Chapter 13: Ensnared: Chapter 13

Ivy blew a rogue strand of hair out of her face and glared at Ketahn. “This isn’t working.”

Water flowed around her knees, cool only compared to the warm, humid morning air. The stream’s surface glittered in the sunlight, offering her fleeting, wavering glimpses of the creatures swimming lazily along the bottom. Of course, the fishes’ movements weren’t so unhurried any time she tried to spear one of them.

She knew these creatures weren’t technically fish—just like the animals that flitted around the trees and sang songs into the jungle air weren’t really birds—but they were close enough. The creatures in the stream looked like crosses between catfish and stingrays.

“Eyes and hands as one,” Ketahn said in accented, stilted English. He pointed to his eyes. “See.” Then he pantomimed jabbing downward with a spear.

“Yeah, I know. You said that the last twenty times. And I’m seeing just fine, but the fish are too fast.”

“You be more fast. See as they will to be, not as they am.”

Broken English aside, she understood what he meant, but that didn’t make her task any less challenging. He was basically telling her to develop precognition and figure out exactly where the fish were going to move as she struck. That sounded super easy.

Not.

She released a huff and returned her attention to the water, readying the spear in her hands. It didn’t help that Ketahn’s spear was almost as tall as she was with an uncomfortably thick shaft and a heavy head made from obsidian-like stone.

“Be a fish,” Ivy whispered as she locked her gaze onto one of the creatures.

The fish glided closer, slowing right in front of her.

She adjusted her grip on the spear. “Be a fish.”

The fish stopped, its fins flapping leisurely as it hovered in place.

Pressing her lips together, she thrust the spear into the water. The spearhead sank into the streambed, kicking up a cloud of mud that obscured everything around Ivy’s feet.

That cloud didn’t hide the totally unharmed fish as it darted away.

Ivy growled, kicked the water, and tried to yank the spear out of the streambed. The effort only managed to make her already tired arms burn; the spear remained stuck. “I am not a stupid fish!”

Ketahn chittered. The sound wasn’t malicious or dismissive, but it certainly didn’t ease her frustration.

He’d spent the week since that terrifying thunderstorm teaching her various survival skills—identifying plants, ways to collect rainwater, starting a fire, mending nets, and weaving baskets. Today’s first lesson happened to focus on fishing.

And she was horrible at it.

Not that she was very good at much of anything he’d tried to teach her so far.

Ketahn’s demonstration when they’d first arrived at the stream this morning had been so smooth and effortless. He’d strode to the bank, jabbed his spear into the water, and pulled it out with a fish wriggling on its end.

Ketahn moved toward her now, his legs barely disturbing the water as he entered the stream and grasped the spear with one hand. He plucked it up as easily as Ivy might’ve picked a dandelion.

Ivy swept back her damp hair and scowled at him. Sweat dripped between her breasts, down her back, and glistened on her skin. “Why can’t we just use your net?”

“This water is much small,” he replied. “No net. And you must take lesson for spear, Ivy. Must know to use. We no have net akar’selyek.”

She groaned. Ivy knew what he was doing and why. He was trying to teach her to live out in this jungle, to survive. This was also breakfast—in the jungle, you had to work for what you ate. So, if she wanted to eat, she had better catch something.

And she was determined to succeed because the tempation of more meat.

She wasn’t even going to think about how hard it had been to convey to Ketahn that she needed her meat cooked before eating; it had been the most difficult game of charades in her life.

Ketahn raised his spear, keeping its head less than a foot over the water’s surface. He pointed to his eyes with a free hand and then down to the water. “See.”

Ivy followed his gesture with her gaze. Another of those fish was drifting along the streambed, perhaps the one she’d just missed. The fluid movements of its fins were so unhurried that she swore the darned thing was taunting her.

He positioned the spear directly over the fish and then altered the angle slightly, as though aiming in front of his target. “Zok.”

She was fairly certain that word meant strike, or attack.

His arms barely seemed to move, but the spear thrust down like a bolt of lightning, striking so fast that the splash from it breaking the water’s surface seemed delayed. When he lifted the weapon, it came up with another splash.

