by David Gilman
“Now! Come on, Xavier! Get here, come on!” The wind was already carrying his voice away from the raft, swallowing it, muting his desperate command. Max jammed the pole into the riverbed, felt it bite into boulders and leaned, pushing the raft across the last stretch of troublesome water.
It was like being sucked down the drain. The narrow outlet pulled them out of danger, but the pole snapped in Max’s hands. He nearly fell, but Xavier grabbed him, and they both clung desperately to the fragile raft as it jiggled, bent and twisted. It would not be much longer before it came apart completely. It was amazing that it had got them this far.
The helicopter pilot flicked the switches and mentally urged the propellers to wind up more quickly than they were doing. The sudden surge of water that came round the bend in the river had taken him by surprise, and he knew that if he could not lift the helicopter clear of the sandbank, they would be washed away. Riga was at the open door of the chopper, standing on a skid as he gazed downriver. If Max Gordon was hiding in the shallows or beneath overhanging trees behind them, this surge of water would have caught him and whoever was with him and flushed them out. But so far there was no sign of them.
The pilot was screaming at him. Riga wasn’t wearing the headset, but he could see the man’s mouth, spittle flecking from his lips in a silent demand that they get going now! Riga nodded, gripped the fuselage and felt the pummeling downdraft of the blades as the helicopter lifted clear. Boulders, trees and mud churned below the skids. Riga felt a twinge of regret-he did not want the storm to kill Max Gordon. The boy had tried his best to survive; he wanted him to live long enough so that he, Riga, could kill him face to face. It was a far more honorable way to die.
The narrow fork that Max and Xavier had turned down was a few kilometers from where Riga had waited in the helicopter, but the noise of the wind and the growling thunder of water as it pursued them stifled any noise of the aircraft they might have heard. Low clouds rode above the crested water like a phantom surfer. The violent wave had surged past the mouth of this channel, but the force of the water now turned its violence toward the two boys.
Max felt the raft begin to break up; the vine string and palm-leaf ties were simply no match for this kind of stress and strain. There were maybe two or three sections of the raft that might hold together, and it was these that Xavier clung to, with the leather seat beneath his chest. Max unrolled the length of rope and tied it to the middle of the metal-tipped shaft. He could see a small pool of water a hundred meters ahead, created by two boulders that made the river spurt its energy around them.
“Over there!” Max shouted. “That pool.” He gripped the shaft, showing Xavier that he intended to throw it and snag the rocks. “The rope’ll be long enough to take you close to the shore. You just hold on tight! Understand? It’s the best chance you’ve got.”
Xavier nodded miserably. Max knew he would have no choice but to go into the water and survive as best he could. If he was lucky, the tongue of water would push him into the undergrowth, where they might have a chance to climb ashore, back into the shelter of the trees where they would have to start their journey again on foot. A thrashing squall of rain caught them, then swept across and past them. Like bullets hitting the surface, the squall momentarily flattened the choppy water. If they were going to have any chance of reaching the bank, now was a good time to attempt it. He stood up, knees bent, balancing on what was little more than the width of a couple of surfboards. Grabbing the end of the metal-tipped shaft, he swung it in a flat arc, low across the water. His shoulder felt as though it had torn apart, the infection from the thorns protesting against the effort. He wrapped the end of the rope round Xavier’s fist, hauled him to his feet and watched as the rope played out.
“Come on, Xavier, it’s now or never!”
“Maybe never’s better,” Xavier shouted, but there was no choice in the matter as the last pieces of wood separated beneath them. The rope tugged, Xavier jumped and within a couple of seconds, Max tumbled into the water, plunging down hard and fast.
