Chapter 9: Yellow Eyes
1442 Words
The sound led them downhill.
Not far, but far enough that the light changed. The palms thinned into darker trees with smooth trunks and roots that rose from the soil like knuckles. Ferns brushed Idris's legs. The air cooled slightly, though sweat still ran down his back and stung the cuts on his skin.
The trickle grew clearer.
Tom moved faster.
Idris caught his arm. "Slow."
"It's water."
"It is also where animals drink."
Tom swallowed and slowed.
They stepped over a fallen branch slick with moss. Beyond it, the trees opened just enough to reveal a narrow stream sliding over dark stones.
It was not wide. Barely more than a ribbon of water winding between roots before disappearing into thicker green. But it moved. Clear over stone, not stagnant in a pool.
Tom laughed under his breath. "We found it."
Idris crouched near the bank, scanning before he reached for it.
Tracks marked both sides.
Birds. Hooves. Smaller paws. Something heavy had crushed the mud farther upstream.
Animals came here.
Predators would know that too.
"Do we drink?" Tom asked.
Idris looked at the water.
Every part of his body wanted it. His throat ached just seeing it. His tongue felt swollen. Sweat had dried sticky on his skin. He imagined putting his face into the stream and drinking until his stomach hurt.
For a moment, he was ashamed of how much he wanted to forget everyone else. Not forever. Just long enough to drink first. Long enough to let the cold water touch the cracks in his lips before he remembered Peter, Lily, Maya and the others waiting under the palms.
That frightened him. Not because thirst made him weak, but because it made selfishness sound reasonable. The island did not need to turn men evil all at once. It only had to dry their mouths and wait.
That was exactly why he did not move.
"Not straight if we can help it."
Tom stared. "Are you serious?"
"Moving water can still carry parasites, bacteria, animal waste. We boil it if we can."
"With what?"
Idris looked around.
No pot. No bottle except the one back at camp and a half-empty plastic juice bottle Tom had shoved into his belt before they left. No shell large enough. No proper container.
"We fill what we can carry for now. Then we make a better plan."
Tom gave a shaky laugh. "You always make good news difficult."
"Good news on this island seems to come with teeth."
A twig snapped.
Not under Tom.
Not under Idris.
Both men froze.
The jungle ahead went quiet.
Idris slowly raised the burning branch.
Between the trees across the stream, leaves shifted. Something moved low behind the ferns. Grey-brown. Too quick to make out.
Tom whispered, "Is it the same thing?"
Idris did not answer.
The shape appeared again.
This time he saw eyes.
Yellow.
Watching from the shadow beneath a fallen log.
Idris felt the strange sensation before he understood it. A pressure behind his ribs. Not fear exactly. Something quieter. A pull, like a thread tied between his chest and the animal hidden across the water.
Hunger.
Wariness.
Pain.
The feelings did not come as words. They came as impressions, sharp and impossible. Idris blinked hard.
The pain was not his, yet his own leg twitched. The hunger was not his, yet his stomach clenched. The wariness was worst of all, because it carried intelligence. Not human thought. Not language. But the animal knew danger. It knew the stream. It knew them.
And for one breath, Idris knew it back.
He wanted to recoil from that knowledge. Instead he stayed still, because the creature was still watching and something inside him understood that sudden movement would turn question into attack.
The eyes vanished.
Tom gripped his stick with both hands. "What was that?"
"I don't know."
"You keep saying that."
"I know."
Something rustled farther away, retreating through leaves.
Idris realised he had been holding his breath. He let it out slowly.
The pull in his chest faded.
Not gone.
Faded.
He stared at the place where the eyes had been.
What had that been?
Not the animal. The feeling.
For a moment, he thought of the watch on his wrist. The fogged compass. The needle that would not settle. The ridiculous little tool that had made fire when it had no right to matter. His life had split into two parts now. Before the beach, when things either made sense or eventually could be made to. After the beach, where yellow eyes could look at him from the jungle and leave something like another creature's fear inside his chest.
Tom swallowed. "Should we leave?"
"Soon. We need water first."
"I admire your priorities. I hate them, but I admire them."
Idris tore two broad leaves from a nearby plant, then stopped.
No.
Unknown plant. Unknown sap. Unknown risk.
He dropped them.
Instead, he unwound part of the cord from his watch strap, tied it around the neck of Tom's empty plastic juice bottle and lowered it into the stream. His hands wanted to hurry. He forced them not to. A slip could lose the bottle. A snapped cord could leave them with nothing.
The bottle filled slowly.
Too slowly.
The jungle watched them.
Water made a small glug-glug as it entered the plastic, a ridiculous domestic sound in a place where everything else whispered, clicked or growled. Idris fixed on that sound because it was easier than fixing on the shadows.
"Halfway," Tom breathed.
"Don't narrate."
"It helps."
"It doesn't."
"It helps me."
Idris almost told him to be quiet, then stopped. Fear needed somewhere to go. If Tom poured it into words, at least he was not pouring it into panic.
"Then narrate quietly."
Tom nodded once, eyes never leaving the opposite bank.
A movement flickered upstream.
Idris raised the torch.
Nothing.
The stream kept sliding over stone, bright and innocent. A dragonfly skimmed the surface as if this were any ordinary morning. The unfairness of that nearly angered him. The world should not have been allowed to look peaceful while his body prepared to run.
The bottle filled.
Idris lifted it, tied the cord tighter and handed it to Tom.
"Do not drink it yet."
Tom looked wounded. "Not even a sip?"
"Not unless you want Maya shouting at both of us."
That worked better than a warning.
Tom clutched the bottle to his chest. "Fine."
They filled the flask next. Less water than Idris wanted. More than they had. He hated every compromise that sounded like victory.
As he bent for the flask, the pressure behind his ribs stirred again.
Not close.
Not the same.
A question, perhaps. Or warning. It brushed through him and left the taste of metal in his mouth.
He looked across the stream.
No eyes.
Only ferns.
"Idris?"
"We go."
Tom did not argue.
They backed away from the stream first, because turning their backs felt wrong. Once the bank dropped from sight, Idris allowed them to face the trail.
The jungle had changed since they entered it.
No.
That was not right.
They had changed.
The stream still whispered over stones. Insects still clicked in the leaves. Vines still hung from branches in thick, patient ropes. But Idris could no longer pretend the green was only trees, mud and animals.
Something in it had looked at him.
Something in him had answered.
He did not tell Tom.
He did not know how to say it without sounding like seawater had damaged his brain.
They walked back slowly, Tom in front with the water held tight, Idris behind with the burning branch. Twice he thought he heard movement. Twice he saw nothing.
Then he saw a print in the mud beside their earlier trail.
Smaller than the huge one at the beach. Narrower. A pad and four claw marks, fresh enough that water still seeped into the edges.
Tom followed his gaze.
"That was not there before."
"No."
"So something crossed behind us?"
Idris looked into the trees.
The pressure in his chest remained quiet this time.
That made it worse.
"Keep walking," he said.
The light ahead grew paler.
With every step towards the beach, the water in Tom's bottle sounded louder. Slosh. Slosh. Slosh. A little plastic heartbeat. Idris wondered whether the others would hear it before they saw them. He wondered whether Gareth would.
Then he heard the voices.
The beach was close.
Somewhere beyond the leaves, voices rose.
Too many voices.
Idris tightened his grip on the torch and moved faster.
The jungle did not chase them.
That made it worse.
- Writer
