Coughing and spluttering, I tried lugging Clair away from the fire. The smoke clung to the insides of my lungs, and my eyes stung no matter how many teardrops tried to wash them out. My arms and legs hurt. Comfey had done a wonderful job, but I still ached from the poisons I’d inhaled. Sunny was having more luck with Luca, who was also awake by this point. I felt Comfey’s small weight land on my shoulder, and she began to heal Clair. Seeing I was making no progress, I dropped her and went to gather Vivi and her newly captured Seedot, Nutty, in my arms. Both were still unconscious.

  As I bent to pick up Vivi, a crack sounded above me. I had a brief premonition of a scorching branch ending my career, such as it was. It never came to pass. A jet of water catapulted the falling hazard far from us, and a great blue blob interposed itself between us and the flames.

  “Hector?” I asked. I hadn’t seen him evolve, but it could only be him. The Quagsire stood almost as tall as I was, and with a lot more bulk. He croaked deeply and continued launching Water Guns and Mud Shots, far more powerful now than any he had done previously, into the smoke and sparks. I snapped myself out of admiring him and focused on trying to escape. The ever-cloudier air and my stinging eyes made seeing where I was going difficult. Sunny tapped my arm. She was back. She took over the responsibility of dragging Clair. I followed her, one step at a time, until the air was fresh and cold.

  An hour or two later, I couldn’t care about keeping track of time, we were finding out that the one thing we could all bond over was how much we hated Parasect. Clair was in the middle of another tirade against the species. Or maybe it was the same one she’d been on the whole time and was only taking breaks. She picked on their marble glass eyes and their ugly mushroom caps. They were stupid and slow and weak and did she mention ugly? Her acerbic tongue was, for once, put to good use. They were ugly.

  I was sitting against a tree, wrapped in my sleeping bag, clicking idly on my laptop. Sunny’s Pokémon had saved most of our belongings. My tent was lost, but I couldn’t remember for the life of me if I still had it with me after the first Primeape attack or if it was taken by the fire. There was a strong likelihood of the former. As scary as it had been, the fire wasn’t as big as it had appeared. It had blazed brightly initially, as it consumed all of the more flammable sticks around, but once it had gone through those, it had been left with nothing but rotting wood. I learned that rot smoked far more than it burned.

  As much as I wanted to, we didn’t travel far from the nest. I felt sick. We all did. Who knew what poisons were still running through our bodies. Comfey was doing frequent rounds, but even she was losing steam, and cold sweat was still prickling on my back.

  Even worse were the visions whenever I closed my eyes. The tap tap of tiny legs over my body as I lay prone and paralysed. The taste of mould in my half-opened mouth. I stopped thinking and forced my eyes wide. It was not dark yet, but it was getting there.

  I closed my laptop and shuffled closer to Sunny. She was pale, but doing better than the rest of us. At least, she had enough energy and willpower to find some of our emergency rations for us to eat. Cereal bars weren’t the most filling, but I wasn’t sure I could keep anything else down, even if anyone could pull themselves together enough to cook. What I really wanted was to sleep and hope it would all be better in the morning.

  Between moments of rest and bone-cutting fear as sleep opened me up to reliving the horrors, the night jerked slowly on. Whispers and the eerie sound of many legs were interrupted by the growls of Infernape. She had been the last to come out of the smoke. Even I could tell she blamed herself for everything. As soon as Comfey healed the gashes in her legs, she took the role of an overprotective mother. Anything that came close was scared off by her aggressive threats.

  I awoke, finally, to morning light dappling through the canopy and the smell of mint and pine with a hint of lavender. I gave Comfey a grateful pat and stretched, feeling far too good for the terrible night and the day before, which I was absolutely not thinking about.

  “You’re a hero, you know,” I told Comfey. She really was. We would have been lost without her. And I was sure she was the reason I felt so fresh too. She squealed and held up a sprig of pine, like she was asking me to draw it. My stomach rumbled and I laughed.

  “Later, okay,” I said. “I need to make breakfast.”

  Comfey hopped angrily after me as I rooted around in our bags for things to eat. Everyone else was still asleep and I wanted to make something hearty for them when they woke up. Sunny was the one who carried the oats, so it looked like oatmeal was still on the menu. I found some thoroughly squashed berries and a handful of nuts too. We would have to forage as we walked because we were running out of other food.

  With the help of Infernape, I made a small fire to cook, and Hector, who I hadn’t noticed was awake, provided the water. Honestly, even after I realised he wasn’t asleep, he moved so little and with such a relaxed air, that more than once I questioned what state he was in. He was also a hero. So was Sunny and the rest of her team.

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  “What happened to your head?” asked Clair.

