Merryl returned from porting Andre and his group out for their morning trip and told Grant, "We had to go to the second location. Another group beat us to the first place."

He frowned and made a note of that. "Some villages are starting to send people out earlier."

"If we go out much earlier, we'll be there at the break of dawn," I reminded him. "We can't see as well, and the predators are still out. There are a few locations where the sun rises earlier, but there isn't much difference."

Grant had a huge map of the world in his office; alas, it showed the old world, not our current desert-besieged one. No one knew the current layout of the continents. Lions should be in Africa, but the sun rose there only a handful of hours after ours did. Our sunrise matched the one in the places with coyotes and moose, which should be North America, or possibly Russia.

Yet, I'd never seen the snow depicted in the magazine pictures, nor located a lake so big a hunter couldn't shoot an arrow across it, and those should have been present in both locations. No one had ever found the ocean, and rumor said it had disappeared. The desert reigned.

Thankfully, most animals remained in their traditional habitat, which made it easier to predict what we might encounter. It wasn't always a rule though. The only rule was that the Saursunes could appear anywhere.

Grant sighed glumly. "I know. But if we don't start going out earlier, we'll encounter more groups and have to settle for less favorable places."

"Less favorable" meant not enough food or being too close to a Saursune farm or field. Once again, we were forced to pick between starvation or risking attack from animals or Saursunes.

"I'm heading out before someone beats me to my usual spot," Merryl said, jogging toward the crystal as her group converged on her.

Pointing a thumb over my shoulder at her, I asked, "She gets to bounce?"

"She has to stay beside the crystal for ten hours," Grant reminded me.

"Point taken. That would drive me insane." I grabbed a couple of tightly-wrapped carry nets out of a nearby basket and stuck the fist-sized bundles in my pockets. "Where am I heading?"

Brielle and Tib were waiting nearby, so I already knew it was going to be a journey away from the crystal.

He opened his book and pulled a crystal shard out of his pocket. "I hate to send you out again, but—"

"It's easier for me to remember them," I finished.

My tendency to remember a crystal or shard instead of a location made it possible for me to port there reliably, even years later. Others usually found it easier to memorize locations, but memory became hazy during the long years while the shard grew, and they often ended up porting to more familiar areas by mistake. Then they had to hike to the crystal a second time and hope their notes were good enough to find it. A few crystals had never been found.

He nodded. "Try writing in the dirt too. That trick already helped Ariel differentiate those three mountain fields she kept mixing up."

"I wonder if we can port to a similar location if we knew the words someone else wrote in the dirt?"

Grant was already ahead of me. "Doesn't work. Derek never visited the higher location, but even when he visualized a similar field and used the words for the high one, he still appeared at the other field."

So much for that idle hope. The porters still had to visit each crystal in order to return there, presuming their memory was good enough.

"Speaking of the mountains, can you port to the Grapefruit Grove crystal and plant that shard farther down the slope? Maybe see if you can find a creek or a spot with a fair bit of wildlife."

"The location near the cotton trees or the really dense tropical jungle?"

"The tropical one, please."

I made a face. Wandering through dense jungles with tigers, elephants, snakes, and who-knew-what-else wasn't my idea of fun. But the jungle trees had more nuts and fruit.

Grant gave me a sympathetic smile. "That's why I'm sending Tib and Brielle with you."

I looked over at the lanky hunters. "You're going to be stuck at my speed."

"Going fast isn't wise in that sort of jungle," Tib replied easily.

With a resigned sigh, I grabbed a sturdy walking stick and went over to the crystal where the hunters were waiting for me.

"Grapefruit Grove Mountain."

The hot, dry air was replaced with humid warmth full of the smell of plants. The three of us cautiously looked around. Ferns and plants abounded on the ground while trees competed for light above. Their branches shook as monkeys gave alarm calls and ran away from the humans below. The birds went about their business, singing, flying, and looking for food.

Three large grapefruit trees stood twenty paces away, but the fruit was green and only half-grown. Tib stepped away first, still scanning the dense foliage alertly. I carefully picked my way across the soft leaf litter. The slope was slippery, so I had to watch where I put my feet. Scorpions and small venomous snakes were also a concern.

I followed Tib downhill as we descended at an angle. Even with my walking stick to help brace me, I slid down some sections. Tib paused and fiddled with a palm leaf, leaving a large and rather messy knot.

"What's that for?" I asked.

"Too many leaves to use charcoal marks," he replied, pulling out a charcoal stick and leaning over to swipe it across a trunk. The black mark was almost completely lost within the shadows and dappled greenery.

Brielle added, "I usually wedge a flower or something bright into mine to make them easier to spot." She picked a small flower and slid it into the knot as we went by it.

I was suddenly glad I had two skilled hunters with me on this trip. It would be far too easy to get lost in a jungle this dense.

Our pace was slower than I expected, and every rustle in the leaves made us pause. My nerves were strung far too tight, even with Brielle and Tib close by.

