Chapter 3

I was awakened to some sort of panic-inducing sound. I don’t remember precisely what it was, but it obviously terrified my sleeping brain. I immediately bolted awake to see Jake hastily standing up. The fire was visibly lower but still burning strong, so I’d been asleep for only a few hours. I could see a look of terror on his face.

“What is it?” I whispered harshly. I could feel my voice trembling as the words left my lips

“Heard a roar,” he replied back, his voice equally apprehensive. “Or a scream. Didn’t sound… human…”

A roar sounded again, and I flinched and fell backwards onto the moss. It wasn’t a roar like that of a lion, however. It sounded almost like a scratchy scream, almost human. But no human could make a sound that enraged.

“Uh, Stella?” Jake stammered. “W… What do we do?”

Crap, crap, crap… I just sat there for several moments, my brain doing absolutely jack shit to find out a solution to this problem. The creature or whatever it was roared again, and this time it sounded a lot closer!

“Fuck!” I exclaimed, stumbling to my feet. “Run!” I immediately began to take off in the direction away from the roar, Jake following me into the forest.

My heart pounded and pounded as I clumsily sprinted through the undergrowth, narrowly dodging rocks, roots and other things. As we left the light of our campfire, it became too dark to even see. It was as if our vision had been covered with a blanket, one that not even starlight could penetrate.

After what felt like a thousand years of running, I stopped. “Jake?” I whispered.

“I’m here,” he said. I could feel his hand brush up against my arm. “What was that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably a lion or something.” I knew damn well that lions didn’t live in the jungle, but my dumb animal brain wasn’t caring about semantics at that precise moment. I was still shaking in my weird tunic and trousers.

“I think it’s gone,” he said, letting out a breath. “Whatever it was, it doesn’t seem to be coming after us right now.”

“Okay,” I sighed. The panicked adrenaline I had been feeling began to dissipate, leaving me shaking and exhaling. “Where should we go?”

“Not back to our campfire,” Jake said. “Whatever it was, it probably-” he was cut off by another roar. Identical to the first two, this one seemed to be much louder and closer to us. Scant seconds later, a slightly higher-pitched roar echoed from a small distance away.

“Oh fuck!” Jake yelled. “Quick, climb!” I blindly looked around in the dark, and I could make out the faintest outline of Jake. He seemed to be hauling himself onto a low-hanging yet large branch extending from a nearby tree.

“Grab on!” he called, extending his hand down. I fumbled for one terrifying moment, then grasped it firmly. As I braced my legs against the trunk, the creatures roared again, this time in tandem. I quickly climbed the tree, using smaller branches and Jake’s arm to stabilize myself.

A wave of nostalgia washed over me, slightly staving off the trepidation. I hadn’t climbed a tree since I was in the second or third grade. Back when I was in elementary school, they didn’t have any of those monkey bars or obstacle courses or whatever the schools in movies had, only installing them once Jake and I’d already moved on to high school. The kids of Lonwick Elementary had to make do with a large stretch of grey concrete, a rusty basketball hoop, and a small grove of trees on the outskirts of the premises. I’m pretty sure a few kids wound up in the hospital after overestimating their climbing skills, but Jake and I had been fine. We spent our recesses next to the largest of those trees reading Lord of the Rings and stuff like that, its branches protecting us from the sun in spring and the wind in winter. Despite the frequent games of impromptu basketball the other kids had played, none of them had bullied us or even asked us to join them. They just let us be.

Well, those roaring things sure aren’t letting us be, I thought as I pulled myself onto the next branch. We weren’t on a playground. This was the goddamn jungle. I stepped onto the branch and grabbed the one above me. Pulling myself up alongside Jake, I looked down. I couldn’t see much of anything in the darkness, but we had to be at least ten feet up by now.

“Do predators climb trees to hunt their prey?” I asked.

“Depends,” Jake said. “Leopards can, but it takes a lot of effort and there’s likely easier-to-hunt ground-based prey for whatever… this is. It’s okay. We’re fine. We’re fine,” he repeated. His quavering voice suggested that he was, in fact, the opposite.

The creatures roared again, their screaming bellow echoing through the forest. With a start, I realized that the sound was coming from directly below us. I felt the branch above me, but it felt too thin to support my weight without snapping.

Not daring to breathe too loud, I stood in place like a statue. The creatures roared again. There must have been at least three of them now.

“Crap, what do we do?” I asked Jake.

Jake’s response came out in a harsh whisper. “If they could climb this tree, they’d already have done so. All we can do at this point is wait them out.”

