Free Zally's Book by Jan Bozarth Page A

to it myself.
    Kir whinnied.
    Imishi sat up on his back. “What can you see?”
    â€œNot much,” I admitted. “Just the jungle and our parrot friend. But I feel something, and I need to check it out.” I went to the door and grasped the heavy metal ring that was affixed to the stone slab where I would normally expect a doorknob to be. I pulled and the door swung inward just enough so I could squeeze out.
    â€œZally, no—it’s too dangerous!” Imishi cried.
    â€œClose the door behind me,” I whispered back. “I’ll be okay.” I heard the scraping of stone as Imishi shut the door. Staying close to the small building, I inched to the corner and peeked around it. At the edge of my vision I caught a glimpse of something—the jaguar? No, it was just a ghostly animal spirit of some sort.
    I slid along the wall, taking care not to step into the stone circle of grass and leaves on that side of the building. If Kir had not wanted to step into it, neither did I. At the next corner, I peeked around again: no jaguar.
    I turned the corner and began inching along the wall. Something was different here: the stone circle, which was wider than I was tall, was not completely filled in with grass and debris. A sound came from it, like an echoey, raspy bark. The parrot—minus a few green tail feathers—fluttered down to perch on one of the low encircling stones. “We’re here, we’re here! Safe now, safe now!”
    â€œShhh!” I hissed, sending a thought of silence to it at the same time.
    The parrot stopped squawking and continued bobbing his head and shifting his weight as if he were doing a dance. It seemed I was really talking toanimals! I wished I could celebrate how cool this was, but this wasn’t the time.
    I noticed a jagged hole in the surface closest to the building. About a third of the ground inside the circle had broken away and fallen inward. I knelt beside the parrot, leaned forward, and looked into the hole. It was a deep pit, more than twenty feet down, and the jaguar was at the bottom.
    Turning her glowing eyes upward, the jaguar saw me. I didn’t sense any threat from her, but she crouched and sprang upward. I gasped and jerked back. I heard the jaguar’s claws scrabble on the hard, smooth stone at the side of the pit for a moment before she fell back with a raspy growl of feline frustration.
    I saw now that the ground inside the circle was nothing more than a thin crust of dried clay covered with dirt, pebbles, leaves, and twigs to disguise it.
    â€œSafe now,” the bird squawked again.
    I was getting the idea that the parrot really did know what he was saying, albeit with a limited vocabulary. “Okay, okay,” I said. “But what am I supposed to do?” I leaned over and peered down into the hole again. This time when the jaguar saw me, I felt a flicker of … what? Hope? The jaguar’s thoughts and feelings were edged with green. I drewback again and looked through one of the slits into the building. I almost laughed out loud when I saw one fairy eye and one horse eye staring back at me.
    â€œIt’s okay, you can come out now,” I said. “Just don’t step in any of those stone circles.”
    A minute later, Kir and Imishi joined me. I had not moved from beside the pit, and I found myself wondering why Kir’s instincts had steered him clear of the pit when the jaguar’s had not. I felt a strange sensation in my mind as Kir tried to explain something about the way vibrations in the ground had warned him that there was a hollow area ahead. I gave a mental shrug. Maybe the jaguar had been distracted by stalking us—or by that loud parrot.
    â€œWe need to go now,” Imishi said, mounting up. “We have lost much time.”
    I nodded and stood, still staring into the pit, brushing dirt from my knees. Imishi stretched out a hand to help me up onto Kir’s back. Something