Fire Girl, Forest Boy

by Chloe Daykin

  A necklace I hadn’t seen for two years from the neck of someone I’ll never see again.

  Who doesn’t exist. Not any more.

  That parcel meant the time for adventure is now.

  Maya

  Since we got here Dad’s been jumping at every leaf twitch, every monkey screech. Looking behind him like there’s a flesh-eating plant on his trail, like he was expecting something else. Someone?

  Dad who isn’t scared of anything.

  Now I get it.

  It was them. Charles and Rosa. They sent the letter. And they’ve got him.

  Why?

  I’ve got no idea.

  But there’s no way they’re going to get me too.

  My feet slip on the mud outside the lodge door. It rained last night. Heavy, like fistball drops smashing on to the roof. Channels are cut into the earth like canyon cracks running down to the river.

  Charles grabs my arm and tries to pull me along.

  I pull it back. ‘I can walk by myself!’

  CLICK. My brain snaps the fury in his face when I say it.

  Rosa tries to steer my waist. ‘Let’s go.’

  I dodge her hand like earwig pincers.

  My eyes are blurry, the jungle heat is making me sweat.

  ‘Drink this.’ She passes me a bottle of water. It’s frosty cold.

  No way. What if they’ve drugged it?

  I hold Dad’s note in my hand and step out over the cracks and up on to the walkway. A Jesus lizard ducks under a rock, a bushbaby scampers up a branch.

  And when we reach the end I see the canoe bobbing on the jetty at the bottom of the steps with bottle-top lids for non-slip treads.

  I pull back.

  Charles tries to grab me but I twist my elbow out of his hand and ram it into his throat. I swipe my pack out of Rosa’s arms. Charles snatches the pack strap.

  I pull.

  He pulls back and his frog eyes bulge.

  Two red macaws shoot out of the trees and scream.

  I spit in his eye and kick him in the balls and jump off the walkway, into the arms of nature.

  And run.

  Raul

  We set off at 4 a.m. in a van with the team and rattle along. The guys shake hands and slap each other on the back. I like how happy Dad looks when he sees them all. We hook up with the walkers out of town. Three Australians, two Americans, one French. They’re nice.

  I walk with the Australians at the back, up over the Dead Woman’s Pass and down into the Pacaymayo Valley. They take a lot of photos – one they think’s of a puma that’s actually a dog and we laugh a lot. I make the most of their company. Tomorrow I’ll be on my own.

  We break to make camp. Ropes and canvas slide through the crew’s and my hands as we pull the hikers’ tents tight, looping the ropes through the pegs and stamping them into the ground against the wind. Once one lifted clean off the mountain with the sleeper still inside it. Some people say it was the wind. Others say it was the Abu, the spirit of the mountain, full of rage and throwing the tourist off the cliff.

  For what?

  Disrespect. The guy had left beer cans piled up by the river.

  People don’t disrespect Pachamama round here. Pachamama is Mother Nature – she’s the earth and everything in it. Disrespect that and you disrespect yourself.

  They found him downstream stuck to a rock before the falls. I guess she wanted to teach him a lesson.

  They fished him out like a bag of trash. Live trash.

  Dad lights the gas ring in the chef’s tent and cooks up plates of lomo saltado – beef with onions and peppers – that sizzles and makes the tent smell like hanan pacha, Inca heaven.

  All the walkers come in, their plates held high.

  Simone from America stops crying on the phone to her boyfriend and Anton, the French guy, sniffs the air and grins.

  The crew take theirs and slap Dad on the back.

  Dad smiles. He takes pride in his food. Mami calls him manos magicas – magic hands – ’cos he puts sparkle into whatever he makes. Which is always something. Even though all we seem to live on back home some days is air. I’d like to see how all those fancy city chefs cope on a two-ring burner on the side of a mountain.

  The team have made a fire and we sit round it and fill our faces full of rice.

  ‘Hey, Raul,’ the guide next to me says.

  He stares into my face.

