Here it is, folks: The fanfic that almost was.

So, you want to know why I went with the other version instead of this one? Well, even if you don’t, I’ll tell you anyway as long as you’re here. ;-)

My biggest reason was fun. “Blue Fire” has fewer plot holes, but a standard amnesia premise (although it would have included a non-standard twist at the end) that lent itself to a more angsty tone. I don’t mind going grim, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to go this heavy. “The Switch” has a dopier premise that isn’t terribly original, but I could do impish stuff with it and take it less seriously (well, parts of it anyway) while still doing what I want to do, i.e. exploring the Scott family dynamics. I also couldn’t have done a David/Le Sage relationship in this one, not like the one in “The Switch”. I know it’s nothing of real importance, still I really didn’t want to let that twisted relationship go because I had too much fun with it. I also would have had more difficulty constructing the relationships exactly as I wanted in “Blue Fire”. It wouldn’t be impossible, just more difficult.

I don’t know what’s up with Dane’s accent either. In this one, he talks like a pirate. I think I watched too much “Pirates of the Caribbean” or something <g>. In ‘The Switch’, he talks like Gambit from the “X-Men” (no offense to Gambit). You can tell dialect isn’t my specialty. ;-)

You’ll notice similarities in the beginning chapter between some of what’s in here and what ended up being in “The Switch”, since they don’t start out too differently. The basic similarity of the story structure would have been the same---there still would have been tons of flashbacks, probably the same ones I used in “The Switch”, most (but obviously not all) of the same events from “The Switch”, and the ending still would have taken the boys to the hunting grounds for a nasty showdown with Dane and Payden probably identical to the ending of ‘The Switch’. As for whether David would have ever got his memory back in this story, I guess I’ll keep that tidbit to myself <evil grin>.

This is unfinished, folks. So, don’t complain when you get to the end and there isn’t one <g>. If there’s a demand for it, perhaps someday I’ll complete this one. I don’t anticipate much demand, all things considered, but you never know. If someone is just dying to finish this story for me, send me an outline of what you want to do and ask me first, okay? It’s okay, I don’t bite. I just growl a lot…. ;-)

Dinotopia

“Blue Fire” (Alternative Version of “The Switch”)

by lln_books

1

The place was a sinkhole.

How anyone could call this island a ‘utopia’---no, make that Dinotopia---was beyond him. Of course, the little ‘topians looked happy enough, he mused as he moved through the crowded marketplace of Waterfall City. Why the hell shouldn’t they be happy? They didn’t know any better. You have to be on the outside of the bars to understand what it means to be in a prison. In the case of the ‘topians, you had to be on the other side of the meteor-formed Razor Reef (which together with its never-ending thunderstorm destroyed any vessel that crossed its path and made escape from the island nearly impossible) to appreciate all the things you were missing being stranded on Dinotopia.

He’d been told that last day in the outside world had ended when the small yacht, his apparent place of employment as he’d been dressed in a steward’s uniform, had been sucked into the thunderstorm and cut neatly in half by the Razor Reef. What had become of his employer and the other crewmembers, he didn’t know. As far as he knew, he was the only one who had washed up on the island. He didn’t have a single memento of his previous life left when he reached the shore.

Not even his memories. He’d been told by his pack that he’d arrived two years ago, but a run-in with a Pteranodon had resulted in a nasty fall that had robbed him of his memories. After eleven months of waiting, he’d all but abandoned hope of getting them back. Perhaps it was for the best. In theory, you can’t miss what you can’t remember. In theory. Even if he didn’t remember one whit about the world off-island, he had one reason to desperately want to get back to it: Survival.

Eleven months. Almost a year of dodging the carnivorous dinosaurs (Dinosaurs. There were freaking dinosaurs on this island! He was told that wasn’t the case in the world beyond the Razor Reef) on a near-daily basis and living on vegetables and (taboo for the ‘topians) whatever lizard could be killed and roasted on good days and seaweed on bad days. He was only grateful the Outsiders (as the ‘topians referred to the ‘rabble’ who shared neither their opinion of what a paradise this place was or their tolerance of the scalies---the dinosaurs---that populated the island) had rescued him from the prisons of Waterfall City and life among the ‘topians. The outsiders might not have been the most trustworthy sorts of people---or even the most decent, he mused, thinking of the subtle but permanent limp in left leg he owed to one of the worst of the worst Outsiders---but at least they weren’t going to brainwash him into becoming part of this happy little utopia/prison.

He'd been hidden within a darkened archway. Before stepping out into the streets, he took a cautious look around the marketplace to see if he’d drawn the attention of any of the ‘topian shoppers or the saurian guards. No one had given him a second look when he’d emerged from the stairway that descended down to the temple. Apparently, in the outfit he’d appropriated for this trip into the city, he looked just like the rest of ‘topians. The outfit was comical looking, but it was useful for one thing: With the loose-fitting shirt and long-sleeved coat, no one spotted the small, rounded stone pendant tucked inside the folds of his coat or the tattoo on his right hand. If his luck held out, no one would notice the saurian guards he’d left unconscious in the Temple either, at least not until he was far away from Waterfall City.

He hadn’t been to Waterfall City before, for the Outsiders avoided the 'Topian towns, but he’d memorized maps of the place that his outsider pack had pilfered from one of the ‘topian libraries. He’d seen the city only from a distance, when his Outsider pack had passed through the forests that covered the mountains surrounding the city. The place was spectacular; he’d give them that. It was like some alien planet out of the sci-fi books he'd liked to read in his past life, his life before the island. Its stone buildings and bridges had been constructed over and around rivers that ran right through the heart of the city. Outside the city limits, the rivers spilled downwards to form multiple roaring falls that fed the larger river at the base of the cliffs on which Waterfall City stood.

That was the one big problem with Waterfall City: It was too damn high. As he moved through the marketplace and crossed bridges, he deliberately averted his gaze from the waterfalls and their drop-offs. Just imagining how far down it was to the valley floor made his stomach churn and his vertigo kick in like a self-preservation alarm reminding him that a long drop usually ended with a sudden stop and a splat.

Unfortunately, he hadn't been able to avoid the dizzying heights of the waterfalls to accomplish the task that had brought him into Waterfall City...

The tallest structure was the tower that housed the city’s 'sunstone', the meteorite fragment that didn’t bother the non-carnosaur scalies who co-existed with humans, but was keep at bay the predatory dinosaurs that roamed the forests outside the city. Its rays were like a protective shield around the city and its boundaries, and every city and village on the island had one. The Outsider packs weren’t so lucky; they had to fend for themselves against the T-Rex, the Pteranodon s, the Velociraptors, and the other predators, with whatever weapons they could build. Who could blame them for hating the scalies when every day was a fight not to become some dinosaur’s midnight snack?

The ‘sanctuary’, which he supposed was the ‘topian equivalent of a church or temple, was built on the shores of the river at the base of one of the city’s smaller waterfalls. He hadn’t been able to read the ‘topian footprint language to find the sanctuary, but he'd been able to follow the landmarks drawn on the parchment. There had been a covered (thank God) stairway built alongside the falls that had lead down to the sanctuary. The entrance to the stairway had been a small archway marked with one of the ‘topian's Sentinel statues (what he hoped were only mythical half-human, half-dinosaur creatures) carved into its walls. The Sentinel had been easy enough to spot---he’d seen similar ones that were towering above walls of the canyons where the skybax riders had their base.

Once he'd found the stairway to the temple, descending to the sanctuary below and slipping inside had been easy enough. The Outsiders, he couldn't quite call them 'friends', who had found him months ago had taught the newcomer everything there was to know about which jungle plants would sedate a dinosaur. Survival had depended on such knowledge. Collect the right twigs and leafs, roll them into a bundle, burn the ends, and voila---smoke that would render the saurian guards at the sanctuary gate quite senseless. Another such bundle effectively neutralized the saurian, he supposed 'priestess' was the proper word, inside. The small box, containing the pendant that had brought him to Waterfall City, had been sitting exactly where the scrolls had said it would be: On the outstretched stone palms of a massive Guardian of the Temple statue.

He could have sworn the Guardian's giant stone eyes were alive and staring right through him as he approached. The sensation of something---supernatural---had given him pause, but only for a few moments. It's a rock. It's just like a really big garden gnome. It's not alive. It's not watching you. It's standing between you and getting home, so get a grip.

What the heck is a ‘garden gnome’?

Home. The world had steeled his resolve. He had averted his eyes from the intimidating stare of the statue and reached for the box and the treasure inside...

Now, back on the streets of the city above, the pendant tucked into his coat, he pushed his way past the few odd merchants’ booths on the side-street and through the shoppers who’d gathered to pick through their wares. He had to get out of the city before the temple guards snapped out of their stupor. Even with the skills at warding off scalies that he'd learned these past few months, he wasn't a match for an army of saurian guards and a town full of pissed off 'topians.

Distracted, watching for pursuers in the busy marketplace, he moved swiftly down one side-street and nearly collided with a round, male Casmasaur. Stopping on his heel, he tripped and fell against a merchant’s table, spilling most of the contents to the ground. He had to bite his tongue to hold back a very un-dinotopian curse, but the old dinosaur merely gave him a wide smile and inclined her bulky head slightly in greeting. The dinosaur said something he couldn’t interpret in his native scalie tongue.

