THE TAMER WHO REWROTE EVOLUTION

Chapter 4

The Venom Stalker came out of the trees without a sound.

Ethan didn't see it first. He saw Darius's face change. It happened fast. The easy smile Darius had worn all morning dropped off his face like a plate slipping from wet hands. His mouth stayed half open. His eyes went wide and fixed on something behind Ethan's left shoulder.

"Darius?" Ethan said. No answer. "Darius, what is it?"

The two other teammates had already stopped walking. One of them dropped her water bottle. It bounced twice on the mossy ground and rolled away, and nobody picked it up.

Ethan turned around. The creature was long and low, with a spotted green hide that matched the leaves so well he had looked straight at it and seen only a bush. Its tail curled over its back like a hook. Yellow drops fell from its fangs and hissed where they hit the dirt. It was looking at him. Not at Darius. Not at the others. At him. "Nobody moves," Darius said. His voice came out thin and strange, higher than normal.

Ethan realized his own hands had gone numb. He looked down. His fingers were open, curled slightly, as if they had forgotten what to hold. Wick sat on his shoulder, perfectly still, a warm spot against his neck. Count, he told himself. Count something. One. The Stalker's tail twitched. Two. A bird somewhere stopped singing.

Three. He noticed he was not breathing, and he made himself breathe, and the air scraped in like sand. "Ethan," Darius whispered. "Yeah." "I need you to do something."

"Okay." "Hold it off. Just for a second." Ethan heard the words. They arrived in his ears, but they did not seem to go anywhere after that. He stood there with them, turning them over, like a coin he could not read. "What?" he said.

"Use your mouth," Darius said. "Throw it. Do something. Just get its attention." "Wick is the size of a button." "I know." "He can't..." Ethan's throat clicked. He tried again. "Darius, we ran together. We fight together. That's the plan. You said that." "I said a lot of things." The sentence 

was quiet. Almost kind.

Ethan looked at his friend. Darius was not looking back. He was looking at the ground, at the trees, at the gap between two ferns where a path ran back toward the exit gate. He was looking everywhere except at the one face he had known for six years.

A muscle jumped in Darius's jaw. Then his Ironhide Boar snorted, and he grabbed the other two by their sleeves.

"Go," he said. "Now." They went. Ethan did not hear them leave. That was the strange part. He knew they must have run. There must have been crunching leaves and pounding boots and a heavy boar crashing through brush. But all he heard was a high, flat ringing, like a glass rubbed along its rim.

He watched Darius's back get smaller. He watched the blue of Darius's uniform flash once between the trees.

Then it was gone, and the forest was quiet again, and Ethan was standing very straight with his arms hanging at his sides.

He thought: He'll come back. He thought: He said he'd come back. He had not said that. Ethan went through the last minute again, carefully, like checking a pocket for a lost key. Darius had said hold it off. He had said just for a second. He had never said I'll come back.

Ethan's knees felt loose. He locked them. The Venom Stalker took one step forward. A drop of venom landed near his shoe. The grass beside it curled and went brown.

His chest was doing something odd. It would not fill all the way. Each breath stopped halfway, like stairs with a missing step. His eyes were hot and dry at the same time. 

He blinked, and his eyelids felt like sandpaper.

His hand rose to his shoulder on its own, and he found Wick there, and closed his fingers around the little body. It was the only warm thing left in the world. "Hey," he said.

His voice cracked in the middle, so he stopped. He swallowed. He tried again, softer. "Hey, Wick. It's just us."

The moth pressed against his thumb.

Ethan almost laughed. It came out as a small, broken puff of air through his nose, and it frightened him, because it sounded like someone else. He wanted to shout Darius's name. He pictured it, the whole shape of it, the way it would echo through the trees. He opened his mouth.

Nothing came.

His lips shut. His teeth pressed together until his jaw ached. He realized he was shaking, a fine fast tremble that started in his knees and climbed his spine, and he could not make it stop, so he stopped trying. Six years.

The thought showed up uninvited. Six years of sharing lunches. Six years of Darius dragging him out of the library on Fridays. Six years of shut up, Cole, said with a grin.

He pushed the thought away. It came back.

He pushed again.

It came back heavier. The Stalker lowered its head. Its shoulders rolled, slow and smooth, the way a cat's do before a jump. Ethan's thumb began to move. It stroked Wick's back, over and over, a small slow circle. It was the only part of him still working properly. He watched it as if it belonged to a stranger.

Okay, he thought. Okay. Okay. Okay. He did not know what he was agreeing to. A hot line of water ran down his cheek. He felt it before he understood it. He lifted his free hand and touched his face, and his fingertips came away wet, and he stared at them in something close to confusion.

He had not decided to cry. It had simply happened, like rain. He wiped it on his sleeve. More came. "Stupid," he whispered, to no one. "This is stupid." The words wobbled and fell apart. Wick lifted off his shoulder. Ethan almost missed it. A faint flutter of gray wings, a tiny shape hovering in front of his face. For a moment the little moth simply hung there, wings blurring, black eyes fixed on him.

"Wick, no," Ethan said. "Come back. Come here."

The moth turned. It flew, slow and wobbling, straight toward the Venom Stalker, and stopped between the creature's fangs and Ethan's chest. It was a speck. A coin. A joke the whole hall had laughed at.

It spread its wings as wide as they would go. Ethan's heart slammed once, so hard it hurt. "No," he said. His voice finally came back, loud and raw, and it did not sound like him at all. "No! Wick, get back!" The Stalker's jaws opened.

Ethan lunged forward and dropped to his knees in the poisoned grass, arms out, reaching for the one small thing in the world that had not left. And as the yellow venom rose in the creature's throat, a sharp heat bloomed against his chest, just beneath the ribs,

as if someone had pressed a burning coin to his skin.