Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Pundu singuang and chalk were watching the ocean, similar thoughts running through their minds though they were very different in appearance. The Centrosaurus was nearly fourteen feet from beak to tail, with a stocky, muscular body that weighed somewhere between four and five tons, depending on when he had last eaten. His huge skull swept back into an armored, bony frill lined with short spikes while a single massive horn thrust upward from just behind the horny beak. His personal name derived from his unusually pale appearance.
His human companion was shorter, slighter, darker of skin, and completely unarmored, though he did have a rather prominent nose. Together with a family of torosaurs they worked the farm, sharing proportionately in its bounty of rice and tropical fruit.
Presently they were standing atop a small hill, a tree-covered blip on an otherwise typically flat corner of the Northern Plains. Arms crossed over his sweat-streaked, bare chest, Pundu leaned back against the supportive sweep of Chalk's frill. The farm spread out behind them. Nearby rose a cluster of neat thatch-roofed structures designed to accommodate humans, dinosaurs, farm equipment, and the twiceyearly harvest.
Before them stretched a brackish quilt of untamed reeds, palms, and finally mangrove swamp. Beyond lay a narrow beach of pure white sand, a wide lagoon, and at last the extensive reef that encircled all of Dinotopia. Leaping from a cobalt sea, deformed by powerful, unnavigable currents, ivory breakers shattered themselves against the unyielding coral shoulder.
The sky was a paler hue, its homogeneous blue marred only by a few patchesof sooty cloud escaped from some unseen northern squall.
Except along the line of breakers, where the sea warred with the accumulated skeletons of long-dead corals, all was tranquil and calm.
"It looks peaceful enough," Pundu remarked to their visitor. At the sound of his voice Chalk also turned to regard the runner. "Are the weathercasters certain?"
The swift Gallimimus had come from the south only that morning. Twin saddlebag-satchels decorated with official seals and trailing bright blue and yellow streamers were strapped across the rose-tinted skin of her back. An ornamental hood topped by a flowering of shorter yellow streamers protected her face from wind and dust and covered most of her head while simultaneously signifying her status to any who saw or encountered her.
Though no translator was present, she was still able to recognize the uncertainty in the farmer's voice. By way of reply she held out the official document, pinching it firmly between two of her claws. The warning was written both in human and dinosaur. Having already read it, Chalk continued to stare out to sea. Only humans felt the need to peruse the same words over and over, as if to assure themselves of their validity. Dinosaurs were far more accepting of reality.
There was no equivocation in the warning, which was clear and forthright. It stated that Dinotopia's six-year weather cycle was coming to fruition, and that all the signs indicated that the culmination of this particular cycle should be particularly robust.
Like anyone whose family had long farmed the damp, hot lands of the Northern Plains, Pundu Singuang knew what that meant. So did Chalk. Raising one hand facing forward, Pundu touched his palm to that of the runner and nodded once. The Gallimimus returned the gesture, turned, and trotted down the gentle slope. With each stride, she covered twice as much ground as the best human sprinter could manage.
She paused only long enough to bid farewell to Pundu's wife, Lahat, who was hanging out laundry in front of the bamboo-framed farmhouse. Their two children followed the runner as far as the dirt road, one of them riding atop Singlewhack's back. Singlewhack was Chalk's daughter. She was still young enough for her nose horn to be little more than a stub above her beak.
As they concluded their hopeless pursuit of the runner, the children's laughter drifted up the hill. Pundu watched the now tiny bipedal form of the Gallimimus turn left on the road and accelerate, dust rising from beneath her flying, three-toed feet, her silken streamers stretched out behind her.
Pundu knew that the children, human and centrosaur alike, ought to be helping with the chores, but at that moment neither he nor Chalk was inclined to discipline them. Let them have their fun while they could. There would be hard work for all soon enough-harder work than they had yet known.
Again he turned to stare out to sea. The last several six-year cycles had been relatively benign. It had been some time since he had been forced to think of the ocean as a threat.
It took many days with everyone working together to empty the house and barn. Everything that could be moved, from kitchen utensils to the big iron plow, was packed, piled, or stuffed onto the sixwheeled farm wagon. Lahat's treasured set of shadow puppets, handed down in her family from generation to generation, was wrapped in rice paper and stowed carefully beneath the seat with the other fragile household goods.
Chalk grunted patiently at the youngsters, chivying them along, while the two huge torosaurs, ceratopsians like Chalk only bigger and with eye horns like a Triceratops, tried to make themselves comfortable in the wagon harness. Chalk and his mate would follow behind, pulling a second, smaller wagon piled high with farming implements.
They were good companions and good farmers, Pundu reflected as he watched his ceratopsian compatriots at work. He was lucky they had chosen to mingle their lives with his own. Human and dinosaur families alike benefited from the mutual cooperation. They worked together, lived together, often played and ate together.
And now, he reflected grimly, they would flee together.
In his desire to be on their way, Chalk was displaying an almost human impatience. Pundu's mood lightened as he watched his old friend. Just like a Centrosaurus: always anxious to check out the fodder over the next hill. Chalk and his relatives liked the Northern Plains, where there was thick forage and good farmland in abundance.
