll trap it on the high ground and bring it down. But we need more manpower. Three more.” He looked at me and smiled kindly. “Now’s your chance, Jaf, if you still want it.”
“I do,” I said, and that was when the voice that watched in my head piped up: You’re mad, you’re mad, you don’t have to go. You never had to go. Stay here, you fool. Play faro with Billy Stock on deck. No one cares whether you go or not.
“Go on, Jaf,” Tim said, “it’s a great thing being out there. You’ve got to come.” He touched my arm. “Come with us, Jaf,” he said, and his eyes were almost pleading with me to go and keep him company.
I laughed. “You try and stop me,” I said.
“Good.” Dan clapped his hands. “So—who else is for it?”
“Me,” said John Copper, “me.”
And Dag Aarnasson.
A massive millipede rippled across our path, a vile, red thing like a nerve. The trees were full of bright birds.
Anything might be poisonous in a place like this. They might drop on you from above, scrabbling down your neck. Scorpions. Spiders with teeth. Who knows what’s up there? We walked silently, single file, with the Malays going ahead and Dan in the rear. I was glad of him back there, glad of how unconcerned he seemed, gladder still when we came out above the forest onto a grassy, rocky place with scarcely a tree. But then I began to think about snakes in the long grass, and my fingers kept carressing the handle of the shooter slung against my hip. What good would that be against a snake? You wouldn’t see it till it was too late.
Dan called a halt. He said we should go east. He said he was going to rope the dragon. He said there was no longer any doubt that it was there, and we were going to take one alive. It sounded ridiculous. Rope a dragon? John laughed nervously. Dag’s face was a weird, flat, jutty thing with staring blue eyes. “I don’t understand,” he said in that slow, heavy way of his.
“Ach,” said Dan, “don’t worry about it. Me and these boys here will see to all that. You just keep back and do as you’re told, and we’ll all be fine. You come in at the end with the rest of the rope when it’s safe, and help us get it on the hurdle.”
“What hurdle?” I asked.
“The one we haven’t made yet,” he said. “One thing at a time. First we find a place to lay the bait.”
“What bait?”
“You, Jaf,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Why do you think I brought you along?” He laughed and pushed my head. “We don’t have the bait yet either. One thing at a time. First