“Sorry, I didn’t see you there,” he apologized. His hand automatically felt at his coat pocket, making sure the item hidden there hadn’t been dislodged by the impact. The collision had drawn a few looks from shoppers and he had no desire for close scrutiny. He awkwardly and rapidly helped the human merchant gather up her wares.

The Casmasaur had, apparently, figured out that he didn’t speak its language, for he replied in English. “Oh no, pardon me, son. On your way back from the sanctuary this evening?” It wasn’t a difficult guess, since the sanctuary was the only destination one could have on that particular street.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Ah, splendid. It’s good to take time for meditation and reflection. Breathe deep, friend,” he approved.

The scalie appeared to be waiting for the proper reply from him. He didn’t have the slightest knowledge of ‘topian phrases. So he returned the smile, hoping it was convincing, considering the extreme discomfort he was feeling speaking to a scalie. “Yeah, back at you.” That left the dinosaur at a loss for words, if nothing else, and he saw an opportunity to make his escape before he attracted any more attention from the ceaselessly cheerful city dwellers, human or dinosaur.

It was ridiculous to be distracted by something as ordinary as a mirror, but when he spied the mirror among the goods he was helping the merchant pick up, the Outsider was drawn to it irresistibly. It was one simple question that he hadn’t found a way to answer since---well, since as long as he could remember. There weren’t any mirrors in the forests where his Outsider pack roamed, and trying to see his reflection in the ocean or rivers wasn’t as helpful as he’d hoped. He’d spent eleven months without having one clue what he looked like. He knew his hair was brown and curly. It had grown down to his shoulders these past months, and he usually kept it bound up in a ponytail to keep it out of his face. You didn’t need to get blinded by your own hair while running from the monsters on this island. He was told by those he’d bothered to ask that his eyes were 1) brown 2) hazel and 3) green, but he never could get a consensus on the subject. Touch told him that there weren’t any horrid scars on his face like some members of his pack bore, but he knew there was a small one over his right brow and three fading, red, parallel scars going across his left shoulder where a scalie had clawed him. He was glad not to be able to remember when that had happened; it had to have hurt. He’d been fair-skinned when he’d washed up on Dinotopia, but months in the sun of the forests and beaches had tanned him a darker color. None of these things told him what he looked like, really looked like.

The mirror was too much temptation. He knew he didn’t have the time to spare, not with that pendant in his pocket and the danger of someone spying his tattoo, but he lingered at the merchant’s table anyway. The woman seated in the booth was white-haired and ancient-looking and offered him a wide, mostly-toothless smile and his picked up one of the mirrors in his calloused and scratched hands. Unexpectedly nervous, he took a deep breath as the scalie had advised and gazed into the glass.

He was younger than he’d thought, which made him chuckle somewhat bitterly to himself. Despite the facial hair, he looked almost like a kid, no more than twenty years old at best. What a twisted thing, not even knowing your own age. But then, it goes right along with not knowing your real name or what happened for the first twenty years of your life. His eyes, he decided, were hazel, and there was indeed a pale scar on his right temple.

His first memory was fire---oddly enough, the flames were tinted blue---then the oppressive heat of the forest. And pain, like his head had been split open. He had weakly reached up just to check that skull was still intact. There was a thick cloth wrapped around his head and it was sticky with blood and grime. When he’d finally opened his eyes, he saw another bandage wrapped around what had turned out to be a broken knee. The leg was killing him, but the pain in his head was the more dominant at the time.

His second memory was the group of ragged faces, male and female, unshaven in the men’s cases, staring down at him from their places around a miniscule campfire. One of the men---a tall, lanky blonde with a hideous scar down his cheek---crossed over to where he was lying flat on his back and beamed a smile full of yellow and brown teeth down at him.

“Well, well,” he’d said in a thick brogue, “Look ‘o’s come back to the land ‘o the living’. That was a nasty smack you had, but better to take your chances with the cliffs than end up in the scalies’ bellies, ‘ey?” Gabriel Dane kneeled beside him, clapping the younger man roughly on the shoulder. The impact sent a jolt of pain through his injured skull. “Well, safe at ‘ome now, no worries. Next time, I’ll play rabbit to the ol’ scalies and you can man the traps, mate. Fair’s fair.”

Then Dane had pointed to a huge, winged creature lying in a dead heap among the trees and underbrush. It had been impaled on a spike the size of a small tree, which had swung on ropes like a pendulum from the trees. It was the first memory he had of seeing a dinosaur and of the handiwork of Dane’s traps. Unfortunately, in both cases, it would not be his last memories of either..

He was squeezing the mirror with such strength that the bamboo frame groaned and nearly cracked. You shouldn’t have looked, he scolded himself. Disappointment crashed over him in a sudden wave and anger followed. He hadn’t admitted it to himself, but until that moment, he’d nursed the unconscious hope that seeing his own face might finally trigger some scrap of a memory. He’d set himself up for a fall again. So that’s it. My life history is going to remain eleven months and counting of being chased by dinosaurs and living like a nomad in the forest with Gabriel Dane and his pack.

“Young man, are you all right? You don’t look well.” The old woman was squinting at him, trying futilely to make out his features. It was on his lips to tell her to mind her own business, but he couldn’t bring himself to be that rude. It wasn’t her fault he was disappointed and she meant well in her own ‘topian way. Thank God she was clearly blind as a bat and didn’t know she was talking to a poorly disguised Outsider fugitive. “Should I call a healer?” she asked.

“No.” The word came out harsher than he meant, so he tried a more polite response. “I’m fine. Long day, too much sun, brain-fried, you know?”

Still she smiled. “Ah. You should have a bit of Maloba juice right away.” She pointed to a small building further down the street, probably an eating establishment.

“Maybe I will. Thanks.” He handed back the mirror, catching sight of the blue tattoo. She hadn’t spotted it, bless her near-sighted heart, but it was a reminder that he shouldn’t be talking to her. Dane had warned him time and again to be careful and discreet when dealing with the ‘topians. He shouldn’t be drawing any attention to himself, lest someone spot that tattoo or see through his disguise.

“Have you been here before? You seem familiar…” She stood as if to get a closer look.

Time to go. “Not that I remember,” he said honestly. Then he ducked into the crowd of the marketplace before she could ask any more questions.

“Breathe deep, friend,” she called after him.

There was still no sign of pursuit, and he was just starting to believe he might get out of the city before the theft was discovered.

That was when he heard a woman’s authoritative boom: “Stop!”

He risked a peek over his shoulder. The crowd parted way for a woman, who was all but flying towards him. He’d never seen her before, but every outsider knew, on sight, everyone in authority among the ‘topians. This young woman was Marion, the daughter of Waldo (the Mayor of Waterfall City) and his wife, Rosemary (the matriarch of Waterfall City). The dark-haired girl was, until a few minutes ago, the owner of the pendant that now rested in his pocket. Clearly, she knew her pendant had been removed from the Temple and just who had removed it. He ran, but didn’t get two steps before she caught him in a flying tackle, her strength fueled by determination and outrage. “Thief!”

Damn she was strong. The two of them were wrestling on the stone pavement now…and they were definitely drawing attention. He heard someone shout for the guards. She had pinned him face-down on the pavement and was sitting on his back. Under different circumstances, he wouldn’t have minded at all, but this situation was going to lead to him being tossed in a ‘topian prison if he didn’t do something. When she clawed at his coat to reach into the pockets and seize the sunstone, he caught her arms and rolled so that she had to move or be crushed between his back and the pavement. She moved only for a second. As soon as he was on his back, before he could get to his feet, she pounced. They fought for the sunstone pendant. There was murder in her eyes when they met his own…

…it faded at once, replaced with a look of shock. Her attack ceased at once. One long finger reached out to tentatively touch the bristles on his chin as if trying to move them out of the way so she could see his face clearly. She stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment, but the hostility was gone. He might have shoved her aside and run but for two things: The touch of her hand had sent a jolt like an electrical current through him. The second was a single word that she uttered with something like wonder.

“David?”

*

Karl hated flying.

Rosemary had told him, when he and his brother were first stranded on the island, that he was ‘of the Earth’ and had dumped the unhatched triceratops, Twenty-Six, in his lap to raise as his ‘Saurian Life Partner’. Karl Scott had chaffed, more so since his brother had been proclaimed ‘of the Sky’ and sent to join the corps of the Skybax Riders, who patrolled the skies by riding on the backs of pteranodon s. It was Dinotopia’s version of ‘Top Gun’, and Karl’s mega-nerd brother David---who was so afraid of heights that he could barely climb a ladder much less fly on a dinosaur’s back---had made the cut while Karl was turned away to play babysitter to Twenty-Six. Karl remembered envy twisting his heart every time his brother put on that uniform and took off on his own saurian partner, Freefall.

Well, okay, not every time. There had been days when there wouldn’t have been enough money in the world (even if Dinotopia used money) to pay Karl to be up on those flying lizards. Most of those times involved the failure of the sunstones and resultant T-Rex and Pteranodon attacks on the cities and outlying villages. It had happened twice since Karl had become stranded on the island and both times the skybax riders were the first (and sometimes only) line of defense between the deadly predators and the humans and friendly dinosaurs. Both times, David had been right there on Freefall in the thick of the fight and the danger. David, the same guy who got queasy at the notion of a fight and thought ‘Scrabble’ qualified as a sport, had jumped without thought or hesitation into skirmishes with the nastiest ‘Jurassic Park’ outcasts the island offered up. Karl had envied him, had sulked like a child, had even gone to Marion to get her to pull strings with her mother to get him into the corps…but he didn’t remember ever telling his brother how much he admired him for what he did and what he’d accomplished.

