WITH A SQUEAL OF TERROR, Pippi shot sideways and clambered over a slippery rock, her claws scratching and sliding. One of the bats sank its teeth into her tail, and she shrieked at the stab of pain.
She spun in circles until she dislodged the bat, then fled through the underbrush. Shrubs and roots and fallen leaves blurred past. She raced on her aching knuckles, her mind blank with panic, as the shouts behind her grew fainter.
She ran and ran until finally she collapsed at the base of a tree fern, panting and exhausted. She licked at the bat bite, relieved to find she still had a tail. As the ache faded, she looked up and realized she didn't know where she was. And had no idea how to get home.
"Okay, don't panic," she muttered to herself. "Think. What would the Stargazer say? What would she tell me to do?"
She'd tell Pippi to find her way home. Or would she? She'd said that only one animal could help the tribe, and she'd been right about the attack from the air, so she must be right about the frog, too.
Pippi shivered under the tree fern. She wanted to find her way home, to check on her parents and sister and friends. But she needed to find Darel the frog before it was too late. Except she wasn't even sure where the Amphibilands was. Near the coast, she thought, but the coast was big.
She could follow the river, and hope it didn't lead her into dangerous marshland…or empty into a hole in the ground. Except she'd lost the river.
She glanced at the sky, wishing she could go into a trance and try to read the Rainbow Serpent's signs in the clouds, like the Stargazer sometimes did. But she couldn't, so she'd just have to decide for herself: Should she try to return home or search for the frog?
She closed her eyes and remembered the rivulets on the rock wall in the Stargazer's burrow. She imagined that each one was a raindrop, collecting in lakes that flowed into rivers that spread through the land, bringing color and lushness and life. She imagined what would happen if the spiders and scorps won the battle for water. She imagined rivers drying up and lakes turning into desert.
Then she rubbed her bill and sighed. She needed to find Darel the frog in the Amphibilands. She peeked around the tree fern. She didn't see any white bats flashing among the branches, so she headed off in the rising moonlight.
Toward the coast, toward-she hoped-the Amphibilands.
Toward help.
Pippi marched for hours as the stars twinkled in the sky. She froze perfectly still whenever a forest sound frightened her. Which was about every ten steps. She'd never traveled this far from the river's comforting gurgle or the safety of her burrow. She missed her parents and her sister, and she was starting to get hungry. There was no time to stop for food, though.
So she continued onward through the night, trying to pretend this was just one of the Stargazer's tales.
At the first faint light of dawn, her courage was rewarded-she smelled the sea in the air, a hint of brine and salt. She gave a happy thwack of her aching tail and decided to stop for a moment and have a snack.
She stuck her bill into the mud and wiggled it back and forth until she felt the tingle of little crawly tasty things. After gobbling down a few worms-crunchier than normal, and with way too many legs-she set off again.
She'd only gone a few hundred feet on her bruised knuckles when she heard a strange scuttling sound from the other side of a rocky gully. A sort of clicking clitter-clatter.
She stopped moving and peered into the shadows. She didn't see anything, but her bill told her there was something out there. Maybe more than one something.
Then a harsh voice slithered through the stillness. "Lord Marmoo promised us we'd be eating frog legs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But instead we're skulking in the forest. I miss the desert."
"Well," another voice said, "instead of frogs in our belly, Marmoo got a dagger in his."
Rasping laughter sounded, so cold and unfriendly that Pippi almost whimpered. Holding her breath, she hid beside a fallen branch, afraid to move. She heard an ugly sort of chewing, and then she saw them: two scorpion warriors, with segmented poison stingers swaying over their black carapaces. They were feeding on pincerfuls of snails. Blood smeared their mouthparts as they chewed and chattered, and Pippi trembled.
"I need something in my belly," the first scorpion grumbled. "I'm hungry."
"Yeah." The second scorpion spat out a bit of shell. "We need to kill something warm and fleshy soon."
Pippi gave a soft yelp of fear. She was warm and fleshy.
"Did you hear that?" The clattering of scorpion legs sounded again across the gully. "Something's near that dead branch."
"Yeah," the second one said. "I can smell it now…it'll be dead soon, too."
The clitter-clatter came closer, and Pippi panicked.
She heaved herself to her feet, scrambled over the fallen branch, and raced away. Leaves crunched and twigs whipped her face as she ran. Prickles snagged her thick coat as she stumbled through thorny bushes. She heard the scorpions draw closer as she slipped in a muddy puddle, raising a cloud of gnats.
For a long moment, she heard nothing but her own ragged breath…then the mocking voices of the scorpions sounded right behind her.
"Look at it try to run," one scorpion scoffed.
"Chubby water rat," the other said, ten feet behind Pippi. "It does look succulent."
Pippi wasn't sure what "succulent" meant, and she didn't want to find out.
She took off as fast as her stubby legs could go, but she was built for swimming, not for sprinting. Her knuckles were aching, and her wide bill slowed her down. Only her fear kept her moving. She dashed across a grassy clearing and almost smacked into a tree but swerved at the last second, then tumbled down a shrubby hill, flipping and flopping, tail over bill.
She crashed to the ground at the bottom, dazed and breathless.
A second later, the scorpions skittered up. One of them prodded her with a pincer. "What is it?"
"I don't know," the other one said. "But it looks tasty."
"I-I-I'm not!" squeaked Pippi. "I'm very poisonous!"
"Not as poisonous as us," the first scorpion said. He raised his stinger, ready to strike.