The Unexpected Read online

  The rest of Yami’s family laughed, too, and gathered around me.

  I looked at Yami.

  He shrugged. “I told my grandfather about your great shape-shifting powers. And about how you calmed the ’roo. And about how you hid in a creek bed that runs into the spring.”

  Oh. That.

  Yami’s grandfather nodded. “The spring of our ancestors. You chose it as your safe shelter. It is a sign.”

  Yeah. It was a sign all right. A sign that I shouldn’t be set loose in the world unsupervised.

  But Yami’s family didn’t see it that way. Apparently I’d become something of a celebrity while I was sleeping.

  Yami explained it to me. “My grandfather’s greatest fear is that the old traditions will disappear. He works very hard to teach us the ways of our ancestors. He thinks you are proof that he is doing well.”

  I stared at him, horrified. “But Yami, I’m not. I’m not proof of anything.”

  Yami only shrugged.

  His mother gave me a T-shirt and shorts and insisted I’d be cooler in them. She was right. I was a little cooler. But I panicked when I came back outside from changing clothes and saw Yami’s aunts throwing my leotard in a tub to soak.

  “I’ll need to take that with me,” I said. “Soon.”

  They nodded and fixed me breakfast, a big bowl of something that looked like miniature white Taxxons.

  “Witchetty grub,” said Yami.

  “Ah.” I stared into the bowl. It was filled with fat, white, segmented worms, longer than my hand. “Don’t tell me,” I said. “Tastes like chicken.”

  Yami frowned. “No.” He popped a grub into his mouth and chewed. “More like butter. You try.”

  He picked the longest, plumpest grub from his bowl and held it out to me.

  I stared at him, then at the grub. I’d eaten worse. Actually, I’d been worse, when I was in Yeerk morph. But right now I was Cassie, regular human Cassie, and there was no way I was biting into a wormy little Taxxon.

  “You know, this desert heat is really getting to me.” I swallowed. “I — I just don’t have an appetite.”

  Yami blinked and nodded. His smile faded. I looked into his dark eyes, and a little pain stabbed through my heart.

  We were by ourselves, sitting side by side in the little lean-to. Tjala dozed at Yami’s side. His grandfather had hobbled off toward one of the houses, and his little cousins were playing in the sand nearby. The rest of his family had finally stopped fussing over me and gone about their morning work.

  Yami dropped the grub back into his bowl.

  “Yami,” I said, “your family has been so nice to me. You have been so nice to me.”

  I touched his arm. He looked down at it, surprised. I was a little surprised myself. I pulled my hand back.

  “I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate everything, and I know I sound like E.T., but I have to phone home. It’s a long-distance call.” A really long distance. “But I can reverse the charges. I think.”

  He gave me a sad smile. “We don’t have a telephone.”

  I stared at him.

  “You could use the two-way radio.” He looked down at his bowl. “But the explosion yesterday destroyed the aerial.”

  “The explosion?” I frowned. “Oh, no.”

  The Bug fighter. When I Draconed the Bug fighter, I’d fried their radio antenna. I couldn’t call out. Yami’s family couldn’t call out. Not only had I led the Yeerks to their outstation, I’d destroyed their only means of communication.

  “Oh, Yami. I’m so, so sorry.” I took a deep breath. “And I know I must seem like a total idiot to you, just falling from the sky and demanding phone service. It’s just that nobody knows where I am. I’m not even sure where I am.”

  “I know where you are.” Now Yami touched my arm. “You’re in the Piti Spring Community,” he explained. “Northern Territory, Australia.” He smiled. “Not South Dakota.”

  I laughed. “Thank you. That’s very helpful.” I shook my head. “But I have to go home. To my own family.”

  And to Jake, I thought. I had to get back to Jake.

  Yami shrugged. “No worries. You’ll ride with the postie. The postman.”

  I blinked. The mailman. Of course. I glanced over at my leotard, drying in the sun. “What time does he come?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “Tuesday. But that was …”

  Yami nodded. “Yesterday. He delivered the post right before the explosion. Right before you came.”

  “And he’ll be back … ?”

