Page 1 of Caveman Alien’s Terror (Caveman Aliens #25)

1

- Astrid -

“What do you think?”

I keep my voice to a whisper. We’re always really careful about not making too much noise in the jungle. You don't know what exactly you might attract, just that it's going to be really bad for your health.

Alba pushes back her fireman-style straw hat and squints. “Is that what a salen tree is supposed to look like? Isn't it a little short?”

I look behind us. Anter'az, Alba's husband, is nearby somewhere. He won't let his wife out in the jungle without him to protect her. But he's good at staying out of sight, especially when I need him to identify various plants.

“I don't know,” I admit. “I've never seen one before. But the fruits look about right, don't they?”

“They do,” Alba agrees. “Delicious and really hard to get hold of.”

“We don't need the fruits,” I remind her. “Just the water.”

As the shaman apprentice of the Borok tribe, I have to be familiar with the wild jungle that surrounds the village on every side. I will need to gather plants and herbs and twigs and leaves and fruits and nuts, both for food and for various substances that the shaman of an alien caveman village needs. But it’s the scariest part of my duties.

One day I will be ready to go out into the woods on my own, but today is not that day. Walking out of the village gates always feels like stepping into a lion's cage with the lion sleeping lightly. It makes me tighten up inside, and I barely dare to breathe.

So I'm grateful to Alba for offering to come along and to bring her giant caveman husband. But the feeling of being one second from stepping on that lion's tail is always present. There was a reason Alba, Bronwen, and I lived in damp underground tunnels for years rather than above the ground.

And Cora, an inner voice reminds me. Cora, who vanished after I basically told her to get lost, and who never came back or showed any sign of life and who is almost certainly dead, while I live safely in a village protected by eight-feet-tall cavemen…

“So… do we go over there?” Alba asks.

The tree stands in a clearing, slender and alone. It’s shorter than most of the other trees around it. A single beam of sunlight reaches it from the canopy of leaves and branches several hundred feet up, making the smooth trunk shine like polished copper. It's the only sunlight we've seen since we left the village, and it makes the clearing look so inviting, and so much like a trap, that I hesitate to go on.

“Okay,” I decide, looking around for Anter'az again and not spotting him. “Follow me.” I grip my spear tighter and move slowly into the little clearing, heart racing.

The wet grass strokes against my bare ankles like slimy weeds. Looking up, I spot a small, blue break in the canopy. There's no movement, no shadow of a deadly alien pterodactyl that's about to swoop down on me from above.

I stop and look behind me. Alba is clutching her spear, specially made for her by Anter'az. She follows me into the clearing, looking up and around the way we have to in the jungle.

My heart is beating fast, and I look carefully at the ground, feeling like I'm about to walk into some deadly snare.

I'm not even sure why. There's nothing much that separates this spot from any other in the jungle. What the heck is making me feel so scared just here? If anything, this little clearing is more idyllic and peaceful than practically anywhere else. Maybe that’s why I don’t trust it.

The salen tree looks innocent as it towers over me. Yellow, mango-like fruits shine like little lights inside the dark green crown. They’re legendary for their taste and juiciness, and the cavemen say they contain a lot of ‘force’, which I take to mean energy. They’re also insanely hard to pick off the tree, because the salen tree tends to defend itself in dangerous ways.

“Do you have the tool?” Alba whispers from close by, making me jump. “Sorry! Didn’t mean to startle you.”

I put my hand on my racing heart. “It’s fine. I’m just a little tense.” I get the drill out of my backpack. “Can you hold the pot?”

“Sure.”

I slowly walk up to the tree and gingerly touch the smooth bark. It’s cool to the touch, and it’s as if I can feel some living tension in there. “Ready?” I put the tip of the simple little wood drill on the bark and begin slowly cranking the handle. If this were a lion’s cage, this would feel like pulling a hair out of its fur.

“Go slow,” Alba cautions me. “They say the tree is easily triggered.”

As if I didn’t know that.

The iron drill slowly cuts into the bark, revealing a layer of vivid green inside before it starts scraping softly against the wood. The vegetal scent of fresh bark wafts past my nose.

“I have to use more force,” I whisper.

“Be careful.”

I add some weight to the drill, and it bites into the wood, shaving off bright yellow flakes.

A light shiver goes through the tree and I stop. “Did you feel that?”

“What?” Alba whispers behind me.

