“No!” Esme wailed, kneeling next to the tiny lizard.
Apparently, it had climbed up on Adri’s shoulder while he was asleep. In his dazed slashing, he had cut off the little creature’s tail.
Adri spun around in a blind rage. “Who …?”
“You!” he pointed at me accusingly.
Esme’s face darkened. “What happened?”
“You were in my head!” he yelled.
Esme looked at me with a mixture of rage and dismay, cradling the injured lizard in her hands. “What did you do?”
My stomach flipped with guilt. “I just … Adri, you know me! I was trying to help!”
“Help yourself?” Luna stared at me. She had two 75sticks out, one in either hand. Where had she been hiding those?
“Wait!” I said, not sure if I meant Luna, Adri, Esme, or all of the above.
“Who are they?” Adri demanded; his guard up, as he turned from one to the other.
“It’s okay!” I tried to reassure him, “They’re like us.”
“You never EVER go into someone’s mind without permission Zo,” Esme said solemnly. “I hope you know that now.”
“E, move!” Luna warned.
Esme gasped. I stared at her, confused.
“Well look at that!” she giggled.
There, on the ground near her hands, the lizard was moving around like nothing had happened. It was growing another tail before our eyes.
As if that weren’t enough, its sliced-off tail was growing another lizard!
I took a sharp breath. I knew that lizards could re-grow their tails, but this was happening fast. And I’d never heard of a tail re-growing a lizard!
Luna clearly felt the same way.
“Time to go!” she urged.
It was too late. Immediately, from all the holes in 76the rock behind us, from behind every cactus and shrub, crawled lizards almost identical to the one … well, now two, at Adri’s feet.
“No. Sudden. Moves,” Luna advised, carefully picking up Adri’s pack and signalling us to lift our own.
The crowd of creatures moved slowly toward us. We backed away. In large numbers, the little lizards weren’t so cute. The one that had grown from the tail Adri had so unwisely cut, hissed at him loudly.
Adri brandished his knife, “Back! Back!”
“Stop!” Luna warned, but the damage had been done.
All around us, the lizards unfurled their rattling neck-flaps like so many flags. The nearest ones leapt at Adri. He swung in a circle, slicing at them. The regeneration was even faster this time. In fact, it seemed like they doubled in numbers before they even hit the ground.
Now they were snapping, not just at Adri, but at all of us.
“Run!” Luna screamed, and we were off.
We dashed through the scrub, trying to avoid cacti and rocks. We were in a dry, stony plain covered 77with patches of grass and giant cacti, with a line of hills behind us.
I didn’t have time to see much more. Lizards were everywhere.
They kept up with us easily, jumping onto our arms, hair, and backpacks. I ran, resisting the urge to swipe them off frantically. They weren’t biting or hurting me in any way. The only person they were snapping at was Adri. He kept slapping and kicking at them. But at least he’d stopped slicing at them with his knife.
“Idiot!” Luna called, looking like a Christmas tree covered with lizard-shaped ornaments.
I wasn’t sure Adri could hear her, but I got her point. The lizards hadn’t bothered us until he’d hurt them.
I tried to reach over and lift some of the lizards off Adri’s head.
“Don’t. Touch. Me.” he seethed.
It felt like a gut-punch, but I understood why. By trying to enter his memories myself, I’d only made matters worse between us. Now it would be even harder for him to trust me.
“Sorry,” I murmured.
To my surprise, the lizards on me jumped off and 78scampered away. Why had they stopped chasing me, but not the others? I kept running alongside Esme and Adri, zigzagging on dusty paths between the towering cacti. I looked back at the lizards that had leapt off me. They seemed to be heading home at top speed – the home we had invaded.
That was it!
“Guys!” I shouted, “Guys! Say sorry,” I wheezed.
No one seemed to hear me. Maybe they were distracted by the tiny lizards’ tails hanging down in front of their eyes.
I suppose that was why we didn’t see the sudden drop.
I felt the ground give way beneath my feet. I slid down and, from what I could hear, the others and their lizards came down with me.
I coughed and tried to get to my feet, rubbing the dirt out of my eyes.
We were on the floor of a sandy, flat-bottomed crater. Thankfully, the lizards were leaping off us and scampering away, up the sides of the massive hole we were in.
I looked around in a haze of dust. Adri had already reclaimed his backpack from Luna and was rubbing 79antiseptic wipes from the med-kit over a few scrapes on his arms and face. For all the lizards that had been hanging on him, he didn’t look too bad. Maybe they hadn’t really been trying to hurt us.
Meanwhile, Esme was trying unsuccessfully to get the sand out of her hair, muttering, “Great job, new guy. Just great.”
“So, this is my fault?” Adri complained.
Esme looked at me seriously, her hazel eyes flashing in the sunlight.
