Even in pain, lying there a second away from
death, I thought I had never seen anything so perfect in my life.
In a split second Jake was gone, and the larger Hork-Bajir was screaming and holding his eyes.
I was ready. I swept my leg left to right and knocked the Hork-Bajir off his feet. I was up and hobbling on my one good leg before he hit the ground.
I ran to Rachel and helped knock her last Hork-Bajir foe to the ground.
"Ready to go?"
"Been ready," Rachel said.
Although my one leg was almost useless, I could still use my tail for balance and hobble at a pretty good speed. Rachel soon pulled out ahead of me. But that was okay. That was the plan.
"Jake?" I said. "That was one sweet save back there. Would it be wrong for me to say I love you, man?"
"Hah-HAH! That was fun! Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that was a rush!" Jake exulted.
Rachel and I ran toward the lip of the ravine. And now I could actually feel the heat of the fire approaching. The wind shifted and I gagged on thick black smoke. I lost sight of Rachel.
When the smoke cleared, I was face-to-face with a Taxxon. "You're lucky I'm in a hurry, or
you'd be worm hash," I said, and brushed past the huge centipede.
"Rachel! Ten feet to your left," Jake instructed. "Yeah! Yeah! Right there between the two saplings!"
I looked forward just in time to see Rachel leap out into the air. Out into the emptiness she went . . . and then disappeared. She fell from sight.
My hearts stopped beating. Both of them. I felt my throat clutch tight.
It was a hundred feet to the bottom of that ravine. Not even a Hork-Bajir could survive that kind of fall.
Now it was my turn. I ran for the ravine lip.
"0h, man!" Jake cried. "0n your left! In front of you! I didn't see them all in the smoke! Tobias, it's him!"
A thick wall of smoke swirled around me, then blew away. It was like some horrible magic trick. One minute, there was the ravine. The next second, there stood three Hork-Bajir. And one Andalite.
One Andalite who was no Andalite at all.
Visser Three stood on the very lip of the ravine. Right in my path.
Hork-Bajir are fast. But the tail of an Andalite is faster. I couldn't win a fight against Visser Three and three Hork-Bajir. No way.
But then it suddenly occurred to me ...
I grinned. At least as much as a Hork-Bajir can grin. I looked Visser Three right in his main eyes.
"Ket Halpak free!" I yelled, using my Hork-Bajir voice.
And I charged straight at him, running flat-out, ignoring the searing pain from my injured leg.
Visser Three watched me calmly for a couple of seconds. Then it occurred to him, too. Just like it had to me. See, he might get me with his tail, and even kill me before I could get to the ravine, but my momentum would certainly carry me forward.
And I would knock Visser Three off the edge, too.
At the last second, Visser Three dodged nimbly out of my way.
"Ket Halpak and Jara Hamee freeeeeeee!" I shouted defiantly as I jumped off the edge of the ravine.
I fell.
The floor of the ravine was a long, long, long way down.
I saw a brutish, massive arm shoot out. A fist the size of a Virginia baked ham grabbed my leg,
I stopped falling. I slammed into the ravine wall. And the massive arm yanked me back up-
ward. Right up into the shallow cave in the ravine wall.
No Earth animal could possibly have caught a falling, seven-foot-tall Hork-Bajir in midair. No animal except a gorilla.
"Nice catch," I said to Marco.
He hauled me up into the cave and bodily shoved me back to where Rachel was waiting quietly.
We huddled there. Waiting. Silent. We were just a few feet down below the lip of the ravine.
Because of the overhang, I could look down and see the floor of the ravine. Down there, on the sand, lay the crumpled forms of two very dead-looking Hork-Bajir. A pair of hungry wolves were already tearing at their "dead" flesh.
Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak lay still as Cassie and Jake, who had to fly down to the ravine and morph from falcon to human to wolf, pretended to begin devouring them. Fortunately, Hork-Bajir can stand a lot of pain.
And they heal quickly. Because I'll tell you what - if I didn't know the truth, even I would have thought that two dead Hork-Bajir were about to become wolf chow.
I held my breath. Would the Yeerks be fooled? Would Visser Three believe that Rachel and I had fallen to our deaths?
I heard cruel laughter in my head. "Fools," Visser Three sneered. "No one escapes the Yeerk
empire. Certainly not a pair of idiot Hork-Bajir. Look at them down there, all of you! That's what awaits anyone who tries to escape the Yeerks!" He laughed a terrible laugh. "The wolves will give them both the burial they deserve."
We waited till Visser Three and the rest of the Yeerks - human, Hork-Bajir, and Taxxons - left.
Then we crawled back up onto the lip of the ravine. We morphed back, and once we were all together again, we headed off across the land the Yeerks had burned. We knew we had to be quick. The Forest Service firefighters would be showing up soon. Even though the fire had mostly just burned itself out.
We found the valley. The lovely little valley the Ellimist had shown me.
I knew what to look for. Otherwise I'd never have noticed it.
I was a good puppet for the Ellimist. I had done my job well. Not that I regretted that part of it. I could never be sorry for helping anyone escape Yeerk slavery.
But I was once more a red-tailed hawk. And so I would remain.
The entrance to the valley was so narrow the Hork-Bajir could barely fit between the rock walls. It was like some amazing bandit hideout from an old Western movie.