CHAPTER 12: THE SANDY MOUTH AND THE BIG RIVER CATS

The morning sun did not just come up; it hit the deck like a hot brick. By seven o'clock, the cool sea fog was completely gone, chased away by a dry, yellow glare that made everything look bright and dusty. The green coat Leo had been wearing since the snow island felt like a heavy wet sack on his shoulders now. He pulled it off and threw it over the wooden water barrel, leaving him in just his grey shirt.

The water around the Going Merry was thick and brown, full of swirling mud clumps and old bits of river grass. You could see the banks on both sides now. They weren't close, maybe half a mile off, but they looked like giant piles of yellow flour stretching out until they touched the sky. No trees. No grass. Just hot sand that made the air wiggle if you looked at it too long.

"It's too hot!" Luffy yelled. He was sitting on the main deck floor with his back against the mast, his legs stretched out so long they went almost all the way to the kitchen door. He had his shirt completely open, exposing his stomach which was still a little round from all those grease clams he ate yesterday. "Sanji! Bring out the cold juice! The water in my throat feels like hot sand!"

Sanji kicked the kitchen door open with his heel. He was carrying a big tin bucket full of grey river water with a few pieces of lime floating on top. He didn't look happy. "There isn't any juice, Luffy. The lime water is all we've got until we find a town with an actual well. The river water is too muddy to drink straight unless you want your insides to turn to clay."

Chopper peeked out from behind Sanji's leg. He had taken off his big blue backpack, but he was still wearing his pink top hat, which now had a wet white rag tied around the middle to keep his brain from cooking. His blue nose was dry and dusty. "The heat is bad for fur!" he squeaked, his little hoofs tapping against the hot deck planks. "My people live in the deep snow! If my temperature goes up three more degrees, my liver will start to cook like a turnip!"

"Go sit under the shaded bench, then," Nami said from the steering deck. She was holding a large straw fan in one hand, waving it fast against her face while her other hand held the big wooden wheel. She had changed into a light blue top that didn't have any sleeves, and her orange hair was tied high up on her head with a leather string. "And Luffy, move your legs! Usopp is trying to grease the front rope gears and you're right in the path."

"I'm dying," Luffy said, his head rolling back against the wood. He didn't move his legs. "Zoro, tell them I'm dying."

Zoro was lying flat on his back on the top cabin roof, right in the full glare of the sun. He didn't have his shirt on at all, just his green trousers and his white belly band. His three swords were lined up right next to his ribs. He didn't open his eyes. "You're too loud for a dead guy. Shut up and sleep."

Leo walked over to the side railing near the center of the ship. His left boot was feeling a little loose again because the leather had dried out fast in the hot air. He bent down and pushed the lower strap into the brass teeth. Click. Click. Click. Three short clicks. It felt tight again. He looked down into the brown river water. It was moving fast here, swirling around the ship's bow with a heavy, sucking sound.

"Hey, Leo!" Usopp called out from the front where the sheep head was. He had a big wooden bucket of black grease and an old rag. "You see anything ahead? My telescope lens is all foggy from the heat dust, but I think the river gets narrower about two miles up."

Leo squinted his eyes, shading his face with his flat hand. "There's a big turn coming up. The sand banks look higher over there, like a couple of yellow walls."

Vivi came up from the lower cabin, followed by Karoo. The giant duck looked much happier now that the snow was gone. He was waddling around the deck, his yellow feathers looking bright in the sun, though he kept his beak open to stay cool. Vivi had a long white cloth wrapped around her head and shoulders, the regular style for the desert people.

"That's the iron tooth bend," Vivi said, walking up next to Nami at the wheel. She pointed toward the narrow part of the river Leo had noticed. "The water moves very fast there because the stone under the sand is hard. My father's men used to keep a small guard post on the right bank, but I don't see the flag."

"Is it because of the bad guys?" Chopper asked, running over to hide behind Vivi's white skirt, his eyes wide as he looked at the high yellow dunes.

