The gorilla grabbed the squealing pig and got to his feet. The pig looked tiny in his hands. The beast roared again, gleaming fangs dripping with saliva, and brought the squealing pig toward its mouth.
Alex cringed and looked away just in time. The pig went silent.
When Alex dared look again, the gorilla was loping back through the overgrowth toward the mountain.
“Wow,” Alex breathed. “That was intense.”
Simber nodded. “Quite. I have a feeling that whoeverrr made that help sign—”
“Has long ago been eaten,” Alex said. There was no doubt. No one could survive with a beast like that around.
Simber turned toward the water. “Maybe this is one island we can safely avoid in the futurrre.”
“Definitely,” Alex said.
As darkness fell, they flew back to the ship.
When they arrived, the Artiméans had gathered and were waiting for details.
“We heard a roar,” Samheed said. “What happened? What did you see?”
Alex slid off Simber’s wing and landed on the deck. “Oh, just a lush forest, sparkling waterfall, rugged mountain . . . and an eight-foot-tall saber-toothed mountain gorilla that hunted down a pig and killed it in about four seconds,” he reported.
Lani grabbed his arm. “Are you serious?”
“Yep.”
“Eight feet tall? No way. You can’t be serious.”
“It was huge, Lani.”
“Saber-toothed?”
“Six-inch spears jutting down out of its face. Not kidding.”
“Wow,” Lani said, imagining it. “But it didn’t eat the pig . . . did it?” Lani’s face was aghast. “Gorillas aren’t carnivorous.”
“I admit I didn’t watch that part,” Alex said.
“It ate the pig,” Simber confirmed. “Two bites.”
As the captain continued guiding the ship toward home, Lani fielded questions from Fox and Kitten about what gorillas were supposed to look like. And Alex used some burned bits from one of the lamps to do a charcoal sketch on the deck of the monster he’d seen, fangs and all.
Later, as Samheed, Lani, Sky, and Alex lounged under the stars before falling asleep, Sky said, “It was such a beautiful island. I’m sad we can’t ever visit there.”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “That waterfall looked refreshing.”
They lay in silence for a while.
“I wonder if any of our spells would be strong enough to freeze the gorilla,” Lani mused.
Alex and Samheed simultaneously shot her warning looks.
“No,” Alex said.
“Not a chance,” Samheed said. “Don’t get any ideas.”
Sky looked on, amused.
Lani smiled innocently at the stars. “It was just a thought. Sheesh,” she said. But it got her mind whirring. Perhaps she could come up with a special spell. . . .
One by one, their eyes fluttered closed and they drifted off to sleep.
» » « «
By morning the sixth island was just a spot on the horizon behind them, and a new, tall rise of land greeted them from in front of the ship, still some distance away.
“Wow, it’s island seven!” Crow said when he woke and saw it. “I can’t believe we’ve seen all seven of them.”
“It’s pretty cool,” Henry said. After breakfast and chores, they hung over the railing as they sailed by, not as close as they’d been to the sixth island. The others gathered to look at it too.
The seventh island, which was the one just east of Quill, jutted up from the water like a canister wearing a giant spiky crown. Lush growth sprouted from the top, with vines hanging between the spikes a short length down the side of the smooth vertical wall.
“I wonder how you get up there,” Alex mused. “It looks impossible to climb.”
“Look, there are birds circling above it,” Ms. Octavia said. “And diving down to the water.”
They could hear the cries of the sea birds, and watched as one particularly large-beaked bird flew just above the surface of the water and scooped up a fish without stopping, gulping it down its floppy gullet. They didn’t seem alarmed to see Simber or the ship. They just went about their birdly business.
There seemed to be no way to access the island, and nothing was happening on it that they could see, so the Artiméans moved on without discussion.
By midafternoon, the seventh island was long gone, and the Artiméans grew anxious for signs of home. They were more than ready. And it was way past time.
A New Discovery
Aaron immersed himself in the jungle, spending the rest of the day training the panther to stay when he commanded her to. Whenever the panther obeyed, Aaron would pet her, and whenever she did not obey, Aaron ignored her and played with the little sharp-toothed dog that often spent time in the clearing near the tube.
Every now and then, when the panther would slink away or run off, and the dog and rock would nap, Aaron whiled away the time by fashioning things out of all the vines around him. He twisted long pieces together without any particular purpose in mind at first, but then noticed the connected vines resembled a large, long-legged spider.
Inspired, Aaron went in search of something that would make a good head for the spider. Eventually he settled on a ball of mud from the riverbank and a handful of acorns for the eyes. He used extra mud to hold everything together.
The rock watched with interest. And the panther seemed very curious as well. She didn’t like it when Aaron spent time paying attention to other things, even when it was because she disappeared. And whenever the panther came bounding back to demand Aaron’s attention, Aaron would work with her a bit more on the “down” command, until she did it ten times in a row, perfectly.