Karl hated flying. The uniforms itched, the dives and jerky motions of his pteradsaur, Terra, gave him motion sickness, and---most of all—he felt like a poser. He had been in the corps almost seven months now and he lived in his brother’s shadow. How the tables have turned, a voice taunted in his mind. Frank Scott had objected horribly. It had taken every bit of parental strength their father possessed just to accept it when David had become a skybax rider. The sky was the last place he wanted Karl, especially now. Udu had given Karl every chance it took for him to pass the test (five times was the final count) and Romana, David’s former wingmate, had all but held Karl’s hand and walked him through the training, but Karl felt it acutely in his soul: This was David’s place, not his.

It was the worst kept secret on Dinotopia, the real reason Karl kept flying every day. Karl had professed to want to carry on his brother’s work, to become a rider in his honor. He was sure that Rosemary and Udu believed it…to an extent, and to an extent it was true. But there was another reason and Karl was sure they suspected it if they didn’t know it for sure: It was access to the skybaxs and to the sky. It was to slip away every morning before his patrol duties began and again every evening until the very last rays of sunlight gave way to the dangers of night and forced him back to the base in Canyon City. It was to fly in slow, sweeping patterns across and around the island.

It was because the Dinotopians had given up searching, but Karl Scott could not. Would not. It was because the Dinotopians, all of them, even Marion, had given up David for dead.

Karl had not. Could not. Would not.

And so he flew.

He knew what this island could do, what the monsters that roamed its forests could do. Marion always pointed out that carnivores were not malicious, not to be hated, that they acted according to their instincts. She could forgive them. Karl couldn’t. He had seen them attack---devour---men, women, and children without mercy. Did it matter to parents who saw their kids eaten by a T-Rex if the creature was ‘malicious’ or not? Karl doubted it. The further into the forests you went, beyond the protection of the sunstones’ glow, the thicker the population of maneaters became, and it was there that they’d found what was left of David’s skybax (what was left of it---it had apparently died when it fell from the sky and impaled itself on a tree). Two other riders had died without enough left to bury.

The third member of that three-man patrol had been David. He had vanished without a trace.

That had been eleven months ago. If he’d been riding Freefall that day, maybe he would have outrun the pteranodon s. If Rosemary and Waldo had said ‘no’ when he suggested exploring the inner island, maybe none of this would have happened…

If you’d kept your mouth shut that day, maybe none of this would have happened, the obnoxious voice in Karl’s head scolded him for the millionth time.

A shrill whistle broke him from his grim reverie. Karl turned his attention from the forest below to the pterosaur flying beside Terra. Its rider was trying to get his attention. Moving awkwardly beneath the helmet and bulky protective riding gear, Romana Denison pointed a gloved finger towards the sun, which was beginning to sink over the distant horizon. She then gestured in the direction of Waterfall City. Her meaning was clear: Time to go back before the carnosaurs come out to hunt.

Karl held up his hand, One more pass.

Romana shook her head and pointed quite adamantly to the safety of the city. Her condition helping him with these searches had been simple from the outset—her word was law. “David would not appreciate it if I let you get yourself lost, too,” she’d said. Considering how she’d risked her own status in the corps the first three months following David’s disappearance by helping Karl and Frank search areas of the island they were never supposed to see, Karl felt obliged to repay her by doing as she asked.

Resigned, he arched Terra back towards Waterfall City and another long, sleepless night. Karl didn’t remember the last peaceful night he’d had or the last time his sleep hadn’t been punctuated by nightmares. He’d had them before David disappeared—hey this island would do that to you---but since his brother was lost, they were a million times worse. They showed in dark rings permanently beneath his eyes and a temper that grew shorter every day. Frank, Marion, and Rosemary endure his wrath…Frank had the same circles under his eyes, a new slump to his posture, and more gray hairs than Karl remembered. Romana was the one who barked right back at Karl’s outbursts, “You’re not the only one who misses him, Karl, but you’re the only one who doesn’t notice that.”

She’d been right, of course.

As the towers and permanent cloud of mist around Waterfall City appeared on the horizon, Karl wavered. He should go to the tavern that was now his father’s home, which lay on the outskirts of the forest within the safety zone of the sunstones. He’d stopped telling Frank when he went out searching not because Frank would worry but because he hated disappointing his father every night by coming back unsuccessful and seeing that grief and pain renewed in his eyes. That’s what Karl told himself anyway. The truth went deeper. He was angry with his father, and had been ever since David’s memorial. It had been two weeks since his last visit with Frank Scott.

Karl would visit Marion first. It had been a month since he’d seen her. If he waited much longer, she’d send saurian guards to retrieve him from Canyon City. He’d rather face her than Frank.

Finding Marion was easy enough---Karl just had to follow the commotion that had erupted in the marketplace of Waterfall City. Saurian guards were dashing over bridges (at least, as fast as the saurians could dash) and down the streets, heading in the general direction of the marketplace. They were coming from the direction of the Temple of the Falls. People and dinosaurs scrambled to get out of the path of the guards and to see what the hubbub was about. Further up the road, Marion was on the stone pavement, wrestling with a figure clad in dark, shabby clothing. He didn’t look like a Dinotopian, but Karl was still too high up to see the man’s face or identify him. The outsider had Marion’s sunstone pendant clutched in his dirty hands and was determined to keep it away from her.

Well, I’ve got my excuse not to head to the tavern, Karl mused. He kept one eye on the scuffle as he searched for a clear spot to land Terra. As the pterosaur touched the ground, Karl saw Marion suddenly fall away from the outsider. If he laid a hand on her, I’ll kill him, Karl vowed silently despite know he probably didn’t have the right to such feelings for the mayor’s daughter anymore.

The outsider had broke free from Marion’s hold and was trying to stand. Insanely, she wasn’t moving to stop him. Marion’s face was visible now, and something in her expression made Karl’s heart clench automatically in response. Something was wrong. Marion had gone pale as the dead and all anger rapidly fled from her features and stance. She was kneeling on the pavement opposite the outsider, seemingly frozen. Her lack of movement, the shock on her face, made Karl hurry. He vaulted from Terra’s back. Then, amazingly, Marion smiled at the outsider and said a single word (Karl wished he could read lips). She extended a hand to touch the man’s cheek, then his hand. The way the guy started at the contact, he was as surprised as Karl was at the gesture. Karl felt a familiar surge of jealousy. “Hey!”

The outsider scrambled to his feet just as Karl began to run towards the two of them.

He met the skybax rider’s glare with defiance.

Karl stopped in his tracks, so abruptly that he almost fell. He hadn’t known Romana was on his heels until his sudden stop made her careen into him. He heard her gasp and felt the tension radiate from her as she froze in place as well, but noticed these things only distantly. Karl felt the blood drain from his face, felt the world begin to spin around him, thought he might actually fall over or be sick right there in the street. Karl’s attention was riveted on the unshaven face, the dirty, curly hair sloppily tied in a small ponytail, the threadbare black duster and tattooed hand, and the eyes of the outsider. Especially the eyes. If he hadn’t recognized the face beneath the whiskers and grime or the way the man stood, Karl would have known those eyes.

“David?!”

The world stopped only for a moment, and then the moment was gone. There was a shout from the approaching saurian guards. In the time it took for Karl to hesitate, to blink, the figure in black took the forgotten pendant and ran, shoving past the crowd of people and dinosaurs despite their feeble efforts to block his path. Karl stood there dumbly. His mind wanted what he’d just seen to be true while at the same time it couldn’t process it, couldn’t accept that it hadn’t been a hallucination born of too many months of wishful thinking. He couldn’t form a coherent thought.

Marion recovered first. She regained her feet and plunged into the crowd. “David! Wait!”

Marion had seen him, too. It wasn’t a hallucination. Marion saw him, too. It can’t be…it can’t…but Marion saw…Karl’s mind raced.

That’s David…that’s my brother!

David’s alive.

2

The second she’d said his name, David knew he was in trouble. Dane had been right—coming to the city was a bad idea. The pack leader had forbade any of his people from entering the ‘Topian towns, but he had particularly warned David that his tattoo meant he was a criminal (even if David couldn’t remember committing a crime) and that everyone of authority in the cities would recognize and arrest him on sight. Sure enough, the first authority he’d encountered, the mayor’s daughter, knew him at once. Even as part of him was tempted to stay, if for no reason other than to ask if she knew his last name, he knew he had to get away. Now.

She didn’t sound angry. If David didn’t know better, he might have thought she was glad to see him. She wasn’t arresting him, wasn’t fighting him, she was sitting in a stupor with that goofy grin on her face. It was kind of charming, actually.

He should have grabbed the girl, used her as his hostage to keep the scalie guards off his back. That’s what Dane or anyone in the pack would have done. ‘Topians weren’t used to violence, didn’t believe in it like the outsiders did. They’d have been stopped stone cold by even a hint of a threat against the mayor’s daughter. David had almost reached for the bone dagger (which Dane insisted everyone in his pack carry for protection). “Whatever you have to do to stay alive. There are no second chances ‘here,” the leader had frequently reminded David. But, David wasn’t Gabriel. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. He cursed himself for the weakness, but he couldn’t have lifted a finger, much less a blade, against her. He’d balked only for an instant and the opportunity was gone.