  “Next Tuesday.”

  Next Tuesday. Six days. I couldn’t stay here six more days. I closed my eyes and collapsed backward into the sand. I’d battled Dracons and Bug fighters and paralyzing green beams, only to be defeated by the lonely Australian outback.

  Marco would love this. Cassie the nature lover finally gets out into nature and begs for technology.

  A low buzzing hum pierced my thoughts. It started so softly I barely noticed it, then grew louder. It sounded like —

  I sat up.

  An airplane.

  I shielded my eyes against the sun. A small silver plane glinted on the horizon.

  I raced from the lean-to and waved my arms over my head.

  “Hey! Down here! Stop! STOP! Hey, down here!”

  It was a small plane, flying low. It buzzed closer and closer and was now almost directly overhead.

  “STO-O-O-O-O-OP!”

  I jumped up and down in the sand, waving my arms like a crazed referee. Tjala bounded out of the lean-to and ran in circles around me, barking at the sky.

  The pilot dipped his wing and flew on.

  “HEY!”

  I watched the plane grow smaller and smaller and disappear over the horizon. I was still holding my hands over my head. I let them drop to my sides.

  “Tourists.” Yami scratched Tjala’s head. “You’ll see them all morning flying in that direction, then all evening flying back the other way. Waving won’t make them stop. They’ll just snap pictures of the charming natives and fly on.”

  I wiped the sweat from my face and tried to catch my breath. The desert heat sucked the air right out of my lungs. “So where do they take off from? How far is it?”

  “From the Alice. About one hundred kilometers from here.”

  One hundred kilometers. Okay. That was … what? We’d done this in math class. A kilometer was less than a mile, like maybe half a mile. Maybe a little more. So one hundred kilometers was only —

  “Fifty or sixty miles.” I stared out at the endless red desert. “Give or take a blistering acre or two.”

  Yami shook his head. “You’d never survive it,” he said. “Not Cassie the girl. Cassie the bird, who knows? Too bad you aren’t a kangaroo. A kangaroo could be making a telephone call in only a few hours.” He laughed at his own joke. “But even a kangaroo would wait till the sun went down.”

  He turned and walked back to his witchetty grub. Tjala followed. I stared at them.

  A kangaroo. Fast. Smart. Built for the outback. Better than Crocodile Dundee with a big knife.

  But could the kangaroo find its way to a pay phone? Because Cassie the girl sure couldn’t, and she wouldn’t have Yami along to lead her safely through the night desert.

  I wiped my sticky neck on the sleeve of my T-shirt. Yami was right. I couldn’t go anywhere till the sun went down. I would wait until nightfall, then morph kangaroo. Yami could give me directions to the nearest town. Just a few more hours and I would be on my way home.

  I squinted up at the clear, bright sky. All I could do in the meantime was hope the Yeerks took a very long time organizing a search party.

  A door slammed, and Yami’s grandfather hobbled around the side of the house. His limp seemed worse than it had only a few minutes before. His hair was matted with sweat. When he reached the edge of Yami’s porch, he stopped and leaned against it.

  “Grandfather?” Yami set his bowl in the sand and ran toward the po
rch. I followed him.

  Yami’s grandfather pushed away from the porch and stood upright. He held up a curved piece of dark wood. “For you,” he told me. “You have given me a gift. And now I give a gift to you.”

  I took the wood. It was smooth and hard. “A boomerang,” he said.

  I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. I wanted to say I couldn’t take it, that I didn’t deserve it. I wanted to tell him the only things I’d given him were a broken radio antenna and exposure to an evil so absolute and terrifying that it had no place here in this untouched land.

  I looked up. The old man’s face burst into a smile. Yami’s smile. I’d seen the same pure joy on Yami’s face when he tried to share the witchetty grub.

  The joy that turned to pain and embarrassment when I refused to eat them.

  I ran my fingers over the boomerang. “Thank you,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Grandfather carves boomerangs and sends them to my aunt in the Alice,” Yami said proudly. “Collectors buy them, and tourists, too, and art galleries even.” He nodded at his grandfather. “Show her how to throw it.”