“I think it moved.”

I wait for a few seconds. But the shiver doesn’t happen again, so I keep drilling. The wood gets harder, but the caveman-forged drill is sharp and cuts easily into it. Before I know it, a hard stream of clear liquid starts flowing, covering the drill and my hands.

“The pot!” I urge as I lean out of the way.

Alba puts the clay pot under the stream to catch the liquid sap. “Nice. That was easy. I never knew it would flow like this!”

“Yeah, I thought it would be more of a trickle—” I stop as I spot movement from the corner of my eye.

Something vanishes behind a tree trunk at the other side of the clearing. Something blue.

I freeze and stare. Random movement in the jungle is never a good thing. And the velociraptor-like dinosaurs called rekh can be any color, including blue. What the heck was that?

“Getting full,” Alba warms me. “Maybe plug it up?”

The pot she’s holding is filling up fast. I fumble through the pockets in my stiff and shapeless dinosaur-skin dress. Finding the wooden plug I brought, I push it firmly into the hole in the tree, getting my face sprayed with watery sap in the process. “There.”

Alba puts a lid on the pot. “That’s a lot of juice. Should be more than enough for the Sword Ceremony.”

I wipe the liquid off my face, noticing it has a faint spicy taste. “I hope so. I’m not eager to come back here anytime soon.” I scan the edge of the clearing, but the blue flash doesn’t appear again.

Alba secures the lid with thin leather straps and looks up. “It would be cool if we could return with a salen fruit or two. They’re not that high up.” She puts one hand on the bark.

There's a hard sound like 'thwack', and something shoots out of the salen tree trunk and tugs at the side of Alba's dress.

“What the heck?” She frowns and picks something out of the leather. It's a black spike as long as her index finger, but thin and pointed, with cruel barbs all along it. “Did that tree just shoot at me?”

More thwack sounds are coming from higher up the tree. Little arrows are shooting straight out with great force, high up the trunk, but coming lower fast. Soon there will be hundreds of those things hitting us.

I grab Alba's arm. “Run!”

As I say it, I know it's not going to work. That wave of shooting spikes is coming down the tree too fast. And those things are coming out like gunshots. The noise is deafening.

We barely have time to move before spikes start shooting out right above our heads.

I freeze in fear, knowing I'll be pierced like a sieve.

There's suddenly a blue wall between me and the tree. A very strange-looking wall, with silver pants and six-pack abs and big chest muscles and a thick neck. And a face. He's electric blue and so beautiful I can't believe he's real.

I hear the spikes shooting out of the tree, but none of them hit me.

The sheer surprise makes me fall on my butt.

The world goes silent as the tree exhaustes its defenses. Alba is frozen beside me, staring at the newcomer with a jaw that hangs almost to her chest.

I realize that mine is too, so I close my mouth and stare up at the blue apparition.

He's unspeakably beautiful, too much so to be real. In his eyes he has white stars that sparkle like welding torches. His hair is a chaos of gold, silver, and copper and probably a good few metals I've never heard of. He smiles with an icy, dangerous warmth that my brain can't process. There are scales all over him and sharp spikes along his forearms.

He's an otherworldly creature, a god of some kind, too wonderful for this world. I want to cower, to beg for mercy. But I'm too scared to move.

“Little girls in the jungle,” the newcomer says. His voice is as clear as church bells, as deep into the resonant bass as that of any caveman, but with a menacing iciness to it that convinces me that I'm about to die. “You should be more careful. It's such a difficult planet.”

I still can't move. His face and his eyes and his voice make me desperate to flee wildly into the jungle, to brave the danger of the dinosaurs and the venomous creatures. At the same time I'm completely stunned and in the total power of this male. I need to know what he'll say next. I can't take my eyes off him.

He reaches his hand out to me, palm up. It's holding something bright yellow. It could be a hand grenade for all I know, but there’s no choice in this. I simply have to reach up and accept it.

Sharp claws stroke against my fingers as the object is transferred.

It's a salen fruit, ripe and heavy in my hand.

Sparkling eyes pierce me from high up. “There's your wish. I shall expect you to pay for it at some time.”

I nod jerkily. “Yes!” I'd say anything to make him leave. Or to stay. Both possibilities seem unbearable.

“ Aaaargh!” The deep roar of a caveman battle cry ruins the moment.

“Those things are getting tedious.” The blue apparition smoothly pulls away from us and vanishes among the trees.

