ONCE THE CROWD had dispersed, Snortimer unceremoniously stuffed us inside a tiny dark cave and blocked off the entrance with a boulder. The space was so tiny and dark that it was less a cave and more a vertical tomb. There wasn’t enough room to do anything but stand there and involuntarily cuddle. Even Froggy—normally an enthusiastic cuddler—croaked about the appalling lack of personal space.
Stony remained silent, but I could hear both our stomachs rumbling with hunger.
“Any ideas?” I finally whispered.
“Ehhh?” grunted Stony.
“Ideas?” I said more loudly.
“Ideas … deas,” came the echo.
“Wait a minute,” I said, struggling to reach up into the darkness above me. “I can’t feel a ceiling.”
“Ceiling … eiling.”
Stony tried jumping up.
“Ow!” I said, removing his palm from my face.
He lifted me and pushed me up along the wall and onto his shoulders. I could feel the slimy circular sidewalls around me, but still no ceiling. We were like two mice stuck at the bottom of a snake hole.
By the time I managed to wriggle back down into the tight space between the wall and Stony’s belly, he was snoring. I just stood there, impressed by his animal-like ability to snooze standing up. I tried closing my eyes, but it felt strange to sleep in a cave that wasn’t my family’s. Normally, I’d be able to hear my father’s even louder snoring now. I found myself wondering what my parents were doing. This somehow made me feel a little better and much sadder at the same time. I realized that the dull empty ache in the pit of my stomach was not only hunger but also dread that I might never see my family again.
I awoke suddenly—slumped and cramped—in total darkness.
“Croak, croak” went Froggy, next to my ear.
“Croak, croak” came back the echo.
“Croak, ribbit” went Froggy.
“Croak, ribbit” came back the echo.
“Croak, ribbit, ribbit, croak” went Froggy.
“Ribbit, croak, croak, ribbit” came back the echo.
“Stony,” I whispered, “did you hear that?”
His response was a snore in my other ear.
I nudged him. “Wake up.”
He grunted groggily.
“I think there’s something in here!” I whispered. “Something froglike, but bigger.”
“Don’t you have any manners?” a girl’s voice asked primly from above.
Startled, I elbowed Stony in the belly, causing him to grunt louder as he awoke.
“I guess not,” said the voice. “Well, then, I suppose there will be no need to rescue you.”
There was a brief silence as Stony and I contemplated this in the dark. I cleared my throat. “Excuse me,” I said, “who are you?”
“Echo.”
“Very funny,” I muttered.
“That is my name. And it’s not stupid.”
“Who said it was?”
“I can tell you thought it was from your tone.”
She was right—I had thought that.
“Excuse me, Echo,” I said, “but did you say something about rescuing us?”
“Yes?” she said, as if waiting for something more.
“Well, feel free!”
“Don’t you have something you’d like to say first?”
“Ummmm … no,” I said. “Ow!” I could feel Stony’s elbow in my chest and his expectant stare in the dark. “Fine,” I muttered, surprised at Stony’s reaction. “I’m sorry I made fun of your name.”
“And?” said the voice.
“And? … I’m sorry I called you froglike?”
There was a long silence.
“All right,” she said, “I’ll rescue you. But mainly because your frog sounds nice.”
A few moments later, I heard scrabbling sounds and a shower of pebbles hitting a hard surface nearby. This turned out to be Stony’s head. Then I felt something tickle my neck. I reached around and grabbed … a vine!
“Go ahead and pull yourself up,” said Echo.
I started doing just that, but she cleared her throat and added: “In order of politeness, please.”
“Politeness?”
“That means your friends first. I found you to be least polite.”
I sighed and felt around in the dark for Stony’s hands. “You’re going to need both of these,” I said, sticking Froggy in his mouth.
After a bit of huffing and puffing, the low-browed boy began to shinny up the vine using the circular wall around him for footing. Soon I heard the girl say, “And where is your frog, sir?”
I tried not to laugh, but when I heard the girl give an astonished squeal, I couldn’t stop myself. That’s when I felt the vine jerk out of my hands.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” she called down.
“Um … no, no, not at all.”
There was another silence.
“Sorry,” I said. “Can I come up now?”
The reply came in the form of the vine whacking me on the head.
“Ow.”
The first thing I saw as I squeezed up and out of the cave tube were silhouettes of the girl and Stony, standing in a large upper chamber. My eyes adjusted to the light and I saw that she was the red-haired girl who had stood behind the Shiny Stone—the only Boar Rider who hadn’t taunted us.
