I’ve got to get out of here. For a brief moment my head clears and I do an instant check of the use of my body. I can feel the syrupy-like poison seeping through my veins, headed toward my brain. Just like I’d done with snakebites, spider bites, and granal stings, I clench my fists and legs.

Clench! Fight it!

Just barely, I can twitch my muscles. The poison doesn’t burn. Good. It’s not a neurotoxin. It feels syrupy, the tell-tale sign of a poison that paralyzes. All I have to do is siphon it, push it through my veins and pump enough blood for my body to work it through my strengthened system.

Clench, relax, clench, relax, breathe, clench, relax, breathe!

“…woont… ite… woar a goner, Burin,” Iris says to me as she helps me sit up.

I lean up against a tree and try to blink my friends into focus. I can feel the poison seeping out of me and look around at my group. They come into focus and I can see everyone standing and looking over me. Everyone save Minnle. He’s on his feet but William and Mally are completely supporting him. Minnle’s eyes can’t stay focused, the lids twitching as his head bobs uncontrollably.

“Is he okay?” I hear William ask as my eyes regain their strength.

I try to stand up and Iris, holding me by my arm, helps me to my feet. “Wuh-apa,” I say, trying to make out words. I rub my jaw back and forth, stretching and testing the muscles as I work out the tension in them. “What happened?”

Iris sighs with relief and says, “A tree limb snapped down and hit you.” She shows me a tiny, long needle. “The leaves have dozens of these on them. You probably didn’t even notice it — that tree moved like a whip.”

“The tree?”

“It got Minnle, too,” William says. “He tried to take a branch off it.”

“Why would a tree want to hurt mammals?” Bay asks, looking around as if he’s weighing the choice of running toward the ocean.

I stretch, feeling the soothing sensation of my back popping in four places. “Well, I guess it might feed off it. Or it could cause a mammal to decompose and add nutrients to the soil. There’s all sorts of reasons, it’s just not normally something trees do.” I stare up at the tree, trying to find the leaves that had the needles on them. Everyone gives it a very wide berth.

I catch William look at Minnle with a strange sense of helplessness. He keeps gripping his quarterstaff with a clenched fist, making me worried he’s going to hit someone with it. Little green marks on it and the lack of a large amount of limbs on the tree that stung me shows he did.

“How are you standing and Minnle isn’t?” William asks.

“I don’t know. I guess I’ve built up a bit of an immunity to natural poisons,” I say. Everyone looks at me questioningly. I shrug. “It was a hobby.” I pick my still unfinished spear off the ground, wiping the sand off the tip and keep carving. Tree, animal, whatever, I’m going to make sure I’m prepared as much as I can be.

The walk goes very slow. We had all brought machetes to use to hack down whatever vegetation would block our path. Those, of course, went down with the rest of our doomed vessel. We have to take quick, light steps as we make our way through the growth and keep a diligent eye for any more of those trees.

My arm is still a little numb from my brief encounter, and Minnle has yet to regain the use of any parts of his body. William has told me, so close that no one else can hear, that he fears Minnle might be paralyzed permanently if we don’t find him help. For now, all we can do is carry the man, despite the angry stares he tries to give anything that comes across his waning eyes.

As we go deeper into the forest, I can easily sense the changes. The undergrowth starts to even out and get shorter. By the time I finish my spear, examining my work with pride, the trees get bigger, wider trunks and thicker branches that almost look climbable. The first time we see an animal, Iris exclaims, “Oh look!”

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It’s a wide-eyed mammal of some kind. A tiny head on a two-legged body, it squats down on a high tree branch, scratching the part on its back where its spine meets its tail.

“What is it?” Mally asks, staring up at the animal as it tilts its head at a near ninety-degree angle, staring back.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Iris says with a smile. The others mutter similar responses about the curious creature.

At the same instant I open my mouth to say something, a large bird swoops down like a lightning bolt and reaches its talons out to rend the furry mammal’s flesh. Just as fast, the mammal leaps away and reaches out with a tiny hand suddenly bearing enormous claws, swiping at the bird and latching onto it with a hooked hand. In an instant it pulls the bird close and sinks a set of sickly sharp teeth into the squealing bird’s neck.

“Whoa,” is all I say as we watch the mammal quickly devour the bird. As it does it shrieks at us, warning that we should not steal its meal.