"Probably," Nami said, her teeth digging into her bottom lip as she adjusted the steering wheel. "If Crocodile has the towns locked down, he wouldn't leave a royal guard post alone right at the mouth of the river. We need to be careful. If they have cannons on those hills, we're sitting ducks."

"Karoo is a duck," Luffy said, his eyes still closed.

"Not now, Luffy!" Nami snapped.

The ship moved into the narrow section of the river. The wind died down completely here because the yellow sand walls were forty feet high on both sides, blocking the breeze from the ocean. The heat got even worse. It felt like being inside an oven that someone had closed the door on. The wood of the deck was so hot now that Chopper had to jump from one little patch of shade to another to keep his hoofs from burning.

Suddenly, the Merry gave a sharp, violent shudder. *THUMP.*

It wasn't a rock. It didn't sound like stone hitting the bottom of the hull. It was a soft, heavy blow, like a giant sack of flour hitting the side of the boat.

"What was that?!" Usopp yelled, dropping his grease rag right into the bucket. He ran to the rail and looked over. "Did we hit a log? There aren't any trees here!"

"The water is bubbling," Leo said, pointing at a spot about ten feet off the left side. A big cluster of grey bubbles, each one as large as a dinner plate, was coming up from the mud below. They smelled bad, like old river moss and rotten fish guts.

"The old man said something about bubbles," Zoro said, sitting up on the cabin roof. He reached down and grabbed his white sword by the hilt, his eyes tracking the moving line of foam.

"The giant catfish!" Vivi gasped, her face going white under her desert cloth. "I forgot! The mouth of the Sandora is where the big ones lay their eggs this time of year! They think the bottom of the ship is another fish trying to steal their nests!"

A massive shape rose out of the brown water right next to the main mast. It was huge, easily as long as the Merry itself, with smooth, slimy skin that was the color of dirty river mud. It didn't have any scales, just two giant yellow whiskers that were as thick as ship ropes, waving around in the air. Its mouth was a huge pink circle lined with hundreds of tiny, white teeth like rows of pins.

"AAAAH! IT'S A MONSTER WHISKER FACE!" Usopp shrieked, jumping backward so hard he hit his head on the kitchen door. *Bang.*

The giant fish slammed its side against the ship again. *CRACK.* The wooden railing on the left side splintered, three of the vertical stakes snapping right in half. The ship tilted way over to the right, throwing Sanji's lime bucket across the deck, the water splashing all over Luffy's legs.

"My water!" Luffy yelled, his eyes popping open. He looked totally furious now. He stood up, his boots slipping a little on the wet wood. "You big fat ugly fish! You spilled my cold drink!"

The catfish didn't care about Luffy's drink. It rose higher out of the river, its giant pink mouth opening wide enough to swallow the whole kitchen cabin. It let out a deep, wet grunt.....*GURRRR*.....that sprayed a gallon of slimy mud right across the main deck.

"Luffy! Don't let it bite the rudder!" Nami shouted from the wheel, trying to hold the ship straight as the current pulled them toward the sand bank. "If the rudder breaks, we're going to spin into the dunes!"

"Gum-Gum..." Luffy ran toward the side rail, his arms stretching backward until they wrapped around the back cargo hatch. "WHIP!"

He swung his leg out in a huge circle, his rubber shin stretching across the water and hitting the giant catfish right on its flat, slimy nose. *SMACK.* The blow sounded like a wet hand hitting a piece of raw meat. The catfish gave a loud grunt and shook its head, but it didn't go down. The skin was too thick and greasy for a regular kick to do much damage. It just made it madder.

"It's too soft!" Luffy shouted, his leg snapping back into place. "My foot just slid right off!"

"Get out of the way, rubber nose," Zoro said, jumping down from the cabin roof. He had two of his swords out now, the white one in his right hand and the black one in his left. He didn't use the third one in his mouth because the air was too dusty to breathe through his teeth properly. He ran straight for the broken railing.