“Thanks,” I said, dropping the vine, which was cleverly tied to a stalagmite. “I’m Lug.”
“Echo,” she repeated, her bright green eyes daring me to challenge her.
“Crooooooak!” came a call from somewhere within the girl’s tangle of red curls. She reached up and petted Froggy, who was peeking out of her hair. He looked very self-satisfied.
I rubbed my arms in the morning air. We had climbed out of the cave’s upper chamber onto a high outcropping above the Boar Riders’ village. Looking out over the jungle canopy, I saw that the banyan trees had also suffered from the cooling weather over the past few months. They hadn’t lost all their leaves like the gourd trees, but their top branches were bare, pointing like gnarled accusing fingers at the milky sky. In the distance, Mount Bigbigbig rose like a great rocky island out of a green and brown sea of jungle, looking eerie as ever. My sister had once told me that the restless ghosts of banished boys wandered its slope, looking for any living clan folk who strayed too close. I normally ignored everything my sister said, but somehow that had stuck with me.
The Boar Riders’ public clearing lay below—empty except for the Shiny Stone glimmering slightly in the dawn light. A cacophony of snoring and gassy sounds came from the caves around us.
“We’d better go,” whispered Echo, “before someone wakes up and sees us.”
We followed her down the other side of the outcropping and into the forest, in the direction of the mountain. The canopy was full of buzzing and birdsong, and by the time we came to a burbling creek, I had relaxed a little. I took a drink from the stream and thought about ways I might paint flowing water. But Stony’s wary expression reminded me that Bonehead and Bugeyes were probably still skulking around, hunting us. Bonehead’s words to Bugeyes came back to me, as clear as the burbling creek: “If us kill Little Slug, us back in clan.”
We followed the creek downstream, clambering over the slippery tree roots along the water’s edge and keeping an eye out for water snakes. Eventually, we came to what seemed like an extremely wide boar trail. Echo led us up the trail, away from the creek, and I told her the story of how Stony and I had been banished. Several times I stopped talking, thinking I’d heard something moving in the foliage, but I decided it was just the wind rustling the leaves. Finally, we reached a towering pile of boulders not far from the base of the mountain. Echo climbed up the stones and slowly scanned the forest below, trying to make sure that no one had followed us.
When we reached the top, she pointed down the other side of the boulder pile toward a large, dark cavern entrance. “Okay,” she said. “Follow me.”
“I’m not going in there,” I said.
She turned her head slowly toward me.
“I—I just mean I’ve had enough caves for one day.”
She sighed and started climbing down the boulder pile, with Stony just behind her.
I muttered darkly to myself and followed.
At the mouth of the cavern, Stony began to sniff the air.
“Ready for what?” I asked.
She took a step into the cave and called out, “Woolly?”
“Woolly … oolly,” came back the echo.
“Come out!”
“Come out … out.”
“I’ll be right back,” she said, and disappeared into the cave. “Woolly can be a little shy.”
“I think this girl’s a little woolly in the head!” I whispered to Stony.
He shook his head and sniffed the air vigorously.
“We need to stop wasting time,” I insisted, “and figure out a way back into our clan. If we catch a couple of big llamas, I think they’d let us back in. We could see our families. The Big Game is in two days, and they’re not going to turn down any player with a good animal.”
Stony’s unibrow began to squirm like a caught eel.
“Yeah,” I said, “it’s going to be hard, but—”
Stony shook his head frantically and pointed ahead. I stumbled backward. The massive creature lumbering out of the cave was unlike anything I’d ever seen. The beast had a trunk like a macrauchenia, but this was no little dangly thing. It reached all the way to the ground and swung ponderously, like another great limb. On either side of the trunk was a sharp white tusk. And above those were two enormous brown eyes that peered down suspiciously at us from beneath a mop of shaggy hair. The animal had a body like a boulder, a broad sloping back, and a high-domed head with wide flapping ears. He was covered from head to toe in long woolly shags of reddish-brown hair that hung down around his four tree trunk–like legs.
“Don’t make any sudden moves,” warned Echo, stepping out of the cave. “He doesn’t trust strangers.”
Stony and I stood perfectly still. “What is he?” I whispered, watching the long hairy trunk sniff inches away from my face. “Some kind of monster macrauchenia?”
“He’s a woolly mammoth,” said Echo. “A little one.”