“What’s happening?” she says. “Tell us something.”
“We are in serious danger,” Dr. Espada says. He’s already moved off the path to the base of an ogwe tree. He’s looking up, peering into the branches. “This will do,” he calls to Manx. He drops his pack and digs inside it, withdrawing what looks like a big reel with a hook on its side. He tugs on the hook and a length of cord appears, thick and black and somewhat shiny. He pulls again; more cord. When he has a few lengths, he swings the hook around his head and then releases it, launching it up into the branches. It catches somewhere up above and he gives it a tug. All his teacherly gentleness has fallen away.
Manx is already up in the tree before I fully realize that we all need to be in the tree.
“What are we supposed to do?” Alma barks at a finder who has gripped her by the shoulders and is hustling her toward the tree Dr. Espada has chosen. Rondo comes toward me, reaching for my wrist but is intercepted by another finder, who drags him toward the tree.
“Climb,” the finder says. “Quickly.”
Alma climbs, poorly, with Rondo following close behind. At one point her shoe slips on the rope and kicks him squarely in the face; he winces and keeps climbing. Yaya is hopping around at the base of the tree, waiting for them to reach the top. And then I hear it.
A sound that shakes the trees even from what must be a mile away: a roar so deep and mighty that I feel it in the soles of my feet. It’s harsh, almost a scream. Above, rustling in the trees as unseen animals clamber to the safety of higher branches.
“Oh, stars,” I hear Dr. Espada gasp. “It’s the dirixi.”
“You can’t be serious,” Yaya cries as a finder shoves her toward the rope. “Can’t we . . . can’t we use an oxynet? Incapacitate it?”
“No oxynet that big,” Manx yells from the tree. “Get up here!”
Dr. Espada scrambles for another pack, emptying it in search of a second rope. He finds nothing and turns to close the gap between us with one stride. He snatches my arms, his hands rushing up to find my face, which he holds tightly. He looks in my eyes and the buzzing that has been simmering pleasantly in the back of my mind spikes. “We’re going to have to run,” he says.
Reality is shooting from my brain through my body in bursts of rising adrenaline. A dirixi. My eyes dart around over Dr. Espada’s shoulders, scanning the jungle frantically for the enormous reptile. My mind needlessly draws up all the lessons from the Greenhouse, recapping the features of dirixi that make them so dangerous: incredible sense of smell, drawn to blood; teeth the length of my forearm, saw-edged to tear the flesh of thick-hided animals like maigno . . .
“Octavia,” Dr. Espada barks, shaking me. “Look at me! We have to run!”
“Run? Run where?” I stutter. Yaya is barely halfway up the rope and I don’t see Jaquot or the other two finders anywhere. But looking at Dr. Espada, my mind fills with the image of great red flowers, a whole meadow of them. I don’t know how this image got there: I’ve never seen it before in person. But I know the flowers: they’re the same deep red as our skinsuits. Rhohedron. Even as a daydream, I can smell the sweet scent of their nectar, emanating from the blossoms in waves like a magnetic field.
“Go!” Dr. Espada shouts in my face, and we take off running in opposite directions. The jungle blurs around me. Somewhere behind me, from the branches of the tree, Rondo calls my name. His yell is broken in half by a hand clamped over his mouth, silencing him, protecting the group.
I run. The giant leaves and tree trunks speed past me, as if I’m standing still and it’s the jungle that’s running. In my head, the meadow of rhohedron floats in front of me like a specter. I can still smell them, their scent beckoning to me as I hurtle through the crowded underbrush. I hear the sound of branches breaking behind me, and, far off, Dr. Espada’s voice calling and calling. His words are drowned out by another screeching roar. I glance over my shoulder: I can’t see the dirixi, but I know it must be nearly on my heels. Its intensity invades my consciousness, like deep space creeping in through a starship’s cracked hull. I run too near a tree and my canteen strikes it, spinning off into the lush foliage. I run faster, following the phantom smell of rhohedron toward a place ahead where the light seems to change to a thinner, paler green.
I burst out of the tree line, at first thinking I must have circled far back to the red dirt road. But the red that springs up before me isn’t the road: it’s rhohedron, an entire field of it, some of the blossoms as large as my entire ’wam. I gape for only a moment at the stalks towering above, but the sounds in the jungle behind me spur me onward. I leap headlong into tall grass, ducking and dodging through the enormous low-hanging flowers and frantically looking for a stalk I might be able to scale.
Climbing isn’t an option without the kind of gear that Dr. Espada had in his pack. I wasn’t even issued a pack. I rack my brains for anything I might have learned in class that can help me in this moment, but instinct is all I have, and instinct says hide.
I dive into a cluster of the red rhohedron and burrow far into them until I find myself within the petals of one of the huge hanging blossoms, my back against the thick trunk of the parent plant. I pull my knees to my chest, squeezing my eyes shut tight and pulling my lips in, trying to breathe softly. I realize that my head is buzzing: I can almost smell my own blood, the way the dirixi must smell it. I can feel its hunger, a roiling, savage sensation like lava coursing through my veins.
And then I think of rhohedron. I allow the image of the field to fill my mind; imagine that when I breathe in and out that I am inhaling and exhaling the scent of the huge red flowers. It calms me and I feel light, as if my body is made of plant fibers and the wind is blowing against me gently. Somewhere outside myself I hear the heavy, shambling steps, the dirixi snuffling at the rhohedron; can see the shadow of its hulking, scaled body through the delicate petals of the blossoms. But I am a flower, a poisonous flower.
A wave of hot breath passes through the rhohedron, blasting against the side of my body with enough force to make me wobble. The stench is like nothing I’ve ever smelled, a foul mixture of rotting food and something burning. I hold my breath. My mind floods with red. I tell myself the only thing that exists is the wind against my petals.
I don’t know how much time has passed. Gradually I feel like a person again and slowly become aware of my fingers and toes, my back, stiff and sore against the trunk of the rhohedron. My lips are dry. Slowly I open my eyes, letting the shadows swimming in front of me slowly take the shape of the things they are. Flower petals. Stones. Stems. And a person, standing above me and looking down curiously. A person who I think is a person like any other, until I see the pattern of spots covering their skin.
CHAPTER 18