Chapter 60.2

Several hours later, the exact amount of time Amara hadn’t bothered tracking, the topography began to shift. She started seeing thick green vines that stretched between the colorful treetops, while the predictable soundscape of birds and bugs gave way to the sound of running water. The noise grew continually louder, even with Amara’s artificially reduced hearing, and she wondered what kind of river or waterfall might be capable of making so much noise.Thankfully, she wasn’t waiting long, but the answer proved to be more confusing than anything she might have imagined.

Without any advance warning, the thick collection of trees, shrubs, and bushes vanished as the three of them found a sharp edge to the jungle. Roughly twenty to thirty feet in front of them, the jungle resumed its dominance, and the space in between was filled with water. What truly confused Amara was the shape this water took. It didn’t rest in the ground, level with her feet; it instead raced through the air at breakneck speeds, as if someone had taken the entire river and lifted it up and out of the ground. The water, instead of being one constant stream, instead took the form of thousands of fish, crocodiles, turtles, snakes, and other forms of marine life, all of them racing forward while they collided with each other and the nearby tree tops.

The ground underneath this unusual phenomenon appeared very similar to a normal river bed, save for it being completely even with the ground of the jungle. Flat, circular stones lay scattered in a large bed of sand, appearing very much to have been smoothed out by years of water erosion. How this had happened, given the stones weren’t touching any water, Amara decided not to question.

“Uh, Tadhgán? Are we supposed to cross this… whatever it is?” she asked.

“What, you’ve never seen a river before?” Tadhgán responded, a smile appearing on his face despite his obvious exhaustion following their long hike.

“No, we have rivers back home, but they never take the shape of animals like this. Nor do they hover above the ground.” Vee allowed herself a moment of rest as well, squatting down as she examined the point where the sandy riverbed met the jungle floor.

“That’s a shame,” Tadhgán mused. “These kinds of rivers are more rare, but they’re so beautiful. I can’t say I’m surprised to find one so close to the Courts.”

“How are we supposed to get across? Crawl underneath it?” Amara asked.

“Oh, that’d be a terrible idea, lass,” he said. After moving closer, Tadhgán leaned in and pointed at a small patch of ground roughly halfway across the river. “There, you see that glimmering rock? Keep an eye on that.”

Amara and Vee waited for several minutes, eyes fixed on the rock in question while they waited for whatever revelation Tadhgán had promised. There was an impressive amount of space between the ground and the rushing mass of water animals, at least two or three feet, which made observation rather easy. Thankfully, they didn’t have to wait long.

Further upstream, one of the approaching creatures appeared more animated than the others, and continually jumped away from the pack as if trying to win an invisible race. It looked like a mix between a lionfish and a dolphin, with an elongated snout and a series of thick barbs jutting out from its side. Each jump pushed it out of the water, though it wasn’t jumping up; it was instead swimming upside down and jumping towards the ground as it moved. As it approached the area Amara and Vee were watching, it made one final jump, coming quite close to the rock in question.

The sand underneath the river burst upward and a sharp vine punctured the side of the water creature. Its movement completely halted, save for a series of frantic flails as the vine pulled it closer to the ground. Underneath the sand, now visible as it stirred, was a sharp series of dusty brown leaves arranged in the shape of three large fronds. The leaves were so jagged they appeared almost like teeth, and the vine this plant had shot forth slowly reeled the water creature closer. Over the course of the next minute, the creature’s flails gradually lessened, and the large fronds of the plant closed around it entirely before retreating back into the ground.

“That’s… ugh, I don’t even know what to think. It’s pretty unsettling, if nothing else,” Vee muttered, backing around from the river slightly.

“Is it really that strange? Plants need water, so they get it from the river,” Tadhgán said.

Amara shuddered briefly before turning to look at Tadhgán again. “Okay, but you haven’t answered my question. How are we supposed to get across this? You’ve already told me I can’t fly, and we apparently can’t go underneath, so what?”

Slowly rising to his feet with a slight wince, Tadhgán turned his attention to the nearby tree line. “That’s the easy part. We just need to… Ah, here we go.” Approaching one of the larger trees, he carefully raised a hand and placed it on a patch of bark completely free of moss and kudzu. “Hello there, friend. Any chance you can help us get across? My home is on the other side of the river, you see.”

