Laura’s first thought upon seeing the lake was how thoroughly lost they were. The second, inanely, was how badly she needed a good scrubbing.
“This is not the way I thought we were going,” Rick said. “Where the hell are we?”
“Well, the lake’s in the center so—”
“Right, but are we on the north shore, the west shore, what? Damn, my sense of direction’s usually pretty good. What is it about this place?”
Laura knew what he meant. “Yeah. Sound is strange here, so’s the light. It’s hard to keep your bearings.”
They both craned their necks, looking up for a hint of the sun’s position.
“Great,” Rick said. “We reach the only place inside the caldera with an unobstructed view of the sky—albeit a narrow aperture—and we’ve got thick overcast.”
“Did you just say ‘albeit’?”
He cocked his head. “I believe I did. I never say ‘albeit.’ What’s happening to me? Anyway, we seem to have eluded the dapis for the moment.”
“Oh, I doubt that. They’re busy chasing Laffite and Bakari, but I’m sure they’ve got scouts up there keeping tabs on us.”
She checked the vanilla sky again. With the clouds allowing no clue as to the sun’s location, points of the compass were a guess.
“If Pepé Le Pew hadn’t taken my compass, clouds wouldn’t matter. We need to figure out which way is west.”
She knew the camp was near the western wall.
“You want to go back to camp?”
“Yeah. Get my compass from Laffite’s tent and we’ll never be lost again. Or at least not this lost.”
“Well, we know we started off heading north.”
Rick grimaced. “But we were being chased and not watching and following Laffite who was taking the path of least resistance. By the end we could have been heading in any direction.”
“So the only thing we know is that we wound up at the center of the island.” She heard herself and added: “Sorry for stating the obvious.”
“No, it’s okay.” He was looking up again. “This is the only place down here that gets direct sunlight. Which means…” He looked around. “Which means that the old woodsman’s lore about moss on trunks might work.”
“Moss? In case you haven’t noticed, there’s no shortage of moss around here.”
“That’s due to a definite shortage of direct sunlight. But when there is direct sunlight, even for a few hours a day, moss tends to avoid the southern side of a tree trunk and accumulate on the north. So if we wade along the shore here—”
“You mean get in the water?” She didn’t know about that.
“Just up to our ankles.”
“But we don’t know what’s swimming in there. I mean, I’ve already seen prehistoric ferns and horsetails…”
“Don’t tell me you’re worried about an ichthyosaurus.”
“No, but we can’t afford to assume anything about this place.”
“Suppose you’re right. But if we can find trunks with moss on just one side, we’ll know which way is north.”
“No, it’s a great idea, I’m just—”
She cried out as something landed on her back and started pulling on her hair. Another something landed on her shoulder. More joined the first two.
Dapis.
Nearby she heard Rick yelling in surprise and anger until the screeching of the dapis clinging to her downed out every other sound. Before her sight was blocked she had a glimpse of him spinning and swatting at the dozen little primates engulfing the top half of his body.
The good news was they weren’t carrying spears. But the ones on her head and her right shoulder were yanking on her hair. The burning pain sent her stumbling blindly to the right. She bounced off saplings and smaller trees, but kept moving, determined to stay on her feet. If she fell, God knew what would happen to her.
Try as she might, she couldn’t dislodge them. She called out to Rick, but if he replied she couldn’t hear him over the dapis. If only she could see! Because if she could find the lake she just might dive in to get these creatures off her, and the hell with whatever might be lurking beneath the surface. But they continued to block her vision.
She didn’t know how long she stumbled around, but after a while she got the impression the dapis wanted her to travel in a certain direction. She fought them but the painful tugging on her hair and the lopsided distribution of their weight on her upper body made it impossible.
And then, as suddenly they’d jumped on her, they left, fleeing for the trees and disappearing among the branches.
Finally able to see, she looked around for Rick, but she was alone. No lake in sight, leaving her more thoroughly lost than before.
She called out Rick’s name, hearing her own voice echo around her. Almost immediately she heard a faint response, but it seemed to come from everywhere.
She kept calling and he kept responding, but she couldn’t find a direction.
She gave it a rest for a moment, catching her breath. And suddenly a man started screaming in pain and terror. Much closer. Off to her left, she gauged. And then, just as suddenly as he’d started, he stopped.
He’d sounded an awful lot like Razi had this morning, which meant this was probably Bakari. If the dapis had attacked him in any way like they’d attacked his brother, he had no hope.
She listened for more, and through the quiet she heard voices … male … close … arguing.
Definitely from her left. She hurried that way.