The Secret Path

by Karen Swan

  The fabric clung in patches to her sticky skin, hardly appealing when the shirt was already a day old. Finally, she looked up with defiant nonchalance, to find his dark hair was wet and slicked back like an otter’s; she wasn’t the only one who’d cleaned up. Unable to stop it, an image of how he used to look coming out of the shower, a towel around his hips, flashed through her mind.

  Without a word, he took the now gleaming cups and pan over to his rucksack and began carefully repacking everything. They dismantled their tarps and hammocks, wound the rope back in. He collected the red twine and made sure the fire was completely out. Tara was struggling to fold her hammock down to a small packable size.

  ‘Let me.’ He held out a hand.

  ‘No, it’s fine, I can do it,’ she replied, snatching it away from him.

  ‘I know you can. But it’s just a question of how quickly you want to get this done.’ He stared at her evenly and after a moment’s reluctance she handed it over, watching with intense irritation as he got it down to the size of a pillowcase again.

  ‘Okay then,’ he said several minutes later, with what she thought sounded like a note of weariness. ‘Ready?’

  Their backpacks were on and apart from a few oddly striped leaves, there remained no sign they’d ever been here.

  ‘Yes.’ The sooner they did this, the sooner they could get out of here. Back to Rory and the land of antibiotics.

  She kept her eyes on his footprints as he walked, as determined as yesterday to keep pace with him and not to moan about the rubbing on her heel that started up almost immediately. Her boots might have been broken in – just not to her feet.

  Within twenty minutes, their bathing efforts were undone, sweat rolling in rivulets down their skin and both were breathless as the humidity rose. She had no idea of the time; she had been without a phone for two days now but, strangely, she was increasingly less in need of a clock. What did it matter if it was six o’clock or nine? The rules were simple – if the sun was up, they could walk and when it set, they stopped before they were pitched into another black, chattering jungle night.

  Still they walked. She listened to the animals’ conversations and tried to see them in the branches, she heard their songs rise with the sap, she noticed how the early sparkling sunlight sent golden shafts through the trees down to the forest floor, so that it was like walking through the place where rainbows end. The colours were intense – ten thousand shades of green, leaves that had felt blackish and mulchy in the rain yesterday now waxy and bright. The ground was firm underfoot again, shadows trembled with sharp edges and, in spite of her tiredness and resentment and developing blisters, she became aware of a strong feeling of gratitude, a recognition that life was beautiful.

  It was even getting hard to keep hating him. Her gaze kept rising to him – obviously, he was her guide – but she saw the energy in his movements, his connection with this place. She wondered how many times he had walked this trail, watching as his hand would shoot out occasionally to brush against a particular plant, his fingers sliding over the leaves or flowers, looking up inquisitively beneath the canopies of particular trees. He seemed to see stories within the habitat, he could ‘read’ what he saw and understand the tiny, unseen lives that were being lived there in fragile balance. He moved with such self-assurance that she was able to relax; she didn’t need to think or orienteer. She just walked and followed. Mile after mile. One foot after the other. Up the side of a mountain, right to the very top and back down the other side.

  After several hours, Alex stopped and pointed. ‘Over there.’

  She followed the line of his finger, looking for something distinctive, but the land kept rolling away from them in grassy peaks, anonymous and endless.

  ‘Okay,’ she said tiredly, a trace of sarcasm lining the words. What was she supposed to be seeing exactly? ‘If you say so.’

  He seemed irritated by her response. ‘I do say so.’

  She arched an eyebrow, surprised but also somehow pleased to have got under his skin. ‘Okay. What do you want? A round of applause?’ He had about as much chance of that as forgiveness.

  She saw the irritation bloom into anger behind his eyes. He resumed trekking again but his speed immediately began to feel punishing as he walked at a faster and faster rate as they went downhill. She half expected him to break into a jog and just openly run the rest of the way, but she refused to ask him to slow down. Was he wanting her to chase him? Was he trying to provoke her into asking him to stay back with her? To help her? She wouldn’t do it, she wouldn’t play the helpless little woman and let him be the hero in this. She simply kept up, kept on, matching him stride for stride, mile after mile, a stubborn silence jostling between them like a storm cloud as they headed down the valley.

