An Alex Hawk Time Travel Adventure | Book 3 | Return from Kragdon-Ah, стр. 49

Senta-eh jogged ahead and over her shoulder, said, “I will bring Drana-eh. She might remember something that can help us.”

Drana-eh? Alex searched through his memory, then the name clicked into place. One of the elders who sits in the upper cave. But that’s not quite right, either. Not one of the elders. The elder. The oldest living Winten-ah.

Everyone scrambled away like they’d had a fire lit under them. Again, Alex looked up at the sky, trying to see what the hurry was about. How could a single bug dropping from the sky be such a cause for concern.

A few minutes later, as darkness fell beyond the mouth of the caves, half a dozen council members gathered around the empty fire pit. A moment later, Senta-eh entered, carrying a small woman on her back.

Alex was sure that Drana-eh had once been as tall and strong as any of the Winten-ah, but time is undefeated in its battle with the human body. She was now so gnarled and compressed that she looked like one of the petrified trees in the forest by the ocean.

Sekun-ak stood and offered his chair to her. Senta-eh placed her gently in the chair with a pillow that helped her sit more upright, as she had a strong tendency to lean to the left. She may have looked ancient, but Alex noticed that her eyes were bright and sharp.

Drana-eh opened her mouth and revealed two rows of pink gums, unbroken by the appearance of teeth. “Would someone light the fire, please? I haven’t truly been warm in at least ten solstices.”

Alex scrambled up to retrieve some firewood and flint and soon had a good blaze going. Sekun-ak scooted Drana-eh’s chair forward until she was only a few feet away from the flames. Senta-eh returned with a comfortable blanket which she wrapped around the old woman’s shoulders.

And finally, Drana-eh was ready to speak.

“The first zisla-ta has fallen then, has it? I wondered which would happen first—that I would finally be done with this old body that is now my prison, or that the scourge of our land would return. It would have been better if they had come after I had gone.”

“Were you alive the last time they appeared?”

Drana-eh’s eyes grew misty with memory for a moment before sharpening again. “Yes. I was a tiny girl, barely off my mother’s teat when they came, but I have never forgotten it. One day it was one, then the next day two more, then maybe a hundred. The children made a game out of following them down out of the sky and jumping on them.”

She drifted away for a moment, lost in the memory of a Kragdon-ah of long ago.

“The fourth day, they blacked out the sky.”

For long moments, the only sound in the cave was the crackling and popping of the fire.

Finally, she concluded. “It was almost the end of us.”

Alex leaned forward and spoke loudly. He knew Drana-eh didn’t hear well.

“But why, though. Are they poisonous?”

“No. They’ll bite you, but they aren’t poisonous.”

“What then? Don’t spiders only eat bugs? If a whole bunch of them land and they eat all the bugs, why is that dangerous?”

“Zisla-ta don’t just eat bugs. They eat everything. At least, everything that’s alive. Trees, bushes, animals, grass. Everything. Wherever they go, they leave destruction behind them. We almost starved last time the zisla-ta flew by. Even mighty godat-ta hides when the plague comes.”

It was hard for Alex to picture godat-ta hiding from anything, but he didn’t want to say so.

Alex hesitated to ask his next question, but figured nothing was rude when a plague was on the way. “Drana-eh, how old are you? I’m just trying to figure out how long it’s been since the zisla-ta appeared.”

Drana-eh didn’t answer for so long that Alex thought that she had fallen asleep with her eyes open. Finally, she jerked a bit and said, “I don’t know how old I am. The legend is that the zisla-ta reappear every one hundred summer solstices. If that’s true, then I am older than that even. I don’t know how I have lived so long.”

Sekun-ak looked around the circle. “And we are already low on supplies. We will want to send hunting parties out every day until they arrive. Same with our gatherers. The legend says that the zisla-ta will pick every leaf, limb, and bush bare. That we will find skeletons picked clean. I just don’t want it to be any of us.”

“Maybe we should take our normal hunting team and split it in two. Then each group would have at least a few experienced hunters, and we might be able to bring in more game.”

“I will split the groups. You can lead one group and I will lead the other. Ganku-eh, can you organize the gatherers. We need to just grab as much as we can and get it inside the caves. We’ll worry about cleaning and the like later.”

Alex looked around the circle. “Is there anything else we can do? Do we just sit here and wait for them?”

Sekun-ak waited, giving anyone that wanted time to speak. When no one spoke up, he said, “Other than Drana-eh, none of us were alive the last time they came. All we have are the legends, and the legends say they are an unstoppable force. Do you have any ideas?”

“Not yet. But I can’t imagine just sitting here and doing nothing. Let me sleep on it and I will let you know.”

“Everyone knows what we need to do then,” Sekun-ak concluded. “We will start before dawn.”

THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE a whirlwind of activity in the caves. Sekun-ak and Alex led one hunt after another. As soon as they had field dressed and returned with one animal, they went out again, from first light to full darkness. At night, they stayed up and helped process the meat, berries, and herbs.

Niten-eh was concerned that the zisla-ta would destroy