  ‘What?’ I don’t look at him.

  He takes my chin in his hand, like he can see what’s inside me. Like he can read my thoughts. I feel the parcel Aiko gave me in my pocket like it’s red-hot. And glowing. I didn’t show it to my dad. I daren’t. Though it’d mean as much to him as it does to me. I can’t believe the water brought it all this way. All the way up the Amazon, sucked up into the mountain and spat out into the water channel. Into our town. One thousand and sixty kilometres. Running through the water like a dog that got lost on moving day and ran to find its family in their new home.

  Sometimes the past comes to haunt you.

  I push the guide off.

  ‘What’s up?’ Dad hands out plates of chocolate bananas and slaps my knee.

  ‘Nothing.’ I turn away.

  The guide pours some beer for Pachamama into the earth, takes a sip and passes the bottle back to Dad and grins. ‘Keep an eye on that one,’ he says.

  Dad looks worried.

  I look down at my plate. I never know how much Dad knows about how I feel since we left. We talk about stuff. But mainly we say a lot with silence.

  Dad sips the beer, passes it on and puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘Life leads in many directions,’ he says. ‘Sometimes you have to pull the string of your heart and go.’

  I can’t look him in the eye. He knows. How does he know?

  Sometimes you have to pull the string of your heart and go.

  He’s right. It’s not a choice. Not any more.

  My family knows all about going and leaving. Some things you can leave behind, like places. Some things you carry all your life.

  Dad left the cloud forest when my sister Alessa died. We all did.

  The way she died has never left my father.

  Or me.

  The guilt grows in my stomach like a sponge.

  *

  I think of the heat of Dad’s hand on my shoulder like he’s still there, when I’m standing, pack on my back in the sunrise next morning. Sun on my face, ice wind in my hair. I look back at the camp. Asleep in the mist. I look down at the moon on Rick’s watch and hold Alessa’s necklace in my hand.

  5 a.m.

  It’s time to go.

  Maya

  I run into the jungle, a whole world of up – trees way over my head, up into the clouds. My feet slip as I run in my knee-length lodge boots. My hair flops in my face. I flick it back and follow the trail. It’s safer and there’s space to run. Snakes and beasts avoid it.

  I put my arm round a rubber trunk and skid round the corner. I run with fear, I run with speed, I run with sweat and a bigger trust in nature and tarantulas and whatever they might throw at me than two liars I don’t even know, touching my stuff and trying to shove me into a boat.

  I hear them. Behind. Feet smushing through the mud.

  But I’m fast. Like a cheetah.

  Like a fiery Glaswegian midge screaming it down the trail.

  The path splits, I go left.

  Splits again. I go right.

  But I am not fast enough. Charles is on my tail. My legs are shorter than his.

  But I do have a brain.

  I jump over a branch, skid past a woven-headed mushroom and look up.

  Up.

  CLICK, creepers.

  CLICK, a walking palm tree with legs like stilts.

  CLICK, the wide cracked roots of a ficus tree that reach into the earth like octopus tentacles sucking up soil.

  I jump at the cracks, jam my foot into a hold, pull my knee high and slide my body up the trunk.

  Up and up.

&n
bsp; I pull against the wood in a wide hug. A two-toed sloth droops off a branch two body lengths up. It closes its black moon eyes and smiles. I smile back and close mine too and turn my face into the tree.

  And pretend I am one.

  I am a tree.

  I am a tree.

  I am a …

  Raul

  I take out my phone and look at the text from Matias.

  Tonight, he says. It has to be tonight.

  Yeah tonight – I type and hit send.

  People here might share their houses with chickens, but everyone has phones. Communication is important. People are the most important thing. I remember when I first got mine. When Uncle Carlos brought one to the forest and we thought it was magic.

  I walk down over the pass, past the valley of orchids and over rock-desert dust and on to the road.

  Plucked out of nature on to the man-made tarmac.