Marion’s gaze traveled to his right hand, which still clutched her medallion. She was staring unmistakably at his tattoo. Her brow furrowed. She touched the blue lines delicately with her fingertips. He really wished she’d stop doing that. The brilliant smile faded into a look of horror. “Oh my God…”

He heard a voice shout angrily “Hey!” He looked over his shoulder and saw two skybax riders thundering towards him, and heard the echoing shouts of the approaching guards. Get the pendant and go, damn it!

“Sorry about this---believe me,” David said as he snatched the pendant from her. “I really do need this. Nice to meet you though.” He ran for his life. The ‘topians were so busy gaping that they didn’t lift a finger to stop him. Even the two skybax riders weren’t moving. Guess they don’t see many of my kind here in the ‘respectable’ part of Dinotopia.

“David! Stop!” Now Marion sounded rather upset. Well, David supposed that was reasonable, he had just made off with her personal sunstone medallion. He’d told the truth---he was sorry, but everything he had planned hinged on this sunstone.

David ran for the stairs that would lead to the catacombs beneath the city. The shipping canals were down there. It would be easy enough to get lost in the passages and then to stow away on one of the outbound cargo boats. The skybax riders and scalie guards could spend the rest of their lives looking for him down there.

“David!” That was the skybax rider again. Luckily, the guy sounded very far behind the outsider, but David wasn’t about to stop and check. A third voice, probably the lady skybax rider, also called the outsider’s name. At this rate, he was going to have all of Waterfall City chasing him. Sheesh, it’s only one lousy rock, people. It isn’t like they don’t have more sunstones..

He paused only for a second when he found the archway that lead to the stairs, which in turn lead to the canals…way far down. David clutched the rail of the stairway as dizziness rocked him. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

“David! What the hell are you doing?!” It was that rider guy again, sounding closer now and just as confused as Marion. David was galvanized out of his momentary lapse of vertigo.

They’re really taking this too personally. David climbed over the rail---against every self-preservation instinct within him---and jumped. He felt his stomach churn at the sensation of falling as he plunged down one flight to the first landing of the stairway. Without thinking, lest he change his mind, he leaped from there down to the second landing, and from there to the third and fourth. The scalie guards weren’t so reckless, they took the stairs (albeit three or four stairs at a time). The skybax rider was more determined: He duplicated David’s movements in vaulting from one landing to the next. He closed the distance between them rapidly. “Where are you going?! Wait!”

David frowned at the suggestion. This guy’s becoming a pain in the ass. He jumped the final few feet to the concrete banks of the shipping lanes. Luck was giving him a break---there were tons of crates and few people or scalies down here at the moment, and those few hadn’t looked up from loading and unloading boats to notice the outsider or his pursuers. By the time the shouts of the rider and the guards drew their attention, David was lost among the crates.

*

Karl felt like he was losing his mind. There wasn’t so much as a nanosecond of joy or relief for him as he chased the figure in black. He was either following his long-missing, presumed-dead older brother who had just stolen Marion’s medallion and was acting for all the world as though he didn’t know or care about Karl (and who apparently was taking fashion advice from the outsiders), or Karl was chasing a very confused, hapless outsider who just happened to resemble David, or this was all a fantasy produced by some psychotic break due to stress. If it was David, why would he run (or steal Marion’s medallion)? Where had he been for eleven freaking months? Why hadn’t he gone back to the tavern? Why didn’t he come back?

“David, what the hell are you doing?!” Frustration let the question escape Karl’s mouth before he knew he was going to say anything. The dark-clad figure hesitated and glanced back at the skybax rider. That brief look erased any doubt from Karl’s mind. It was David he was chasing. No question, Karl knew it in his soul.

And he was staring at Karl without one iota of recognition. The realization wounded Karl like a physical blow.

Then, David was running again, trying to lose his pursuers—including Karl---among the stacks of crates and the activity of the docks. Karl didn’t have time for questions. Questions would wait. He couldn’t let David escape now, not after all these months. He jumped from the last landing to the pavement and tore after his brother.

*

Marion was fast, but Karl and David were faster. David was tearing down the streets as though he expected to be executed upon capture. Karl was on his trail, running like a madman. Romana had started to follow, but Marion had caught her by the arm. She indicated the sinking sun. “Have the skybax riders patrol the forests above the city. If David gets away from us, you’ll have to spot him from the air. He won’t survive alone in those forests overnight.”

Romana kept her own distress carefully masked. She didn’t falter even for an instant. Rather, she looked quite determined as she hurried back to her mount. If any rider besides Karl could find David, it would be her, Marion knew.

She knew it was David. He was scruffier to be sure, and there was a white scar over his right brow that hadn’t been there when she’d seen him last, but she’d have known him by his eyes even if he’d turned green and sprouted horns and a third arm. The eyes were older and more haunted, no doubt owing to whatever he’d been through since his disappearance, but they were his eyes. She wanted to laugh, cry, and say prayers of thanks to the angels who’d brought David back to them, and she might have but for the thing that bothered her: The tattoo.

The utter lack of recognition in his eyes when he’d seen her had confused her until she’d seen the tattoo. David was the world’s worst liar due to those eyes, which betrayed his every thought and emotion as plainly as spoken words. He wasn’t pretending to have forgotten them, even if he had reason to do so. Karl and Marion, and perhaps the whole of Waterfall City’s population, were strangers to him now, and before she had the chance to wonder why she’d seen his hand.

Outsider packs sometimes made permanent dye out of the forest plants and fashioned insignias unique to their bands. David’s tattoo had resembled flames painted in blue dye. Blue flames.

Blue fire.

Then she knew the reason David hadn’t known them, and the sudden comprehension came with horror that had made her breath seize up in her throat. Now she was pleading silently with the same angels whom she’d been thanking only seconds earlier. Please let me be wrong. Please don’t let it be that. Not that.

She found Karl by the underground docks, still half-crazed with aggravation. Marion was in time to see his fist land a punch that splintered the side of one small crate. The saurian guards were searching every container and every boat, a momentous task at best. She didn’t need to ask what had happened. They’d lost track of David. The anguish on Karl’s face when he turned her way only added to her own despair.

“He can’t just disappear, damn it,” Karl shouted at the hapless saurians, who were looking pitifully harassed.

Marion interceded. “There are a hundred crates and at least as many pipes leading in and out of these catacombs. Check every one of them. Until then, no boats leave the docks,” she instructed the captain of the guard. “Start with the pipes that lead directly to the forest. That’s where he’ll go if he wants to get out of the city quickly.

“Why did he run?!” Karl vented on Marion.

She kept her expression impassive. One of them was going to have to keep their head, and clearly it wasn’t going to be him. She tried anyway, “Karl, I need you to be calm.”

“He acted like he didn’t know me—us.”

“He didn’t, Karl,” Marion said bluntly. Sometimes (usually) the direct approach was the only one that got through to him.

Sure enough, she got his attention. It took a bit before her words sunk in, as intent on the search as he was, but he finally focused on what she’d said. “Wha---What are you saying? My own brother forgot me?”

“Yes.” Marion gave him a stern look to let him know how serious she was. “At least, that’s what I’m afraid of. We have to speak to my mother. She’ll know for sure.” Yes, Rosemary would know about the Blue Fire. Marion hoped Rosemary would say her daughter was wrong, but it was a faint hope. Karl balked, not believing her and reluctant to abandon the search. “We’re not going to find him in these catacombs if he doesn’t want to be found. I’m sorry. We know he’s alive, that’s more than we’ve known for eleven months. We’ll find him again, I promise.”

“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked bluntly.

“Not here. Not now.” Marion took him by the arm and half-guided, half-towed him back towards the stairs. She didn’t want to have this conversation on the docks, not with Karl in this agitated state. “We’ll go see my mother---and then you’ll have to go talk to your father.”

*

David had finally found a pipe wide enough for him to shimmy through but too small for the scalie guards follow. It was a long climb, and the sky had grown dark before he emerged into the forest. He was on the banks of Waterfall City’s main river. The city towered high above him now. This was a setback, but not an insurmountable one. He’d been in Dane’s pack long enough that being caught in the forest at night didn’t paralyze him with fear, especially a forest under the sunstone’s protection. Two things mattered right now: There was no sign of ‘Topian pursuers and Dane or his pack, if they were around at all, would be on the opposite side of the river and likely on their way to make camp. Dane might not cross the river at all, considering whose territory it was, but David couldn’t stake his life on that possibility.

It depended on how badly he wanted to kill David. Once he’d found out what the younger man had done…well, yeah, he probably would want to do that very, very much. He wouldn’t risk the pack, though. If by some miracle Gabriel knew where David was, he wouldn’t cross the river at night.

“This is the most important lesson, mate---the pack comes first. The slow, the sick, the injured…well, they get left to take their chances w’ the scalies if it comes down to that.”

That hadn’t been good news at the time, as David was hobbling on improvised crutches as fast as his injured leg would allow. Gabriel’s people didn’t so much as slacken their pace in deference to their wounded member. David was exhausted. His head was spinning and his leg was killing him, but the distant roars of the T-Rex and God-knew-what-else reminded him that it was extremely important that he not get separated from the pack on sprints between safe zones like they were making that afternoon.