“Eyes and hands as—” Ketahn halted the spear and his words at the same instant. The only thing on the spearhead was water, sparkling in the sunlight. No fish.

A loud snort escaped her. It was followed by uncontrollable laughter that had her doubling over as she pointed at his spear. “Not as good as you think, huh?”

Ketahn glared at her and gnashed his mandibles, the fine hairs on his legs briefly bristling. “Cannot catch akar’selyek,” he grumbled. Considering the way he used it, akar’selyek probably meant always or every time, something along those lines.

She snickered. Her cheeks hurt from grinning so wide, and her stomach ached from her laughter. “See! It’s not as easy as you make it sound.”

He turned his eyes back to the water. His mandibles twitched as he scanned for a new target; Ivy had barely spotted the fish he was looking at before his spear darted into the water again. With a triumphant growl, he turned his head to meet her gaze and lifted the weapon from the water.

Two catfish-stingrays were flopping and flapping their fins on the end of the spear, impaled side by side—one still on the spearhead, the other pushed back to the shaft.

Ivy stared at the fish, dumbstruck. Brows furrowing, she flicked her gaze to Ketahn. “Now you’re just showing off.”

Ketahn grasped the fish with his left hands, pulled them off the spear, and twisted to toss them into the basket waiting atop a nearby rock, where they joined the first fish he’d caught. When he turned back to Ivy, he held the spear toward her. “Yes, I show. Show you to do it.”

Ivy glared at the spear and pushed it back toward him. “You know what? I don’t need the spear.”

He tilted his head and made a questioning chirrup.

Turning away from him, Ivy widened her stance and bent her legs, lowering her hands until they hovered just above the water. Her shadow blocked the sun’s rays, giving her a clear view inside the stream. Patiently, she waited.

Movement from the corner of her eye caught her attention. She looked toward it just as another catfish-stingray darted up to eat something that had been floating on the water’s surface, making a bloop sound and sending out a small ripple. Lazily, it coasted along the stream’s bed toward her. Ivy’s fingers flexed.

Focus, Ivy. You can do this.

With her eyes locked on the fish, she pressed her lips together and waited until it was just beneath her.

Ivy’s hands moved faster than her thoughts could match. They closed around the fish, and she yanked it out of the water. It wiggled in her grasp, rubbing its slick, rough scales against her palms.

She stared at it with wide eyes. It didn’t immediately register that she’d caught it.

“I got it. Oh my God, I got it!” She grinned wide and held up her prize, letting out a little squeal as she looked at Ketahn. “I caught the fish with my hands!”

Ketahn was wearing his vrix smile, and though the expression was so simple, the light it sparked in his eyes filled her with an immense sense of accomplishment. He was proud of her.

The fish—presumably unhappy about its current situation—swelled slightly, as though it were drawing in a deep breath, and then it released a spray of what Ivy could only hope was water directly into her face.

Ivy flinched and stumbled backward—and unfortunately caught her heel on a rock. She gasped, eyes flaring, and released the fish to desperately wave her arms in a vain attempt to regain her balance.

She landed on her ass with a big splash that sent up a torrent of water around her. It streamed from her hair and down her face. She blew the water away from her lips and raised her hands to wipe the soaked strands out of her face.

Ketahn was chittering, the light in his eyes now mirthful.

Ivy arched a brow at him. “You’re laughing at me now?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I see. Well…laugh at this.” She swept her arm across the surface of the stream, sending a wave directly into Ketahn’s face.

He raised a hand—much too late to shield himself—and shook his head sharply, twisting away from her. As he used his palm to brush away the water from his face, he chittered again. Leaning closer, he slipped a hand under each of Ivy’s armpits and lifted her out of the water, setting her on her feet.

Keeping his hands upon her, he met her gaze. “Ivy do good. You make catch.”

She smirked. “Don’t expect me to catch another. I’m all fished out. You’re sharing yours.”

“Oh-kay,” he replied. That amused light still danced in his gaze. “You must make fire.”

“Are you serious?” Ivy let her head drop back. “Uuuuugh! Fiiiiiine.” Stepping away from him, she trudged toward shore. “Guess we’re playing how long before the human starves today.”

His only response was to chitter at her again.