  Yami’s grandfather smiled and nodded and led us around the trailer, steadying himself with one hand against the metal as he walked.

  I leaned close to Yami. “Is he okay?” I whispered.

  His grandfather waved a hand in the air without turning around. “I’m fine. I cut myself yesterday while carving. I’ve done it before.” He laughed, but some of the thunder seemed to be missing from it. “You can be sure I’ll do it again.”

  He led us to the edge of the outstation, away from the houses. He gripped one end of the boomerang in the palm of his hand and stood still for a moment, facing the wind. Then he pulled the boomerang back at his waist and hurled it sideways, low to the ground.

  FFFFFwwwpppwwppppwwppp.

  The boomerang shot over the desert, a deadly, spinning blur. It sliced a little pink flower off the top of a scrubby bush and skidded into the sand. Yami ran to get it. Tjala bounded after him.

  “It doesn’t come back?” I said.

  “Yes, it comes back. As soon as Yami brings it.” Yami’s grandfather laughed. “This boomerang doesn’t come back without help. Returning boomerangs are for games. I would throw a returning boomerang much differently, over my shoulder, like a ball. This is a hunting boomerang. A weapon.”

  Yami jogged back across the sand. I saw the same natural ease I’d noticed when I’d first met him. Not like he was running across the desert, but like he was part of the desert. He smiled at me and wrinkled his eyes against the sun. “Your turn.” He handed me the boomerang.

  I took a deep breath and tried to stand the way his grandfather had. I pulled the boomerang back to my waist.

  “No!” Yami reached toward me. “You have it backward.”

  I looked up as he looked down. Our noses brushed together.

  “Oh.”

  “Sorry.”

  I stepped back in embarrassed confusion.

  Yami turned away and looked at his feet. “My grandfather would be better at helping,” he said.

  I nodded and looked over at Yami’s grandfather. He smiled weakly and started toward me. He stumbled. I caught his arm, and he sank against me.

  “Grandfather!” Yami braced his other side, and we lowered him to the sand.

  “Show me where you cut yourself,” I said.

  Yami’s grandfather nodded and rolled up his pant leg. A putrid stench wafted out.

  “Oh, man,” I said.

  A deep gash ran down his calf, from just below his knee to the middle of his shin. His leg was swollen and blistered, and the skin around the cut had turned purplish-black. I touched it. It was burning with fever. Pus oozed from the wound.

  “You did this yesterday?” I said.

  He nodded. “A new carving tool, sharper than anything.” He dug into his pocket. “I found it in the desert. I saw it fall. It was a gift from the sky.”

  He held up a shard of metal, black and singed. My stomach jolted. It wasn’t a gift.

  It was a piece of the Bug fighter I’d shot down.

  The Bug fighter.

  I stared at the charred black piece in his hand.

  A hunk of metal. All the horrifying things that had happened over the last two days — all the horrifying things I’d done — had been because of a hunk of metal.

  The Marines. The armored-truck guys. The Hork-Bajir. The Taxxon. And now Yami and his family, especially his grandfather, who had only wanted a good sharp tool to carve a boomerang. I had put every one of them in terrible danger.

  Over a hunk of metal.

  I stared at the injured leg. I’d helped my dad with a lot of injured animals, but I’d never seen an infection get this bad this fast.

  Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe a chunk of Bug fighter could spread weird alien diseases. Clearly the foreign metal had caused a horrible reaction in Yami’s grandfather.

  Whatever it was, we had to get the wound cleaned.

  “Do you have a first-aid kit?” I asked.

  Yami’s grandfather nodded and lay back in the sand. “The medical kit and the natural medicines.” He closed his eyes. “Yami’s mother knows them all.”

  “Good. That’s what we need for right now.” I stared out at the desert. Heat shimmered up from the scrub. “But, Yami, we have to get him to a hospital. Somehow.”

  “There’s the flying doctor,” he said.

  “The flying doctor?”

  Yami nodded. “Not like the flying bird-girl.” He tried to smile at his little joke but his chin quivered. “The Flying Doctor Service. They use airplanes to fly doctors over the outback.”