  She could hear a river close by – the rushing sounds growing louder; they were seemingly heading towards it – and she allowed herself to feel some relief as he finally began to slow down. They would stop now, have some lunch and rest for a while. Thanks to their silent battle, they had both pushed hard and must have covered some good ground. But her feet were killing her and she was exhausted; he’d been right – one banana had not been enough for her breakfast.

  They stepped out of the trees, blinking several times as the open sky and bright light rushed at them. This part of the river was a different beast to the section they had camped by last night, or perhaps it was an entirely different river altogether? Ten times as wide and seemingly three times as deep, the water looked silken and elastic, a dark greenish-brown; it slunk heavily like an eel. She swallowed at the sight of it. Now this was crocodile country.

  Downstream, she saw a deer drinking at the water’s edge. Careful, she thought, seeing its ears twitch and then its head lift as their scent carried over on the breeze; in the next moment, it had gone.

  The water was running clear, stretching out of sight. She glanced over at Alex, waiting for his cue for their next step. Clearly crossing here wasn’t an option and she didn’t much like the prospect of lunching beside these waters either, not with the natives lurking in places she couldn’t see.

  But, to her disappointment, it seemingly wasn’t food that was on Alex’s mind. He appeared to be looking for something. Standing on the river’s shore, he had turned his back to the water and was peering back along the banks with a look of concentration.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ she asked, turning back too.

  ‘I’m certain I left it here,’ he muttered.

  ‘Left what?’

  His eyes narrowed, his voice distracted. ‘. . . A boat. I traded it with the Cabécar tribe about a year back.’

  Tribes. Trades. These were insights into his life now. ‘What did they trade it for?’

  ‘Some radios. They’re mountain people, pretty remote, but even they want to be a bit more connected – especially for after the handover.’

  Tara frowned. Why did they need more contactability after then?

  ‘It’s a good boat,’ he mumbled. ‘Especially useful for me to have some way of getting about that doesn’t involve walking a hundred miles. There’s a lot of gorges in this stretch; it’s hard going.’

  ‘So you come here a lot, then?’ It was a sardonic take on the age-old question but he missed her sarcasm. His eyes were still on the banks.

  ‘Reasonably often,’ he said distractedly, after a pause. ‘There’s a young female jaguar that we’ve been tracking and it quite often crosses around here.’

  A jaguar? Tara looked around them again nervously but there was an ominous stillness to the trees. Only the river rushed past, in a hurry.

  ‘Well, could someone have taken it?’ she asked as he began walking along the shore, leaning into the bushes. He pulled out and straightened up again, unaware a leaf had become caught in his hair. Her gaze went to it but she resisted the urge to pull it free.

  ‘It’s possible,’ he mumbled reluctantly, as if even to talk was a waste of precious energy. ‘But unlikely. We’re pretty
deep in the jungle here and I pushed it right into the bushes so it couldn’t be seen. Clearly I pushed it too damn far in.’ He squinted as he looked up at the horizon and did something with his hands, as though pinpointing markers. ‘. . . I was certain it was in the crease . . . opposite the . . .’ he muttered to himself.

  Tara looked to the opposite bank, but saw only trees. Trees, trees, more trees.

  ‘Ah!’

  Suddenly he moved, walking with purpose towards a spot a hundred yards downstream. A tree was hanging slightly forward of all the others, one of its roots exposed from the riverbank like a lover’s knot. Alex ducked as he reached it, pushing back the foliage and seconds later giving a shout of victory. He seemed very pleased to have found it and it occurred to her the rest of the journey must be gruelling if he was looking for shortcuts. She watched as he reached up and began heaving and pulling, slowly bringing out the prow of a very long and narrow wooden canoe.

  ‘Feel free to help!’ he called over to her sarcastically.