So we waited. Each tense minute felt like an hour, each second feeling like molasses. The absence of sound from below made me calm down slightly, only to be interrupted every few minutes by another roar or grunt. It was the most tedious yet terrifying thing I’d ever experienced.

Eventually my arms began to tire from holding them above me for so long, so I slowly lowered myself down so that I could sit straddling the larger branch below me. My feet dangled off of it, but the beasts didn’t seem to notice them. In this marginally more comfortable position, time seemed to pass just a tiny bit faster.

After literal hours of waiting, the sky began to lighten slightly. A glimmer of apprehensive sunlight reached through the forest canopy, faintly illuminating the ground. All around us, birds and other creatures began to chirp and call and sing, heralding the dawn. And it was with this sunlight that I was finally able to get a good look at what was hunting us.

Not six feet below my shoes stood three boar-like creatures. Each of them was about the size of a large dog. They looked somewhat like wild boars, except for their tusks and fur. Each of them had three tusks, two of which protruded from its cheeks like a normal boar and the third from its forehead like the horn of a rhinoceros. Each tusk was a foot long and was wickedly curved like a scimitar. Their fur was green and matted, a color similar to the forest floor.

The third rhino-boar-thing was a good foot longer than the other two. It had a row of curved spines protruding from its back, and it had a second, smaller horn extending from its head to the left of its main one. The broken end of a spear protruded from its side, the wood chipped and splintered.

I immediately perked up. So there are other people here besides us! And they were hunting these things! But that feeling quickly dissipated. Wild boars didn’t eat large game like humans, but they were very easy to piss off and would fuck your day up if you so much as looked at them funny. According to my high school Latin teacher, ancient Greeks hunted those things with ten-foot spears. He’d also said that a machine gun was both much safer and the only reliable way to kill them.

“Uh, are you seeing this?” I whispered to Jake.

“I’m seeing them,” Jake said. As he said this, the bigger boar pawed at the tree and let out a bellow. “I don’t think they like us too much.”

“They sat under this tree the whole goddamn night!” I said. “They’re downright pissed! We didn’t even stab the big one!”

“I mean, we might have,” Jake said. “I don’t know what these bodies were up to before we appeared in them. Maybe they were hunters.”

“But the million-dollar question is,” I said with a sarcastic flourish, “how the fuck are we going to get down from this goddamn tree?”

“They’ll need to eat or drink eventually,” Jake said. “They’ll need to leave if that’s the case.”

“But we might die of thirst before they do,” I countered. “I haven’t had anything to drink since we appeared here.” My mouth felt beyond parched at this point. It was burning with thirst, and it took all my self-control not to lick at a leaf that was gathering the morning dew.

“Well, being skewered by one of those tusks sounds painful,” Jake said. “Let’s wait and see what happens. It’s the only thing we can do.”

I scratched at my beard. It felt really interesting, and distracted me by a marginal amount. Never having had any significant amount of facial hair before, this new body I had proved to be fun. If only we were in a safe building instead of being hunted by goddamn wild boars…

The biggest boar roared again, and its smaller companions roared back. The big boar turned around and began to walk away from the tree.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“What’s it doing?” Jake asked.

“I think it’s leaving!” I said hopefully. The smaller boars remained where they were, and a tinge of fear began to undercut the hopeful joy I’d been feeling.

As the boar reached the base of another tree ten feet away, it turned around. It roared, and I could see it fuming at the nose. It pawed the ground like a bull about to charge a matador, angling its wide snout towards the tree.

“Uh, are you seeing that?” I asked Jake.

“Oh god, I don’t like where this is going,” he said apprehensively.

My worst fears were confirmed when the boar bellowed one last time and began to gallop at full tilt towards the tree. Before we had time to even react, it struck the trunk with a resounding CRASH. The wood shook and groaned under us as the boar stepped back to do it again.

“Oh fuck!” I screamed, almost losing my footing. “It’s trying to knock us down!” The smaller boars joined in, butting their heads at the trunk as the big one charged a second time. This time, I could hear the wood splintering.

“It’s gonna fall down!” screamed Jake as the world began to tilt backwards. The tree was a sturdy, elderly deciduous tree like the one in the neighbors’ backyard, but the tremendous force of the boar’s charges were too much for it to bear. The aged wood groaned and popped as it began to tumble to the ground.

“JUMP!” I yelled, adrenaline surging through my body. I got to my feet and attempted to jump onto another tree branch like Tarzan, Jake close behind.

