The Green Ones

Episode 1, Part 18

As I struggle to comprehend what Neca has just said, he stoops. Picking up a rock, he places it in my hand. The wolves seem to perceive the gesture as a declaration of intent. No sooner than I wrap my fingers around the rock’s edges, the low growl erupts into an angry bark.

Neca pushes off, and I spring in the opposite direction. The wolf charges. Brushing past my leg, it misses with its razor-sharp teeth. The contact is enough to spin me off balance. Managing to land on all fours, I barely avoid smacking my forehead on a large rock.

Instantly, a second animal barrels out of the trees, its yellow eyes glinting. Holding my breath, I raise onto my knees and swing the rock directly for its jaw. The beast whimpers, letting up his charge a split second before he and the rock collide. Miscalculating, I strike him in the neck. His exposed canine catches me across the chest as the two of us spin.

 Bones audibly snap from the force of the blow. Momentum unchanged, the wolf’s limp shoulder collides with mine, tossing me backward. I brace for the inevitable dashing of my head, hoping it’s not so bad I lose consciousness. Rather than a crushing impact, I’m caught up in a cushion of air. I bounce as if striking a spongy bed of moss.

As I tumble, the snarling of angry wolves is cut short by a wash of vibrating air. Sliding down the edge of the ridge, I catch a foothold. My eyesight blurred, I can’t stop my brain from rattling. “Neca!” The word comes out of my mouth distorted and strange.

A fierce snarl, followed quickly by Neca’s own guttural challenge, reaches me on the front edge of a dark pulse—a ripple of shadow and emptiness. I hug the slope as an explosion of fur and shattered rock bursts from the top of the ridge and rushes past. Gravel settles in the wake, larger rocks splintering branches further down the slope.

Everything falls quiet. “Neca?” I croak his name, suddenly terrified the dark-skinned chadzitzin boy has left me alone.

Testing my limbs, I discover they work. I scramble onto the ridge, unable to see anything. No wolves. No Neca. My hearing alerts me to a low gurgling growl meters away. Without jerking, I turn toward the sound. Sprawled on the ground, I spot a dark shadow in the shape of Neca—a single wolf limping toward it.

“Hey, wolfie!”

The animal growls louder, refusing to alter its course.

“Hey,” I shout, “your mother was a coyotl!” I reach for another rock.

Less than a meter from Neca, the beast lunges.

I don’t have time to stop it. I scream. I scream for the fighter, for the boy, for the friend I’ve just made. I scream for my brother. The night dissolves—the sounds and smells melting around me. And the dark of night morphs into emptiness in every direction, except for the shapes of the wolf and Neca lying beneath it.

At the far end of a distant tunnel, I see the animal slow its attack. I watch it stop in midair. It blurs around the edges. Finally, an explosion splits the air between us, and all senses shatter.