Gabriel continued, amiably lecturing around a mouthful of apple, “There’s not a man or woman ‘ere ‘o don’t have the bollocks---so to speak—for a scrap w’ the scalies. You just remember, the scalies will be tryin’ to cut you out o’ the herd soon as they get a whiff o’ that blood.” Dane pointed to the bandages on David’s head and leg. “If we run, we ain’t slowin’ down, and if one o’ us gets left behind, we’ll expect no less from you.”

David had argued, “Leave someone to die? That’s pretty cold-blooded…”

Dane had whirled on him. David didn’t have time to react before Gabriel landed a brutal kick right on David’s bad leg. This was followed by Dane’s elbow slamming into David’s nose. The leg, radiating agony, gave out and David collapsed. He bit his lip against a scream that might have drawn predators---or worse, given Gabriel any sort of satisfaction. Dane knelt beside the younger man then and grabbed him by the throat until David could barely breathe.

“You got a head full o’ rocks right now, so I’ll remind you: Never question my orders. Not out ‘ere. We live by the scalies’ laws ‘ere. You know well as any o’ us, there’s no blood colder than scalie blood. Best get your priorities sorted out if you want to stay alive.”

Someone in the pack screamed: “Skybaxs!”

At the warning, Gabriel forgot his lecture. He glanced up at the dark shapes in the sky, his mouth set in a grim line. Then, he hauled David up by the scruff of his neck and all but dragged him further beneath the canopy of trees. He shoved the younger man, not at all gently, into the cover of the forest’s undergrowth. There, Dane crouched beside David. They watched the routine ‘Topian patrols circle overhead a few times before continuing on their flight path.

When the patrols were gone, Dane faced David again. “Just one more thing, mate…” He grabbed David’s right hand, the one with the garish blue markings that closely resembled flames. “I imagine those ‘topian cities with their pretty sunstones and all them happy people spouting off ‘bout livin’ in harmony w’ the scalies is gonna sound real appealin’ soon. So, don’t forget this ‘ere tat is their way o’ markin’ criminals. The only room they got for scum like us is in the ol’ dungeons.” Gabriel grinned. “But, no bother. Like you always said, ‘Better a scalie’s dinner than a scalie-lover’, right?”

David blinked. “I said that?”

“Ha!” Gabriel clapped David’s shoulder, affectionately this time. “Mates to bend an ear with, wide open space, no one tellin’ us ‘You are of the Earth, you are of the Sky’, free to come ‘n go as we please, wouldn’t live any other way.” He helped David to his feet. “Come on. We’ll go over which o’ the plants is fit to eat again. Wouldn’t want you getting’ chomped ‘cause a T-Rex catches you in the middle of a case of Tuklooberry trots…”

The lessons may have been brutal (Gabriel hadn’t been lying when he’d warned that his pack wouldn’t stop for an injured member if a scalie was chasing them) but David was grateful for the training now as he plunged deeper into the forest, putting distance between himself, Waterfall City, and—how’s that for irony---Gabriel’s pack. Come morning, the river wouldn’t stop Dane from coming after David, so David used every trick he’d learned to make sure he didn’t leave a trail, not so much as a turned leaf or broken blade of grass, for a human or scalie to follow.

Concentrating on the path behind him, David was unprepared for two burly figures who loomed suddenly out of the shadows. Damn, they hadn’t made a sound… He’d been too well-trained to cry out in his surprise, but his heart pounded mercilessly. For a second, he thought it might be Gabriel’s pack, but, once his eyes adjusted to the dark and he could make out the newcomers’ faces, he knew that wasn’t the case. He could guess at the strangers’ identities, however. They were Outsiders, and the only pack in this area was strictly under the leadership of Doris Le Sage…a woman known to particularly despise Gabriel Dane and everything associated with him. Just the woman David had hoped to see, but, face-to-face with her oversized goons, he briefly doubted the wisdom of his plan.

He raised both hands in a placating gesture, mindful to keep the blue tattoo covered by his sleeve. “Fellas…can we talk?”

3

“I’ve sent a message to Canyon City. Udu will have search parties out at daybreak. David won’t get far in the dark.”

Marion directed the words to her mother, who was seated across from her at a large wooden table in the room reserved for the mayor’s private conferences. Arms folded across his chest, Karl was standing at a window, glaring out into the night as if trying to see through the blackness. He alternated his vigil with impatient pacing, making him the image of nervous energy ready to explode. The fact that Rosemary and Marion could sit there talking as calmly as if they’d found a lost sock and not Karl’s brother was only adding to his irritation. He wanted to yell at them: Do something!

He even opened his mouth to bark those exact words---probably not the best way to address the mayor’s family---but Marion, sensing this, cut him off: “I’ve also sent a messenger bird to Le Sage asking her to keep an eye out for him.”

“Le Sage?!” Karl scoffed at that notion.

“Few people travel through the woods without her knowing about it. She might be able to help,” Marion explained.

“Yeah, if it suits her mood, you mean.” He resumed his pacing.

“And you’re sure it was David?” Rosemary asked gently.

“Am I sure? I’m sure. I know my own brother.”

“We’re sure. But…well, there’s something else.” Marion hesitated. They had told Rosemary the whole story from the Temple guardians alerting Marion to the theft of the pendant to David ditching them in the shipping lanes beneath the city. Rosemary had kept her expression neutral, listening carefully and saying little. Now, she waited for Marion to continue. Marion didn’t want to ask the question she’d come there to ask her mother for dread of the answer. She was afraid of what the answer would mean for David as well as for Karl and Frank. Karl was already handling the situation badly. “When we were fighting over the pendant, after I recognized him, I saw a mark on David’s hand…”

Karl stopped his pacing. From Marion’s timid tone, he knew she was about to say something monumentally unpleasant.

“A mark?” Rosemary prompted.

“A mark…it looked like spirals, like flames. I thought it was a tattoo, but I realized it was more like a scar. A blue scar,” Marion finished.

Karl watched Rosemary’s reaction---if she looked worried, then he’d panic. Rosemary was matriarch on an island full of dangers every bit as equal to its wonders. She was used to schooling her reactions right down to the twitches of her eyebrows so that her own fears were never betrayed to those who counted on her leadership. Yet, Karl saw it for just a moment in her eyes: Fear.

Rosemary’s eyes flicked from her daughter to the skybax rider. His alarm was noticeable, and her stoic manner returned at once. She drew a deep breath and collected her own racing thoughts. Karl wished she’d say something---nothing she could tell him could be worse than his imagination running away with him while she sat their silently.

Karl’s mouth started automatically, “So, what’s to get in a wad about? It’s a tattoo. I mean, yeah, David’s as likely to get a tattoo as Madonna is to become a nun, but being out in the sun too much does things to your brain…”

Rose patiently ignored his nervous babbling. She had to be certain Marion knew what she was suggesting before explaining the implications to David’s frantic brother. Karl had been in a near-constant state of agitation---at times outright anger---since his brother’s disappearance and more so since the official search for David had ended a few months ago. It was Karl’s nature---just as it was David and Frank’s natures---to rail against fate, to resist the inevitable, and most of the time it served them well and benefited the entire island. It was that will to fight that had helped them save the islanders from the rampages of the carnivores two different times. It had enabled their father to survive being trapped, buried alive, in an undersea cavern for months before his sons found him. It had helped David earn a place in the skybax corps in the face of imminent failure.

It had also made it impossible for Karl or Frank to make Dinotopia their true home. David had embraced the island and its way of life from nearly the first day and made a place for himself there. Karl and Frank forever had their hearts and minds turned to thoughts of escape. Dinotopia was always their prison, never their home. They couldn’t accept fate---not their fate when they became stranded on the island, and not David’s apparent fate when he was lost almost one year ago.

It seemed in this case they had been right to resist, for here they were, witnesses to David’s survival in spite of the odds. The price for resistance, however, was the lack of peace of hearts or minds for even one minute of the past eleven months. Finding David should have finally brought his family peace. If what Marion believe was true, however, Rosemary was about to shatter the solace they’d not had since the day she’d told Karl there would be no more searches for his brother.

Then there was her daughter. The past year had put a strain on Marion as well as the Scotts. Karl’s anger at the Dinotopians for what he perceived as their abandoning David had driven a wedge between the two of them. Before his brother vanished, Karl had been Marion’s unofficial suitor. It might have become official had Marion not postponed her decision in the commotion following the accident. It might not have---Rosemary knew her daughter; she knew that Marion had great affection for David too, and not all of it merely ‘friendly’ or ‘sisterly’. What was to come if Marion was correct would be as difficult on her as on the Scotts.

Rosemary had to be certain. “He didn’t recognize you or Karl? Is it possible he was pretending not to know you?”

“He’s not that good a liar,” Karl answered. “Why would he do that anyway?”

“Why would he steal the sunstone pendant?” Rosemary countered.

Karl didn’t have an answer to that question. “He wouldn’t run from me---This is David, the world’s most responsible guy. He practically has an anxiety attack if he’s two minutes late for patrol. He wouldn’t have stayed away from Waterfall City for eleven months without telling us. He damn sure wouldn’t let us think he’s dead all this time.”

“Unless someone forced him to stay away,” Rosemary thought aloud.

Karl’s eyes blazed at the suggestion. That hadn’t even occurred to him. Marion looked shocked at the notion, so it obviously hadn’t occurred to her either. “You’re getting carried away,” Karl argued, “He probably fell off his skybax and gave himself a bump on the head. Like in the movies---” Well, that wasn’t helpful to them. Dinotopia didn’t have movies. “---he’ll see his face in the mirror or Marion or his uniform and it’ll all come back to him.”

