“I wonder how it tastes,” I muttered back to her.
If the lizard-bird heard our voices or felt threatened by them, it gave no indication. It simply stood there on the shore of the gently lapping wavelets, drying its feathers and digesting its fish dinner.
Suddenly I realized that we could do the same. “How would you like to eat fish tonight?” I asked Anya.
She was sitting by a clump of bushes, feeding the little duckbill again. It seemed to eat all day long.
Without waiting for her to reply, I waded out into the shallow calm water, turning hot pink in the last rays of the dying sun. The lizard-bird clacked its beak at me and waddled a few paces away. It took only a few minutes for me to spear two fish. I felt happy with the change in our diet.
Anya had spent the time gathering more shrubs for our baby duckbill to nibble. And a handful of berries. The dinosaur ate them with seeming relish.
“If they don’t hurt him, perhaps we can eat them, too,” she said as I started the fire.
“Maybe,” I acknowledged. “I’ll sample one and see how it affects—”
The duckbill suddenly emitted a high-pitched whistle and scooted to Anya’s side. I scrambled to my feet and stared into the gathering darkness of the woods that lined the lakeshore. Sure enough, I heard a crashing, crunching sound.
“Something heading our way,” I whispered urgently to Anya. “Something big.”
There was no time to douse the fire. We were too far from the edge of the trees to get to them safely. Besides, that was where the danger seemed to be coming from.
“Into the water,” I said, starting for the lake.
Anya stopped to pick up the duckbill. It was as motionless as a statue, yet still a heavy armful. I grabbed it from her and, tucking its inert body under one arm, led Anya out splashing into the lake.
We dove into the water as soon as we could, me holding the duckbill up so it could breathe. It wiggled slightly, but apparently had no fear of the water. Or perhaps it was more terrified of whatever was heading our way from the woods. The lake water was tepid, too warm to be refreshing, almost like swimming in lukewarm bouillon.
We went out deep enough so that only our heads showed above the surface. The duckbill crawled onto my shoulder with only a little coaxing and I held him there with one arm, treading water with Anya beside me, close enough to grasp if I had to.
The woods were deeply shadowed now. The trees seemed to part like a curtain and a towering, terrifying tyrannosaur stepped out, his scaly hide a lurid red in the waning sunset.
The tyrant took a few ponderous steps toward our campfire, seemed to look around, then gazed out onto the water of the lake. I realized with a sinking heart that if it saw us and wanted to reach us, it had merely to wade out and grab us in those monstrous serrated teeth. The water that was deep enough for us to swim in would hardly come up to its hocks.
Sure enough, the tyrannosaur marched straight to the water’s edge. Then it hesitated, looking ridiculously like a wrinkled old lady afraid of getting her feet wet.
I held my breath. The tyrannosaur seemed to look straight at me. The trembling package of frightened duckbill on my shoulder made no sound. The world seemed to stand still for an eternally long moment. Not even the lapping waves seemed to make a noise.
Then the tyrannosaur gave an enormous huffing sigh, like a blast from a blacksmith’s forge, and turned away from the lake. It stamped back into the woods and disappeared.
Almost overcome with relief, we swam shoreward and then staggered out of the water and threw ourselves onto the sandy ground.
Only to hear an eerie hooting whistle coming out of the twilight on the lake.
Looking around, I saw the enormous snaky neck of an aquatic dinosaur rising, rising up from the depths of the lake, higher and higher like an enormous escalator of living flesh silhouetted against the glowing pastel sunset. Our duckbill wriggled free of my arms and ran to worm his body as close to Anya as he could.
“The Loch Ness Monster,” I whispered.
“What?”
Suddenly it all became clear to me. The damned tyrannosaur would have waded into the lake after us, except that the lake was inhabited by even bigger dinosaurs who had made it their territory. As far as the tyrannosaur was concerned, anything in the water was meat for the beastie who lived in the lake. That was why it had left us alone.
The lake dinosaur hooted again, then ducked its long neck back beneath the waves.
I rolled onto my back and laughed uncontrollably, like a madman or a soldier who becomes hysterical after facing certain unavoidable death and living through it. We had literally been between the devil and the deep blue sea without even knowing it.
Chapter 18
My laughter subsided quickly enough. We were truly trapped and I knew it.
“I don’t see anything funny,” Anya said in the purpling shadows of the twilight.
“It isn’t funny,” I agreed. “But what else can we do except laugh? One or more tyrannosaurs are patrolling through the woods, one or more even bigger monsters prowling through the lake, and we’re caught in between. It’s beyond funny. It’s cosmic. If the Creators could see us now, they’d be splitting their sides laughing at the stupid blind ridiculousness of it all.”
“We can get past the tyrannosaur,” she said, a hint of cold disapproval, almost anger, in her voice. I noticed that she assumed there was only the one monster lurking in the woods, waiting for us.
“You think so?” I felt bitterly cynical.
“Once it’s fully night we can slip through the woods—”
“And go where? All we’ll be accomplishing is to make Set’s game a little more interesting.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Yes,” I said. “Transform yourself into your true form and leave me here alone.”
She gasped as if I had slapped her. “Orion—you… you’re angry with me?”
I said nothing. My blood seethed with frustration and fury. I raged silently at the Creators for putting us here. I railed inwardly at myself for being so helpless.
Anya was saying, “You know that I can’t metamorphose unless there’s sufficient energy for the transformation. And I won’t leave you no matter what happens.”
“There is a way for you to escape,” I said, my anger cooling. “I’ll go into the woods first and lead the tyrannosaurs away from you. Then you can get through safely. We can meet back at the duckbill nests—”
“No.” She said it flatly, with finality. Even in the gathering darkness I could sense the toss of her ebony hair as she shook her head.
“We can’t—”
“Whatever we do,” Anya said firmly, “we do together.”
“Don’t you understand?” I begged her. “We’re trapped here. It’s hopeless. Get away while you can.”
Anya stepped close to me and touched my cheek with her cool, soft hand. Her gray eyes looked deeply into mine. I felt the tension that had been cramping my neck and back muscles easing, dissolving.
“This is unlike you, Orion. You’ve never given up before, no matter what we faced.”
“We’ve never been in a situation like this.” But even as I said it, I felt calmer, less depressed.
“As you said a few days ago, my love, we still live. And while we live we must fight against Set and his monstrous designs, whatever they are.”
She was right and I knew it. I also knew that there was no way for me to resist her. She was one of the Creators, and I was one of her creatures.
“And whatever we do, my unhappy love,” Anya said, her voice dropping lower, “we will do together. To the death, if necessary.”
My voice choked with a tangle of emotions. She was a goddess, yet she would never abandon me. Never.