She stayed quiet and out of his way, knowing she could fight all night if she wanted and never change his mind. “Can I help?” she asked finally, defeated.

“No.”

She looked around at the wind-blown plains, but saw no game and no sign that anything had passed through recently. There were no streams, no green swath of promise where water might be hiding, not even a swampy piece of lowland, just more dead hills rolling away on every side of them. The closest tree was easily fifty meters away and all alone—a huge, cancerous-looking thing with a squat, lumpy body trailing parasitical vines like hair from its few remaining branches.

“I’ll get a fire going,” Amber offered, heading toward the tree. It had clearly been dead for some time, which she hoped meant she’d find some branches around the bottom. She could see some kind of spiky bush at the dead tree’s base, so if nothing else, she could always burn that.

“We don’t need one yet. Just rest.”

“You rest. I’m fine,” she said, still walking.

“Insufferable human.”

“Scaly son of a bitch.”

He grunted without looking at her and went on putting his tent together.

The gully was deeper than it looked. The grass was hip-high and hard to walk through, with plenty of creepers wound through to try and trip her up. Amber went slow, muttering and swearing, keeping her eyes on her feet and determined to go one day, just one, without falling on her stupid face and giving Meoraq yet another reason to think—

“Stop!” he shouted behind her. “Stop now! Here to me!”

Amber rolled her eyes and turned around to see him running down into the gully after her. “I feel fine, damn it, would you relax?”

Meoraq yanked the hooked sword from his belt and no matter how pissed off he was, he would never pull a sword on her.

‘Don’t turn around,’ Amber thought with such clarity and in such a reasonable inner voice that she nodded along in agreement. ‘If you don’t turn around, nothing will be there.’

Very true. Very good advice.

Amber turned around and watched the spiky bush at the base of the dead tree raise its head and turn magically into an enormous, quill-covered monster, oh, about a meter and a half away.

It saw Meoraq first. Its sleepy eyes squinted, assessing this danger, as it raised one massive, claw-tipped paw—it had no fingers or toes that she could see, just a leathery pad for a palm and four huge hooked claws—to scratch at its neck. The quills that covered its entire body turned to fine hair over its flat face and chin, but kept growing along its jawline in a dead-on evolutionary imitation of a muttonchop beard. That, combined with its severe frown as it watched the sword-swinging lizardman tear across the plains toward it, made it look hilariously like President Martin Van Buren. There had been a row of presidential portraits all around the tops of the walls in her seventh-grade world-history class. She had not realized until this moment that she knew any of them and that was kind of hilarious too.

“Ha,” said Amber. She didn’t mean to. It just came burping out of her.

The creature’s head swung left and right, then down. It saw her. It had eyebrows, of a sort. It raised them. Now he was a surprised Martin Van Buren. Mr. President, it appears William Harrison has just won the election. Pack up your shit and leave.

“Ha ha,” burped Amber.

The creature thumped its paw into the ground and stood up. And up. And up.

Even as a bush, it had been a pretty big bush, the kind that might burn maybe an hour. She had thought, following its magical transformation into an animal, that it was the size of a bear, because even though she’d never been to a zoo or seen a bear close-up, she’d seen them on TV and figured she knew how big they were, and yeah, big had a way of being subjective the closer a person came to a real live bear, but whatever this thing was, it was no more a bear than it had been a bush. It stood up on all fours and its ass was already taller than Amber, and then it stood up on its hind legs, doubling its height in a slow-motion second. It drew back its arm with a severe, presidential frown and swung.

Something hit her. It wasn’t Mr. President the Porcu-bear because she was looking at him. It wasn’t a car either because they had none on this planet, or at least, none that worked anymore. It felt a little like a car, though. She’d been hit once when she was little. Mama had gone running across the road so little Amber went running after and the cars had mostly stopped, but one of them hadn’t quite and although Amber didn’t remember it hurting, she remembered that whole-body double-WHUMP of the car hitting her and then her hitting the pavement. Then, she’d gotten herself a scraped elbow and maybe a bloody lip, she couldn’t recall exactly. Now, she tumbled over the grass and thorns and looked up dazedly to see grey skies and rolling clouds and Meoraq hacking at Mr. President’s neck. The porcu-bear turned away from Amber at once and slapped with his other paw, aiming at Meoraq this time.

It must have connected, because it seemed from Amber’s vantage that Meoraq flew back, but he landed and pivoted and lunged again with such effortless and brutal grace that it might have been choreographed. The sword went in, not bouncing off the quills this time but stabbing through them, slashing deep into the porcu-bear’s neck. It bellowed and dropped to all fours, shaking its head and slapping Meoraq away. Again, Meoraq rebounded, pulling his other sword from his back even before he hit the ground. His boots kicked a clod of grassy dirt onto Amber’s chest. She tried to pick it up, but it broke apart in her hand.

The porcu-bear stood up again, fanning its fingerless claws with both hands and bobbing its head as it roared, which made it sound a lot like Martin Van Buren during some fairly intense coitus, but when Meoraq came at it again, it dropped and tried to run.

It managed surprising speed for the first dozen steps and staggered for a dozen more before collapsing carefully onto its knees. Glaring at Amber, who it clearly blamed for its predicament, the porcu-bear rolled onto its side and lay panting.

“I didn’t see it,” someone said. It sounded like her, but she hadn’t felt her lips move. Her eyes were still fixed on the dying animal, and even though she could see it lying there, it was as if she could also see it rising up in front of her too—just rising and rising, a mountain of quills and hot breath and muscle—ready to kill. She hadn’t seen it? Really? How could anyone miss it?

“It was lying down,” someone explained in her voice. Even Amber thought it was a weak excuse. “I thought it was a bush.”

Meoraq grunted and stomped into view. The porcu-bear took a swipe at him which he easily stepped over. He planted one boot on the animal’s side, gripped the hilt of the sword jutting from Mr. President’s neck, and shoved. There was no last kick, no grunt, no slump, but Amber knew the difference immediately. It had been alive; now it was dead. That was how quick it could happen.

Meoraq yanked twice and finally got his sword back. Drops of blood fell like beads from a broken necklace, scattering prettily over the animal’s stiff quills and rolling out of sight. Meoraq wiped it off and hung it back on his belt. “Kipwe already. We must be nearer to the mountains than I—Are you all right?”

“You could have been killed.”

His spines flared and flattened. “By a kipwe?” he demanded, sounding pissed. He knelt down to carve some meat out of the quill-covered carcass, and maybe he was talking to her while he did it, but she couldn’t hear him. His back was to her and on his back was a ragged tear in his tunic with the wet gleam of blood beneath.

“Oh my God, you’re hurt!” she blurted.

“I realize that,” Meoraq said testily, prodding at another tear, this one on his side. And there was another on his arm. His stomach. His thigh.