“Except that he did see me and he did see your uniform and it didn’t ‘all come back to him’,” Marion pointed out, “and he had the mark of Blue Fire.”

“Okay, someone really needs to tell me what that’s about or I’m seriously going to lose it here,” Karl warned. He hated mysteries. He even read the last pages of mystery novels first. “Why are we playing games when David needs us?” Even if he doesn’t know that he needs us.

“Sit down, Karl,” Rosemary said sharply. At her bark, Karl obediently dove for the empty chair beside Rosemary, looking very uneasy. The boy was right, of course; he deserved an explanation. He needed to be prepared for the possibility that Marion was right.

“You know that our ancestors survived the meteor’s impact and the following ages of darkness by dwelling beneath the earth. Your father used the old caverns to stay alive after your plane crashed here. It was difficult to survive for so many years Below. The sea provided for some of our needs, the sunstones for others, but there was still suffering. In the time of the second generation Below, illness came upon our people---a very devastating fever,” Rose explained carefully. “Many people died before children chanced upon a strange plant. They were hiding from carnivores or playing in the tunnels, I don’t know which. The plant was growing in the darkness of one damp cavern, up until then never seen by our people. The children chewed on the sweet-smelling leafs—curiosity, I suppose, or delirium from the fever—all but one. The children who ate the plant fell unconscious. The other child told the elders about the strange plant.

“The adults were amazed at first that the fever abated in the children who’d eaten the plant. Eventually, the illness went away completely. It took some time to realize that the miracle cure had a terrible side effect. Strange hives broke out on the children’s arms and hands in spiral patterns closely resembling flames. The hives dried into scars with a peculiar blue hue. But the worst was yet to come.”

“I hate it when people say that,” Karl grumbled.

“The children awoke days after eating the plant, fully recovered from their fever---but their memories of all that had come before the instant they consumed the leafs of the Tohma Faiere were gone.” Rosemary concluded her story, watching to see that Karl understood where she was going with the explanation.

Karl was nodding to himself. “Okay, so we’re abandoning the ‘fell of his skybax and bonked his head’ theory. You’re thinking that the weird blue tat on David’s hand was the blue hive things? That he might have accidentally gotten into that Tonga Fairy stuff? And that’s why he didn’t know me or Marion?”

“Maybe not accidentally….” Marion said quietly.

“Meaning?” Karl snapped.

Marion directed her response once again to her mother. “David read the library scrolls. Before he left on the deep island expedition, he studied all of the writings on indigenous plants. He wanted to be prepared in case the group was delayed and ran short of provisions, in case they had to live off the plants in the forests.” She remembered David being eager to share with her some of the more exotic plants he’d discovered during his exploration of the island.

“Sounds like David,” Karl said.

“My point is, I don’t think he would have accidentally eaten Tohma Faiere even if they did wander into the caverns. Even if he didn’t know what the plant was, any man or woman on this island would be able to identify it and stop him from eating it,” Marion theorized.

“The other riders were dead. If he fell off his skybax and got disoriented…” Karl offered lamely.

“It’s possible he might have unintentionally eaten some.” Marion didn’t sound convinced.

“You think someone fed it to him?” Karl’s anger was back, full force.

Marion shook her head. “I won’t make accusations when I can’t be certain.” She would say no more for the time being. The very idea of someone using Tohma Faiere deliberately on David was distasteful, cruel almost beyond the comprehension of someone raised in the gentle Dinotopian ways.

“Okay,” Karl let it go in lieu of the more pressing question, “So, how long before the blue fire stuff wears off and David’s memory comes back?”

Rosemary’s answer was in her eyes. Karl stared blankly, unable or unwilling to accept it. “It’s permanent?” Numb, he looked to Marion for confirmation. She was staring at the stone floor, eyes bright, working very hard to keep herself under control for his sake. She needn’t have bothered. Karl digested all this for only a minute before he was back on his feet. “No.” He shook his head. They were wrong. There was no such thing as ‘permanent’. He needed something to vent his rage on. When he tripped over his chair in his haste, the inanimate object took the brunt of his anguish. Karl pitched it against the stone wall with one sweep of his arm. “No.”

Marion rose, taking a step toward him. “Karl—“

“Don’t!” He held up a warning hand. “I’m all right.”

Rosemary also stood. “Marion, speak to Flippeau. Go down to the library and have him pull every scroll that refers to the Tohma Faiere. You’ll have to go into the very old texts from Below. When your father returns from Zuru, I’ll speak to him myself.”

“Mother…”

Rosemary raised an eyebrow. Marion understood: The matriarch wanted to speak to Karl alone. With a nod, her daughter slipped out of the room. She left word with the saurian guards outside that Karl and her mother were not to be disturbed.

Karl was pacing again, much more frantically this time. “Eleven stinking months I said David was alive and all you gave me was that ‘you must learn to make peace with fate’ bullshit! Now look what’s happened!”

“You should speak with your father, Karl. Sooner or later the rumors about David will reach him. He should hear the news from you first,” Rosemary said gently.

Karl glared at her like she’d sprouted a second head. “Tell him what? That David’s alive but guess what some island shrub erased his memory and now he’s a damn sunstone stealing Outsider?! Dad’s barely keeping it together as it is since---since this started.”

“Your father’s much stronger than you give him credit for.” Indeed, whatever dissimilarities there were between Frank Scott and his two sons, it was apparent to Rosemary that both boys had inherited their father’s tenacity and determination. “Karl…what are your intentions?”

Intentions? “My what?”

“If this is true and David has lost his memory, you’ll no longer have the luxury of self-indulgence. David’s going to need you and so is your father.”

Self-indulgence? That pissed him off more, if possible. “Everything I’ve done for a year has been for David and my father. I---“

“Has it? You’re flying sweeps of the island every day until Romana drags you back and you’re off again before sunrise. Have you seen your father since he gave his consent for the memorial?” There was a flash of guilt in his eyes at that question, confirming her accusation. “You’ve blamed every one of us at one time or another for what happened. You’ve made every kind of demand of our time and our resources on the pretext that we should give you anything you ask to prove we care about David just as much as you do---Karl, where are you going?”

He didn’t want to hear another word. He was heading for the door. “You asked my intentions. Well, Rose, either my brother lost his memory and someone used it to keep him prisoner…”

“You’re jumping to conclusions. That was only a theory.”

“My brother’s not exactly Crocodile Dundee. He couldn’t have survived eleven months in Jurassic Park without help. That means someone knew where he was. Every Dinotopian on this island knows David. If they’d seen him, they would have told us. That means whoever found him was an Outsider or another Cyrus, and sure never brought him back to us or told him who he was. That means they either kept him prisoner or pulled a Patty Hearst on him…”

“I really don’t have a clue what you mean by that.” Rosemary frowned.

“Brainwashing. Made him one of them. So, if he was a prisoner, he’s escaped and someone’s probably coming after him. If he got tricked into joining them, he’s probably stolen the sunstone for them and is on his way back right now. Either way, I intend to get off my ass and go get him before he disappears again, then make whoever did this pay…” Karl reached for the door, but Rosemary blocked the way.

“That’s exactly why I asked your intentions.”

“Get out of my way, Rose,” he warned. “I’m not staying here.”

“You will, or I’ll have your clearance to fly revoked and you can try looking for David on foot.” He knew better than to think she was bluffing. “You don’t see that your anger, your obsession, caused us--- your father, Twenty-Six, Marion, me--as much pain as the loss of your brother did. We didn’t share your faith at the time, and I am deeply sorry for that, but what you’ve done hasn’t been for David or Frank. I suspect you think somehow you’re to blame for David’s accident.”

“I didn’t make him go off on that half-assed jaunt…I don’t feel guilty.” Karl took another stab at the door handle. Rosemary laid her hand firmly over his, her grip like iron.

“What do you want from me?!”

She stood her ground. “I want your word that if someone did give Tohma Faiere to David to make him forget us, if someone has been keeping him away from us as you said, that you’ll let us deal with whoever’s responsible.” She would have said ‘punish whoever’s responsible’, but the Dinotopians had no punishment befitting this sort of transgression.

Karl didn’t so much as consider her request. “No.”

“Yes. Because you will throw the same anger and obsession you’ve had the past year into revenge while your family is here trying to put itself ---their lives--- back together. You said yourself that David needs us right now. He’s going to need your help most of all. You’re closer to him than anyone.”

Karl slumped against the wall. Sensing she’d made her point, Rosemary released her grip on him. “I wish that was true,” he said softly, bitterly.

He felt a different kind of fear now. After months of being terrified that he’d never find David, for the first time he was more afraid of what would happen if---when---he did. Fear at the idea of spending weeks, months, years, the rest of his life even, trying to reconstruct their lives and maybe never having the real David back. Was that the universe’s sick way of getting back at Karl for every time he’d wished he were an only child? I can’t handle that. I could barely keep it together when he had an asthma attack or a gash from a fight with the carnivores for crying out loud.

Rosemary wrapped an arm around the boy’s shoulder. She glanced to the window and saw that the skies had grown black. “There’s nothing more to do tonight. You can’t make it to the tavern now. Get some sleep, Karl and in the morning, go and speak to your father. Marion and I will go with you if you wish.”

“No. I can take care of it myself.”