  “Like an ambulance in the air! But that’s — that’s exactly —” I stopped, my mouth open. “That’s impossible, isn’t it?”

  Yami nodded.

  We needed a radio to call the flying doctor. The radio I had destroyed.

  “I can get my uncles to help us,” he said.

  Two of Yami’s uncles carried his grandfather inside. Yami’s mother set a huge first-aid kit and a basket full of bottles and powders on a table by the bed.

  She leaned over to examine the wound. “Oh!” She clapped her hand over her mouth and stared up at me. Fear filled her eyes.

  “I know,” I said.

  The gash started on the inside of his calf, in the fleshy part below his knee, and curved down to his shin. Through pus I could see bone.

  I helped Yami’s mother clean the wound, then we left it uncovered to heal in the open air. Yami’s mother gave his grandfather something to help him sleep, a natural drug from one of the desert shrubs. Then left us with him so she could go disinfect the things she’d used to clean the wound.

  Yami and I sat next to the bed, watching his grandfather sleep. His chest rose in fits and shakes when he took in a breath, then fell with a shudder when he exhaled.

  The floor of the house had been dug down into the ground. The dirt and stone walls kept it cooler than the desert outside. Still, the air in the tiny room was thick with heat and the stench of rotting flesh.

  “Yami,” I said, “he needs antibiotics. If I leave to get help now, the flying doctor could be here in a few hours.”

  Yami shook his head. “This is the middle of summer. You would never make it.”

  I mopped the sweat from his grandfather’s face. “Do you remember what you said about changing into a kangaroo?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, I can do that. I can become a kangaroo, and I can get help.”

  He looked at me. “Do you remember the other thing I said? That even a kangaroo would wait till the sun went down? You wouldn’t be able to travel very fast in this heat. You’d have to stop and rest and find shade.” He narrowed his eyes. “And you wouldn’t. You’d push yourself on. To get help. But you can’t help my grandfather if, if —” His gaze flickered to the floor.

  “If I die in the desert?”

  He lifted his eyes. “Yes.”

  �
�Okay,” I said. “I’ll wait until sunset.”

  I didn’t tell him I’d already planned to morph kangaroo and cross the desert during the night. My earlier panic about making a phone call suddenly seemed trivial.

  We stayed with his grandfather all morning and into the afternoon. Yami’s mother came in and out, and I helped her clean the wound and reapply the medicine.

  It wasn’t helping. The infection only grew.

  Yami’s mother left to gather more plants for medicine. I sat on the floor with my back against the wall, waiting for nightfall. I leaned my head against the stone. I guess I closed my eyes.

  “Hhhuuuuuhhhh.”

  A moan.

  I blinked. Red streaks of light fell across the room. I glanced out the window. The sun was setting.

  “Hhhhuuuuuuuuhhhhh.”

  “Yami?” I stood up.

  A hand clamped around my wrist.

  “Aaahhhh!” I yelled.

  It was Yami’s grandfather. His hand was dry and burning with fever. He looked up at me. His eyes blazed in a bright frenzy against the gray of his face.

  “Hhhhuh-hhhhelp me.”

  “I will. I am.” I squeezed his hand between both of mine. “I’m going to get help.”

  I rubbed the back of his hand. He closed his eyes.

  Then I glanced down at his wound.

  “Oh, God.”

  His entire lower leg, from just under his knee to the top of his foot, was black and swollen like a basketball.

  A throbbing, putrified basketball, about to explode.

  “Yami, wake up!”

  Yami was leaning against the foot of the bed, his head on the mattress.

  “Yami, we fell asleep. You have to wake up.”

  His dark head bobbed. “No worries. I am awake.” He rubbed his eyes and climbed to his feet. Stared at his grandfather’s leg. “Oh!”

  “Yami, it’s too late to get a doctor.” I swallowed. “If we don’t stop the infection — now — he’ll die. And there’s only one way we can stop it.” I held his gaze with mine, so he would understand. “We have to get rid of it.”

  Yami nodded. Then the horror registered. “Get rid of … his leg.”