The catfish lunged forward again, its giant pink mouth heading straight for Zoro's legs.

Zoro didn't jump back. He crossed his two blades in front of his chest, his eyes narrowing to small black slits. "Two-Sword Style... HAWK WAVE!"

He slashed both swords downward at the same time. A sharp gust of wind shot off the blades, cutting through the muddy river water and hitting the catfish right between its yellow whiskers. *SLASH.* A deep red line opened up on the fish's snout, and it let out a terrible, high-pitched squeak like a pig before dropping back down into the brown river with a giant splash that soaked everyone on deck.

"Did you kill it?" Chopper asked, peeking over the top of the water barrel where he had climbed to stay safe.

"No," Leo said, watching the brown water. "The blood is moving. It's coming back under the hull."

The ship gave another big lurch, this time from the bottom. The giant fish was underneath them now, rubbing its heavy back against the keel of the ship. The whole boat was lifting up out of the water by six inches, the wood groaning and creaking like it was about to split down the middle.

"Usopp! The front cannon!" Nami yelled.

"The front cannon isn't loaded!" Usopp wailed, his hands shaking as he tried to open the small powder box near the mast. "And the matches are all wet from Luffy's big splash! I can't get a spark!"

"Let me try," Sanji said. He walked over to the rail, his face calm despite the ship rolling back and forth. He took his lighter out, flicked the metal wheel once, and this time a small yellow flame popped up. He lit his cigarette, took a deep breath of the smoke, and then looked down into the water where the giant grey shadow was moving under the planks. "Hey, green head. Hold the rail. I'm going to kick the bottom."

"Don't break the boat," Zoro muttered, his boots digging into the deck seam to stay steady.

Sanji jumped straight up into the air, turning over twice until his right leg was pointing straight down. His boot started to look red from the heat, or maybe it was just moving so fast it looked that way. "Bad Manners... KICK COURSE!"

He drove his heel straight through the broken gap in the left railing, hitting the water right where the fish's back was lifting the ship. *BOOM.* The force of the kick made a huge column of brown water shoot thirty feet into the air, and the giant catfish let out another squeak, its massive tail slapping the surface once before it shot away down the river, leaving a long trail of red bubbles behind it.

The Merry dropped back into the water with a heavy *thud*, the waves sloshing over the sides for a second before the ship stabilized.

"Is it gone?" Chopper asked, his little ears twitching as he looked around.

"Yeah, it's gone," Leo said, wiping a clump of wet river mud off his shirt. "But we're leaking a little bit in the front cargo hold. The wood near the chain pipe is cracked."

"I'll fix it!" Usopp shouted, glad to have something to do that didn't involve giant teeth. He grabbed his wooden hammer and a handful of oakum rags from his bag and ran down the front hatch. "The great Captain Usopp can fix any leak in two minutes! Don't worry, ladies!"

They sailed on through the narrow bend. The high sand walls slowly started to get lower after another mile, opening up into a wider valley where the river spread out into three smaller channels. The water was slower here, and the mud wasn't as thick, turning a lighter shade of yellow.

"Which way, Vivi?" Nami asked, leaning over her compass which was still spinning around slowly like a dead beetle. "The three channels look exactly the same from here."

Vivi walked to the bow, looking at the distant hills. "The middle one goes straight to the green city, Erumalu. But... we can't go there by boat. The river has dried up completely near the city gates. We have to take the left channel toward the old green oasis, Green Bit. We can park the ship in the small cove there and walk across the dunes."

"How far is the walk?" Leo asked, leaning against the main mast.

"About twenty miles," Vivi said, her voice dropping into that quiet, worried tone again. "If the sand storms aren't bad, we can do it in one day. But we need water. A lot of water. The desert between here and Yuba is completely dry now. Crocodile stopped the rain three years ago."

