Another cat joggedtowards them to join the fray, and with three of them facing hershe decided to back off and darted towards the river with all threein pursuit. She took a flying leap from the riverbank and landedten paces into the river, submerged and changed shape to the formof a crocodile. She had used this tactic once before. Moments aftershe entered the water she felt three splashes behind her. Normalcats might fear the water, but jungle cats didn’t mind it atall.
She swam in a circlebeneath the three cats and saw that one was losing blood. Thatwould be the one that had ripped her. It was going to be thevictim. She propelled herself upwards with a quick thrust of hertail, opened her jaws and grabbed the cat, rolled viciously todisorient it, and dived for the bottom. It struggled for twenty orthirty seconds, then went limp. She let it go and swam upwards toattack another, but the other two had decided to paddle for theshore and were just climbing out as she surfaced.
Wham! Something hit herin the side and bit into her, ripping out a chunk of her flesh andcausing a flourish of blood around her. She spun round to see thetail of a fish darting away. ‘Damn there’s a Barra here,’ shethought as the water made the wound sting terribly. These werelarge two pace long fish with wicked jagged teeth. They attackedanything, including crocodiles, and once there was blood in thewater they came from everywhere to join in the feast.
She saw the cats wereon the shore watching her, so she knew she couldn’t escape thatway, and she was too heavy and wet to take to the air. She wouldhave to go defensive; so she shape changed to a giant tortoise justas the Barra attacked again, and a second showed up attracted byher blood. She dove for the soft muddy bottom and on reaching itstirred up the mud to provide some cover, pulled her head and legsinto her shell and lay quiet. The two Barra hit at her shell acouple of times but, unable to penetrate it, soon lost interest andswam away.
After several minutes,she decided to go up and have a look. She surfaced carefully underan overhanging tree and looked around. Tortoise vision wasn’t verygood. It had a very wide field of view close by to see enemies, butit was very unclear and foggy at even a short distance of twentypaces away. This meant that she wouldn’t be able to see any of theland-based creatures until they were dangerously close, so sheopted for discretion.
She spent the next halfhour paddling towards the native camp, taking care to remainsubmerged for most of the distance, and staying only a few pacesfrom the riverbank. When she hadn’t seen or heard anything unusualfor several minutes she changed back to her newman form, andquickly searched the shoreline with her improved vision. Detectingno sign of activity, she carefully swam to the bank and slid out ofthe water, then darted for the nearest large tree several pacesaway.
Miranda was experiencedin moving through dangerous jungle, as she had done so many timesbefore. She used the chameleon prayer to blend her shape and colourinto the background, knowing that as long as she remainedstationary few creatures would see her, although they might stillbe able to smell her scent if close enough, and the breeze wasflowing towards them. After carefully listening, watching andsniffing the air for a minute or two, she headed off in thedirection of the village, guessing that it wouldn’t be far.
The village was anoccasional camping area, roughly semicircular in shape andapproximately three hundred paces across, alongside and occupying abend in the river. The canopy trees had been cut down, but therewere several smaller fruit bearing trees dotted around. The areawas used by several groups of nomadic little people as theytravelled around the jungle.
A group would move in,stay for a few weeks, and then move on, as game became scarce inthe locality. It would normally have had about twenty small crudepalm covered shelters scattered around the area, and one largercommunity shelter about fifteen paces long and seven wide in thecentre. More than half of the shelters had been collapsed or hadburnt down during the raid, although fortunately, the communitycentre had survived.
On reaching the edge ofthe village she scouted around. The place was a slaughter yard. Shenoted that the green-scaled little people were from the Barra clan.There were dead bodies and body parts everywhere. It was evidentthat some of the bodies had been partially eaten. There were fewbodies of children, but many pools of blood. Presumably they hadbeen the first to be eaten. She felt heartbroken for both the Barrapeople and the cats. The Barra people would probably blame thepurple-scaled Jeti people because of the cats, but she was surethat they weren’t to blame. Someone else was provoking trouble.
She set about buildingfuneral pyres near the edge of the river. First a layer of wood,then a layer of bodies, another layer of wood and so on until shehad stacked over eighty bodies. She was about to ignite the firstpyre when she saw two canoes with several Barra people approachingfrom up river. ‘Probably a party of hunters,’ she thought. Shewalked to a tree near the river’s edge, stood still and disappearedas she watched.
The Barra hunters wouldhave expected a welcome home. They were concerned by the lack ofpeople on the shore. As they drew closer they took in the funeralpyres and she saw their worried faces. They pulled into the bankand called for loved ones, as they ran to where they expected tofind them, but no one answered. They came back to the funeral pyresto see their loved ones amongst the dead. They threw their arms inthe air and swore vengeance on whoever had committed this deed.
Miranda thought that itwas time to appear, so she walked forward holding the palms of herhands up and forward to show she was not carrying any weapons. Shespoke the expected greeting and waited. The Barra people knew herand respected her greatly.