Max broke the surface retching, frantically kicking to stay afloat. He saw Xavier, still gripping the white leather seat and rope, his mind acknowledging that the boy was in smoother water and that he had a good chance of reaching the bank. Xavier was sorted. Max had his own problems. He was being pulled away by the current. Another squall splattered down, stinging his face, forcing him to close his eyes. Part of his brain was shouting at him to look downriver. He tried to shake the water from his ears, suck air and force his eyes wide open against the spray. What was that noise? It did not sound like the wind. More like an express train. A couple of hundred meters away, the mist phantoms were forced into the sky by a greater power. A curtain of spray that rose up from the river like steam. Waterfall!
He swallowed water, choked, gasping for breath, forcing himself not to panic. Whatever happened he mustn’t panic; he had to stay in control as long as he could, but his strength was slipping away, and no matter how hard he fought, he could not beat this tidal surge, nor the fever that was swallowing him more quickly than the river. He had finally asked too much of his body, now weakened from battling the infection in his shoulder.
Was this what drowning was like? Everything fell silent about him. The wind and slushing water were muted. There was a lot of water in his ears-perhaps that was why he couldn’t hear anything anymore. He tried to float on his back, arms outstretched, gazing at the cotton-wool-like mist and hoping his spread-eagled position would snag something, anything, to halt the unstoppable course toward the cliff edge. Was it a ten-meter drop or a hundred?
He bounced and bobbed; then a wave overtook him, washed across his face and forced his body down. With no time to take a breath, he simply closed his eyes and mouth and let the water spin him round. Sometimes you can’t fight it-just go with it, son. Find that place in your mind where it is quiet and where there’s no fear. How many times had his dad told him that the mind and body had to work together? It was like going through a door into a silent room where he could watch his body fight its own battle.
It was not his father that he yearned for in these final moments. This vein of river was the route to his mother’s heart, and he called for her, crying out desperately in the darkness of his mind.
His face broke the surface, and he lurched upward, forcing his painful shoulder to raise him high enough so that he could see and breathe. It would take only a second for the water to tumble again, pushing him back down beneath the surface. He couldn’t survive another thrashing. He was going to drown this time-better that way-before the drop.
For a moment he thought the helicopter had returned as a whirring hum of blades thrashed the air. The current spun him round; at least now he would not see the drop into the cauldron when it came, but the crazy image he saw took time to penetrate his mind. It was a big, flat-bottomed boat, and a man sitting on a high seat in front of a massive fan was pointing the boat directly at him. These killers just wouldn’t give up!
A grizzled, bewhiskered man with a gold tooth, tattooed face and arms, an earring and a battered old straw hat with colored feathers shoved into it was mouthing something at him. This apparition stood at the front of the fan-propelled boat as it surged toward him.
Max almost laughed aloud: it seemed there were pirates of the Caribbean after all.
17
It felt as though he were tied to the riverbed, deep down in the dark, still pools where the sand was smooth and no turbulence could reach him. Seaweed had somehow wrapped itself across his body so that he could not move. He could breathe, which surprised him, and he forced his eyes open, trying to focus his blurred vision. He was not in an underwater grotto filled with bright colors of coral, fish and seaweed, but in a hut; its palm-thatched roof creaked as the wind rustled through it. The walls were made of thin slats of wood bound together, and the narrow-planked floor was worn smooth by years of bare feet moving across it.
A small, homemade wooden table bore scooped-out
gourds, some fan-shaped seashells and an old-fashioned metal grinder clamped to the end. A drop-down bunk held by thin rope was cantilevered from the wall, and two or three lines, covered in skirts of different colors, were stretched across the room in place of wardrobes. Blue-dyed cotton with white stripes, orange-colored children’s dresses, some T-shirts and green and purple homemade burlap bags, scuffed from use, hung on hooks. Max realized he was lying on a homemade bed similar to that on the wall, a soft straw mattress cushioning him from the slatted base.
He was tied down in the prone position, one arm stretched out and bent in front of his head, his wrist bound with what looked to be an animal-skin thong. He tried to raise himself, but he had been secured by similar straps to the bed.