  My mood didn’t plummet, but I did panic, touched my hair, noticed it was all over the place, my scars on full display, and tried my best to bunch it up to hide them. Maybe I shrieked a little too.

  Anyway, that seemed to be the signal for the rest of them to roll out of their sleeping bags with a lot more groaning and grumbling than I did.

  “That smells good,” said Luca, looking hungrily at the pot.

  “Food does sound good right now,” added Sunny, then, seeing I was still struggling with my hair, “Do you want me to do your braid?”

  My hands stilled, and I nodded. No one outside my family had done my hair before.

  “The porridge is done, Luca, if you want to serve it up,” I said as I sat down in front of Sunny.

  “Of course,” said Luca.

  “Fine, ignore me, I guess,” grumbled Clair. “What should I do?” She looked around and for a moment, I thought I would have the pleasure of seeing her stand awkwardly, wringing her hands in the well-known gesture of I want to help, but there’s nothing to do! Unfortunately, she was more resourceful than that and began tidying up around the place so we could set off as soon as we’d eaten. Foiled again.

  “Seriously, how are you so cheery this morning?” she asked. “I barely slept.”

  “Neither did I, but I have a good feeling about today.”

  My good mood lasted a good few hours into the hike before it began to dissipate. It would have lasted longer too, but that one Mankey group had found us and were pestering us again. Having learned our lesson, we didn’t flee like we did previously. Infernape was enough to stop them from being any more than a nuisance, but even with her, Caviar, and Watty returning the harassment, they never stayed gone for long.

  I took to throwing things back at them too. For every stick and nut flung down at me, I flung up pebbles and clumps of earth. Silly me. I realised too late that I only painted a target on myself. I noticed the others weren’t getting pelted as much as I was, but it was too late. I couldn’t back down now. So it was, that I found myself stuck in a downward spiral of playing a veritably not fun game of dodgeball with the pettiest bullies in the forest.

  Infernape guided us north, whenever she wasn’t busy chasing off the pests. She was still in her over-protective mood, and scouted our path frequently, ensuring we weren’t entering the territories of any powerful Pokémon. I was increasingly grateful for her help. It was hard enough going as it was, creating a nice collection of scratches on my arms and legs from the fauna. Worrying about where we were going was beyond me. Especially considering we didn’t have Kurt or the maps the professor gave us. I was beginning to think accepting his request had been a terrible idea.

  Before too long, I heard another sound joining the ambient noise in the forest. It started as a trickle in the distance, but soon it was the distinct music of water gushing over rocks.

  “That’s the Greenforest River,” I said, almost not believing my ears.

  “That’s the river,” agreed Sunny. I broke into as much of a run as I could through the underbrush and I burst out into the sunlight, and the view of a wide, sparkling, if a bit muddy, river greeted me. I laughed, relief flooding my face. I turned to face the others and promptly got smacked in the face by what seemed to be a Rowlet’s nest. I snapped, grabbing the first thing that came to hand, I threw it full force at the Mankey dangling by his tail from a branch above me. I watched, with dawning horror, as the pokeball smacked it squarely on the nose. It was as surprised as I was. I could tell by the way it slipped from the branch and knocked its head on the trunk before being absorbed by the ball.

  “No, no, please no,” I muttered.

  I stumbled over a shrub, rooted around in it until I found my pokeball, sealed and unblemished.

  “Nice aim, Calla,” said Claire. It must be a talent how she knew exactly the wrong thing to say.

  “A Mankey, I can’t train a Mankey,” I said. They were notoriously difficult to train. And I heard the struggle wasn’t even worth it most of the time. Primeape’s were strong, yes, but nothing altogether special, and considering their uniform personality of condensed anger, they were impossible to use with any degree of subtlety. My team were nice Pokémon like Flaaffy and Comfey, not loose cannons.

  “I mean, you can always release it if you don’t want to keep it,” said Luca.

  “Luca, you’re a genius. Wait no, that’ll break the pokeball. No, I have to.”

  I took a deep breath and picked up the pokeball.

  “Okay, let’s take a look at you,” I said.

  I opened the pokeball, and almost immediately, my face got latched onto by the enraged Mankey.

  “Get off!” I threw it off and held up the ball. “Look, I’ll break this and release you, okay?”

  If anything, this seemed to anger it more. It barrelled towards me and smacked the pokeball out of my hand. I grabbed it by its tail and swung it away, but it caught onto my hair and pulled.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I screamed. “I’m trying to let you go!”

  It didn’t understand me, for sure, because every time I said anything about releasing it, it attacked with renewed fury. Eventually, after much scuffling, I managed to get it back in the ball.

  It was at this point I noticed I had a full audience, all of whom were trying their best not to laugh. Except Clair. She was laughing out loud.