  ‘Ugh.’ She ran over and together they began dragging it off the bank, down towards the water. It was incredibly heavy and appeared to have been dug out from the trunk of a single tree; she could see the knife markings against the grain, a ladder of single seats carved across the width. It was crude and naive, but also beautiful. Sculptural, almost.

  The canoe wobbled precariously as the near end was freed from the bank and nosed into the water. It reminded Tara of those old-fashioned wooden skis – so much longer and narrower than the modern designs; she didn’t know how anyone used them without breaking their legs.

  After much heaving and ho-ing, they pulled the far end free too and it landed heavily in the water with a splash. Alex pushed it fully away from the bank as the canoe began to float. ‘Climb in,’ he said, unbuckling his backpack and letting it slide off his shoulders, falling into the hollow of the boat behind him. ‘I’ll grab the oars.’

  Carefully, wanting to get in before the water went above her boots – she didn’t want wet feet again after yesterday’s trainers debacle – she grabbed both sides of the narrow boat to try to stabilize it, and climbed in. It rocked alarmingly and she felt nervous; she was still wearing her backpack and feeling cumbersome and off-balance. She kneeled awkwardly, waiting for the boat to stop lurching, then straightened up, still on her knees, and quickly unbuckled the backpack. It was immediate relief, again, to get the weight off her shoulders, and the boat pitched and rolled as it fell heavily into the hollow behind her. Gripping both sides again, she turned, twisting herself onto the seat—

  ‘Alex!’ Her voice was a cry and he turned from where he was standing in a split stance, reaching up the riverbank into the undergrowth. He had one oar by his legs and was holding the end of the other, a vine seemingly having wrapped itself around it. She saw his expression change, his face instantly pale and his mouth fall into a perfect ‘o’ as he took in the sight of her – already heading towards the middle of the channel and drifting quickly away.

  ‘Tara!’ He instinctively dropped the oar and ran into the water up to his thighs, but the river was thirty metres wide at least. He could never wade out to her in time.

  ‘Alex no! Get back! Get out of the water!’ she cried, trying to stop him from following. The water was murky and thick – anything could be below the surface. ‘The oars! I need the oars!’

  They would be long enough to bridge the gap between them, something for her to grab at so he could pull her in again. He turned and ran back to the shore again but she was drifting quickly, ever further from reach and within seconds she was too far for the oars – even tied end to end – to reach. It was already too late. She was ten metres away, now twenty, the canoe gliding through the fast-flowing silky water like a cut reed. It had been made too well, by people who knew too much.

  Alex was standing in frozen horror, up to his knees, knowing all of this. ‘Twig! Get out of there! Paddle back! Use your arms! Paddle!’

  She leaned over the edge and stared down into the unseeable depths, but the sides of the canoe were low and even with just her transfer of weight, water slipped over easily, quickly, soaking her thighs and making her cry out.

  ‘I can’t!’ she yelled. ‘I’ll capsize!’

  She watched as Alex’s mouth opened but no words came out. He didn’t know what to say, how to help her – because there was no way to help her. For once, he couldn’t do anything. ‘. . . Tara!’

  She scanned the hollow of the boat for something she could use – something to throw over the back to act as a drag and slow her rapid progress – but there was nothing except a half-coconut ladle that would barely dole out soup. She thought fast about what they’d packed in their rucksacks, but it was just camping stuff – sleeping and cooking equipment.

  She gave a whimper of terror, feeling her fear grow in waves. There was nothing they could do. Not her. Not him. Her grip tightened on the wooden hull as she looked back. Alex was already a diminishing figure, growing smaller by the second as the canoe slipped into the pleated central channel, as the river sped through the mountain pass. He was sprinting along the riverbank now, his momentary shock thrown off for action. The look on his face was no longer visible, but his shouts carried over, betraying his fear. She heard her name carry into the sky, up with the birds, pretty and useless.

