I might have already mentioned this but pandanus and palm trees grew all along the top of the beach. There was also the occasional clump of dune grass and patches of some kind of small leaved vine. It all looked familiar, but I didn’t know if any of it could be eaten.


    None of the pandanus had any fruit, but I did find a couple of palms which bore long clusters of orange brown drupes. Each individual drupe was about the length of my thumb. They had an ovoid shape with an almost scale like skin. There was a little bit of give when I gave one a squish. They might have been edible or they might not. There was a lot of pith and torn husks around the palm tree''s base so I guessed that something had been into them, but I didn''t have the guts to try one for myself. Not yet. I resolved to remember where these palms were and moved on.


    Beyond the foredune there were a couple of smaller dunes before the jungle proper began. These sandy valleys were choked with pandanus, and palm trees, and cycads. They cycads were big prehistoric looking things with spongy trunks and massive fans of foliage, deep green and spiky at the ends. I knew better than to look for fruit on these. I was pretty sure they would all be poisonous, something about cyanide or arsenic or some kind of heavy metal. I was a bit worried about even getting jabbed by the one, but if I wanted to get to the jungle I would have to pass through the trough.


    Eyes wide open for snakes I picked my way carefully in, thankful for my shoes among all the fallen fronds. It was quiet behind the foredune. Really quiet. One of the things that had been bugging me finally sank in. There were no birds. No bird song. No seagulls screeching, no finches chirping, no birds at all, just the sound leaves rustling in the breeze. It felt kind of spooky.


    Picking my way through the clumps of palm and cycad almost got me lost. They were way over my head, a green maze of spikes and spreading foliage. I would have given a lot for a decent stick to push things back. Eventually though I stepped from sand onto a slope of rich, red volcanic loam covered in a litter of normal leaves. I climbed into a new kind of quiet, a new kind of still, caused by a canopy far over head. The light dimmed to a kind of diffuse green and by the time I''d climbed a few meters in it was at least a couple of degrees cooler.


    The palms disappeared entirely, and the distance between cycads opened right out, giving way now to the trunks of true forest giants, and the occasional tree fern with delicate curling fronds. The first real tree I came to looked almost like a strangler fig. It had buttress roots almost as tall as I was, a massive trunk, and broad spreading branches. I didn’t see any fruit. I could have climbed up for a better look. There were plenty of gaps for hands and feet but anything could have been living in those and I didn’t want to risk it. I pushed further up slope.


    Most of the real trees were some kind of grey skinned hardwood. These had a moderate sized buttress and very column like trunks which went way, way up overhead before spreading into the glorious canopy. It was kind of intimidating really. The beach had felt almost normal but the jungle made me feel small. It occurred to me that I think I came from the city. I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I’d come quite a way from the others.


    But I didn’t have anything to show for my efforts yet, so I searched around that forest slope for just a little bit longer, collecting a bundle of fallen sticks. Pretty soon I came across a big fallen branch which must have split off from the tree above. It was too big for me to shift on my own, half buried in leaf litter, and covered in moss and fungus, but I thought I might be able to break some decent pieces from the smaller end.


    The crack when I put my foot to it seemed very loud in the forest. I almost fell on my arse, then froze as it was echoed by a call I’d never heard.


    “Rrrrrrrrrk!”


    For a long time I didn’t move, didn’t dare breath, as with eyes alone I searched here and there up the slope for whatever could have screeched. That was not the sound of any animal I knew from Earth, but I couldn''t see anything, only ferns and trunks, leaf litter and dark rocks, no creature of any kind.


    “Chak Chak!” came from higher in the forest.


    Then the sound of something heavy moving off.


    Very slowly and very carefully I gathered up my sticks, trying to breath as quietly as I could. One step after another I crept back down that slope. Realising as I retreated. I’d heard no insects, no cicadas, no frogs, no small creatures of any kind since we’d woken in the morning.


    My trip back through the thicket was significantly quicker. I got spiked by cycads a couple of times but by then I didn’t give a fuck. I knew I wouldn''t feel truly safe until I was on the other side and back in open air.


    I spotted Jan and Eric almost immediately. They were sitting on top of the foredune a little way from where I came out, under the shade of a couple of palms. Panting a bit I stumbled up to them and dropped my pile of wood.


    “Holy shit!” said Eric looking up. “You might be worth more than I thought!”


    He sounded a lot less angry and lot more amenable to talking. I almost read apology in his face so I grinned.


    “Yeah I ain’t going back though. Not on me own. There’s some kind of creatures in the woods.”


    If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    Both Eric and Jan grimaced. They exchanged a look as if they weren’t really surprised.


    “I’ll come with you in a bit,” Eric promised. “We can bring the boys, but we gotta let them get that out of their system first.”


    He jerked his chin toward the middle of the beach where the younger four were clustered. Ryan and Andy were digging a hole in the sand, with their hands, under the full midday sun. It was a big hole. They’d both half disappeared into it. Chloe and Vanessa stood watching them. They seemed to be either arguing with them or cheering them on. It was kind of hard to tell.


    “What the fuck are they doing?” I asked, honestly confused.


    Eric just shook his head.


    “They are digging a well,” Jan said, speaking slowly and enunciating each word so carefully that I had a fair idea what she thought of it.


    “But the sea''s fresh,” I said.


    “Mmmhm,” Jan said. “Eric and I have had a nice big drink from it. But both the young men insist that all fresh water should first be filtered through the sand.”