A small girl wearing a crisp white dress embroidered with a bright red flower bent down next to his face. She gazed at him with wide eyes, like a fawn seeing something unusual in the forest. She smiled, then took one of the small gourds from a low table and put it on the floor next to Max. She dipped her fingers into the water and dabbed them onto his dry lips. Then she took a small cotton cloth, soaked it, wrung it out and gently wiped his face. Max nodded, as best he could, by way of thanks. His throat felt raw and parched, probably from swallowing and choking on so much river water. The girl smiled and got to her feet, and he heard her patter out of the hut, calling her father.
“Papa. Papa!”
Max knew someone had undressed him, and he could smell a gentle fragrance from his skin, so someone had washed him as well. He tried again to raise himself against the thongs that bound him, but they gave by only a fraction: he was well and truly secured. Then heavier footsteps came into the room, and the crazy-looking pirate he had seen on the river squatted down in the corner of the hut. Max could see him clearly in his limited line of sight. He had a long-bladed knife in its scabbard strapped to his calf over the tough cotton trousers he wore. There were two or three chains round his neck, some of them threaded through small pieces of coral and semiprecious stones, and the straw hat with the feathers was old and sweat-stained.
“You’ve been asleep for two days, my friend,” the pirate said.
“Am I a prisoner?” Max asked.
The man smiled. Some of his teeth were missing, but the others were capped in gold. “You were nearly a prisoner of the river god. He would have tied you up, bundled you like a plucked chicken and sucked the marrow from your bones while you rotted on the bottom. I tied you down so that I could treat the wound in your shoulder. Those thorns had festered deep inside the muscle. It took a lot of effort to get them out, and I had to use my sharpest knife. We had to keep you like that so the dressings would not come off your back and shoulder. You want to get up now?”
Max nodded, uncertain how to engage his rescuer in conversation. The man spoke with a slightly unusual inflection-a gentle, clear pronunciation of his words. Max thought it might be an Irish lilt to his voice, though he looked as Latino as Xavier.
The man quickly pulled the knife from the sheath, leaned forward and cut the thongs. Max raised himself to his knees slowly and stretched out his muscles like a cat. He tentatively rolled clear of the bed and sat on the floor facing the man, feeling the pad of a dressing taped to his shoulder.
“Not too fast, my boy. You’re weak. You need rest. Food and rest,” the piratical man cautioned.
“I want to get up,” Max said, forcing himself to combat the giddiness he felt.
“ ‘How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?’ ”
Max stared blankly. What was he on about?
“You are schooled?” the man asked.
“What?”
“You go to school.”
“Of course I do.”
“Aha! An ignorant child.”
“No, I’m not.”
“But you do not recognize a simple quote from Shakespeare.”
Shakespeare? Max’s muddled brain tried to make some sense of the idiocy that seemed to have taken hold of his life. “Not offhand, no.”
“Aha,” the man said again, and settled the feather-stabbed hat more squarely on his head. “You feel strong enough, you come outside. We need to change the dressing.”
“Where’s Xavier? Is he OK?” Max asked.
“The sewer rat? You’re a friend of that scum?”
Max thought about it. Yes, they had forged a kind of friendship over the last few insane days. Max nodded. “Yes, he’s my friend.”
“He’s outside. You Western kids! You come here backpacking. You think you’re on a big adventure because you take time off school; then you start playing around with drugs. Next thing you know, you’re in big trouble. Let me tell you, boy, these drug runners will slit your throat, no questions asked, if you mess with them. And if the cops catch you, you go inside for a long time. You got bad friends.”
The man leaned forward and handed him the gourd full of water. “Drink slowly-otherwise you get stomach cramps.”
Then he walked toward the door.
Max called after him, “I don’t know your name.”
He stopped in the doorway and looked back hesitantly, as if debating whether to tell Max anything at all. “Your clothes have been washed and dried; they’re on that rack. We can talk later when you’ve had some food.” He went to a shelf and gathered up the photographs he had retrieved from Max’s shirt pocket when he’d been brought ashore.