“You’re right, it’s not your fault, it’s hers,” she jutted her chin toward me. “Breaking into other people’s memories can have serious consequences.”
I hung my head. “I get it.”
I wished I could promise never to do it again.
“Shhh,” Luna hissed. She looked around carefully.
I did too and knew instantly why she wanted us to be quiet. All around us, on the ground, were neat circles made up of giant eggs. Each one was twenty times the size of a chicken egg. I held my breath in the sudden silence. Esme and Adri had seen them too.
I tried to imagine what kind of animal had laid these eggs.
“Don’t touch them!” Luna growled. 80
Adri circled one of the eggs, inspecting it. Esme whimpered. My legs were weak.
There was a round clutch of eggs right next to me. I could see them clearly. They had thick, hard shells, ranging from tan to alabaster, and bone white. They were shiny and slightly stippled on the surface. I thought of the size of the snake that could lay eggs like this. My whole body shivered.
Without a word, we moved to the sides of the crater. It was time to climb out. There was just one problem, the sand was too soft and dry. It kept slipping under our hands and feet, sliding us back down to the base of the hole.
As I tried to clamber up one more time, I looked up to find something curious staring at me.
It had round, glass-like eyes on either side of a small, flattish head – long, gorgeous eyelashes and a feathery, chinless face, mostly taken up by a large beak, that started wide at the face and ended narrow, with two flared nostrils on top. The beak looked like it was permanently pursed in disapproval. All this was on top of a long neck that rose higher and higher above my stunned face.
The creature opened unmistakable wings, like 81massive, feathered fans, on either side of its domed body – wings with large black feathers tipped in white.
Shock stuck in my throat. I was face to face with an ostrich.
It honked loudly in my face.
I slid back into the crater just in time to see Esme, Luna and Adri doing the same. We backed toward each other slowly. The ostriches slid and jumped down to join us: their long powerful legs covered in pink or white wrinkly skin and ending in two large toes.
They towered over us. Even Adri, the tallest among us, only came up to their chests. They were hissing, booming, honking, grunting, whistling, and wheezing. Clearly, they were not pleased that we were near their eggs.
I knew that ostriches, native to the African continent, had been brought to farms on islands like Curaçao and Aruba (Bonaire’s neighbours) for visitors to learn more about these amazing birds … But what did the Council want with them? It couldn’t be anything good.
We tried to back away as much as we could, but 82we were surrounded by honking, flapping ostriches. We inched around the crater, doing everything we could not to step on any of the eggs. Soon, there was a small opening among the birds.
“Run,” Luna said under her breath.
Esme, Luna, and I made for the gap, causing a huge commotion. We barely missed getting clocked by an ostrich’s powerful legs. As I ducked, I could see a pair of toes jam through the air near my face. One of the toes ended in a curved black claw the size of a potato peeler.
I bobbed and weaved, gasping for air. I remembered reading that an ostrich’s kick could kill a full-grown lion. That was all I needed to know. With shocking speed, I put my foot on Luna’s linked palms, and she boosted me up the side of the crater. Once I was out, I turned to grab Esme’s arms as Luna pushed her up and out. Then we turned and pulled Luna out as well.
For some reason, the ostriches weren’t focused on us. We soon realised why. Adri was at the other end of the crater holding an ostrich egg in both hands, shouting, “Ay! You! Hey! Look at this!”
The adult birds protested loudly, but they seemed reluctant to go near him once he held one of their 83precious eggs. Adri and I had pulled something like this off in Samaan Bay the year before, with the egg of a giant X. I was hoping that it worked now too – at least long enough to keep him alive.
But how was he going to get out of the crater with a massive egg in his hands? It dawned on me that he wasn’t … I went to slide back down to help him, but Luna grabbed me by the shirt.
“No!” she hissed. “He can take care of himself. We have to go!”
I tried to wrestle myself out of her grip, but she held me with the strength of a mother bear and dragged me kicking and screaming away from the edge and toward the reddish dirt of a trail. I kept fighting and looking back, hoping to see Adri crawling up from the crater. I wondered why none of the ostriches were chasing us. They could run alongside cars, far less us puny humans. Then I realized that, like the lizards, they weren’t out to hurt us, just defending what was theirs – in this case, their young.
Luna dragged me as far as a patch of giant cacti jabbing their needle-covered fingers at the blazing sky. I couldn’t hear Adri’s voice from the crater, 84above the ostriches’ loud racket. I thought of their legs and feet, their razor-sharp claws, blinding feathers, and battering-ram kicks. My body went limp.
“Let her go now Lu,” Esme begged.
Luna released me. I collapsed on the ground under the unseeing cactus. I couldn’t believe that after all this, I’d lost Adri again. And this time, for good.
“We better get going,” Luna said gently.
“Room for one more?” a voice burst in.
Esme jumped, then burst into laughter. We spun around to see Adri walking toward us from the edge of the crater.