An Alex Hawk Time Travel Adventure | Book 3 | Return from Kragdon-Ah, стр. 48

Reggie really just needed room for two small beds and a small table in his tiny house, so it only took six days to chop the trees down and haul them back to the cliffside.

On the final load of that sixth day, Alex unhooked the horse that hauled the log and took it back to the stables. He returned to find Reggie struggling to move the log to the spot where they would delimb and hew it in the morning. Alex helped him move the log, then stood and stretched, looking up into the late afternoon sun.

At first, he thought he was hallucinating. He used both hands to shield his eyes from the sun, blinked and looked again.

To Alex’s eyes, it looked like a parachutist was descending from above. He could see what looked like a parachute, long, silky strings, and some kind of body attached, slowly descending toward them.

It slowly descended, swaying back and forth in the breeze. As it drew closer, Alex could see that it was no parachutist. In fact, it was some kind of bug, although it did appear to be hanging from a balloon or parachute.

Alex touched Reggie’s arm and pointed up, saying, “Look at that. You ever seen anything like that before?”

They both watched the parachute descend until they could see it wasn’t just a bug. It was a spider. It was hard for Alex to judge how big it was as it fell, but eventually the chute dropped to the ground just about ten feet away.

When it hit the ground, it released the chute, which tumbled away. It sat on the grassy field, examining the surroundings it had fallen into. It stretched out two of its front legs and skittered toward Alex and Reggie.

Monda-ak reached his head out toward the bug, sniffing the air, trying to catch its scent.

As it grew closer, Alex got a better idea of the size of the thing. He estimated that it was five or six inches from one side to the other.

Alex and Reggie watched in fascination as it scrambled across the grass toward them. It paused a few feet away and looked at them.

Alex turned to the cliffside and yelled, “Senta-eh! Sekun-ak! Come see what dropped out of the sky!”

As Alex turned back to the spider, it leaped off the ground directly toward his face. It was the realization of every arachnophobe’s worst nightmare.

Alex was not an arachnophobe. Still, and all the same, he didn’t like to have a giant, possibly poisonous spider leap onto his face. He ducked backwards and slightly to his left. The spider’s arc was predetermined by its jump, so it landed, not on his face, but on his right shoulder.

Alex was surprised that as big as it was, it weighed almost nothing,

Again, the spider sat there for a long moment, contemplating. It reached one long, hairy leg out and ran it down Alex’s neck. That was enough for even a non-arachnophobe like Alex to quickly reach up and shoo it off.

Behind him, Alex heard Senta-eh say, “What is it? I don’t see anything in the sky.”

Again, the spider leaped, this time at Reggie’s face. This time, Alex was ready. He unslung his light club from his belt and swung it at the spider in a lightning-fast arc. He hit the spider a foot away from Reggie’s face.

“Whoa,” was all Reggie managed to say, accidentally slipping back into English.

The spider tumbled over and over, but landed on the ground, apparently uninjured.

Alex did not want to have it make a third jump at them, so he closed the gap between himself and the spider, leaped, and landed on it with one moccasined foot. The spider was crushed beneath his foot and again he wondered at how insubstantial it was. It was almost as if it was an empty shell.

Senta-eh ran up to him and said, “What was it?”

Behind him, Alex heard Sekun-ak and a number of other Winten-ah who had been attracted by his call.

Alex lifted his foot up and scraped the remains of the spider off onto the ground.

A crowd gathered around the bug’s corpse. Senta-eh kneeled beside it. She reached out and moved two of the legs aside to look at the squished belly. There was an irregular slash across the stomach, almost like a lightning bolt.

Senta-eh closed her eyes, said, “Oh, no.”

“What?” Alex asked, dusting his shoulder off where the spider had touched him. It had left a dusty spot behind. “It’s just a spider, right?”

Senta-eh only said a single word: “Zisla-ta.”