Page 7 of Caveman Alien's Touch

“We try not to eat things we don’t know,” he tells me slowly. “The jungle wants to kill us, but we must not make that too easy for it.”

It’s clearly something the clan says to its youngest boys, and I should probably be embarrassed. “I not will try again,” I promise.

He grabs the cane he cut off and smells the end of it, where juice is still seeping out. “Maybe it’s a poison we can dip our spearheads in before a battle, so that even an enemy that’s only grazed will have a bad time.”

“Mhm.” I wipe my mouth on my sleeve and take a couple of final gulps that I swallow so it can dilute and fix things inside me if I accidentally swallowed some of the poison. Then I hand back the pot. “This is good against it.”

He puts the cork back. “We make it in the camp, the way Piper showed us. Perhaps the Borok tribe will want some.”

“I sure they will,” I tell him as I pick up the cane and toss it far away in revenge. “But not for drinking, Piper say. Only for injuries.”

“She did say that,” Noker agrees. “Still, we have tried to drink it. It burns the throat, but also makes us happy.”

“Not do that, Noker,” I implore. The last thing we want is to turn the Foundling clan into alcoholics. “Is very bad?—”

My sentence is cut off by a terrible screech from right above my head. Before I can look up, Noker gives me a hard push and I faceplant on the tall grass. Rolling around, I see a big dactyl coming right down at me, long beak first and wings tucked in.

Terror seizes me. I want to curl up in a ball, but I’m scared stiff and I can’t move.

Noker stabs his spear into the ground and jumps into the air like a frog, shooting at least eight feet straight up. He curls up like a spring and grabs the dactyl around its neck with both arms.

The dactyl seems to freeze for a split second before it crashes to the ground, head first.

Noker lands lightly beside me and pulls his spear out of the ground. The dactyl takes off again, huge wings beating like crazy. But its wingbeats are messy and wrong, so it crashes a second time. This time Noker is ready with his weapon and thrusts the spear into the dinosaur with a mighty shove.

There’s a meatycrackas the spear cuts into the dactyl’s throat. It screeches again, but now it stays down, thrashing madly around on the ground and screeching as it sprays blood like a fountain.

I lose track of it from there on, because Noker grabs me and throws me across his shoulder. He runs easily over to the other side of the trench and into the jungle.

I can’t see much except his rear end from very close up, which is not the worst thing to look at. I hang onto him as tightly as I can to not dangle too much. My face goes warm with the rush of blood to my head. Each jarring step sends a small shock through my spine, and the ground and Noker’s legs flash past my eyes. Despite the uncomfortable situation, I notice his scent is fresh and exotic; a warm, herbal fragrance like sunbaked pine needles laced with something spicy and unknown.

When he puts me down, we’re in front of the gate that looks like a bunch of tall reeds.

“That was too close,” Noker growls. “I should have seen that irox long before it dived on us.”

“You killed it,” I tell him, steadying myself on him as I regain my balance and the blood drains from my face. My heart beats like crazy after that near-death experience. “We not harmed.”

He looks me up and down. “But we’re sprayed with irox blood.”

It’s true — we’re both covered in hundreds of small red spots where the dactyl blood sprayed over us as the monster crashed to the ground. “We have to make clean, then. Just let me breathe for moment.”

The gate swings open, and three Borok men with drawn swords come rushing over to us. “We heard an irox!”

4

- Bronwen-

“There was one,” Noker tells them. “It will be dead now.” He points back the way we came.

The tribesmen frown as they look us up and down. “Dead? How?”

Noker holds up his spear. “A lucky strike with this.”

Six alien eyebrows are arched in surprise. “Lucky indeed, if you took out an irox,” one of the tribesmen says. “We shall see if its claws and skin may be saved for you.”

“That all belongs to the Borok tribe,” Noker states clearly. “Not to me.”

“We thank you, warrior.” The men quickly bow to him and walk away fast along the wall.

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