"He stopped the rain?" Chopper asked, his little mouth open. "Can humans do that? Is he a sky wizard?"

"He uses Dance Powder," Nami said, her voice bitter as she looked at her maps. "It's a special green powder that steals the moisture from the clouds before they can reach the middle of the island. It makes it rain on the coast where his city is, but the rest of the country turns to dust. It's against the world law, but nobody can prove he's the one buying it."

"He's a jerk," Luffy said. He had found a small piece of dry fish tail that had fallen out of his pocket and was chewing on it again. "We'll hit him twice. One for the rain, and one for my water bucket."

The left channel was very quiet. The sand walls were completely gone now, replaced by flat gravel plains that went on forever. In the distance, Leo could see a few small green dots that looked like palm trees, their leaves drooping in the heat. That was Green Bit, the old oasis town. It didn't look like much, just a couple of broken stone walls and some empty mud houses that had been abandoned when the water got low.

They reached the small cove around three in the afternoon. The water here was very shallow, and Zoro had to jump into the mud with the heavy rope to tie the Merry to a big piece of buried iron rock on the bank so the current wouldn't drift them back out into the main river.

"Okay," Nami said, gathering everyone around the galley table. "We need to leave two people with the ship. If Wapol's men or those Baroque Works bounty hunters find the Merry while we're gone, they'll burn it or steal our food."

"I'm staying," Sanji said immediately. He was looking at his leg, which was still a little sore from that big catfish kick. "My feet aren't ready for twenty miles of hot sand. And someone needs to look after the kitchen anyway."

"I'll stay too!" Usopp said, his hand going up fast. "I have the... the special desert sickness. My nose starts to bleed if I look at too many dunes. It's a very rare medical thing."

"You're just scared of the big scorpions," Zoro said, not looking up from his sword cloth.

"I am not!" Usopp yelled, his long nose twitching. "The scorpions are nothing to the great Usopp! I just need to... to calibrate the front cannon gears! Yeah! That's it!"

"Fine, you two stay," Nami sighed, shaking her head. "Zoro, Luffy, Leo, Chopper, and Vivi will come with me. Vivi, where do we get the camels? You said there was a camel post near the old wall."

"If they're still alive," Vivi said, her face serious as she pulled her white cloth tighter around her head. "The Baroque Works men usually take the animals when they pass through here. We might have to walk the whole way on our feet."

They climbed down the side ladder onto the gravel bank. The ground felt like a hot frying pan through Leo's boot soles. He gave his buckle one more check. It was fine.

Chopper was carrying his small medical bag over his shoulder, his little blue nose looking very small under his big pink hat. He looked at the giant expanse of yellow sand ahead of them, his ears dropping down. "It's so big... There aren't any trees at all. Where do the birds sit?"

"They don't sit," Luffy said, running ahead into the first big sand dune. "They just fly until they drop! Come on, Chopper! Let's find the giant scorpions! I want to ride one!"

"No! Don't ride them!" Chopper shrieked, running after him, his little hoofs sinking into the loose yellow powder with every step.

The walk started out okay. For the first two hours, the ground was mostly flat gravel, which was easy to walk on even if the sun was hitting them right on the neck. But by five o'clock, the gravel disappeared, replaced by massive ridges of loose yellow sand that were as high as houses. Every step felt like walking through thick grease; your boot would sink six inches into the powder, and when you pulled it out, three more inches of sand would slide right back into the hole.

"Nami-san," Vivi said, stopping at the top of a large dune to look back. "We need to cover our faces. The wind is starting to come from the east. That means the dust is coming."

Leo looked back too. The horizon behind them didn't look blue anymore. It had a dark, orange color, like a big wall of rusty iron moving across the plain. The air was getting thicker, and he could feel tiny bits of sharp stone hitting his cheeks already, making his skin sting.

"Get down!" Leo said, grabbing Chopper by the back of his vest and pulling him into the small hollow between two dunes. "Zoro, grab Luffy! He's still running toward the hill!"

