I wiped a bead of sweat from my forehead as we continued down the mountain. The sun's heat beat down on us from high overhead, and any kind of wind or breeze had long left the area. It was a stale heat. The worst kind. I was already starting to sunburn. My skin was pretty pale and unprotected because, as a Minniemon, I usually stayed in the grass and out of the sun’s death rays, as Mason called them.
I suppose it had been about two hours or more since we started, but it felt like years. We'd made great progress, though. I could cover a whole lot more land this size, and already our two peoples were far behind us and out of sight. At this rate, we'd probably be at Ackon the next day.
More hours of hot hiking passed until I simply couldn't do it anymore, so we set up camp.
"EarthWorms!" I facepalmed out of the blue. "I didn't bring anything to eat!" The very mention of food seemed to alert us both of our empty and miserable stomachs. We split up and looked around desperately for a tree or bush of any kind that produced food, but there was nothing. Nothing except for one small bush that was too young to bear berries.
"Do the thing that you did before," Nathen suggested. "Make it grow."
"Yeah." I rolled my eyes. "Like that's ever going to work." Still, I slipped my hand into the soil next to the plant, and closed my eyes, hoping that the fact I was Upperlander size wouldn't change anything. The bush slowly started to grow and blossom until there were a few pitifully small berries on its branches.
Nathen immediately went to pick them, but I grabbed his wrist before he could touch the plant. Without a word, I picked two of the berries, set them on the ground, grabbed four leaves from the bush, placed them by the berries, and held out my hand for him to take.
That white light hit us again, then we were small. That was getting a lot easier and faster. I kicked one of the berries over to Nathen, who was grasping his stomach in pain.
"Smart." He eyed the fruit that was now seemingly far bigger.
"You shouldn't expect much less." I chuckled proudly and started eating. It wasn't the best meal, considering the bush still wasn't fully grown and I couldn't do better. But it was still food. It probably took less than two minutes for me to eat that thing. After skipping lunch and hiking for so many hours, I was more than starving. Nathen, however, was a different story. He just kept staring at it. Starting to grab it, then yanking away his hand. "What's the matter?" I asked, curiously staring at his odd behavior.
"I don't know." He started to touch it again, but ended up yanking away his hand. "It hurts to touch it. Like a kind of stinging pain. You try." He took a step back. I raised an eyebrow, but picked up the fruit effortlessly. Almost instantly, the berry shrank. It shrank down so small that I could hold it between two fingers. "What the . . ." I mumbled.
"You don't think—" He didn't bother finishing. Instead, he took the berry from me and placed it on the ground. Nathen snapped his fingers, and the berry went back to its normal size.
"How'd you do that?" I asked in awe.
"Think about it. You're a Minniemon, I'm an Upperlander. With your help I can shrink, with my help you can grow. You can cause an object to shrink, while I can cause it to grow," he explained excitedly. It made sense . . . Sort of. But there was still the question of how. How was any of this even possible?
An owl's hoot interrupted my thoughts. Already the sun was down, and the air was starting to chill drastically. Nathen finished his berry as I used the leaves from the bush to build makeshift tents and sleeping bags.
The ground was hard without a real bed, not much different than the way it was when I traveled with my tribe, and negative thoughts kept me awake for an hour or two before I finally got to sleep that night.
Chapter 9
Another Village
THE NEXT DAY CONSISTED mostly of more hiking, and by the time we got to Ackon, the sun was almost down. The river was still flowing rapidly, even more rapidly than it had been the day before. The water splashed us as we hiked by it in Upperlander form, providing us with a cool relief from the heat of the evening. The skies were dark and cloudy, and not a sound was to be heard over the water. The winds swirled aimlessly, causing my hair to whip around my face. The situation was in no way comfortable, but we continued, determined to make it to that village before sundown.
We walked along Ackon for a few more miles, but the sun set on us before we were in sight of the village that Miss Martha spoke of. Still, we hiked on. We could have easily set up camp by the river bed and finished the hike in the morning, but we were—I was—far too stubborn for that.
Darkness engulfed us, and the winds blew harder. Colder. The river stirred so violently that we had to back away from it and follow another trail. The sky thundered and flashed, but no water came. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. For hours there were countless signs of a storm, but there was no rain. Not a drop. There was a sense of magic in that place. I couldn't tell if it was a good magic or a bad one. It just continued stirring.
I tried my hardest to ignore my surroundings and just keep moving forward, and it worked. After a couple more hours, a light greeted us from an Upperlander civilization, and another smaller one not far from it. The villages lay just up ahead, promising rest and, hopefully, answers.
We dug two small holes outside of the towns, shrank, and slept there. We agreed to explore first thing in the morning. Surprisingly, I slept very well. As soon as I closed my eyes, I was out.
Thunder struck with a boom louder than that of ten drums, and I shot up in my makeshift sleeping bag. Still, there was no rain. Not the slightest sprinkle. I groaned and got up from the ground, making my way outside to see what time it was.
Shock filled me as I took in my surroundings. Everything was like it was when I went to sleep, except twice as bad. It was near impossible to tell what time it was with the thick black clouds overhead, but I guessed that it was just before dawn.
"Thunder wake you?" I jumped at the sound of Nathen's voice. He was sitting Indian-style against a large blade of grass, staring up the mountain.
"Yeah," I responded, then went back into the hole to change into a new dress. When I came back out he was still sitting there, staring. I followed his gaze up the mountain. There was a large cloud of smoke coming from just a few miles up. At first, I thought it was a wildfire, but then I realized that it was contained. The Upperlanders must have been camping up there. That meant my tribe wasn't far behind either.
Both of our villages were supposed to be here by now, but the storm must’ve slowed them down. If I knew my tribe, they were probably going to wait it out. It would only take a few hours to get from there to here, but it would be too difficult to navigate carts and crowds through this storm.
I started to think about my family and friends. They were probably worried sick, running about searching for me. There was no doubt that the entire tribe was searching. I shook off the thought. The only thing I should be focusing on was the village ahead.
Nathen and I grabbed our backpacks, changed into Upperlander form, and left the spot. The thunder shook the ground, causing a shiver to snake down my spine.
There were two villages. A Minniemon village and an Upperlander village. Both of them were quite smaller than our villages, which I thought was rather strange. I mean, who wouldn’t want to live in a village right next to Ackon?