  I hold up a hand to wave goodbye to the green and think of my dad rubbing his eyes and waking up to an empty space where I used to be. Cooking breakfast for the crew. I try to catch his thought wave on mine.

  I’ll be back. I promise.

  I left a note. He’ll know why I’m doing this anyway, right?

  In his heart I know he knows.

  I make a pile of rocks by the side of the road. One big one for the base, then smaller and smaller and smaller ones on top and shut my eyes. This is what we do to make wishes here. The land’s alive with rock piles and hopes. We use them to connect to Mother Earth.

  Matias is in the cloud forest. Miles away. There’s no way I’ll make it on foot.

  ‘Bring me a car,’ I whisper and I hope she’s listening.

  I wish it into the rocks.

  ‘Please bring me a car.’

  Maybe I was lucky enough to hit one of Mother Earth’s entrails. ’Cos when I open my eyes I see a black Toyota rolling over the smooth tarmac ribbon that is the road. Dints in both wings. Rust on the bonnet. Heading off into the bright blue turquoise that is the sky.

  Going my way.

  I stick my arm out and do my best ‘I am not an axe murderer’ face. As the car gets closer I look into the faces in the front.

  A woman, sunglasses, long fingernails, pink T-shirt is driving.

  Another woman, long hair, curly, big smile is sitting alongside.

  They look like they are singing. They don’t look like axe murderers either.

  The car slows, the brakes squeal and they stop. They look at each other and their eyes turn into crescent moons. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Iquitos,’ I say.

  They laugh. Iquitos is hundreds of miles from here. ‘Are you crazy?’ The passenger leans closer, like I’m a chicken she’s inspecting.

  ‘Get in,’ the driver nods. ‘Let’s do it!’ I thank her and my lucky stone stack, and climb in before they can change their minds.

  Maya

  I crawl along a branch so I can hang, and look down. Charles runs past below.

  I breathe out.

  ‘Wait!’ Rosa runs behind him but stops and puts her arms out.

  Charles runs back. ‘This is where the prints stop,’ she says and points at the ground.

  Her forehead is dripping with sweat.

  My hands are too. I start to slip and grip harder. It makes me sweat more.

  The sloth hangs easily on the next branch up, its nails curved over the branches. Its arms free and easy.

  Be a sloth, I think. Be a sloth. I try to hang loose and free.

  They start to search around, like I might be behind a bush. A bush? Nothing here grows that low.

  They start to look up.

  UP.

  I want to chuck rocks at their heads, but all I have is leaves.

  The buzz of a million invisible winged things sings in my ears. A giant beetle crawls over my leg.

  I think, If they come for me I’ll bite them.

  The sun finds a chink in the canopy to cut through. It shines on my face. And glows through my hair, like someone stroking my head.

  I think about what our guide said when we first got here. ‘Respect the forest and the forest respects you,’ he said. The sloth smiles. I relax.

  And down below someone screams.

  Raul

  Iquitos is the city in the jungle. The furry piece of mould in a cracked piece of cheese. It isn’t home, but it’s near it. It’s the first step.

  The only way in or out is by plane. Or river.

  You can’t drive there. The rainforest is holding the roads off. So far. Papi Rosales says if you chopped into the forest it’d grow back twice as thick and twice as strong behind your back. And wrap its vines round your neck to say its thanks.

  That or the Chullachaki will get you.

  Papi Rosales is the best thing about our town. I first met him when I was sitting against the wall, flicking grit and feeling sad with nothing else to do. He sat next to me and said, ‘There are two cats swimming across a river. One-two-three cat and un-deux-trois cat. Which one won?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘One-two-three cat,’ he said. ‘Un-deux-trios quatre cinq (cat sank).’

  I smiled and he smiled too, and we were friends after that. He lives three streets down. The house with the twisted wooden door and green vines that peek out over the edges. We used to sit in the garden, listening to the water running down through the town, out the mountain. Channelled by the Incas.

  Sometimes when you live by something that’s always running, it makes you realise how much you’re standing still.