Unfortunately, I was not Tarzan, and neither was Jake. We both fell to the ground several feet short of the neighboring tree, screaming at the descent. With a whump, I unceremoniously hit the ground like a rotting pumpkin. Fresh pain blossomed throughout my front, and I groaned. Beside me, Jake let out an agonized grunt as he flopped beside me.

Behind us, I could hear the boars roaring again. The roars had a cruel, gleeful tinge to them, like schoolboys laughing as they pulled the wings off of a hapless beetle. Yup, we’re the beetles here.

“Come on!” Jake shouted, already on his feet. He extended his slender arm, and he pulled me up.

“Did you break anything?” I asked him.

“I don’t think so, but man does it hurt like hell,” he replied. I looked around as he brushed his dress off. The boars were arranged in a rough A-shape with the big one at the center. They looked mean and very pissed off. And, with a triumphant bellow, they charged.

At this moment, a strange wave of calm came over me. You’re going to die, I thought as I just stood there on the mossy ground. There was no fear, no exclamation point. Just a strange sort of acceptance and absence of feeling. It felt similar to the way I’d felt in those brief moments between spotting the semi truck and death. The feeling like there was nothing you could do about your impending doom, so why bother?

Another roar echoed nearby. This one sounded different than the boars’ ones. It sounded like a lion’s roar. Oh shit, another predator coming to eat us? But the roar came from behind the boars…

A large shape slammed into the leftmost boar. It toppled to the ground with a squeal as its companions stopped mid-charge to look. As they began charging at the new enemy with a bellow, I caught a glimpse of the newly-arrived beast.

It was unlike anything I’d seen on Earth, both in the wilds, the zoo, and on the National Geographic channel. Its body was about the size of a large dog, but had features of a whole bunch of other creatures. Its body was green, scaly and thick like a sauropod dinosaur, and it had six thin, green legs like an ant. It had a long prehensile tail that looked like an octopus’s tentacles. But the most unusual feature of it were its heads. It had two identical heads protruding from its long necks that almost doubled its length. They looked like green-maned lions with the jaws of sabertoothed tigers. Two curving ram’s horns protruded from each head, giving it a devilish appearance. The chimera - the ancient Greek mythological terror was the only word I had for such a creature - roared with its free head while its other head dove into the side of the boar.

As the other two boars converged upon the chimera, three more chimeras appeared from off to the right. One of them had a long mane, but the other two were maneless like female lions. They rushed at the boars and within seconds the area was consumed with a deadly melee.

“Run!” I screamed, turning away from the warring monsters. Jake didn’t have to be told twice; he hiked up his dress and sprinted into the distance. I followed him, dashing at top speed.

I ran faster and farther than I ever had before. Once when I was ten or so, the neighbor’s young, excitable corgi had gotten loose. Since I wasn’t exactly a dog person, my first instinct was to run. I had sprinted at top speed away from the yapping dog (in hindsight, the worst thing that would have happened to me is that it would have licked me and panted happily, hardly a fate worth panicking over), only stopping once it lost interest three blocks away. Jake had called me “Supersonic Stella” for months afterwards. I’d called upon my ten-year-old-sprinter spirit to run away from the boars and chimeras.

Eventually, I could run no more. I stopped, falling to my knees and panting.

“God… Oh…” Jake said, gasping for breath. “Jesus.”

“Fuck, that was close,” I said. “This jungle is fucking terrifying!”

Jake laughed at my inane comment as he steadied himself. Then, he perked up. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” I asked. The only sounds that reached my ears were the calls, buzz and hubbub of the forest’s fauna. Then, I heard it. It was a faint but unmistakable trickling sound.

“Water!” I exclaimed, running once more to the sound. Jake let out an elated whoop and followed behind. It didn’t take long to find the sound’s most-welcome source.

A small stream, about eight feet wide and a foot or so deep, cut through the forest. Before I got a good look at the water, I bent down, scooped some up, and slopped it into my mouth. The water was gritty and sandy, but to my parched mouth it tasted like the pure, clean water from my dorm’s fountains. I gulped down another mouthful, watching Jake do the same.

“Ahh…” I sighed, laying back. “Oh, that feels so good.”

“Mmmm,” Jake grunted, guzzling a second handful of the murky river water. “Mmm.”

I sat back against a small boulder, watching the river as my drink traveled down my esophagus. For the first time, I could see myself. It was startling how different I looked.

Staring back at me was a man who looked like he could have been the subject of a Renaissance-era painting. He had handsome, chiseled features that were coated in dirt and short ginger hair. A medium beard reached down his cheeks and onto his neck. He was wearing the maroon tunic, white undershirt and purple-and-green pants I was wearing. They were stained with dirt and plant matter. This is me! I look like this now!