Luffy was about fifty yards ahead, trying to catch a small green lizard that kept disappearing into the sand holes. Zoro ran up behind him, grabbed him by the collar of his red shirt with one hand, and dragged him back down into the hollow just as the wind hit them.

*WHOOOOOO.*

The noise was incredible. It didn't sound like wind; it sounded like a big iron train running right over their heads. The sky turned completely dark, the yellow sun disappearing behind a thick curtain of flying brown dust that made it impossible to see more than three feet in front of your face.

Leo wrapped his grey shirt over his mouth and nose, holding Chopper tight against his chest. The little reindeer was shaking, his tiny hoofs digging into Leo's belt to stay steady. The sand was piling up around them fast, covering their legs like heavy wool blankets.

Nobody talked. You couldn't talk without getting a mouth full of dry gravel anyway. They just lay there in the dark, listening to the mountain roar for what felt like three hours.

When the wind finally stopped, the world looked totally different. The dunes they had been walking on were gone, replaced by new ones that were in different places. The air was still yellow and hot, but you could see the sun again, a small pale white circle through the dust.

Luffy popped his head out of a sand bank like a mole, coughing up a big cloud of yellow powder. "Pwah! That tasted like old brick! Hey! Where did the lizard go?"

Zoro pulled himself up, shaking the sand out of his green hair until he looked like a dusty bush. "We're lost," he said, looking around at the identical yellow hills.

"We are not lost!" Nami shouted, crawling out from under her blanket. She looked completely furious, her orange hair full of fine yellow dust. She pulled her compass out, but the needle was just spinning around in circles again, completely useless because of the iron sand in the hills. "Wait... okay, maybe we're a little bit lost. Vivi, which way was the big rock?"

Vivi looked around, her face pale. "The storm moved the main dunes, Nami-san. The old trail is completely gone. But... look at those tracks over there. Those aren't from the wind."

About twenty yards away, on the side of a fresh sand hill, there were five deep grooves in the sand. They looked like they had been made by giant fingers dragging through the powder, each groove as wide as a wagon wheel.

"The sand octopus?" Chopper whispered, his voice trembling as he remembered Usopp's story.

"No," Leo said, walking over to the tracks. He knelt down and touched the edge of the groove. The sand was hard here, pressed down by something very heavy and smooth. "These are shell marks. A big turtle. Or a giant crab."

"A crab?!" Luffy's eyes turned into giant meat symbols. "Crab meat is good! Let's go find it! It's down there!" He pointed toward the bottom of the dune where the tracks disappeared into a deep, dark cleft between two stone ridges.

"We shouldn't go into the holes," Nami said, her hand going to her stick weapon. "We need to find the main road before it gets completely dark. The desert gets freezing at night."

"The tracks go south," Vivi said, looking at the stone ridges. "The capital is south. If we follow the cleft, it might lead us out of the loose sand area onto the old rock plateau. It's safer than walking over the shifting dunes in the dark."

They followed the deep grooves down into the stone cleft. The walls here were made of dark red rock that looked like it had been burnt by a fire a long time ago. It was cooler inside the cleft, the high stone blocking the direct heat of the sun, but it was very narrow, barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side.

Chopper stayed close to Leo, his small hoofs making a soft *patter-patter* sound on the hard stone floor. "Leo... do you think there are any doctors in the capital? Real ones? Like Doctor Kureha?"

"There used to be," Leo said, thinking about the story. "The king had twenty great doctors who looked after everyone. But Wapol took them all when he ran away, and Crocodile's men have been hiding the medicine in the port towns. Once we fix the country, they'll come back."

"I want to see their books," Chopper said, his voice going bright for a second. "Doctor Kureha had forty books about the liver sickness, but she wouldn't let me read the ones with the leather covers because she said I'd drop juice on them."

Suddenly, a loud *skrrrch* sound echoed from the front of the tunnel.