“That was…” Iris offers.

“Amazing!” William exclaims.

“Yeah, amazing,” I say, looking around to see if anymore creatures, bird or mammal, are lurking and waiting to turn one of us into a similar meal. “Here, William.” I hold my knife out. “Use this on your quarterstaff. You might need it.”

William actually scoffs at the idea. “I’ll be fine. Let’s keep moving.”

Sand becomes dirt, dirt briefly becomes mud. Then there’s that moment where the mud becomes sandy mud and Mally nearly drowns. Luckily we grab some vines and use our limbs-turned-spears to pull her out. Unluckily, the vines have ants crawling all over them that bite our arms. Everyone but William, Iris, and I scratch at the bites those buggers give us. Luckily, we spot a board laid on top of the mud on one side, an obvious sign that a human was laying down a safe path. Meng has definitely been this way.

What I think is a mile in, keeping on what we all believe is the poorly-kept path Meng has made, Iris gets bit by a massive bee, least I think it’s a bee, and we take a water break to cool her off. The bite mark swells and she says it burns. But there is otherwise no problem. Thinking quickly, and without me noticing at first, she pulls out her knife and cuts open the flesh around the bite, allowing a sickly yellow fluid to flow out of the swelling, draining the blood as well. She says it actually cools the bite off and feels much better.

After making a quick bandage of soaked leaves and rope for Iris, we head off through the thickening forest.

“Feels fine,” Iris says after I inquire to her injury. “It was just a bug anyway.”

“And it was just a tree that hit Minnle, but Mally and William are still carrying him,” I say.

“I’ll be fine.” She reaches out and reassuringly touches me on the shoulder. “Trust me.”

I smile back at her, not looking around as I do and ignore that tickling sensation in the back of my mind, the same I’d felt when I first entered the forest.

“How much further do you think?” Bay asks. “My leg is killing me.”

“We could make camp here,” Horal suggests, scratching at his ant bites. “It’s clearing up a bit.”

I shake my head and say, “No. We have to find Meng. We don’t know what’s in here. I’d rather head back to the shore than camp out here. Who knows what predators come out in this place at night?”

Everyone gathers around me, Bay breathing hard and Mally considering whether to lean against a tree.

Horal crosses his arms, impatient to come to a decision. “So we keep moving then?” he asks.

“What do you guys think?” I reply.

Iris glances up at the sky, unable to see the sun through the canopy of trees. “We might be able to get to the shore by sundown,” she says.

“And we might be able to get some adequate shelters built by sundown,” William says.

“Of course we have no idea what the definition of adequate would be in this case,” Bay points out.

“So we have two maybes,” I say. “And the third maybe that we might find Meng.” I look around at the slight clearing, examining the thickly packed tan dirt, the wide-leafed ferns and low knee-high grass mixed amongst a never-ending expanse of trees ranging in all shapes and sizes, each one more unfamiliar than the last. If only I hadn’t lost my cataloging book. I could have had hundreds of new species marked down.

A slight breeze blows from the north and gives a cooling sigh through the shaking trees.

“That makes two out of three to keep going,” William says.

“True,” I say. I rub my hand through my hair, sweat coming off my forehead onto my dry palm. “What does everyone else think?”

Bay groans, shifting weight on his purple-colored, broken leg. William glances at it and shifts his quarterstaff from one hand to the other, trying to ignore the wound. “Either way we keep moving,” Bay grunts, and breathes deeply to try and ignore the pain he’s obviously feeling. “We came here to find Meng. Let’s keep on his trail.”

“I agree,” Mally says. The others speak similar agreements. Minnle grunts and barely moves his head, the first movement he’s been able to do in hours.

“Okay then,” Horal says, and starts walking toward a massive tree. “The path goes around this big trunk here.” He’s smiling and stepping eagerly. “Meng can’t be far. No way he’d camp more than half a day from the shore.”

“That makes sense,” I say as we begin to follow. Horal steps around the tree several feet in front of us, following the path as it rounds the thickly barked wood. I nearly trip over the massive roots and warn the others to watch for bugs. “Horal, hold on. Bay’s still…”

I round the tree and see a path clearly cutting straight through lower grass. All around it stands massive ferns and waist-high vegetation, but no Horal.