The below is an excerpted chapter from my upcoming prehistoric-fantasy novella Yandi and the Fire Mountain, which I will self-publish sometime before the end of the year. Please enjoy!
In another world, in another age…
Yandi stood poised with her bone-tipped spear and watched the river’s surface for movement. The lukewarm current licked her thighs while the perspiration on her black skin fended off the steamy heat. Weighing down on her hip beneath a thong of twisted plant fibers was a butchering knife fashioned from a deathjaw’s serrated tooth.
A long shadow drifted through the water in front of her. Drawing her spear overhead to build momentum, Yandi struck with lightning swiftness and pierced her prey in the head. She drew out a violet legfin larger than her forearm, more than enough to feed her family for the night. Watching the fish flail its leg-like fins about, she smacked her lips as she anticipated savoring its tangy flavor.
A flurry of frantic splashing shattered the calm, flinging droplets of water onto Yandi’s side. Her sister Benje, younger than her by five rainy seasons, was attacking the river’s surface while yelling with frustration. The tiny silhouettes of Benje’s intended targets all darted away from her with every desperate jab.
Looking up to see what Yandi had caught, Benje pouted. “Why does the river favor you so, Yandi?”
Yandi gave her sister a playful chuckle. “Because I don’t attack it the way you do. Remember what our mother taught us. Stay still until the fish comes to you.”
“That’s what I’ve been doing, and yet the fish don’t come to me at all. What have I done wrong?”
“Nothing, Benje. You only need patience. I was that way once, remember?”
Yandi closed her eyes and prayed thanks to the river for offering her its bounty, imploring it to bless her sister as well. It was only a few heartbeats later that Benje yelped with triumph.
Benje had skewered a young watersnapper. The squirming creature was scarcely larger than Yandi’s legfin, nowhere near as massive as its kind could grow upon reaching adulthood. It was still plump for its young age. Both sisters had eaten watersnapper meat before and knew it to taste as good as any fish. Together, the two sisters would bring back to camp more than enough river meat for their family.
Yandi waded to her sister and laid a hand on her shoulder, stretching her lips into a proud beam. “It seems the river favors you too, Benje.”
Her heart jolted within her chest when a flat black form, as long as a man stood tall, surfaced with an eruption of foam behind her sister. A pair of green eyes with slitted pupils glared from its far end with what could have been either hunger or parental rage. As it zoomed toward Benje, drawing a steep wake behind it, the great watersnapper twisted its head aside and parted sharp-toothed jaws, ready to chomp down on her with crushing force.
Yandi yanked her sibling out of the way. The watersnapper’s jaws clamped a narrow breadth away from them, their closure blowing out a gust of wind that almost shoved them off their feet. Together the two sisters jogged toward the riverbank as fast as the water would allow them. Swimming faster than either woman could run, the great watersnapper caught up to their rears in little time.
The giant reptile opened its jaws behind Benje for a second attack. Yandi hurried to punch it in the eye with the butt of her spear. The watersnapper threw its immense head back with a guttural bellow, letting the sisters rush all the way to the water’s edge. As they sprinted over the riverbank’s damp and sticky mud, the aggravated beast stormed out of the water after them on its sprawling legs.
It swung its head like an oversized club of bone and scaled flesh at Benje. She ducked with a stumble and slipped face-first onto the mud, losing hold of her spear. Scrambling to recover it, she rolled back onto her feet and brandished the weapon at the incoming beast. The baby watersnapper Benje had caught earlier flung off the spear’s tip and landed one pace in front of its huge parent.
Whether or not it recognized the young as its own, the elder creature scooped up the little carcass with its teeth and swallowed it as if it were an ordinary fish. In the meantime, both women had run to a safe distance farther up the riverbank. They watched with relief as the great watersnapper lurched and swam back into the river without giving further pursuit.
A panting Yandi patted her sister on the back. “That was swift thinking there, Benje.”
Benje brushed mud off her breasts with a disappointed frown. “A shame I had to give up my catch.”
“Don’t worry about that. The river will always offer more.”
“If only I could catch them as well as you can.”
“That’s only because I am older and have more experience than you, sister. You’ll catch up in time. It will get dark soon, so we should return to camp.”
Benje nodded. “And we wouldn’t want to be around if that watersnapper is still hungry.”
Yandi led her sister parallel to the river’s upstream course. Their path straddled the shaded juncture between the riverbank and the towering rainforest that walled its far edge. She kept her gaze swaying between the river and the forest undergrowth, never forgetting the myriad threats lurking in both.
Even the sky overhead could present danger should a great skinwing swoop down to pluck either of them up in its beak. Those soaring giants ruled the sky as much as the great watersnappers ruled the waterways and the deathjaws the deep jungle.
As she trailed behind her elder sister, Benje still held her head low with a gaze aimed at her spear’s empty tip. Yandi gave her a soft tap on the shoulder while cradling her necklace of fangs, claws, and eggshell beads in her hand. It was their late father who had strung each sister’s necklace after she had earned her facial scarifications of womanhood. Their necklaces were therefore the last tangible things the sisters had connecting them to his memory. Yandi would not lose Benje the way they had lost both their parents several rainy seasons ago. This she had sworn by Grandmother Sun and Grandfather Moon.
A subtle tremor shook the earth beneath their feet with a rumble. Far beyond the jungle along the river’s opposite bank, a gray stream of smoke meandered up from the summit of the eastern horizon’s tallest mountain. A chill slithered up Yandi’s spine. Never in her life had she seen that ancient dome of black rock leak smoke like that, but she recalled the elders’ stories well enough to recognize what it meant. It was something even the fiercest deathjaw or the most colossal longneck feared, something more powerful than any beast or man.
After generations of slumber, old Fire Mountain was stirring once more.