Two hours later, we stumbled upon several large moss and vine covered rocks.

"This should be good enough," Tib said. "No hunter in their right mind will stray this far in this type of jungle."

That was good enough for me. I clambered up the slippery moss and used a stick to scrape the dirt and moss out of a crevice in the largest rock. I pulled the shard out of my pocket and admired how the light shone through it. My eyes traced all the faint ridges that would sprout into spires.

I gently set the shard in the hole and covered it with the loose dirt and moss. The crystal would grow through the rock almost as readily as loose soil. It might take an extra six months to reach porting size, but the large rock would keep trees away until we could return.

Using a piece of charcoal, I wrote Stone in the Jungle beside it. Stepping back, I carefully committed the words, rocks, and surrounding area to memory.

In this dense jungle, the chances of anyone else finding the stone, even if they knew the general distance and direction, was close to zero. If I didn't recall its location in several years, it would be lost forever, which wasn't exactly a rare occurrence among the villages.

We followed Tib's leaf-knot markers as the daytime heat increased and made the humidity almost unbearable. My shirt was plastered to my back with sweat, and the moisture in the air clung to my skin and lungs.

It was a relief when we finally reached areas where fruit and nuts trees had been planted by past gatherers and porters. Tib paused, craning his neck as he held his hand out in caution. I immediately stopped. Brielle eased up beside him, moving only as quietly as a hunter could. Both of them backed up to where I was.

"There a small herd of peccaries off the side," Tib whispered in my ear. "We'll take you to the crystal as quietly as possible, and Brielle and I will come back and see if we can flank them."

"Can you do it safely?" I asked. Peccaries occasionally swarmed an attacker instead of running. In the recent past, a hunter's leg had been shredded by the sharp tusks.

"We'll climb a tree. It might take us a while to return to the crystal though."

"Why not go before they move away? The crystal is just down that path," I said, pointing. "It's only about two hundred paces away." This close, I didn't even need Tib's knots to guide me.

He hesitated, then glanced at Brielle, who said, "They're already starting to leave. We'll have to move quickly if we want to catch one."

I added, "Most porters wander farther from crystals than this while foraging." Albeit, not in this type of jungle, but it would be a huge success if we could bring back a peccary.

He nodded and began slipping through the undergrowth as Brielle followed him, both nocking an arrow onto their bows. I quietly went the other way, toward the crystal, just in case the herd of peccaries came this way for some reason.

As I rounded a bend, I sighed in relief when I saw the crystal in the clearing ahead. I paused by a bush to pick some nuts that were barely ripe enough to harvest. The five or six handfuls barely lined the bottom of the carry net. As I walked toward the crystal, I glanced up at the tall native trees, some of which had fruit on spindly branches.

I gazed longingly the round objects far out of my reach, then frowned when I noticed the lack of monkeys. Only a few of the smaller birds were in sight. Unease crawled up my spine, and the dense foliage suddenly felt far too close.

The silent forest goaded my feet into moving faster along the path. How I longed for the desert where I could see trouble well in advance!

Fifty paces from the crystal, the bushes beside me rustled as a green Saursune emerged, its eyes locking onto me. With a startled gasp, I put on a burst of speed and ran full tilt toward the spires. Footsteps followed right on my heels.

Something smooth—its snout, maybe?— nudged the side of my leg. It wasn't much, but with my current speed, it was enough to make me break stride and stumble. I dropped the carry net and windmilled my arms to avoid falling.

A second nudge pushed me off balance as I slipped on the leaf litter. My hands flew out to break my fall, sinking into the soft loam and absorbing some of the impact as I slid forward. Before I could pull my knees under me, weight on my back pushed me down.

I froze as the faint pinpricks of claws warned me to remain on the ground. I trembled, knowing all too well that those claws could easily slice through my clothing and skin. Its hand remained a steady warm pressure on my back. It snuffled at my hair, and its hot, metallic breath washed over my neck.

I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my forehead against the ground. My heart hammered in my chest as I waited for the bite capable of crushing my spine and killing me within seconds. There was no thought of fighting back—not against a predator three times my own weight when its claws already rested between my shoulder blades.

Even if the hunters had spotted it or been present, there was no chance of them scaring it away—it would just kill them and me. I already mourned their deaths, for the Saursune would check the area for more humans. They knew we travelled in groups.

A faint rumble came from above, akin to distant thunder, but definitely originating from the Saursune. It wasn't like a dog's warning growl. It rose and fell in patterns, but if it was saying something, the language was far beyond my understanding.

The heat emanating from its hand was almost as hot as its breath. I risked turning my head just enough to see the crystal ahead. It was only about twenty paces away. I had been so close! I could almost imagine the light flickering across my veins as I stared longingly at the bluish-green spires. The crystal glittered in the sunny clearing, its safety just out of my reach.

My hand shifted in the leaves, as if to reach toward it. A snort on the back of my neck made me freeze and squeeze my eyes shut again, tensing up. I remained motionless as it snuffled at my hair.