I didn’t know what to say. Back in my life before, I’d always felt confident in my status as a woman, both physically and mentally. But now… I didn’t really have conflicting feelings about this body. I felt as comfortable being a guy as I’d felt being a girl before. Am I trans? Nah, I wasn’t trans before. Never even questioned myself. It must be a quirk of whatever power that transported us here? It didn’t matter. I’m a man now. I’m a man! I’m a goddamn man! Hah!

I could see that Jake was checking out his reflection as well. He was staring intently at the regally beautiful blonde woman reflected in the slow-moving stream. His new body looked like that of a queen, someone you’d see sitting on a tall throne surveying her court. His face shifted from pensive to tense to calm.

After a minute, I felt that it was time to break the silence. “So.”

“So,” Jake replied.

“We’re the opposite genders now,” I said. “...But not just in body. I have the body of a man now, but I feel like a man now. As if I’ve always been one. It’s unusual but… normal? Calming? I don’t know what to say…”

A contemplative smile appeared upon Jake’s face. “Funny. I was thinking the exact same thing. It’s like I’ve always been a woman. When I think about my time before, it felt natural to be a man, but this… It feels just as natural.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s just odd that we’re taking such a major change so… well?”

“Yeah,” Jake said. He was silent for a few moments. “Babe… Can I ask you to do something?”

“Sure thing,” I said. “What is it?”

“Can… Can you refer to me with feminine pronouns now? I’m not sure about my name, but I think I’m a woman enough to… you know…”

“Yes, my love,” I said. “Can you do the same? Refer to me with masculine pronouns?”

Jake giggled, grinning widely. “Of course,” she said. “You’re my man, after all.”

“And you’re my woman,” I laughed. It felt so freeing, so right to do this. It was a sensation of calm in a time of turmoil, and I savored the moment.

We had another few gulps of the murky water and then set off downstream. The plan was to follow it to a lake or coastline, then search for life. Given the broken spear embedded in the boar’s side, there obviously were people nearby, and according to my history professors, people tended to live near bodies of water. That thought alone gave me hope.

The stream gradually grew wider to the point where one might even call it a river. It began to burble, then roar as we progressed. Fish like the ones on Earth swam in the shallows, some of the more adventurous ones leaping into the air to snatch up bugs. At one point thought I saw what looked like crocodiles basking in the shallows, but we were thankfully far enough away to never find out. The gap in the canopy above us grew wide enough to expose the sun, which looked exactly like the one back home. This simple similarity made me feel even more determined to get to safety.

Hours passed, and the sun reached its zenith and slowly started descending. Based on the path it took across the sky, the stream seemed to be flowing to the southeast and it didn’t curve or change course very much. The trees began to grow thinner and more numerous, the palm and birch trees giving way to spindly deciduous ones, like the ones you’d see in a Massachusetts forest that had been replanted nary a century ago.

Suddenly, I spotted something unmistakable. Right there, in a small clearing devoid of moss, were deep boot tracks!

“Jake! It’s tracks!” I exclaimed as I rushed towards them.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “What tr-” She stopped and gaped as she saw them, then she ran to catch up to me. We stepped into the clearing, and I got a look at them. The garments that had made the tracks weren’t treaded, but had small horizontal grooves running the length of them. I spied a fingernail-sized scrap of torn, faded yellow cloth hanging from a thorn bush.

“People!” I exclaimed. I immediately began to trace the tracks backwards, hoping that we’d find their maker’s camp. Jake ran alongside me as we followed their path. Some of the ground was hard and mossy, but the crushed plants and askew terrain were unmistakable signs of human presence.

I was so obsessed with the ground that I barely noticed the forms standing in front of me. I looked up and gasped with surprise as I narrowly avoided bumping into three humans. THERE WERE PEOPLE! A wave of happiness and elation washed over me, flushing my worries away.

I stopped and gasped, looking at the figures. Two of them were white-skinned men with long brown hair and beards, the other one a woman with short raven hair and dark skin. They were equal in height but somewhat short, about five-and-a-half feet tall if I had to guess. They wore long tunics of pale yellow, cream-colored tattered trousers and black shoes with muddy wooden platforms attached to them. The woman had a fur hat like the kind beaver trappers wore, and the men wore close-fitting leather caps. They looked just as surprised to see us as we were them.

“Lord George? Lady Eliza?” the white guy on the left asked, his voice astonished. “You’re alive?”