Between The Crystals

Ch 21 Lost Crystal

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 than we do, 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 regular, practiced 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 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.

With a farewell wave at Grant, I went over to the stone as the second group gathered around. "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 formed groups of twos and threes as they began jogging away.

"Best of luck," I called out.