Luffy had stopped walking. He was looking at a massive wooden gate that blocked the entire cleft ahead of them. The gate was made of old ship timbers, bolted together with thick iron bars, and there was a small iron slot in the middle at eye level.

"Who's there?" a voice called out from the other side of the slot. It was a clipped, tired voice, sounding like a man who had been reading tax forms for thirty years in a dark cellar. "This is private property. The oasis is closed by order of the district manager. Go away."

"We're the Straw Hat pirates!" Luffy shouted, his face pressed right against the iron slot. "Open the big door! We want the crab!"

There was a long silence from the other side. A small piece of paper slid through the slot, falling into the sand at Luffy's feet. It was an official-looking form with a big purple stamp in the middle.

"Fill out form 4B," the tired voice said. "Three copies. State your business, your ship registration number, and your total weight in gold. Then wait forty-eight hours for the review process. If you don't have a pen, you can leave."

"What is this?" Nami asked, picking up the paper and looking at it with her eyes wide. "A tax form? In the middle of the desert?!"

"The manager doesn't like visitors," the voice said. It sounded like the man was half-listening, the sound of papers rustling coming through the iron bars. "Especially not dirty ones. Go back to the coast. The water here belongs to Baroque Works."

"Baroque Works?!" Vivi stepped forward, her face full of anger. "This is royal land! My father gave this oasis to the people of Erumalu ten years ago! Who is your manager?!"

"Mr. 3," the voice said, followed by a long yawn. "Now go away. I have forty more forms to stamp before dinner, and the ink is getting dry in this heat."

Leo looked at the big wooden gate. It didn't look like they could break it easily without a big explosion, but Luffy was already pulling his arms back, his skin making that tight, rubbery sound.

"Gum-Gum..." Luffy grinned, his teeth white in the dim light of the cleft. "BULLET!"

His fist shot forward like a stone out of a cannon, hitting the middle of the ship timbers with a giant *BANG* that shattered the entire center section of the gate into a thousand little wooden splinters. The iron bars bent out like wire, and the man on the other side let out a sharp, bureaucratic scream as he went flying backward into a big pile of empty cardboard boxes.

"The gate..." Chopper gasped, his hat falling off again. "He didn't fill out the form at all!"

"He never does," Leo smiled, walking through the broken wood. "Come on. Let's see what Mr. 3 left behind in this cellar."

Behind the gate was a massive underground cavern, lit up by dozens of small yellow oil lamps hanging from the stone roof. In the middle of the room was a large, circular pool of clear blue water.....the hidden spring of the old oasis. But the water wasn't going into the fields outside. It was being pumped into large iron tanks by a big steam engine that smelled like burnt grease and coal smoke.

Standing next to the pump was a short man with a very neat mustache and an long white coat. He was holding a large iron stamp in one hand and a clipboard in the other. He looked completely shocked, his mouth open so wide his little round glasses were sliding off his nose.

"My gate!" the man, Miller, shouted, his tired voice turning into a high squeak. "That gate cost forty thousand berries to haul from the coast! You can't just break it! That's property damage! It's against the company rules!"

"We don't care about your rules, mustache," Zoro said, walking into the room with his hand resting on his sword hilt. He looked at the big iron water tanks. "Is that the water for the towns below?"

"This is premium company asset water!" Miller said, backing up against the steam pump. "Mr. 3 needs it for his wax gardens in Rainbase! If you touch those valves, I'll... I'll file a formal complaint with the high office! You'll be blacklisted from every store in the Grand Line!"

"Let him file it," Nami said, her eyes fixing on a small wooden chest that sat on the table behind the clipboard. It had a gold lock on it. "Leo, help me get that chest. If he's the company manager here, he's probably got the money they stole from the local farmers."

"No! Not the treasury box!" Miller wailed, trying to cover the chest with his body, but Luffy just reached out his long arm, grabbed the man by his white coat collar, and tossed him gently into a pile of wet burlap sacks near the pool.