“The wallet saved them, but they were wet. I dried them out. They’re a bit crinkled, but at least they made it,” he said, handing them to Max. “My name is Orsino Flint. I am a plant thief, but I have nothing to do with drug-running scum. Your mother was my enemy, but she would have been ashamed of you, Max Gordon.”
The shock of hearing Flint mention his mother took some time to wear off. His first instinct was to run after the man and grab his arm, demanding he tell him where he had met his mother and what he knew about her. But, as the man declared that he and Max’s mother had been enemies, Max knew he had to tread very carefully.
He stepped out of the hut into a clearing. Half a dozen thatched huts built on low stilts stood around a central area shaded by low palm trees scattered among them. There were children laughing and playing, and beyond the central area, steps cut into the side of a hill went down to the riverside, which seemed to be little more than a narrow tributary and much calmer than the place where Max had been rescued. Half a dozen canoes were tethered to the bank, as was a small wooden boat with an outboard engine. The bigger, flat-bottomed boat with its huge fan had a camouflage net over it, which obscured it even more than the trees did. Obviously Mr. Orsino Flint did not want his pride and joy detected by the authorities.
Four men sat under the shade of a tree mending fishing nets while women dressed in white cotton smocks embroidered with hibiscus flowers brought washing up from the river. Others pounded corn in a mortar. Another fed a fire with kindling, stripping off leaves before allowing the flames to spit and flare. Max could smell pine resin-nature’s fuel. What struck him was the abundance of flowers and plants growing everywhere, explosions of color climbing even into the trees. It was a small corner of paradise, accentuated by the shrill calls of red-and-green parakeets as they chased each other through the trees. Birds with white-ringed eyes, making them look as though they were staring directly at him, gave their strange cackling cry. An iguana, no more than thirty centimeters long, popped out of a hole in the ground. The small group of children screamed with delight as they gave chase only to lose sight of it again as it scurried under the bole of a tree.
Max gazed at the women: their rich copper-chocolate skin was smooth, the broad features of their noses identifiable as being Mayan. For the first time he was seeing the descendants of a great civilization whose kings and warriors were recorded on the stone lintels in the British Museum. He could barely remember when he had last been in London-it seemed a lifetime ago-but here at last, deep in the rain forest, were the very people his mother had worked among, the pe
ople he had come to find. If Orsino Flint believed Max’s mother was his enemy, was there any likelihood these villagers might have known her, or even considered her differently? He felt some hope. They had not harmed him-quite the opposite.
Max watched the women working. One of them pounded roasted cacao beans and chili and maize, and he could smell vanilla pods as well as peanuts and honey as she mixed the concoction with boiling water. Ancient Maya drank their chocolate hot and frothy, and it appeared that these people did the same. The woman poured the dark liquid back and forth between two containers, creating a foamy mixture. The pungent smell of hot chocolate teased his senses.
Flint gestured to the woman, who spilled some of the dense liquid into a mug-sized container. He handed it to Max.
“It’s food and medicine. It’ll give you strength,” he said.
Max let the beaten chocolate seep through his teeth. It tasted glorious. To be told that chocolate was good for him was a ticket to heaven, and the rich warmth sank into his stomach. Greedily, he finished the cup.
Flint nodded, satisfied. “Over here.” He sat on a stool next to a small fire where another villager was frying something in a blackened old pan on the top of the low-burning embers.
Max joined him at the fireside. He could feel the sun’s heat on his skin, burning through his shirt, though he could see from its position in the sky that it was still early. A quick glance at his father’s watch, still clamped on his wrist, confirmed it.
Flint tapped the ground next to him with his long-bladed knife, and Max sat obediently. Despite the man’s declaration of being his mother’s enemy, he felt he wasn’t in immediate danger. After all, this man had saved his life, so he was hardly likely to cut his throat now, especially not in the midst of this domestic setting.