The seconds felt like an eternity. The suspense was almost worse than the fear.

The weight left my back.

My mind momentarily went blank, then whirled into hyper frenzy. I remained frozen where I was since the Saursune was likely trying to trick me into moving. Twenty paces to the crystal. Just twenty. An insane distance in my current situation. Could I possibly make it? What were the odds of me getting the hunters back alive?

A few birds called overhead, but I didn't hear the Saursune's footsteps. It must still be beside me. A faint snort confirmed my suspicions. Could it be getting bored? Did I dare hope it would walk away like some predators did when prey stopped moving? A firm nudge against my side made me squeak and twist away before freezing.

The Saursune remained sitting on its haunches as it tilted its head. Its pose was reminiscent of a curious dog, albeit having a longer neck and being far larger than any canine I'd seen before. It wore a hip belt with a few devices but no armor.

I stared at it, halfway expecting it to pounce now that I was clearly alive. It regarded me in return. Streaks of yellow on the underside of its jaw marked it as an adolescent. Was it possible it had never seen a human before and was just curious?

Was there a chance it might be inexperienced enough to let me reach the crystal? My only other option was to wait for my impending death, so it wasn't like I had anything to lose.

A flat-out run would activate any hunting instincts it had, just like last time. A cautious retreat—who was I kidding? It would know what I was doing. This was an alien; it was just as smart as I was, if not smarter, regardless of its current animal act. It had me right in its claws. Still, I had to try.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I eased away and got to my feet, backing toward the crystal. It blinked lazily and got to its feet. I kept edging backward, fighting against the urge to run as it ambled closer like an oversized reptilian version of a friendly dog. Even on all fours, the adolescent's back was higher than my waist, taller than the handful of lions I'd seen.

I kept shuffling backward on jittery legs. Its eyes never left me, waiting for me to run so it could pounce. My heel caught on something, and I stumbled. The Saursune took a quick step closer and raised its head slightly, its eyes focusing on me intently.

I recovered my balance, my heart hammering so hard I could barely hear over its internal drumbeat. I risked a quick glance over my shoulder. There were several raised roots poised to trip me, but the crystal was only five paces away.

It was so tempting to lunge for it, but if the Saursune pounced, it would be taken with me, which wouldn't get me away from it. My stalker seemed to notice my interest in the crystal and moved closer, only ten paces away now, and angling to the side as if about to jump in front and herd me the other way.

Two distant squeals made it pause and look in the direction the peccaries had been. With a faint snort, it bounded in that direction, disappearing into the foliage and apparently forgetting about me.

My heart almost stopped. The hunters would have bows in their hands—and Saursunes never tolerated weapons.

I cupped my hands around my mouth and forced air through my tight throat. "Look out! Saursune!"

I stumbled the last few paces to the crystal and grabbed onto a spire with shaking hands. The light shimmering through my veins welcomed me, but that didn't slow my racing heart. My ears strained to hear past the jungle insects and distant bird calls, terrified I'd hear my hunters' cries of pain.

If I bounced to safety, the Saursune might set a trap during my absence, and Grant wouldn't let anyone return until tomorrow at the earliest. Faint rustling of leaves made me look to the side as dark hair ducked under branches.

Relief hit me like a physical blow to see both hunters alive.

"Let's go!" I hissed, although they were already running over, forfeiting silence for speed. A green form farther back made my eyes widen. "It's behind you! Hurry"

They put on a burst of speed as I readied my mind to bounce. Instead of charging, the green Saursune slid to a stop and reached a hand its belt, removing one of the objects attached.

My heart almost stuttered to a stop. I wasn't sure if that device was a weapon, but at least some of the ones adorning its belt would be. Humans rarely ever survived their ranged weapons.

I vibrated with the need to bounce to safety, but Tib and Brielle were almost here. As it raised the grey rectangular object and pointed it in my direction, the hunters finally reached me. Breaking the rules, I held out my hand, and the second they grabbed one, I directed my mind to an overrun village.

My skin practically tingled as the world slowly—far too slowly!—hazed over. Every second, I dreaded the intense heat from a deathfire blast, the bite of piercing rounds, an electric jolt capable of making my muscles spasm, or whatever kind of attack the Saursune's weapon might be capable of.

Almost to my disbelief, the crystal whisked us away from the alien before the weapon struck. The desert heat welcomed me and reassured me that we had escaped. I quickly scanned the abandoned village—one I rarely visited—before sinking to the sand.

I rested my head on my knees, breathing hard.

"Are you okay?" Brielle asked, kneeling beside me.

"I'm alive. And unharmed," I mumbled between gasps.

It was true. I was alive. Somehow.

My arms trembled from the adrenaline and fear still coursing through me. I hadn't realized how big the Saursunes were up close, and this one hadn't even been full-grown. It wouldn't make the mistake of letting humans reach the crystal the next time.

But we had escaped, and that was what really mattered.