Chapter Eight: Blinded

The ride to the jungle entrance was bumpy and uncomfortable, but only about 2 and a half miles long, so I endured it. When we finally reached the entrance, which was a simple path with a canopy of trees covering it, we hopped off of the cart and onto the ground, shouldering our packs.

Miguel started filling us in. “Just follow the dust path until you reach a very large oak tree,” he told us. “Then simply climb up the oak tree and you will arrive at the home of Doctor Anthony Kingston. Just stay on the path, and you will be fine. Good luck, my friends.”

He clapped us each on the back, and the wagon started rumbling back to the city again, leaving our foursome standing in the middle of nowhere, alone.

“Crap,” Kaliyan said eloquently.

Crap is very right, Skylar agreed. But we should probably start going…the sooner we start, the sooner we get there, right?

Kaliyan, Felix, and I shrugged. “I guess so,” Felix said dubiously. “Well, let’s go.” And without further ado, he started trekking into the rainforest.

Kaliyan quickly scrambled after him, followed closely by Skylar and me, and soon I lost sight of the sunny field that we’d been standing in. “Oh, boy,” I said, dread coating my voice, as I took in the jungle. At least the others are with me, I thought, and it reassured me.

We walked for a long while, all of us but Skylar completely tired out by the time the sun started to set. Kaliyan and I set up a lean-to against a particularly flat-sided tree, and soon we were all huddled around a very small campfire.

Popping a piece of jerky into his mouth, Felix finally said, “I’m exhausted…let’s go to sleep now.”

We all agreed. I walked over to my pack and took out my blanket, spreading it on the ground to lay on. Then I curled up on my side and drifted into unconsciousness.



My sleep was uneventful, with no dreams, and I was soon woken by a gentle nudging in my back. I opened my eyes, and was briefly disoriented by the muggy air. “Where am I?” I mumbled, struggling to sit up. Then my memories came rushing back to me. “Oh.”

Up and at ‘em, Skylar chimed, then went on to wake Kaliyan.

A muss-haired Felix was already chowing down on a banana, fresh from a tree across the path from ours, and I grabbed myself one. It was quickly gone, as was another one; I was quite hungry that morning from all the walking I'd done the day before. Then we all stood up, packed our bags, and headed out again.

Felix was in the front, being the one who supposedly knew these woods, followed by Skylar, then Kaliyan and yours truly. We walked for hours, and finally stopped when Felix literally collapsed from exhaustion. Then we propped him up against a tree and ate some more jerky, waiting for about an hour until Felix said that he could walk again.

So we set off once more, but we only got a few feet ahead before the road turned sharply to the left and disappeared into the underbrush. We paused before going into the thick forest, where the path was nearly unintelligible from the grasses around it.

“Oh, god,” Kaliyan was saying, over and over again. “Oh, god, oh, god, oh, god.”

I rolled my eyes. “Gimme a break, Kaliyan, we’ll be fine.”



Kaliyan’s POV

“That’s easy for you to say,” I grumbled to Emily, who was gingerly picking her way behind me, next to Skylar. “You’re right next to the giant wolf.”

I heard a huffing noise come from Skylar, and figured he was laughing. I sighed and waited for a little while, waiting for the mandatory exchange between my best friend and Skylar to come to an end. I really hated it when they had their telepathic talks, and even though I could read human minds, I found that I couldn’t figure out what Skylar was thinking.

Yeah, I know, Skye, but you could at least move up a few steps, to comfort her, Emily was reassuring Skylar. There was a pause while he responded, then Emily grinned. Gimme a break, she laughed in her head and Skylar’s—as well as, unknowingly, mine, I’ll be fine. It’s not like I could lose you people when you’re only a few feet in front of me.

There was a loud burst of air, then Skylar quickened to a lope and came up next to me, slowing down a little to match my pace. “Hey, puppy,” I said teasingly. He was silent. “C’mon, I know you can talk in people’s heads, but you’re not talking to me. What’s with that?”

Skylar’s elongated head turned to face me, his expression puzzled. I rolled my eyes. “I can read people’s minds, but not animals’ minds,” I told him, assuming that that’s what he meant, “so you’ll have to just exert yourself a little and—”

A loud bark reverberated off of the trees surrounding us as Skylar shook his head resolutely. Emily gave a perplexed look from where she was walking a few feet behind. “He says that he’s been talking to you, and being weirded out that you haven’t been speaking back.”

“What?! Really?” I asked. “That’s so weird…Like, super weird.”

Emily nodded, and soon we were walking again. I was just kind of thinking, but making sure I stayed on the path, and Skylar had gone back to where Emily was. All was pretty peaceful, and finally we emerged from the forest path and onto a cleared-out one, like before.

The only problem was that this one was a forked path, and none of us could remember which way we were supposed to be heading. “Well,” I said uncertainly, “let’s go right.” We started walking right, and I turned to Emily. “So?” I asked her.

“I…It’s weird, but I can’t see anything at all. Usually I could probably at least get a vague idea that we were going the wrong way, since I’m psychic and all, but I’ve got absolutely nothing.” She blinked, looking profoundly taken aback. “But let’s try this way for a while, and we’ll see. I’m sure it’s just that I’m tired, or something.”

Biting my lip, I nodded. “Okay, Em,” I said, and we kept walking until sunset, when we all sat down around a gigantic tree, bigger than any I’d ever seen, to eat a dinner of mangoes, jerky, and some water from the river, which we’d carefully filtered until we were sure that there were no bug bits left in it, at least. “Well, I’m exhausted, so—”

“Be quiet for a second, Kaliyan,” Emily said seriously, looking straight into the forest, her brow slightly creased like it was when she was deep in concentration. “There’s something—someone—out there.” She narrowed her eyes and slowly stood, then ran into the forest.

I saw a shadow darting back and forth, getting further and further away, and finally it was gone. Emily came back to our little circle and sighed. “What’d you see?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she mumbled dejectedly, biting into a piece of mango. “Just, never mind. Go to bed; I’m just going to finish eating and pack up for the morning.”

Her face was slowly fading from my view as the sun set, so I climbed onto my blanket, curled up, and dreamlessly fell into a deep sleep.



Emily’s POV

I leaned against a tree and closed my eyes, determined not to succumb to rest like my body was begging and pleading for me to. Instead, I remained as wide awake as possible, listening to the many sounds of the forest. My intuition as a clairvoyant was telling me that there was something out of place, and I wasn’t going to ignore it any longer.

Snap. My breath caught in my throat, but I carefully regulated it again and listened as the footfalls got slowly closer, finally stopping. I slid my eyes open a little bit, so that they were about halfway open—the way I usually slept.

This time, though the bottoms weren’t blacked out with sleep, and I watched intently as a form in front of me leaned over and touched Kaliyan’s forehead with two fingers, leaving a kind of glittering residue where he'd pressed his skin to hers. He then moved onto Skylar, placing his forefinger and middle finger on his furry muzzle, then walked up to me.

“I see that you’re sleeping open-eyed as usual, my dear,” he whispered, leaning down. His face was shrouded in shadow as he placed his hand on my wrist and narrowed his eyes until they were slits. “But tonight you’re really not asleep, are you?”

He put his two fingers on my forehead, and a tingling sensation rushed from the two points until it enveloped my entire body. Then the man slowly brought his hand behind my neck and pressed the relaxing pressure point—hard—smiling an infuriatingly gentle smile.

The world went black.