"The water looks nice," Luffy said, walking over to the edge of the blue pool. He didn't jump in because he remembered his big splash in the river, but he knelt down and stuck his whole face into the water, drinking like a horse until his stomach looked like a giant water balloon again. "Mmm! It's cold! It's way better than the muddy river!"

Chopper ran over to the iron pump, looking at the big valves with his small hoofs touching the pipes. "The water is supposed to go to the trees outside, Leo. Look at the small copper pipes at the bottom. They're all blocked with grey wax."

"Mr. 3's power," Leo said, walking over and kicking one of the wax plugs. It was hard as rock, but it felt greasy under his boot. He hit it twice more until it cracked, a stream of clear water instantly shooting out and spraying the dry stone floor. "Zoro, cut the main lines over there. Let the water go back into the valley."

Zoro didn't need to be told twice. He swung his black blade once, a clean, fast circle that sliced right through the three big wax blocks blocking the lower channels. *SWISH.* The water let out a loud, roaring sound as it flooded into the dry stone ditches, heading out of the cave toward the empty oasis town outside.

"You're ruined!" Miller cried from his burlap sacks, his clipboard completely bent in half. "Mr. 3 will turn you all into candles for this! He'll melt your skin off!"

"Let him try," Luffy said, wiping his wet mouth with his sleeve. He looked completely happy now, his stomach round and full of good spring water. "Hey! Nami! Did you find any gold in the box?"

"Just three thousand berries and a bunch of weird keys," Nami said, tossing the empty wooden chest into the water pool with a splash. She held up a small brass key with a tag that said *CAMEL BARN*. "But I found something better. Vivi, where's the back door to this place?"

"Behind the iron tanks," Vivi said, her face bright as she heard the water roaring through the ditches outside. "The old royal stable is right on the upper ledge."

They left the cavern through the back tunnel, leaving the bureaucrat Miller to clean up his broken boxes and his ruined forms.

When they came out onto the upper ledge, the sun was just starting to drop behind the distant red mountains, casting long, purple shadows over the sand dunes. And there, inside a small stone corral that had been hidden by the wax walls, were three massive desert camels, each one twice as big as Karoo, with long brown fur and thick, leather saddles already strapped to their humps.

"Camels!" Chopper yelled, running over to the wooden fence. He looked up at the nearest animal, which was currently chewing on a piece of dry straw, its big brown eyes looking very sleepy and calm. "They look so peaceful! They don't have any teeth at all!"

"They bite if you touch their ears," Vivi smiled, climbing up onto the fence to pat the first camel's nose. "This one is Matsu. He used to belong to my father's guard captain. He knows the way to Yuba by heart."

"I want the big one!" Luffy shouted, jumping straight onto the back of the largest camel without even using the stirrups. The camel looked completely surprised, its long neck twisting around to look at Luffy with a very annoyed expression, but Luffy just hit it on the hump with his straw hat. "Giddy up, camel! Let's go to the meat city!"

The camel didn't move. It just let out a loud, wet spit that hit Luffy right in the middle of his forehead. *Splat.*

"Gross!" Luffy yelled, wiping his face. "This camel is mean!"

Zoro climbed onto the second camel, his swords clicking against the leather saddle horn. He looked down at Leo, who was currently helping Nami and Chopper onto the third one. "We're moving now? It's getting dark."

"The sand is cooler at night," Leo said, climbing up behind Nami. He checked his boot strap one last time. No clicks. It was holding together fine. He looked out over the wide, dark plain where the red mountains were turning black against the stars. "We can reach Yuba by midnight if the camels don't stop to spit again."

The three giant animals moved out of the stable yard, their big, soft pads making no sound at all as they hit the cool sand of the desert trail. The water was still roaring through the stone ditches below them, turning the dry yellow sand into dark, wet mud that smelled like life. The winter island was far away now, and the heart of Alabasta was waiting just over the next ridge.

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