I blinked slowly in disbelief at Grant. "Sorry, you want me to leave two groups out there by themselves?"

Me leaving them alone yesterday to get the guard and the scanner was bad enough, but most of the day? Where had this idea come from?

He sighed. "Roxanne will check on them a couple of times until you return. It's a huge risk, and they knew that when volunteering, but we need the food. Even if we had four more porters, it wouldn't be enough. Not with so many groups competing."

A hunter commented, "Most of us plan to hunt and gather far from the crystal, so there's no sense in a porter waiting around all day if we aren't nearby."

It was madness. Porters simply did not leave groups unattended with no way for them to call for help, even if they were too far away from the crystal to reach it in time.

I was at a loss. "Other villages tried this in the past. They stopped when they lost too many people."

They knew this method was only going to cost lives. Were we really so short of food that people were facing starvation if they didn't risk their lives?

"Last night, I gave my food to my children so they didn't go hungry," a woman quietly said. "Anything I can gather will help."

I closed my eyes. It was an impossible situation. The volunteers might not be coming home tonight. But if they didn't go, they'd be forced to watch their children go hungry or face starvation.

I opened my eyes and gazed at the sixteen people who were waiting for me to agree. "Please promise me that you'll be careful."

The volunteers all nodded somberly. They knew what they were agreeing to and the enormous amount of danger they were walking into. They weren't our experienced hunters or gatherers—just individuals trying to help out and make a difference.

With a heavy sigh, I said, "Alright. Let's go. I'll have to take one group out and come back. I can't port everyone at once."

Eight gathered around me, and I ported them to Maple Forest as Grant had specified. No Saursunes had ever been seen around here, so it gave them the best chance possible. They broke into teams and headed out. I ported back.

"Take a breather," Grant advised me. He dug in his front pocket and pulled out a shard. "Once you take this group to Willow Plain, I'd like you and Brielle to look for a crystal that's supposedly planted along a creek west of Three Stone Forest. It should be big enough for us to port to, and we could use a new location. If you can't find it, plant this before returning."

"Is it all forest west of there?" I put the shard in a pocket with a flap and secured it.

"As far as I know. The notes you found say so, at any rate."

If Saursunes were hunting humans, they'd be patrolling fields that were close to harvest, not scouring distant forests. Or so I hoped. I had no idea what thoughts went through the aliens' minds or why they did what they did.

I looked over at Brielle. "Looks like you're stuck with me again."

She merely grinned in reply.

With a farewell wave at Grant, I went over to the crystal. Brielle and the second group gathered around as I said, "Willow Plain."

The porting strain emerged before we arrived in a grassy plain with hundreds of waist-high willow shrubs dotting the landscape. The grass was very trampled, evidence that someone had been here yesterday. I didn't see anything edible from where I stood.

I sat on a nearby patch of grass to wait out the faint ache in my chest. The people broke into groups of twos and threes and began jogging away. Brielle waited beside me.

"Best of luck," I called out.

They waved in response. I waited impatiently for the porting strain to fade. It was light enough that it only took a few minutes.

When I stood up, Brielle rested a hand on my shoulder. "Three Stone Forest."

Light shimmered through my veins as my view hazed over as the muscles in my chest tightened sightly. Medium greens were exchanged for darker, richer shades as I appeared in a forest.

Brielle watched me. I took a deep breath, but the tightness in my chest wasn't bad enough to make me rest. "I'm good. Let's go."

With a quick check on the sun's location, she headed west at a quick walk, occasionally leaving charcoal marks on the tree trunks.

After an hour, she paused, tilting her head. I listened hard. It was the sound of running water! We followed it to a small creek. The burbling brook was only a couple paces wide. It wasn't deep enough for fish, but it was clear and would make for good drinking water in the distant future.

To make things better it was flowing from the west, so we followed the water upstream. I kept peering into the underbrush, watching for danger and trying to spot the crystal that Grant had mentioned. The chances of us finding it were slim to none; most porters would have planted it just far enough away from the brook that anyone following such a noteworthy landmark wouldn't spot it.

The sun slowly rose in the sky as we traveled beside the winding creek. Edible plants and even berries abounded. We snacked almost constantly, but didn't collect anything yet since we'd have to return this way and the extra weight would slow us down.

Wind gently stirred the leaves overhead with quiet rustling, forming a peaceful ambience. We startled a few rabbits, and Brielle stared wistfully as they bounded away.

More crackling in the undergrowth had me craning my neck. Was it a bird, another rabbit, or something more sinister? With all the prey around, predators would be nearby, but hopefully they'd be well-fed enough to ignore a human.

She lifted her head and took a step to the side. A sunlit reflection of bluish-green made me blink. After glancing at each other, we jogged away from the creek.

"I can't believe we found it," I said, pushing my way through a thick stand of cranberry bushes. Against all the odds, we had actually found a lost crystal!

"The plants aren't disturbed or harvested, so no one else must know about this crystal."