    “Bloody hell,” I said. “None of them have drunk anything?”


    “Vanessa had a water bottle in her purse,” Jan admitted. “They shared it just after they started.”


    I settled down next to the older two at the top of the foredune. I don’t know if the men below were competing for the women’s attention but all of them looked sunburnt. Andy in particular was going cherry red. I guessed he was the kind of guy who got most of his exercise in a gym.


    “You don''t wanna stop them?” Eric asked.


    I shook my head, “Fuck no! They wouldn’t listen to me.”


    He laughed, “Sometimes you’ve just gotta let people wreck themselves before they’ll listen to anyone.”


    We watched the others for a bit. Vanessa at least looked like she was helping, kneeling in her pencil skirt to scoop back some of the sand as the two men threw it out of the hole. Chloe, still talking, looked like she was getting very frustrated. She started waving her hands and shouting. I couldn’t make out every word but ''fuckwit'' was in there a lot.


    “How far down they gonna dig?” I asked.


    “Well,” drawled Eric. “Given how far up in the dry sand they started... Maybe two meters? Bit more? Should be halfway done.”


    “Bloody hell,” I muttered again. “That’s a lot of work.”


    We watched from the shade of the palms as more sand came flying out. Chloe threw up her hands and stomped away toward the water. Vanessa followed her. Jan laughed as that made Ryan and Andy pop up out of their hole like gophers. Eric and I exchanged a grin as Chloe waded knee deep into the little waves to get herself a drink.


    Then she screamed. Something dragged her in.


    It was like getting electrocuted. I grabbed the biggest stick and sprinted down that foredune as hard as I fucking could. The sand was loose and it wasn’t just the width of the beach between me and Chloe, we were up from them as well. I wasn’t going to get there in time. She''d be pulled right out and under. The sick certainty beat inside me. It drove me to run harder. I’d seen those shadows and I hadn’t told anyone. I hadn''t warned them that there was something lurking in the depths.


    Vanessa got there first. Her fancy clothes hindered her a bit but she grabbed hold of Chloe’s arm and shoulder and she hauled. The younger woman managed to get her feet under her and together they’d dragged her attacker back up into the shallows by the time I got to them.


    It was some kind of silvery lizard-fish thing with a big, broad, flat head clamped over Chloe’s lower leg. At the time it looked fucking huge but it was only really a bit over a meter long, and flat too. It wouldn’t have weighed much more than the average dog.


    I skipped through shallows around the women’s reaching hands and swung down on that monster as hard as I fucking could. My stick broke. I flung myself after it, trying to wrestle the creature away from Chloe’s leg.


    I got a bunch of spines in my forearm for my troubles but discovered that I’m not the kind who backs off from pain. The thing had big bony scales like an ancient fish. I tried prying its mouth open but my fingers slid. One hooked into an eye socket and I gouged as hard as I could. That made it hiss and thrash. It tried to snap onto my arm. Vanessa and Chloe lurched away, suddenly free.


    For a moment me and the fish-lizard thing wrestled in the water. It was trying to bite me and I was trying to get a grip. It was surprisingly strong. I got spiked again and discovered that it’s fin-feet things had little claws, but I managed to get one hand round a hind leg and the other round its lobed tail. I got my feet under me. lifted that thing, and swung it bodily into the beach.


    Once, twice, three times I smashed it onto wet sand. Still it writhed and snapped.


    “Get out of the way kid!”


    Ryan thundered in, spearing the creature right through the head with a piece of driftwood. He almost speared me with it. I was still holding onto the monster when it died and something rose beneath my touch, a vital spark, an unseen glimmer. On instinct I opened to receive it. I swallowed it down.


    I Devoured the creature’s soul, or a fragment of it anyway.


    Sky spun. Water rushed. I fell, sick and dizzy. So much was changing in me that I was unable to keep my feet. The silvery little mote I’d taken settled down through my consciousness, drifting ever deeper like the scale of a fish. It was echoed by the sea beneath my unconscious dreams.


    Fever took me. The Island spun. Senses unfurled beneath my skin. It felt like my soul inverted. I Consumed that mote to form a little void, a tiny unfathomable point of space deep within my core. It was done on instinct. The mote was gone in a second as if a bubble burst, leaving something unexpected and profound.


    There was overflow, Essence shed from both the devouring and consumption. A tiny glitter of the raw stuff of life but my body had no Tolerance for it. It was the first I''d ever felt. The essence spread in trace amount through veins and bone, muscle and limbs. It made my nerves crawl and my skin twitch. On top of the other changes it made everything lurid and weird.


    A little wave broke over me. I gasped like a wounded fish, lying, staring with glassy eyes as Ryan lifted his kill up into the air on the end of his stick like a caveman with his spear. I think he roared in victory, but it was a yell I could not hear.


    Andy reached Chloe and Vanessa. They lowered her to the sand to perform first aid on her leg. It looked badly lacerated. Things were falling out of order for me but I saw blood streaming from her exposed skin.


    Jan ran in panting. Eric stumbled in her wake. His face was mottled purple red from the effort of trying to run. It crossed my mind to hope he wouldn’t drop dead from a heart attack.


    I felt drunk. I felt like I was sinking into the depths. Ryan was looking down at me. Someone said something. I felt hands upon my shoulders but it was all a bit too much. I closed my eyes and was aware of nothing more.


    Nothing but the sweetness of sleep.