Here is the conclusion of the unfinished ‘Blue Fire’. Still rated T for teens, for adult themes mostly and some language. I still don’t own the characters, Hallmark does, and I’m still not profiting from this. Thanks for reading, folks!

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.

***************************************

And so it ended there folks. That’s as far as I got before I decided to go with ‘The Switch’ instead. As I said, if someone out there is just chomping at the bit to finish this story, please contact me for my yay or nay at lln_books@yahoo.com and tell me what you have in mind.

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