  We used to sit by lanterns and I would listen to his stories in the dark, while my mother washed dishes at Koricancha and my father cooked at the Hearts café. And they both came home tired and slept while I went to school.

  He used to talk about saltwater dolphins that carried women off to their underwater cities. And Chullachaki. The guardian of the forest with one backwards foot who can take on any form and lure you into the jungle so deep you can’t find your way back.

  I wonder where Chullachaki was when Alessa, my sister, needed him.

  We used to live downriver from Iquitos. Half a day’s travel by canoe.

  Before Alessa died and we had to move.

  Everyone moved.

  Everyone except Matias. Who just plain refused.

  We haven’t seen each other in two years.

  *

  The driver turns the radio up higher and the music bounces off the car windows as we bounce over a rock in the road. I take Aiko’s parcel out of my pocket to stop it bouncing on to the floor.

  She smiles. ‘I’m Diane.’

  ‘And Elena.’ The other girl turns.

  ‘Raul,’ I say and look at the floor, hoping that’s all they’ll ask.

  ‘Where is your father?’ Elena says.

  ‘Working.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘Same.’

  They talk to each other about their mothers and don’t expect any input from me, which is a relief. ‘I dreamt a bird dropped a stone into my hand last night,’ Diane says and taps the wheel.

  I clutch the parcel.

  ‘A condor?’ Her friend raises an eyebrow.

  ‘A vulture,’ she says and I meet her eyes in the mirror.

  Vultures are birds of death. I grip the parcel.

  ‘I think that stone was you,’ she says to me.

  I look away. I wonder if I have the smell of death about me.

  ‘I’ll take you to the airport in Aguas Calientes,’ she nods.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say and grip the seat with my other hand.

  ‘That’s miles out,’ Elena grins and turns the radio up higher. ‘Your heart’s bigger than your head,’ she says. ‘Your heart’s bigger than a Big Mac and fries.’

  They both grin, and the music shimmies and the sun shines off Diane’s dark shiny hair through the window.

  *

  We drive to Aguas Calientes, the town of hot springs. It’s the nearest place with an airport.

/>   Diane and Elena talk about their lives, their boyfriends, and I try not to listen.

  We wind up the pass and the road rubbernecks on itself. As we snap round a corner we see a rent-a-van fallen off the road, drifting down the mountain on the scree on its side. Diane crosses herself and sucks in a breath.

  The passengers stand in the middle of nowhere, talking on their phones.

  Diane brakes and she yells out the window. ‘You want a hand?’

  ‘It’s OK.’ A man in orange flip-flops waves at us. ‘My uncle’s coming.’

  Three vultures circle.

  ‘You sure?’ Diane squints.

  ‘Sure, sure,’ the man yells.

  The van slides. And I think it’s funny how life’s like that. It can just flip you over like a pancake when you’re not expecting it.

  ‘That happens all the time here.’ Diane has sad eyes. ‘That could be us.’

  ‘But it isn’t.’ Elena spreads her fingers and her bracelets jingle. We drive on. A bright song comes on and the music shakes the darkness off. Elena claps her hands and sings and shimmies.

  Diane hides her smile behind her hand. ‘Where are you from?’ she asks me.

  ‘Ollantaytambo.’

  Diane swerves to avoid a double-loaded onion truck swinging wide around the corner. We’re already a long way from Ollantaytambo.

  *

  When we get to the airport Diane gets out. It’s funny how you can feel like friends with someone you’ve only known for two hours. She pats my arm and smiles.

  I thank her and get my Coke can of cash out. Three hundred sols – that’s ninety dollars. I know it from the walkers who tip in dollars. Diane waves the money away. ‘My grandpapi lives in Ollantaytambo,’ she says and hands me my bag.

  Elena honks the horn and she gets in.

  We wave and pull faces as they drive off.

  And I enter the big glass sliding doors swallowing air that’s like the sols in my pocket.

  Light.

  Fresh.

  Crispy.

  And not enough to fly on.

  Maya