Dawn made a quarter turn and walked through a little clearing, over a patch of umbrella plants, and on past half a dozen lurid green ferns similar to the one that Josh had seen on the ridge. After that Josh saw no landmarks at all, though Dawn went on without hesitation. They walked up a small hill and down the other side. Then over another.
Josh was getting very edgy. He had been doing his best to note every change of direction, but it was easy to become confused. Grisel was hidden behind cloud, and with that and the dense cover of plant leaves, he no longer knew east from west.
What would Sig and Topaz say when they realized that he had no real idea what he was doing? It wasn’t something he wanted to hear.
Dawn paused, suddenly enough that Josh bumped into her. He grabbed her to keep their balance, said “Sorry,” and at once felt ridiculous. He was barging into Dawn in the middle of nowhere, then apologizing as if the situation were normal. They were lost, lost hopelessly.
And then Josh saw movement. Something gray and sleek and low was scurrying away through the stems ahead.
“Oh, no!” It was Ruby’s voice. She was sitting on the jungle floor on a pile of umbrella plant leaves. “Why did you make so much noise? You’ve scared it away!”
Chapter Eleven
Rejoicing at finding Ruby was cut short by the weather. As Sapphire gasped with relief and went forward to put her arms around her sister, the forest lit up in vivid purple and white. It was lightning, up on the ridge—and close. A titanic clap of thunder followed at once.
“Let’s go, Dawn,” Josh shouted, and hoped that she understood him. Winnie Carlson had said that the camp would be safe in bad weather—but she didn’t say that you could sit out a thunderstorm in the middle of the jungle. “You, too, Sapphire. Bring Ruby with you.”
“What about my spangle?” Ruby wailed.
Josh didn’t answer. If he was sure of anything, it was that what he had seen running away through the wide-spaced stems was no spangle. It was too big, and too fast-moving.
He didn’t wait for Dawn, but headed for Sig and Topaz. They hadn’t moved, except to jump at the lightning and the violent crash of thunder. Sig turned to lead the way back, but Topaz waited for Josh and grabbed him before he could stop her. She gave him a hard hug and said, “Thanks, Josh. If anything had happened to Ruby, Saph would never have forgiven herself.”
He pulled himself free, embarrassed by her show of gratitude, and muttered, “I really didn’t do anything.” He turned to make sure that the others were following. Dawn was a few feet away. Sapphire and Ruby were coming more slowly, largely because Ruby insisted on dragging with her a leaf three feet across.
Josh waved them on and turned back to make sure that Sig was still in sight. Dawn could probably lead them out again, if and when she chose to, but he didn’t want to have to rely on that. It was suddenly very dark under the leaf canopy, except when flashes of lightning lit the gloom.
“Come on!” Sig was waving, too, at everyone. “It could rain any minute. We don’t want to be anywhere near the stream when it does—have you ever seen a flash flood?”
Josh hadn’t, and he wondered when Sig had. The Lasker brothers looked like perfect city scruffs, tough and rough and streetwise. On the other hand, someone had given them those peculiar and awful names, Siegfried and Hagen and Alberich. That didn’t sound like gangster parents, or uneducated jobs from the unemployment Pool. How had the Laskers come to be on Solferino at all?
It was a question that would have to wait. A sudden patter of raindrops sounded on the broad leaves overhead. It stopped in a few seconds, but it felt like a warning. The real thing could start at any moment.
They emerged abruptly into the clear space that bordered the stream. Winnie was waiting for them, leaning into the wind. Its force was far stronger here, and her short hair was blowing wildly about her face.
“We found her,” Sig shouted.
She raised her fist in the air, then gestured downstream.
“Go to the camp. The others are there. I’ll make sure of everyone else.”
Lightning again showed everything in vivid blue-white. Josh looked up, to see if he could follow its track, and found the sky already dark. But another bolt followed almost at once, and what he saw by its light brought him to a halt.
“Look!” He pointed up and along the line of the ridge that he and Sig had climbed.
The clouds were low, a few hundred feet above the ridge. Below the clouds, seeming almost to touch them, giant shapes came scudding along over the top of the hill, a dozen or more of them, all different colors, huge and round and majestically riding the wind.
Winnie stopped urging the others along. As they emerged from the forest they all halted and stared up. Three of the balloons were passing directly overhead, stately as great sailing ships. Another explosion sounded, more muted than the crash of lightning, and suddenly only two balloons were above them. Josh heard a rattle on the ground nearby, not at all like raindrops. Something hit him on top of the head, hard enough to hurt, and bounced to the ground in front of him.
He picked it up. It was brown and rounded, the size of his thumbnail. He stuffed it into his pocket. As he did so, the real rain came.
Josh was soaked instantly, as thoroughly as if he had jumped into the stream. The drops were mixed with hail, stinging his exposed face and hands. Sig was shouting, “Stay away from the stream!” and Winnie cried out, “Back to the camp and inside, all of you. Keep to the high ground!”
Josh started to run, then changed his mind. He turned. Here came Topaz, Ruby—still hanging on to her leaf—and Sapphire. Then Sig. And, last of all, sauntering despite Winnie’s attempts to hurry her, Dawn.
Josh ran back, grabbed her hand, and pulled. She laughed, and ran with him. Over the soaked carpet of plants, up the incline, on into the camp’s enclosed but cramped kitchen area.
Winnie Carlson came last. Josh waited at the door and slammed it shut behind her.
Outside, fork lightning flashed continuously in the evening sky. The crash of thunder added to the howl of wind and the ferocious rattle of hail on the roof. Inside, everyone was talking at once and no one seemed to be listening.
“Never again, I promise.” Sapphire was so pale that she seemed bloodless. She made the sign of a cross on her heart.
“Huh. Sure.” That was Amethyst, her voice bitter. “I bet it was your last one, anyway.”
Sapphire said nothing, but she reached in her jacket to an inside pocket and pulled out five little tubes. She stared at the triple-snap for a few seconds, then dropped the tubes to the floor and crushed them savagely under her heel. “I’m off it. Even if it kills me, I’ll stay off it.”
“We’ll hold you to that,” Topaz said. But she went across and put her arm around her sister.
“But how could she? I mean, she’s a retard.” That was Hag to Rick in a different conversation, shaking their heads at each other and trying to pull one of the big grapelike things off the stalk. “I mean, how could she know her way in the forest like that, when we don’t?”
“Dunno. I think I’ll try this, though.” Rick had loosened a purple sphere.
“You can if you like.” Winnie had been watching them. “Eat one, I mean. But it may not be what you think. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s some sort of precursor to a larval stage.”