“Did you actually see him there or is that just where he ought to be?”

“Why do you care where S’kot is?”

“I just want to make sure he got back okay. He was here,” she said reluctantly as his head tipped to a curious but menacing angle. “He was with me when the bird attacked us, but I kind of…lost track of him.”

Meoraq’s head slowly straightened. He stared at her for a long time as yellow began to lighten up his throat again. Then he looked down at the piece of plastic he’d taken from her hair. Slowly, very slowly, he turned the flashlight over and looked at the broken lens.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Amber said hastily, but of course it was.

He didn’t bother arguing with her. Without a word, he turned around and walked back to camp.

Walked fast. His weight was forward, balanced on his toes like a predator, and halfway there, he threw the flashlight violently away and yanked his sword off his back.

“Oh God,” said Amber, following him, and began to run.

He got there before she did and stopped, sweeping his head left and right as he searched the camp for his prey. “S’kot!” he bellowed. “Stand and be judged or die on the ground like the animal you are!”

Amber grabbed at his arm, even as some part of her remarked that this was a very stupid thing to do to a lizard this angry. He didn’t shake her off, but it didn’t slow him down either; he dragged her along without any acknowledgement of her presence whatsoever as Scott darted around to the far side of the fire, shouting, “Whatever she told you, she’s lying! I never touched her!”

“Jesus, Bierce,” said Crandall, staring at her. “What did you do now?”

“You dare to call yourself the leader of these people?” Meoraq started left around the fire, then right as Scott continued to evade him, then noticed Amber. He plucked her off him with a hiss, and then leapt right through the fire to grab Scott by his shirt. “You looked me in the face and swore you did not know where she was!”

“I didn’t!”

“You were with her!” Meoraq gave him a shake that made Scott’s feet lose contact with the ground. “You abandoned her!”

“It was dark! I didn’t see which way I came!”

Meoraq loomed over him, his sword high and poised to fall. His breath steamed out of him against Scott’s face like smoke from a dragon’s mouth. Scott himself did not appear to be breathing at all.

Meoraq’s sword rose higher—

People made all the same gasping/screaming sounds they make watching racecars crash or kids fall out of Ferris wheels, and Amber lunged forward yet again, even knowing she was too late, but shouting for him to stop anyway.

—and sheathed it.

“She asked for you,” Meoraq said, shoving Scott away with a look of contempt. “She wanted to know if you were safe.”

He walked away. Still prowling. Still furious.

“Where are you going?” Amber asked weakly.

“To get the meat!” he spat, not looking at her. His neck was bright, bright yellow. “Stay here, all of you!”

Then he was gone. And everyone was looking at her.

“Are you okay?” Nicci asked finally.

“So that’s how it is!” Scott shrilled out before anyone else could speak. He slapped at his shirt to straighten it, his face wild and eyes glassy. “That’s you, huh?”

“Me?” Amber looked at him disbelievingly. “What the hell are you pissed off about? I didn’t do anyth—”

“You stole my flashlight! Huh? How about that?”

“What?”

“You stole it and you go running off! You endanger all of us!”

She tried to say another what? but could only mouth it, so great was her astonishment at this attack.

“I have to go chasing after you! I have to try to bring you back when you knew, you knew, we were all supposed to stay together!”

“I—”

“And you call that bird-thing!”

“What?!”

“Okay, easy,” said Eric, raising his hands. “No one called it, that’s just crazy.”

“She called it!” Scott insisted, pointing at her hard enough to make his arm quake as violently as his voice. “She called it by tromping around out in the grass where she knew she wasn’t supposed to be! She admitted it! She made herself a target and then she brought them all back here!”

“They were already coming here!” Amber told them. “They saw the fi—”

“And she pushed me down!” Scott shouted. “Yeah! Huh? How’s that for heroic? When it jumped out at us, you pushed me in front of it!”

“I pulled you out of the way, you liar!”

“Nuh-uh! No, you didn’t! You pushed me, see?”

And he held out a pair of scraped palms to prove it, while she stood there bruised from head to fucking toe, so dumbfounded by the enormity of this lie that she could not even breathe.

“Okay, everybody. Calm down.” Eric gripped Scott’s shoulder and turned a stern eye on Amber. “I think maybe you’d better apologize.”

She gaped at him. “For what?!”

He nodded as if that were the reaction he’d expected and, while disappointing, it was not unmanageable. He said, “Then I think you’d better take a walk right now. I think maybe the rest of us need to talk.”

Amber opened her mouth, but it was Maria, of all people, who suddenly said, “Oh my God, enough already!”

Eric flushed. The mob-mutters that had been rising now subsided. People shuffled back, some looking very vaguely ashamed, but most still glaring.

Maria was glaring, too, but at Eric. “I don’t like her either,” she was saying, “but don’t you stand there acting like you believe his playground pushed-me bullshit story!”

Amber stared at them, dimly aware that her mouth was still open, and saw only mob-faces staring back at her.

“Okay, let’s not go making this any worse,” Eric murmured, taking Maria’s arm.

“Baby, I love you, but grow some balls. Maybe we couldn’t see him, but for Christ’s sake, look at her! We all know who got pushed down!”

Her chest hurt. She realized she was holding her breath and made herself start again. The first few came out too rough and too ragged. Too close to tears. She looked down at herself in a torpor of confusion and saw the bright magenta color of her bruise through the shreds of her shirt. She had blisters on her hands coming in from trying to hold on to her spear when it was stuck in the bird. The fight itself felt bizarrely like it had never happened and never stopped at the same time.

“She had it coming,” Scott mumbled, trying to finger-comb his hair into place. “She stole my flashlight. And she broke it.”

“On what, her face?” Maria demanded, advancing on him. “Hey, you know what? She’s a bitch and it’s okay to hate her, but you are a lying, cowardly little coil of dogshit and you are not doing yourself any favors tonight.”

Scott shut his mouth tight and shifted his sullen stare to Eric.

“All right, baby, that’s enough,” said Eric. This time, when he took Maria’s arm, she sniffed but let it stay. “Everybody’s emotions are running high. You’re not helping. The lizard wants to cook, so let’s…let’s just give him some space and everybody try to settle down and get some sleep.”

The mob began to thin out, muttering and throwing mistrustful glances over many shoulders as it left Amber behind.

‘What about my apology?’ Amber wanted to say, wanted to scream. She didn’t.

‘I don’t care,’ she told herself, but the tears were still there, stinging at her eyes.

…it’s okay to hate her.

‘But she used to like me,’ she thought, staring into the fire. ‘She used to say I saved her. She used to say I pulled her from the ship when it was burning. She used to…’

“Amber?”

“Bring your blanket over here somewhere, Nicci,” she said, and was proud of how level and unaffected her voice sounded. “Nothing else is going to happen tonight, but just for my peace of mind, you know?”

“Well…I think I’m going to go sleep in the tent with Lani and Sabrina and, you know, the other girls. Is that okay?”