The Shaktra

  “Now, on the count of three, we go,” Ali said.

  “The troll can’t count up to three,” Paddy muttered.

  “He’ll get the idea. One . . . Two . . . Three!” she shouted.

  They ran, or more accurately, they tried to. The sand was extremely fine, plenty deep. It slipped beneath their feet like coarse liquid. They could have been attempting to sprint through mud, and in fact pushing too hard caused them to slip more. Ali discovered a medium pace was best, but even that was exhausting. The sand seemed alive, hungry; it did not want them to leave before it was sated. She felt as if she were trying to climb a wall, and falling off a cliff, at the same time.

  They were halfway to the river when the scabs attacked.

  The first one came out of the sand on her right, thirty feet away. At first she was not impressed. It looked like a lump of jellyfish with a burnt top. Then its lower portion began to spin quickly—the tentacle part—while the top inflated with air, vigorously sucking it in, making a farting sound, growing in size until it was as large as a basketball. Ali could not figure out how the bottom could spin while the top remained still.

  She was not an engineer, but she knew that such a combination of moves would require spokes and an axis—things nature did not make. Then she remembered Paddy’s remark. The scabs had probably been designed and bred on the Isle of Greesh. They were not natural at all.

  The spinning tentacles gave the creature a hovercraft capability. Slowly, the thing began to lift off the sand, spreading dust all around. The latter was a problem. The single creature stirred up enough sand to sting their eyes as it began to move toward them.

  Ali told Ra to shoot it.

  Ra let fly an arrow.

  The slow-moving scab suddenly jerked to the side.

  The arrow missed. Once more the scab started in their direction, but not all of its lower portion spun. It still dangled long tentacles. These were covered with red suction cups that oozed a slimy green fluid.

  Behind them, two more scabs poked out of the sand and began to inflate.

  Ali turned to Paddy. “Can we outrun these things?”

  For a leprechaun, he was awfully white. “Don’t think so, Missy.”

  They tried anyway. The scab seemed to respond to their running. It accelerated toward them. Ali felt they had to stop and face it. As choking dust spread around them, the creature made a diving swoop over their heads. Its purpose was obvious: to drop down on top of their skulls, to get its tentacles into their mouths and nostrils and ears. But it missed on its initial pass, and Ali took aim with her fire stones. Off to her left, she could see the two other scabs rising off the ground, while another three stuck their gross bodies out of the sand.

  Ali fired. She was happy just to get off a shot, but the beam was feeble. It hit the scab; the creature seemed to recoil, to lose elevation. Unfortunately, it did not fall, it did not die. Ali went to shoot at it again when Ra called out.

  “Behind you!” he cried.

  Ali whirled, discovered a scab she didn’t even know about swooping toward her head. She barely managed to get off a shot. It was almost straight above her, three feet from her hair. It was possible the creature’s underbelly was sensitive. Her blast was as weak as her first, but the scab convulsed in midair—a gory pink balloon touched by a match—and it dropped to the ground, just missing her.

  “Can you hit any of them?” she cried to Ra.

  “Trying!” he shouted back. She saw him miss again, just as she turned to face two more swooping scabs. Yet these guys seemed to have taken note of their comrade’s fall. They did not try for her, but for Farble and Paddy. The troll and leprechaun did the worst thing possible. They panicked and ran from her side, toward the bridge. As a result, she had to shoot at the scabs from behind, and at a greater distance. She had to hit each one three times before they went down. But by then there were over twenty scabs crawling out of the sand.

  “Stop!” she yelled at Farble and Paddy, and there was power in her voice. They froze in midstride. Ali and Ra hastened to them, and put their hands over their eyes as a miniature dust storm rose around them. The scabs must have had intelligence, or else profound instincts. Ali had killed three, and they were clearly not used to that. Now it appeared they wanted to act as a group. With cunning they surrounded them in a broad circle, then—as more of their partners emerged from the sand and rose up, spinning dust and farting the air they swallowed—they began to tighten their circle. Ali counted thirty. It might as well have been three hundred. Farble whimpered and Paddy started to weep.

