There’s something out there,” Sukey had her pistol out in front of her now. “Something got her! M.K.! Where is she? We’ve got to find her!”
We took the vest and rushed ahead, calling M.K.’s name, but we could hear only the waterfalls and the singing of the birds.
“Pucci, go see if you can find her,” Zander ordered, and Pucci took off, calling her name as he disappeared up ahead.
We jogged along the canyon floor, searching the glittering walls for any sign of her, but there wasn’t anyone there, just the echoing canyon, and the blue sky above its walls.
It seemed to take forever to reach the end of the canyon; about a mile past the waterfall the walls narrowed down so much that there was no way to get through. “She’s not here,” I called out as I scanned the canyon walls. “We’ll have to go back in the other direction and see if we can find her.”
“But there’s no way we missed her,” Sukey said. “There’s nowhere she could have gone. I don’t understand.”
“Well, she’s not here.” At that moment, I caught movement high up in the canyon walls, but when I tipped my head back to see what it was, there was nothing there. I didn’t want to tell them what I was thinking, that whatever creature had stalked Zander in the cavern must have attacked her and dragged her off.
“Did you see something up there?” I asked Zander and Sukey. “I thought I saw something.”
“Maybe it’s Pucci. Maybe he found her.”
But the rocks looked just the way they’d looked before and the sky was empty.
We started hurrying back the way we’d come, toward the waterfall. But as we went, I had the feeling that someone was watching us. I kept searching the canyon walls. A couple of times, I again thought I caught movement among the rocks, but I didn’t see anything.
Sukey and I were breathing hard from the running and she had to stop to catch her breath. “I’ll go ahead,” Zander called back to us and disappeared around a turn in the canyon.
Sukey and I rested for a minute, then started running again. I was so tired, so scared for M.K., that I might not have seen them right away if Sukey hadn’t gasped.
“Zander!” she whispered, pointing, and I looked up to see my brother standing stock-still in the middle of the canyon. Ten or so feet in front of him, poised in position to attack, was the hugest mountain lion I had ever seen.
It was much bigger than the cougars I’d seen in zoos or in books, the size of a small horse, with a slick tan coat stretched over its rippling muscles. Its jaws were huge, its mouth lined with shining teeth like pictures I’d seen of prehistoric saber-toothed tigers.
And there was something strange about its eyes. They were bigger than the eyes of most wildcats I’d seen, and they protruded like a fish’s.
“Zander,” I said in a low voice, “don’t move. Just stay still.”
“Look for rocks,” I whispered to Sukey. “Look for rocks.”
“I’ve got my pistol.”
“Not yet. He’s in the way.”
The cat gave a low growl and sank down low on its haunches, every muscle poised as it got ready to attack. We knew it was for real this time.
Suddenly, Pucci appeared out of nowhere, squawking and swooping, his metal talons out in front of him. He flew at the cat, beating his wings in its face, but the cat just ignored him so Pucci got more aggressive, dropping quickly to take a swipe at the cat’s back with his talons. That got the cat’s attention. He turned quickly to see what it was that had hurt him and batted Pucci out of the air with his paw. The parrot floundered on the ground for a moment before taking flight and trying again.
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, and when I turned around, I found that Sukey had drawn her pistol and was pointing it at the cat. “Come on now, Zander, move out of the way,” she was murmuring under her breath.
The cat moved, just a bit, the beginning of its spring, and I felt Sukey tense next to me, ready to fire. But before she could pull the trigger, there was a sort of whooshing sound and then the cat was yelping in pain. From where we stood we could see the long arrow, tipped with black and green feathers, now buried in its leg. It squealed in pain and another arrow flew through the air and pierced the cat’s chest. It died instantly, keeling over, its blank, protruding eyes staring up at the sky.
Pucci screeched and flew down to make sure the cat was dead, then landed on Zander’s shoulder, nuzzling his cheek.
I looked up quickly in the direction from which the arrow had come and blinked once, then twice, unable to believe I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. Standing there, about twenty yards away, holding a huge bow made of highly polished wood, was a girl. She was dressed very properly, in a long, black Victorian sort of dress with golden buttons in a neat row down the front and a ruffled white blouse underneath. The skirt of the dress was hitched up at the bottom for hiking and she wore tall lace-up riding boots of black animal skin. Her long, glossy black hair—topped by a black hat—lay heavily over her shoulders.
“Hello,” she said, breaking into a grin, her broad nose and dark eyes and high cheekbones all seeming to laugh at us. “You must be from the other side.”