Having a detailed schedule is as good as having oars tick his way through the day, so he plans his next assault on the blue crabs. His system is simple: get them to chase him, run to the frog pond, and once they scatter spear them one by one.
With a bamboo spatula he transfers the cooked meat to another blue crab shell, his plate. He wishes he had a pot to make soup. His sister made an excellent one, but after she left, Jeryon couldn’t stomach crab for a long time. Then he ate it to remind himself of her. At some point it lost the quality of remembrance and became just another bland seafood. His taste for it is returning, he’s surprised to find.
He banks the fire, no longer trying to maintain a steady stream of smoke to attract ships or the poth. It breaks up too quickly in the ever-present breeze, barely reaching the tops of the trees, let alone the tops of the adjoining cliffs. As for the light attracting ships, there’s little point in bothering. His second night on the island he built a cross-staff to confirm what he already suspected from the star’s positions: the island is deep in the ocean, well south of any route a ship from the League might take to the Dawn Lands. The dinghy must have reached the river a day or two after they were set adrift. All the time he was telling the poth he could get them to Yness, they were probably passing it, heading into oblivion.
He thinks he might be on Gladsend, an island that shows up on few maps because few are sure where it is and fewer believe it exists. It was supposedly a pirate refuge long ago, but why refuge here when prey is so far away and Yness so accommodating?
He cleans his pan and dish, making a weak soap of some ash, water, and the hot olive oil, and rests them against the lean-to to dry. He overturns the cup and pitcher on little posts. He rakes his house with a leafy frond. When all is in order, he tucks in his shirt and rubs his chin. He hates his stubble. His knife isn’t up to the task of shaving, preferring to slice instead. Hopefully a dragonbone blade will do a better job. He picks up a spear and his knife and sets out.
Along the stream he’s erected stakes to hold bamboo cups. There are also supplies of spears in case the blue crabs decide they’re sick of frogs.
When he reaches the dragon hollow, the crabs are swarming over the hill beyond it and heading toward the gray column of rock to the south. Have they given up on the dragon? Are they chasing something? If the poth found the stakes and blazes along the path, he realizes, they might not lead her to the beach. They might lead her here.
Jeryon slides down the hill and shadows the crabs up the wooded slopes surrounding the column, a wide green collar around a headless stone neck. The crabs climb at an angle and Jeryon moves to their side so he can see what they’re pursuing. He hears it bounding and breaking through the brush, sounds drowned in the furious clacking of crab claws, but he can’t see what it is.
The crabs slow. Do they have their quarry trapped? Did they catch it and kill it? If so, it didn’t put up much of a struggle. With a spear in each hand he edges closer. Just a glimpse is all he needs. He hopes it’s not her, as much as he wants it to be her. The crabs eddy in a pool of shell and claw, several clicks responding to each interrogative clack, as if they’re discussing what to do. Some are looking his way. Jeryon hides behind an oak. If he climbed it, he might be able to see, but if they saw him, he would be trapped. He has to chance it.
He leans his spears against the tree, pulls himself onto a low branch, and it snaps. He falls on his face. The spears clatter over him.
Dozens of eyestalks waggle as one in his direction.
Jeryon jumps up, grabs the spears, and leaps away like a fat black frog.
Halfway to the next hill he realizes he won’t be able to climb the slope quickly enough to stay ahead of the crabs, so he veers north. The trees grow thicker. All he has to do is pace the crabs and eventually they’ll forget about him, just as they’ve forgotten about their original quarry. He might even be able to spear a few in the end.
They’re catching up, though. The crabs, large as they are, can slip between the trees more easily than him, and a few are jumping over branches and bushes he has to avoid. Three leap at him just as he bursts between two trees into a meadow—except there is no meadow. The sky he saw through the trees heralds a fifty-foot drop where the wind has stripped the hill down to its rock, a cliff above the cliffs.