I nodded in excitement, running my hands over the spires as sunlight gently illuminated it from within. Our village now had a new—and much needed—foraging location.

I would have cheered if I hadn't been trained into silence since my youth. After making sure I had memorized the crystal and surrounding area, I stood up.

"Should we keep going and plant the shard?" I asked Brielle. Grant hadn't told us what to do if we found the crystal.

"We might as well. None of the porters or other groups will be back yet. If we go three hours more, we'll still return early."

Brielle went back to the creek and pulled several dead branches across the path to make sure we didn't walk past the new crystal on our return trip.

A flash of green made me freeze. I stared at the shrubs. Had it just been some leaves blowing gently in the wind? Or had that been a glimpse of a Saursune's hide?

"Do you see anything back the way we came?" I whispered.

Brielle's head shot up as she scanned our trail. We stared at the underbrush for quite some time.

"I don't see any movement," she finally replied. "What did you see?"

"A flash of green. But I'm not sure if it was just a sunlit leaf or a Saursune."

She returned to my side as we examined our surroundings as the gentle breeze made the leaves shift around us. My eyes strayed to my crystal. Should we port to safety? Or keep going? I didn't want to leave.

Time dragged on but nothing appeared.

"Should we keep going?" I asked. Waiting here wasn't accomplishing anything.

Brielle's eyes continued to skim the foliage for a while longer. "If you want. Or we can port elsewhere to plant the shard."

"Other places will all be claimed by now," I pointed out. "And this area seems really good."

She led the way once more, more alert now. The uneasy feeling remained with me, although I didn't see anything. We continued beside the creek.

The forest was brighter ahead, likely another meadow. When we reached the edge, we slowed to a stop as we stared at the two fields with the brook flowing between them.

"I wasn't expecting a field in the middle of a forest," I mumbled. "We can't plant the shard near here."

Brielle took a good look at the sun. "If we head northeast, we can plant the shard elsewhere, then cut across the forest until we find our path."

This was another reason hunters accompanied a porter. If needed, they could often traverse the forest without the trail markers they left.

"Let's try it."

As much as I detested the lost time, I wanted to avoid the Saursunes' lands even more.

Brielle continued to mark the trees as she followed deer trails. After several more hours, I was sweaty, tired, and more than convinced we had gone far enough.

Brielle noticed I was tiring. "There's a meadow ahead."

The light between the trees proved to be a grassy clearing instead of more fields.

I knelt down and used a stick to dig a hole among the roots. Pulling out the shard, I admired it and memorized the way the light shone through it and how it "felt" in my mind. It would be at least three years until I saw it again.

I eased it into the shallow hole and buried it. The grass was too thick to write words in the dirt, so I arranged grass stems to form the words Forest Meadow Between the Fields and Brook. That was memorable enough. Overly long, but once we started using it, we'd shorten the name or possibly rename it if we found something unique about the location.

I got to my feet and took one last look around to make sure I could describe the spot in great detail to Grant. With our job done, Breielle headed back the way we'd come. As we entered the trees, she glanced back to check on me and paused with wide eyes. I spun around and my breath caught in my throat when I saw a green Saursune digging among the grasses I had just been kneeling in.

It raised its head and met my gaze. I remained frozen, belatedly realizing its hide was the same shade I had spotted earlier. Had it followed us the entire way or returned later and just tracked our scent?

There was no point in running—we were hours from the nearest crystal. There were at least a dozen objects on its belt; one looked similar to a scanner, another that vaguely resembled a sketch of a zapper, but the rest could have been anything.

It looked at the grass by its feet—had it dug up the shard? That was the right spot... It began scratching at the grass and dirt like a cat burying something. I took the opportunity to edge away. Brielle took my hand and pulled me faster. As soon as we rounded a bend in the trail and were out of sight, we jogged as quietly as we could.

There was no way we could outrun it or muddle our trail enough to lose it, but I desperately hoped that out of sight was out of mind. We rushed back along our trail. Each charcoal line, about fifty paces apart, was a milestone.

Brielle moved behind me. I risked a glance at the trail behind us and saw a glimpse of green among the shrubs. It was following us.

"It's still following us," I told Brielle, a tremor running through my voice. We were hours away from the nearest crystal. If it decided to attack, we had no chance of escaping.

"I know." Her response was grim. She knew our odds of making it back were low. Hunters could dissuade bears, cougars, or coyotes. Not a Saursune.

We kept jogging. My breathing came harder, and I was eventually forced to slow down, pressing my hand against my side as a stitch developed. Brielle matched my pace, uneasily looking over her shoulder. Sure enough, just like half the times I checked behind us, I caught a glimpse of green trailing behind.

Why hadn't it charged forward, cut us off, or otherwise intercepted us? Was it just curious about the human in the middle of nowhere? And where had it come from?

I didn't have answers for any of my questions, and stopping wasn't an option, so I pushed myself onward, far too aware of our stalker.