4

Doris Le Sage was, if anything, a practical woman. A lady didn’t survive more than three decades as an Outsider, much less hold reign over her own pack of rovers, without a good head on her shoulders. The trick was dismissing no opportunities, however remote, for gain. Though she despised their love of the scalies and annoying fixation on mortality and attachment to this cesspool island, sometimes the opportunities for gain came from cooperation with the Dinotopians..

Therefore, where a lesser Outsider leader would balk at, if not openly deride, a request for assistance from the scalie-lovers, Le Sage was not so quick to refuse.

The Scott family was something of neutral territory. Though the oldest son, David, was so much like the Dinotopians that he might as well have been native-born, Frank and Karl were—attitude and morality-wise---somewhere in the middle between the Dinotopians and the Outsiders. Even Frank’s choice of home, a tavern in a village on the outskirts of Waterfall City, was neutral ground. Frank welcomed the Outsiders with the same enthusiasm as the scalie-lovers (despite the fact that the two groups seldom mingled with any sort of pleasantness…the rowdy Outsiders usually offended the Dinotopians’ delicate sensibilities). He regarded Le Sage with the respect befitting her station as a pack leader, respect of which she naturally approved. He had even introduced boxing to the woefully-lacking-in-real-fun island, a competition she enjoyed even though her own attempt to rig a match between Frank’s oldest son and one of her own pack had failed miserably.

Frank’s boys could really be thorns in her side when they set their minds to it, although their antics were sometimes an amusing diversion for her.

Most importantly, the Scotts were famous. They had gained the status of heroes among the Dinotopians, and having the Scotts indebted to her for a favor---such as helping retrieve Frank’s long-lost older son---could work to Le Sage’s advantage in the future.

So, when the messenger parrot from Waterfall City delivered Marion’s request that Le Sage keep an eye out for David Scott, the pack leader did not rush to refuse. She sat at the dresser in her chamber there in the abandoned fortress that was home to her Outsider band, listening with careful consideration to the message.

“Well, well, well, so the do-gooder’s alive…and after all this time in carnivore territory. Now that does impress me.” She was thinking aloud, but the bird responded.

“It’s nearly dark out. Do you have a reply?” it chirped impatiently.

“Keep your feathers on or I’ll make a pillow out of you, little bird,” Le Sage warned, not even sparing the bird a glance.

The critter huffed, “Well, I never! Threatening a messenger of the mayor is…”

“Button it,” she growled.

The bird shut up.

She didn’t have a problem with David Scott. He could stand to lighten up from his affection for playing by the scalie-lovers’ rules and he had cost her a pretty penny with that whole boxing match fiasco, but he could also be respectful and useful from time to time, and he was too much the geek to be any kind of threat to her pack. But, why would the scalie-lovers need her help finding him? If they had seen him, why didn’t they just bring him home themselves? Or why didn’t he go running back to those flying do-gooders and Rosemary’s little daughter whom he was so fond of? What was the problem? Marion had left something out of that note. Le Sage could sense it and she puzzled over what it might have been.

Pounding on the heavy door to her chamber sufficiently killed Le Sage’s thought process. One of her lackies was calling her from the other side of the door, not daring to open it without her permission and face her wrath. “If it’s not a scalie attack or something on fire, you’ll be dangling from the high towers for ‘dactyl bait when I open this door!” she advised.

“You’ll want to see this,” the lacky assured her in a trembling voice. Trembling in fear? Excitement? She didn’t know, but he clearly wasn’t going away until she attended to whatever bug had crawled up his butt. With a sigh, Le Sage forgot the Scotts’ problem for the moment and pulled on her black dressing gown over her skimpy sleeping clothes.

Le Sage flung open her door and affected a glower that would convey how much she did not appreciate the interruption. She tried unsuccessfully to recall the name of the particular lackey standing in the hall. “What?”

“Someone in the courtyard we think you’ll be interested to see,” he grinned. Bertram, that was this smelly little fellow’s name, her mind supplied.

“Better be very interesting.”

*

If her choice of accommodation was any clue, then it seemed Le Sage’s reputation was deserved. The old fortress her pack occupied had been wisely selected: Trees had been cut to logs, then sharpened to points and formed a criss-cross fence around the outsider perimeter of the hideaway. If those spikes couldn’t impale an attacking T-Rex, David was sure a rampaging carnivore would have trouble bashing through the thick, stone walls of the place. The fortress stood in a clearing on the edge of a cliff and backed up to the ocean, reducing the chances of a sneak attack from predators or anyone who was hacked off at the Outsider queen on a given day. The open meadow in front of the castle offered no hiding place to anyone thinking of attacking the place. David would guess that, even though it was on the very edge of the sunstone’s protective glow, this was probably the safest location on the island save for Waterfall City itself.

He only wished Le Sage’s attention to detail extended to the hygiene of her gang. He was used to crawling around the island and its forests with Dane’s rather stinky pack, but the ugly, hairy, apeish men escorting David into Le Sage’s domain had achieved new heights in offensive body odor. The smell didn’t improve when they stepped through the gate into the courtyard, where the rest of her pack was gathered. David held his breath, not from nervousness but from self-preservation, as the stench hit him. He briefly considered offering them the sunstone pendant if they’d only use it to pay for baths.

Men and a few women milled about the courtyard, sitting on broken crates, piles of hay, or sprawled on the dirt. They arm-wrestled (or outright wrestled), drank homemade alcohol---very un-Dinotopian---and boasted of fights with scalies and sexual exploits until the new arrival brought the festivities to a halt. There was something quite evil in their smiles and the whispers they traded as he passed. They knew two things: David was an Outsider and he was not one of their pack. He was an enemy and not under the ‘topians’ protection. That made him fair game for almost any abuse that amused them. One gangly fellow gaped and dashed away deeper into the castle, no doubt going to fetch Le Sage. Everyone else waited, speaking quietly to each other and watching the newcomer. They wouldn’t harm him until Le Sage gave her permission, he supposed. Whether he lived out the night depended on his ability to win her good graces. No pressure.

Le Sage, for her part, had been prepared for almost anything---except the sight of David Scott standing there in her courtyard, glancing around as if her were considering buying the place. It took a second to recognize him, for the last year had changed him physically---longer hair, beard, scar, bit of a limp, and more muscles (definite improvement there, she noticed)---and Marion hadn’t mentioned he’d be dressed as an Outsider, but it was definitely the geek, dropped right into her lap.

And I thought we’d be racing skybax riders to get to him first. She grinned. I do love earning a reward with no real effort involved.

“Wally and Will found ‘im wanderin’ down by the river. He asked to see you,” Bertram informed her.

“Did he?” Interesting.

David watched the raven-haired woman as she looked him over with a wicked smile on her face. The scrawny fellow whispered something to her and pointed to David and the Outsiders flanking him. Le Sage responded by laying one hand over the guy’s face and shoving him aside. Regally, she strode across the courtyard to stand in front of the new arrival.

David gestured to the uncovered courtyard. “What do you do if a Pteranodon flies in?”

Malice shone in her eyes. “I roast it on a very large spit…and make boots out of its skin.” The pack exploded in laughter and whistles.

“Harsh,” David answered.

“What’s with the outfit, kid? Don’t tell me you’ve come to join our happy little group?” Her tone was positively sugary, which didn’t put him one bit at ease. The guffaws from her group grew louder. It was worse because he had, in fact, come to join them. Sort of.

“Something like that,” he admitted. “I came to ask for your help, actually.”

The Outsiders all but fell over in their mirth now. Le Sage barely twitched an eyebrow. “Did you? How can I be of service?”

David couldn’t tell if she was serious or just baiting him for her own amusement, but suspected the latter. Better make this good or she’s going to order me roasted on a very large spit. He made his pitch: “I need your…protection. And I have something to offer in exchange that I think you’ll be very interested in.”

At least she didn’t laugh or order up a spit. Her merriment had abated quickly; she was all business now. “I am fascinated. Why come to me for help instead of the scalie-lovers?”

Did she think he was nuts? “I can’t exactly go to the scalie-lovers.” It was a gamble, but he raised arm and displayed the tendrils of blue snaking their way up his right hand for her by way of explanation. If she didn’t help him, it wouldn’t matter if she knew he was wanted by the ‘topians or not, he’d be dead anyway.

There were gasps from the crowd. David heard someone whisper, “Tohma Faiere.” He didn’t know what that meant, assumed it was some sort of curse in the scalie’s language. Le Sage knew what it was at once. The missing clue to Marion’s strange request---to the boy’s disappearance---clicked into place. The scalie-lovers couldn’t get David to come to them because he didn’t know he was supposed to be one of them. He honestly believed he was an Outsider. She wondered who put that insane notion into his head. “What could you possibly have to interest us?” She swept her hand to include her lot of followers.

“A way off the island.”

He had her. David saw it in the way she started in spite of her substantial self-control. He saw it in the way her hands trembled when she crossed her arms. No one in the courtyard was laughing now. “Protection from who?” Le Sage asked.

This was the part she wasn’t going to like. “Gabriel Dane.”

Le Sage blanched, but she recovered quickly. “Gabriel Dane,” she repeated. So, that’s who put the insane notion in the kid’s head. “You’ve been keeping exceedingly bad company since you left, David…and consider the source of that remark.”

Since I left? Left where?

Wait. He hadn’t told any of her hairy unwashed brethren his name. She knows me. Knows me from before Gabriel Dane’s pack. His heart pounded wildly, hopefully. Keep it under control, David, you can’t exactly grovel with Doris Le Sage for information about your past. You can’t give her the upper hand if you want to make a deal with her. There’s time for that when Dane isn’t hunting you down.

