The Transall Saga Read Online Free PDF Page A

froze.
    It was close. Somewhere in front of him.
    He hustled up the nearest tree and waited.
    Nothing came his way. Still, he waited. He’d learned not to take chances.
    Finally the birds came back and the sounds in the forest returned to normal. Mark dropped to the ground and picked his way through the brush. Two hundred yards in front of him he saw another clearing with low grass. Staying in the cover of the trees, he listened. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
    The clearing was empty. It was dry, and light red like the last one except for one dark splotch of color on the other side.
    Mark skirted the outside, staying well hidden in the brush. The dark color intrigued him. He reached down and touched it.
    Blood.
    Mark ducked back in the trees. Any animal that had lost that much blood had to be big. And what disturbed him even more was that whatever killed it had managed to carry the whole thing off without leaving even a tiny piece of the carcass.
    Get away. He had to get away. There was no time to lose.
    He turned and was about to rush back around the clearing when he spotted something in a tree.
    Quietly, almost reverently, he walked to it and pulled it from the trunk.
    It was an arrow.

chapter
10
    Mark couldn’t sleep. Before dawn, he was sitting on his mat in the tree house turning the arrow over and over in his hands. It had colorful black and red feathers from birds he’d never seen. The shaft was painted with a black zigzag design, and the point was made of a sharp, chiseled rock skillfully attached with a piece of water-shrunken leather.
    Finding the arrow changed everything. It meant that he was not alone in this place. There were other beings here who could think and hunt and make weapons.
    Mark considered his options. Maybe it would be safer to avoid them and move deeper into the dark jungle. They would never find him there. But what about the blue light? He couldn’t stop searching for it. It was the only link to home and his mother and father.
    Spontaneously his mind conjured up smells from the barbecue his dad had cooked in their backyard the day before Mark left to go on his hike. He remembered how comical his father had looked in the chef’s hat, which kept sliding down over his ears. The way his mother had kept stealing glances at Mark told him she was worried. She had pretended to be happy, but he could tell.
    All that seemed like a hundred years ago. What would they think if they could see him now, ragged and dirty, with thick, tough calluses on the bottoms of his feet? His mother would be shocked. Now he behaved and thought more like an animal than a human, sneaking around the forest. Doing his best to survive.
    Willie climbed down from the top branches and sat beside him. Mark stroked the monkey-bear’s soft white fur. "What should I do, boy? For all I know, these people, if they are people, could be a worse threat than the Howling Thing."
    Still holding the arrow, Mark reached for his homemade bow and climbed down from the tree. He wouldn’t think about them now. If nothing else, he had a new weapon. He would study the arrow and design more like it.
    The first time he tried to shoot it, his string was too loose and the arrow just plopped into the dirt about twenty feet away. The second time, after he had pulled the shoestring taut on the bow, it flew in an arc across the meadow.
    He ran after it. This is so great. On his trip to the pool that morning he would gather any small rocks he could find to use as tips. Then he’d come back early from his scouting trip and hunt for feathers. He shot the arrow again. This time he hit the bush he was aiming at dead center.
    He retrieved the arrow and went back to his tree to pack a small supply of food for his trip. Along with his tree rocks and his sock of edible insects, he took a long strip of lizard jerky. He’d discovered that if he hung the thin pieces of meat over a limb to dry, he could take them with him on his travels