Anter'az comes storming into the clearing, sword out, ready for battle. His battle cry still echoes from the trees. “What was that?!”

I regain control of my limbs. My hand goes to the hilt of the knife in my belt, wanting to pull it out and kill Anter'az for chasing away that blue demigod.

“You tell us, warrior,” I snarl. “You've lived here all your life!”

“That was not from here,” he growls as he glares at the jungle. “I've never seen anything like that! Are you all right, my love?” The caveman turns his attention to his wife.

I finally get to my feet and let the married couple reconnect.

There's a heap of ugly, black spikes on the ground. They must have hit him and just bounced off his scales.

He had scales! What the hell was that thing?

“You all right, Astrid?” Alba looks at me, worried.

I look down my front. I half expect to see slowly growing roses of blood on my dress, but it looks whole and as clean as it was this morning. “I think I'm fine. You?”

“Not a scratch. Did he give you something?” She nods to my hand.

I remember the fruit. It's like a mango, but a brighter yellow and more rounded. “Oh. Looks like a salen fruit.”

Anter'az frowns. “How did he get that?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“What the hell was that?” Alba asks in English. “He saved our lives!”

I weigh the salen fruit in my hand. “He absolutely did. Where were you, Anter'az?” I ask, switching to cavemannish. I still haven’t forgiven him.

“I was led away,” the caveman healer growls. “There were sounds and shadows, as if we were surrounded by a full tribe! But at the end of the track, there was nobody! It was a trick!”

“It's all right, my love,” Alba says soothingly and clings to her husband. “We're fine.”

“No thanks to me,” Anter'az seethes. “I was fooled, like the pup of a grint! ”

“You're here now,” Alba points out. “Maybe you saved us from him. He was dangerous. Right, Astrid?”

“He was deadly,” I confirm as I put the salen fruit into my backpack along with the drill. My hands are still shaking. “He radiated danger. We're lucky to be alive right now.”

Anter'az keeps staring at the jungle, sword still in his hand. “What did he say?”

“He said we should be more careful because the planet is difficult,” Alba tells him. “Who was he?”

I take the pot of watery sap and put it into the backpack with hands that are still shaking. “I kind of hope we’ll never know. Well, we got what we came for. We can go home.” I do have some idea who he was. But I don’t want to say it out loud before I talk to someone who knows more.

We start walking back the way we came, Anter’az in front with the sword in his hand.

Before I step out of the clearing and into the jungle, I turn to give the salen tree a last look.

My heart jumps in my chest. There he is again, the big, blue male, casually leaning up against the tree and grinning with the most perfect teeth in the world. His sheer beauty creates a sucking feeling in my stomach, accompanied by a jolt of fear. Because he’s definitely looking only at me, just like when he talked to us. And while having your crush noticing you across a crowded room feels great, having this astonishing male beaming at me across an empty jungle clearing is somehow much more exciting and also blood-freezingly scary. He either likes me or has singled me out as the prospective victim for some terrible crime.

Alba steps into my field of vision, and when I look past her, he’s gone.

“Must have been an alien,” she says, oblivious to him having just shown himself again.

“Must have been,” I echo as I reluctantly turn and walk on. “I wonder how many there are.”

She clutches her spear. “I hope not too many. He seemed unpredictable, you know? But did you notice that he spoke English to us? Like, totally perfect English?”

“Yeah. Maybe he has something to do with Earth. Or with the Plood and their saucers.” The vibrantly alive jungle around me suddenly feels gray and mundane. A bit of electric blue would liven it up a lot.

Astrid steps around a tall root. “Maybe. Imagine a gang of those things coming to attack the tribe. I didn’t even see him move, did you? He was just there!”

“He moved fast,” I agree. “I didn’t see a weapon, though. Maybe he’s some kind of rescue alien, saving Earth girls from their own mistakes.”

“Sorry I triggered that tree,” Alba says and sends me an apologetic look. “I didn’t think it would be that sensitive.”

“I don’t think it was you,” I tell her honestly. “I think it was the whole thing, drilling into it and harvesting its sap and all that. I think it just had enough, and that soft touch was the last drop.”

“Let’s never go back there,” she suggests. “Nothing is worth that kind of danger.”

I look behind us again, but to my mixed relief and disappointment, there’s no trace of blue scales. “ Almost nothing.”