  She looked ahead again. The river – broad and smooth – stretched ahead like a silver mirror, deceptively benign, but she felt the incredible power of the current beneath the boat, propelling her along. The sun was still shining but the sky had grown hazy during their morning trek, and in the next moment, a cloud took the light away again, like the closing snap of a fan. She felt the shadows slacken upon her face, a cold chill rippling over her sweaty skin.

  She glanced back. Alex was still running, his arms and legs like pistons, his shouts still carrying to her, but he was falling further and further behind. There was no way he could keep pace with her. The boat was now settled into the centre seam of the water and sailing along like a car on rails, smooth, fast and unimpeded.

  She was alone. He was calling her but she couldn’t hear even her own name anymore and she had to twist now to see him – and to twist meant rocking the boat. She just wanted to be still, as still and small and light as she could possibly be. She wanted to close her eyes and pretend this wasn’t really happening. She wanted to curl up in the hollow of the canoe and just lie there till somehow, safety came.

  The canoe rocked gently in the slipstream. There was nothing she could do. She was at the mercy of a river that was vast, fast-flowing and crocodile-infested. It stretched out peaceably, calm and deceptively tranquil, and had she been on the riverbank – bathing, washing up, filling buckets – she might have said it was beautiful. Instead, she warily watched the banks for company as she was led downriver, eyes searching for a ripple on the water’s surface, bubbles popping, footprints in the muddy banks. But she was no expert – she didn’t know the warning signs of what to look for, the specific areas these river predators might choose to lie in wait.

  Alex was out of sight now. She looked back as best she dared, but even if he could have kept up with her, he couldn’t have kept his line running along the water’s edge. The landscape had begun to change as the miles slipped past, the stony shore now submerged as the river abutted the banks, the shallow tree-topped embankment growing ever taller, mud swapped for rocks. He would have been forced back into the trees, losing sight of the river’s edge.

  She had no idea how far she had travelled already. Two miles? Three? More? It was impossible to track. She saw Alex’s pack lying in the front of the boat and realized what that meant for him too – with no supplies, he was as defenceless as her. He would have nowhere to sleep, no food—

  Then she remembered. The small shovel he had used for digging the toilet! Could that work? As a paddle? Or even just as a brake? Could it slow her enough to allow her to steer her way back to the shallows?

  She crawled forward on her hands and
knees towards the pack. There were two bench seats between her and it, and every time she scaled a seat, the canoe rocked precariously, the waterline lapping the edges. Her nerve was failing her, her fear mounting as the boat continued to slice through the water, seemingly frictionless and hydrodynamic.

  With one seat between her and the pack, she kneeled on the bottom of the boat and reached over for it, but the bag was heavy – twenty kilos at least. She heaved and strained as hard as she could, but she couldn’t kneel on an unstable base and lift that weight above her head. She would need to get in beside it to unfasten the clips.

  With a deep breath, she steeled herself to climb over the last seat, keeping her body low as she swung one leg over. Water slopped over the sides from the jerky movement and she watched it deepen the growing puddle along the base. Carefully, scarcely daring to breathe, she sat astride the bench and leaned down to unfasten the bag, sliding her arm down the back of it. Her hand groped for the narrow handle amidst the kit but everything felt industrial and unfamiliar . . . Was that it? Her fingers closed around a hard stem. She glanced up distractedly and in the corner of her eye, caught sight of something. Her head jerked up as she focused – disturbances to the water’s surface were breaking up the serene banner of silk. The river was beginning to change, to shift, the cool smooth waters beginning to gurgle and chatter ahead. She peered into the distance and made out some rocks beginning to protrude again, as they had by the campsite. That meant it was becoming shallower – but it also meant obstacles, things to hit.

  She tugged at the shovel – if that was indeed what it was – but the hammocks and tarps were tightly wedged in and it wouldn’t budge, the spade seemingly caught against the saucepan at the bottom. From her newly elevated position on the bench, she started seeing the hazards that had been hidden as she kneeled in the hull – the tree branches submerged just below the surface, detritus that had been swept downstream in the torrents now catching on the riverbed. Just ahead, the tip of a rock jutted from the water almost imperceptibly, but it was what lay beneath that concerned her.