With a quick glance, Amara looked over at Vee, both of them equally confused as they watched Tadhgán talk to a tree. For a moment, nothing happened, and Amara nearly stepped closer to ask for clarification when she saw the tree begin to move. It shuffled back and forth, then angled away from the river as some of its roots rose out of the ground. In particular, the set of roots that appeared stretched all the way to the opposite side of the river. They creaked and groaned as they moved, rising higher and higher until they stopped roughly seven feet above the ground.

In total, three lengthy roots had appeared, and they now formed a narrow tunnel that connected the two banks of the river. One root directly above, and two to the sides, almost like handrails. For reasons beyond Amara’s comprehension, all the racing water creatures that made up the river redirected their path up and over the roots, and not a single one of them swam through the makeshift tunnel.

“That’s it?” Amara asked.

“That’s it!” Tadhgán said. “Now we just walk across. Be sure to keep a hand on the roots at all times. Even though we won’t be touching the water, the force of all that movement is still capable of knocking you over.”

Walking up to the entrance of the tunnel, Tadhgán led by example and grabbed the two roots to his left and right. Gripping them tight, he took several steps into the river and immediately braced against some kind of invisible wind. With a quick glance towards his legs, Amara remembered he was still injured from their fight, and quickly ran closer to help steady him.

“Vee, stay behind me, use my tail for support!” Amara shouted over the roar of the river.

Once she reached Tadhgán, she immediately understood the threat this venture posed. She’d assumed that it would feel like standing in a strong wind, one that threatened to knock them over onto the predatory sands below, but the truth was much more intense. Despite not having any contact with the rapids racing above them, she still felt the force of their movements. Powerful winds as solid as water buffeted her body, the sound of its fury even louder now that she stood inside the river. After quickly adjusting her hearing again, Amara pushed herself beside Tadhgán to help steady him.

He looked up, a friendly smile on his face, and sighed in relief as his body slackened somewhat. He kept his right arm on a railing, then wrapped his left around Amara’s waist as he leaned against her for support. Behind them, familiar hands grabbed her tail, and with a quick flourish, she wrapped it around Vee’s waist to help support her as well.

With Amara acting as an anchor, walking across the river only took a few minutes. They could have gone even faster, but Amara made sure to keep her eyes on Tadhgán just in case he noticed anything strange. She was glad she did, too; on one occasion he pointed out a suspicious bit of sand, and closer examination revealed that one of the predatory plants was incredibly close to the edge of their tunnel. Even a single misstep might have given the plant an opportunity to attack, but with Tadhgán’s help avoiding it was quite easy.

Once the three of them exited the tunnel on the other side of the river, Tadhgán gently pet one of the tree roots and muttered a quiet thank you. In response, the tree on the other side shuddered once more, then gradually sank its roots back into the ground.

With the river now behind them, the journey continued.

Amara lost track of how long they hiked through the jungle. She’d never been great at judging time; life on Earth was so heavily regimented that devices and schedules always kept her on track. Here, for better or for worse, they’d opted to leave their phones behind, fairly sure they would serve no purpose without cell signals or Wi-Fi. Even more confusing was the lack of sunlight. There was plenty of light to navigate by, of course, but its source seemed to be the ever-present sparkling aurora in the sky above them. Even then, the strange lavender light seemed to touch places that made no sense—it appeared underneath plants and in small holes, areas that had no exposure to the sky above. Amara spent many hours silently trying to figure out this mystery, and the answer came when they happened to path around a large bush with incredibly massive leaves that arced up from the ground before bending back again. Upon the surface of this strange leaf was a large collection of sparkling light.

At first glance, she very nearly assumed it was a bit of dew or condensation. Thankfully, by pure coincidence, she happened to catch the moment the collection proved too heavy for the leaf, and fell to the ground as a large droplet. The light shimmered as it landed, and as it dispersed, the base of the bush suddenly illuminated just a bit more; the light of The Wilds, or at least this area, was a liquid.

As fascinating as this was, it meant using the presence of light to tell time was impossible. Gone were the predictable cycles of day and night, and in their absence, Amara felt even more unprepared for this strange land.