  “Missy!” he cried.

  “Don’t be afraid!” she said.

  Farble moaned. “Geea . . . Geea.”

  “It will be all right!” she snapped.

  The scabs’ circle went from sixty feet across to thirty, while another ten of the creatures joined the fray. The scabs angled their bottoms in their direction, hitting them with more wind, more dust. Their odor was nauseating: moldy meat soaked in boiling vinegar. They chirped as they closed, making an odd clicking sound, probably gloating over how tasty the four bipeds looked. Ali could not imagine what it would feel like to have one drop on her head and begin to eat her brains.

  “What do we do?” Ra asked, his back to her.

  Ali focused her gaze hard on her side of the enveloping circle. The scabs seemed to feel her, they slowed their approach, yet they did not back off. Even at full power, she realized, she was not going to be able to shoot all of them.

  “There’s a Bic lighter in my backpack, in the top on the right,” she said. “Hand it to me.”

  She felt Ra fumble in her pack. “You don’t want to smoke that opium now, do you?” he asked.

  She almost smiled, spoke softly instead. “A month ago I passed the test of fire, the test of air. I might be able to combine the two elements and treat these creatures to a barbecue.”

  Ra put the lighter in her left hand. Dropping the fire stones, she transferred it to her right hand, took a step away from her partners, closer to the scabs. The dust was a bank of yellow fog. The ghosts that hovered in it were images from a witch’s dreams. The circling scabs had created a scary cauldron, she thought, a soup kettle that they planned to feed from. What they didn’t know was that she was about to reach outside the kettle and throw a huge log on the fire.

  Ali raised the lighter to her lips, struck the flame, focused her will, and blew.

  The flame magnified itself a hundredfold. It swept the area in front of her. Six scabs immediately caught fire. Their top shells ignited like newspaper, while their lower halves cracked and sparked like bowls of Jell-O soaked in gasoline. Another six scabs fled her attack, but she blew again, before they could get out of range, and the roaring flames scorched both their spinning and dangling tentacles as they caught fire. And the air they had sucked inside must have somehow changed itself into gas because suddenly the scabs began to explode like ponderous zeppelins caught in the crosshairs of a World War I machine gun.

  Turning on her heels, Ali blew fire all around. She was a volcano attached to a carrousel. She felt like a ballerina, a dragon, and most of all, like the queen of the fairies. Power had returned to her right arm—she believed she could throw thunderbolts. The scabs snorted in disgust as they popped and fell to the ground, burning in the sand, and she shouted with joy. She wanted to burn them, she hated them so much. She was not even sure why.

  Drawing in another deep breath, enough air to feed forty lungs, she blew . . . and a geyser erupted from her lips. It could have been a dream; she did not feel herself, or else she felt much more than herself. She was a match, her red hair was a flame, the center of her brain was a smoldering coal. The scabs tried to run, to fly, but she kept breathing fire on them, and they kept dying, horribly, balls of seared jelly bursting from the inside.

  She did not know how long this went on . . .

  Ra suddenly grabbed her, though, stopped her, knocked the lighter away.

  “Ali! Your hand!” he cried.


  Her right hand, the injured one, was bleeding again. The red had already soaked her bandages, and was dripping onto the sand. She had not even noticed, but when she did, her body shuddered, and it was not her palm that seemed to go numb and throb with pain, it was her whole arm. Once again, she had let the power carry her away, and now the power deserted her. The scabs were burning but she was not in a whole lot better shape. A wave of dizziness swept over her. She had to lean on Ra to keep from falling.

  “Help me to the bridge,” she whispered.

  Ra carried her to the bridge. She didn’t know how, what with his bow and arrow, sword, and backpack. He had not been boasting—he was unusually strong. Ali felt a deep weariness slip over her mind, but managed to keep her eyes open long enough to see that no scabs were following. Paddy marched proudly by Ra’s side, and kept telling her to relax, that she was in good hands.

