Planet Urth: The Savage Lands (Book 2) Read Free

hand so tightly, I worried he’d wince in pain.  But he didn’t.  He knew better than to make a sound and alert Lurkers to our presence.  He carried June and led us to a tree similar to the one I am looking at now. 
    Broad, bushy limbs stretched and looked as if they mingled with the constellations.  My father slid June to his back and lifted me as high as his arms could reach then told me to climb, to keep climbing until he told me to stop.  The urgency in his voice set my feet into motion.  I clambered knotted knobs on the trunk until limbs intersected one another like ladder rungs.  Once, I craned my neck and looked over my shoulder to check on my father.  I realized in that moment how high up I had climbed and remember feeling as if a wave of cold nausea crashed over me.  My skin became damp and my brow and palms became slickened with sweat.  A whimper attempted to vault from deep in my throat but was seized by the lump of terror lodged there.  I couldn’t feel my heart beating in my chest and my hearing assumed a muffled quality similar to being underwater and perceiving sounds above the surface that were softened and distorted.  Still, I pushed down the anxious reactions raiding my body and climbed.  My arms and legs felt as if they were made of sponge and my insides quivered.  But the instinctive need to survive won out over my silent panic attack.  
    When my father’s voice whispered for me to halt, I froze where I was and waited for him to tell me what to do next.  I did not dare look down again when he instructed me to hoist my leg up onto a limb and sit with my body leaning against the thinner center portion of the tree.  He and June joined me and we waited there until a blazing arc of orange crested on the horizon line.
    My father, June and I endured the forest at night, teeming with Lurkers, sitting on a tree limb concealed by leaves and branches. 
    An almost identical tree saved June and I once before.  I hope it can do the same for Will, his brother and sister, June and myself a second time.  With no other option in sight, the colossal elm tree before me is our only hope. 
    My eyes remain pinned on the tree when I mumble my thoughts aloud and say, “We’ll stay here tonight.”
    Impossibly, Will hears me.  He looks away from Riley and leaves her.  His features scrunch in confusion as he approaches.  “What?  You want to stay h ere, as in right here where we’re standing?” he asks.
    My head suddenly feels like the flame on a beeswax candle.  “N-no, not, uh, here exactly,” I say and trip over my words.  My gaze vacillates between him and the elm.  I raise my arm and point.  “I meant there, in the tree.  We’ll spend the night in that tree.”  I stare at the interlinked branches so jam-packed with leaves a creature would be hard-pressed to see us without concentrating hard.
    In my periphery, I see Will’s head whipsaw from me to the tree then back to me again.  He looks at me as if I do not know what I am talking about.  He looks at me as if I have lost my mind.  “What?” he asks incredulously.  “You can’t be serious!  Oh my gosh!  I can’t believe this is happening!  I can’t believe we listened to you and left!”  He is gesturing animatedly, his words cutting me with more precision than his hands cut the atmosphere.  He takes a few sharp breaths then looks at me.  His expression is hard.  “We cannot spend the night in a tree,” he pronounces each word slowly and deliberately. 
    “We don’t have another choice,” I say levelly and match his tone by enunciating each word.
    “There’s got to be something other than this,” he says huffily and slices the air a final time with his hand.
    “Oh yeah?” I say heatedly.  “Is there really?” I feel the tension of the day spiraling tightly inside of me. “Well then, I’m all ears.  I’d love to hear any and all suggestions you have.”
    I plant my fisted hands squarely on my hips