“You don’t care for Dane?” It wasn’t a question.

She wore a sneer of pure revulsion at the mention of the enemy pack leader’s name. Tension settled over the group as they waited for her reaction. Calmly, she said, “If he’d ever tried to force his mangy body on you, you wouldn’t care for him either.”

“No argument there.”

“I’d think you were lying if it wasn’t, well, you. I don’t know what you’re playing at, kid, but if you can prove to me you can deliver a way off this island---and don’t even think of double-crossing me---then we have an agreement.” Le Sage held out her hand expectantly for him to kiss. It was her insisted-upon gesture of respect. When he complied, her smile returned. There was a collective sigh of relief from her pack. “Our new friend is under our protection. No one...” Le Sage gave her band a knowing look “…but no one knows he’s here. Our old friend, Gabriel, might be showing his revolting little nose soon. If he does, you have my unconditional blessings to cut it off---and any other part of him if it presents itself. Got it?” They cheered. More importantly, they seemed to understand her charade and the need to play along with it.

Satisfied that her pack understood her point, she addressed David: “Come dine with us, you look like you haven’t eaten in a year. You can explain to me how you plan to get us off this rotten island. Bertram, show our guest the way, and stay down wind so you don’t ruin his appetite. Or mine. I’ll be along in a minute.”

Le Sage whirled on her heel and rushed back to her bedchamber to change into more appropriate clothing for a meal. It was shaping up to be a long and interesting evening.

The messenger bird was still perched on her windowsill, waiting with growing agitation. “There’s an extra fee for flying after dark. Do you have a reply for Marion or do you not?”

She can have David back after I’m done with him. How’s that for a reply? Le Sage bent to stand nose-to-beak with the irksome creature. “Tell dear little Marion that I haven’t seen David Scott, but if I do, she can rest assured that she’ll be the first to know. Now get out of my sight.” She stamped her fist against the windowsill. The bird squawked and fled out her window. She locked it behind the critter. After all, they’ve waited eleven months…they can wait a few more days if it gets me off this island.

*

The kid ate like he hadn’t seen food since his disappearance, Le Sage observed. She studied her guest from her seat at the head of the long banquet table, mentally comparing this David to the one who’d bedeviled her since they’d met during the carnivore rampage almost two years ago. She could barely connect the two Davids in her mind, this one was so different. Merely being in the forest couldn’t account for the dramatic change, for David had run from carnivores and dealt with some of the island’s more unseemly folks (herself included) and always come through with his maddening do-gooder nature intact. Then again, that David wouldn’t have survived in Dane’s pack, not with the cruelties Gabriel could dish out, without getting tougher and learning more than a few survival skills. She’d almost pay money to see how this David would fare in a boxing rematch with Alano. Another time.

David, for his part, had been studying the fortress, its chambers, and its massive dining hall while he ate. He was searching for something even remotely familiar about his surroundings. Le Sage had implied that he’d been there before, but he didn’t have the slightest recollection of it. No surprise there. He was used to being disappointed by his obliterated memory, but for the first time had some hope for a hint of his life before the accident, before Dane’s pack. He was waiting for the opportunity to trick some information about his past from his host.

“So, David,” Le Sage began, “you haven’t graced our humble home with a visit for quite some time…I assume that we have Gabriel Dane to thank for your absence.” She poured herself a goblet of wine and offered the bottle to David. He accepted---quite unlike his old self. “A lady could get offended being passed over in favor of the company of that diseased pig. What could he offer that was interesting enough to keep you away so long?”

“It wasn’t voluntary, believe me,” David corrected her. He knew what she was getting at.

“I do. Does it have to do with your way off the island?” She got right to the point.

“In a way. Dane’s had us wandering the coast, avoiding the scalie-lovers…”

Of course he did. Wouldn’t want any of them spotting David and reporting back to Rosemary. Le Sage filled in the blanks. She quirked an eyebrow at hearing him use the term ‘scalie-lovers’.

“…and avoiding the fishing villages. Dane keeps everyone on a short leash,” David explained. “Until a couple of days ago, I hadn’t laid eyes on anyone who wasn’t one of our pack or one of the skybax riders that’ve been hunting us since, since so long I can’t remember.” He passed the wine bottle back to her. Her gaze fell on the blue markings on the hand holding the bottle.

“Since you can remember,” she repeated, “Which is about eleven months back?”

He almost dropped the bottle. Wine spilled across the plates and onto the lap of the hulking outsider in the chair beside his. David jumped up, trying to staunch the spill with a towel, and quickly stammered out an apology. The giant might have pounded him into the ground, but Le Sage stopped him with a shake of her head. The hulk slapped David on the shoulder in good humor and waved for the smaller man to sit back down.

“Hit a nerve, did I? You’ve been with Gabriel’s pack, never speaking to anyone else, this entire time?” Le Sage concluded. She leaned back in her chair and openly scrutinized David. “Why would Gabriel go to such effort to keep you in his group? Don’t tell me you’re his bodyguard?” That merited another round of laughter from her pack.

“It’s better than a ‘topian prison,” David groused, rubbing his tattooed hand meaningfully. “I can’t exactly hide this from the skybax riders and the villagers.”

Comprehension dawned in her eyes. Le Sage shook her head, incredulous. “Gabriel told you that tat means that the scalie-lovers want to put you in prison? And that’s why you’ve been hiding with his group?” At his nod, she burst out with a belly laugh. “I have to give Gabriel credit,” she said when she’d regained some control, “I never would have thought of that. Then again, I wouldn’t use Tohma Faiere on the most loathsome creature on this island---or even on Gabriel. My ethical flexibility never bent to outright cruelty. Not that kind of cruelty anyway. That’s the one thing I’ve always found so amusing about you, David---you ability to be utterly snowed.”

“What’s ‘Tohma Faiere’?” he asked.

“Why did Gabriel go to that much trouble for you?” she countered.

“What’s ‘Tohma Faiere’?” he repeated.

“You first.”

“No way.”

She caved. “All right. Short version: Tohma Faiere—Blue Fire---is a rather nasty plant that, if you eat it, has the effect of erasing your memory. It also leaves blue scars in the rather unique shape of flames. Someone could mistake the scars for a tattoo if they didn’t know better.”

Erasing your memory?

“Now, why did Gabriel go to the trouble to keep you with his pack all this time? You must have had something he wanted---or there was something he could use you for.”

“There was,” he confirmed.

David hadn’t been meant to hear the conversation, obviously, but the habit of sleeping light and awakening at the slightest of sounds had been ingrained in him by months of going from slumber to sudden, violent wakefulness at the appearance of a predator. On a good night, he got three hours of sleep, and those were rarely consecutive hours. It wasn’t only his body that had become conditioned to the rough life in the forests; his hearing had become more acute, tuned to the sounds around him, be it the wind in the treetops, the distant crash of waves on the beach, the movement of the pack, their breathing as they slept, or the rustle of grass betraying the presence of a dangerous creature.

What had woken him that morning was the impression that he’d heard his name spoken. The voices were close by, though far enough that the rest of the pack had not been roused from their slumber. David could only just make out their sleeping forms in the dim light from the embers of the campfire. The voices were coming from the mouth of the cavern at the top of the hill, the cavern where the pack was hiding that night. Two shadowy figures sat there, staring out of the cavern at the beach below. One voice was Dane’s, the other sounded like his second-in-command, Payden.

David heard his name mentioned again.

Without a sound, David crept to the mouth of the cavern and crouched behind the large rocks there. He could clearly overhear Dane and Payden’s conversation.

“You’d hand him back to the scalie-lovers? Boy’s one of us now.” This from Payden. In the early morning light, David saw the dark-skinned man frown.

Gabriel was chewing a wad of a flower, a favorite narcotic of his pack. He risked a chew on mornings when he was sure of the lack of nearby predators. They were under the sunstone’s reach on this beach, which wasn’t far from Waterfall City.

“I did’na spend a year keepin’ the scalie’s from chompin’ the whelp ta take ‘im w’ us. His scalie-loving friends’d pay a fair piece ta have their boy back. Young Miss Marion’s goin’ ta trade us that shiny sunstone necklace o’ hers for ‘im…and that necklace is the key to ol’ Cyrus’ tub out there.” Gabriel gestured to the bay at the foot of the hillside. “In fact, you can be sure we ain’t goin’ nowhere without that trinket.”

“We should have traded him the day we found him,” Payden complained.

“Before we were ready ta go? No, mate…every scalie-lover on the island would’ve been after trying to get that trinket back to Marion…and every outsider would’ve been tryin’ to take it from us so they could have the boat for themselves. Trust me, this was ‘ow it ‘ad to be. They’ll be so happy they finally go’ their boy, they won’t think ta come lookin’ for us until it’s too late. Come sun-up, you’ll send a bird ta Waterfall City and tell Marion that if she wants David Scott, we’re in a position to barter for ‘is return…”

David had no intention of waiting for Gabriel to hand him back to the ‘topians so they could throw him into prison. He might have lacked Dane’s physical strength, may not have been able to beat him in a fight, but David did have one advantage over Dane and the rest of the pack: Even with his trick leg, he could outrun any one of them. So, he hadn’t gone back into the cavern. Everything he owned---his coat, boots, bone dagger---he had on him. Instead, he’d dove into the forest and run for his life.

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