  They reached the bridge and Ra kept walking, carrying her out until they were far over the water. There he set her down against a stone pillar, one of many, that supported the bridge against the powerful green current. Ali saw that the top of the bridge was made up of smooth gray rock tiles, that had been cemented together with dark plaster, but that underneath the tiles were aged tree trunks of incredible length and thickness. Indeed, the wood looked so old, so strong, it might have been petrified stone. Paddy was right, the bridge over Elnar was ancient.

  Ali rested her aching head on the pillar. “Did you pick up the lighter?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Ra said.

  “Did you get the fire stones? I dropped them.”

  “Got them, Missy,” Paddy said.

  “Try to relax, Ali. I have to attend to your hand.” Ra searched through his pack. “I’ve never seen bleeding start up like that again.”

  Ali closed her eyes, tried to relax. “It’s the power, it has a mind of its own. This human body can hardly contain it.”

  “You better learn to contain it,” Ra said. “That was an impressive show, but it almost killed you.”

  Ali felt herself smile. “Do you believe I’m a fairy now?”

  “I believe that you are a young woman who is pushing her limits.”

  “You know, you speak very good English for a shaman savage. How is that?”

  “Are you trying to insult me?”

  “Of course,” she mumbled, her weariness deepening. The pain in her hand and arm was ghastly, but it was such a relief to be safe, she didn’t care. And it was nice to have Ra caring for her. They had just met but she trusted him, she was not sure why.

  “I watch a lot of American TV,” Ra said.

  She continued to rest with her eyes closed. “Ah-ha, I knew it. You envy us fat Americans.”

  “I did not say that. You are fat and stupid. But you have good programs.”

  1 enjoy me Mr. Ed,” Paddy remarked, but he sounded far away.

  Ali was not sure how long she lay there. She felt Ra removing her soaked bandage and cleaning her wound, before rolling on a fresh layer of gauze. After that, she was not sure what happened. She might have dozed. Her pain did not vanish but it receded into the distance. But she was still aware of the sweet breeze on her face, and the sound of water running beneath her. Elnar, she knew, was as deep as it was fast, and she could almost remember swimming in it as a fairy. . . .

  She heard a horrible scream and sat up and opened her eyes.

  Ra and Farble were gathered around Paddy.

  It was Paddy who had screamed.

  There was a scab attached to his left arm.

  They were trying to get it off. It was not coming off.

  Ali jumped up. “What happened?” she cried.

  “We were resting, but I had my eyes open,” Ra explained. “I told them I would stand guard. But I was looking at the water, I must have stared too long, and a scab must have come onto the bridge. No, it must have come from under the bridge. I would have seen it otherwise. I thought we were safe on the bridge!” He added, miserable, “This is my fault.”

  Ali knelt in front of Paddy, studied the creature, which looked even more like a jellyfish since it wasn’t spinning in the air. It was smaller now that it had deflated—as large as a softball instead of a basketball. The top of the scab’s body lay on the back of his arm, while the tentacles were wrapped around the inside. The dozens of tiny suction cups on the tentacles were stinging him—he was obviously in great pain. Tears ran down his face as he looked at her.

  “Help me, Missy!” he cried.

  “Do you know how we can help you?” she asked.

  Paddy shook his head. “They say they never come off.”

  Ali glanced at Ra. “Did you try pulling it off?”

  “We were just doing that,” Ra said. “It’s hard to get a grip on.”

  Farble nodded, anxious, patted the leprechaun on the head. “Paddy,” he murmured. It was the first time he had ever said the leprechaun’s name.

  “Stand back, let me try,” Ali said.

  “But your hand—” Ra began.

  “I don’t care about my hand!” Ordering the others to hold Paddy still—not an easy task, he had begun to struggle—Ali tried grabbing the scab’s top, but its tenuous surface slipped between her fingers. She had no more luck trying to pull off individual tentacles; they were coated with an oily residue. Besides stinging her own fingers, the stuff made them impossible to hold on to.

  Ali looked around for her fire stones. “We’re going to have to burn it off,” she said. Paddy shook in terror at the suggestion.

  “Don’t burn me, Missy!”

  Ali sought to calm him. “I’m not going to hurt you. I can control the amount of energy I send through the stones. This will just be like a little laser surgery back on Earth.”

  Paddy could not stop staring at the scab. “I feel it eating me skin!”

  Ali suspected the creature was beginning to eat him. And she could not help but notice that it was moving up his arm, toward his shoulder, probably seeking out the head.

  Resting the stones in her left palm, she focused on sending a fine beam of energy onto the surface of the scab. And she was successful, or so it seemed—a pencil-thin red laser reached out and struck the top coat of the scab. Unfortunately, the burn caused the creature to squeeze Paddy’s arm so tight with its tentacles that Ali thought the limb might burst. Paddy’s pain went off the deep end. He screamed bloody murder. Ra and Farble had to fight to hold him down.

  “Kill it!” Ra shouted.

  Ali nodded and increased the level of energy, but again it backfired. The scab just gripped tighter, while it injected more stinging venom into Paddy’s arm, turning the skin on his hand a black-green color. At the same time, the burning drove it more quickly up his arm, toward his head. Once it got off his arm, Ali knew, he was done for.

  “Keep it up!” Ra shouted at her as she paused. Shaking her head, Ali sat back on her knees.

  “The more I burn it, the more poison it injects into his system,” she said.

  “You have to keep trying,” Ra said.

  “It will kill him before it will let go,” she said.

  Ra went to snap at her, but then looked down at Paddy’s face, his sweaty agony, and slowly nodded his head. “You have to take his arm off,” he said quietly.

  Ali nodded. “I was thinking that.”

  “Better do it quick,” Ra warned.

  Ali got up on her knees, moved into position above Paddy. The creature was already well past his elbow—she would have to take the arm off near the top. That would cause him to bleed, of course, but she was confident she could muster enough healing energy to keep him alive. Anything would be better than letting the scab eat his brains.

  So she told herself. But as she placed the fire stones near his joint, the leprechaun stopped thrashing and stared at her with pleading eyes. “No, Missy,” he said.

  “It’s the only way to stop it,” she said.

  Paddy shook his head weakly, spoke in a strangled whisper. All the time, his eye
s never left hers. “I couldn’t find me gold, Missy. Came back empty-handed. Now I can’t lose me arm. Lea. . . she would not have me. No one would.”

  Ali’s eyes burned. “But I can’t let it eat your brain.”

  “Kill me, Missy.”

  “What? No!”

  “Yes.” He gripped her hand with his free hand. “You have to do it. Paddy cannot live with one arm, and Paddy cannot take this pain. Stop it, Missy, please stop it.”

  “Paddy . . .”

  He wept. “Do it for poor Paddy!”

  Ali had never known such anguish, and it was hers to bear alone. The other two could only look at her and watch as the scab slowly moved higher. Yet Ra was shaking his head—he still wanted her to take the arm—and Farble was trembling, gently rubbing Paddy’s hair. Ali felt she had not entered the elemental kingdom, after all, but had taken a wrong turn and dragged them down into hell with her.

  Then, in a moment, she knew what she had to do.

  Ali let go of Paddy, set down the fire stones, and began to unwrap her bandage. Ra looked puzzled for a moment, then anxious. “What do you think you are doing?” he demanded.

  “I’m going to stop it,” she said.

  “How?”

  “I’m going to let it drink my blood.”

  “What?”

  “It can have my arm,” she said.

  Ra was aghast. “That’s crazy! You’ll die!”

  She stared at him. “When it’s on me, then I’ll cut off my arm, with the stones, and I’ll live.”

  “Ali. . .”

  “I can survive the trauma.” She added, “I can heal myself.”

  Ra reached over and tried to stop her. “You can’t operate on yourself! You can’t heal yourself when you’re bleeding to death! Why, you can’t even heal your burnt hand!”

  He was strong but she was stronger. She shook him off.

  “It’s the only way,” she said.

  Ra suddenly stood. “I will not let you do this.”