by Amber Hart
Clovis jumps in first, leading the way. We enter slowly, with me helping Raven over the uneven rocks. With a deep breath, we go under. I notice Raven’s struggle right away. I wonder if we will make it through the tunnel at all, but then I push that thought away, because we have no choice. I will not let Father find Raven.
There is no light in the entrance at night. We navigate through a thick darkness, the blackest water, Clovis grasping and pulling Raven, me behind, helping to propel her forward. I know by memory when we are finally nearing the end, where the tunnel opens like a yawning mouth into the cave. I also know that Raven is running out of air by the way she begins to kick harder, her body panicking. I push harder to get her through more quickly. Just a minute more.
The water becomes a pool and Raven surfaces, gasping greedily for breath. I help her up the rocks, watchful that she doesn’t slip. The hole in the cave’s ceiling allows the dimmest of light through. Not enough to see clearly, but enough to find a small crook in the rocks where I can sit Raven upright to re-bandage her wounds.
“I’ll get the supplies,” Clovis offers. “You stay here with her.” He doesn’t wait for a response. He simply ducks underwater.
I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing that Clovis seems to always think of Raven before himself. He is not trying to eat or drink or do anything but make sure Raven is all right.
“I’m going to remove your wet bandages,” I tell Raven, smoothing hair away from her face. It sticks to her forehead and part of her lashes.
I peel the tape and gauze from Raven’s leg and arm. Her wounds look clean. Once Clovis reappears with our bags, I hand her an oversize shirt and a pair of my boxers. Raven quickly discards her wet bra and underwear and puts on the dry clothes.
“Thank you,” Raven says.
Her eyes close and I’m reminded that she must be exhausted.
“Rest for now,” I tell her. “We’ll talk more in the morning.”
Though the rock is far from the most comfortable bed she’s ever slept on, she nods and sinks onto the stone, laying her head on a smooth part that acts as a pillow.
“Good night, my Raven,” I whisper.
Chapter 35
Raven
The sound of birdcall wakes me from a deep sleep. I slowly open my eyes to find Jospin laying out supplies on rocks, and I quickly remember where I am.
“Morning,” I whisper.
Jospin spins to face me, a smile forming on his lips.
“You have no idea how good it feels to hear you say that.” He chuckles.
I fell asleep right away, on rocks that jut into my skin like knives. I try to sit up. My leg and arm are re-bandaged, not aching as badly as yesterday. Jospin has spread a blanket over me. I’m wearing the dry clothes he gave me last night.
“Where is Clovis?” I ask.
Jospin nods to a corner of the cave that has a dip in it. “Sleeping.”
I have no idea what time it is.
“Have you slept?” I ask, though I think I already know the answer.
“No, I’m keeping watch.”
Jospin finishes laying out supplies. There are two water jugs and three small water bottles, granola bars, dried meat, nuts, cans of fruit and vegetables and soup, dried fruits, a cluster of bananas, a couple of mangoes, and what looks like some type of seed.
“What are you doing with all that?” I wonder aloud.
“Rationing it,” Jospin says. “I figure we have enough for a week, maybe two.”
“And then?”
“Let’s not worry about then,” Jospin says, and comes to my side.
His eyes are beautiful in the light, flecks of golden brown shimmering against an even darker brown. His skin is warm where it touches mine.
“That’s not enough meat,” I comment. “Will we hunt?”
“Too dangerous,” Jospin replies. “We couldn’t light a fire to cook any meat we did kill. We don’t want to announce our hiding spot to anyone out there looking for us. We need to stay hidden for a couple of weeks, until the hunt for us dies down. The longer my father doesn’t find us, the better our chance of survival. Hopefully by then he’ll think we’ve perished.”
“Or that we escaped for good,” I add.
“Yes,” Jospin agrees. “Or that. Father cannot afford to put all his manpower into tracking us for any longer than a week or two. He’ll be vulnerable to attack, especially now that you and Clovis eliminated that official, his link to the raids on the other remaining pack. And if that pack has learned of Mr. Lemba’s death, they will surely set their sights on Father again, knowing that they don’t have to protect themselves from a raid.”
I like the idea of the packs warring with each other. Maybe, if we’re lucky, they will eliminate each other and there will be no more poachers in the jungle.
“When will you sleep?” I ask as Jospin slips under the blanket with me. He is wearing nothing but cargo shorts.
“One of us must keep watch at all times, and judging by the recap Clovis gave me of your travels through the forest, it needed to be me. Both of you required sleep.”
“Are you and Clovis talking again?”
“No,” he says. “Clovis decided he wanted to tell me about your journeys. I simply listened. And then, because he knew I would stay up anyway, he went off to sleep. I don’t trust him any more today than I did yesterday, Raven.”
“Which is why you won’t sleep around him,” I say.
Jospin pulls the blanket tight around both of us.
“I don’t think he’ll harm you,” he says. “But I’m not sure if he has the same dedication toward me.”
I don’t push the subject. “What will we do after we wait?” I ask. “Where will we go?”
“When your injuries are better and I am sure it is safe to leave, we’ll travel to the city—not the town you stopped in, but a bigger city just beyond the rain forest—to turn in the evidence,” Jospin explains. “It is our only hope.”
His hand slides to my thigh, and a grin inches up his face. Slowly he leans in to kiss me. “Enough about that now. I miss you, Raven.”
“I miss you too,” I say.
Jospin’s hand spreads across my belly, and a heat erupts inside me. His fingers trail down to my hips, stopping at my underwear.
“I wish I could take these off,” he whispers.
I glance down to his cargo shorts, which I wish I could take off too, but we are not alone.
“Another time,” I whisper back. “For now you need sleep.”
He rests his head on my chest and breathes in deeply.
“You smell so good,” he groans.
I smile. “Sleep. I’ll take watch.”
With his skin against mine, my heartbeat playing a tune for him, Jospin relaxes into me.
“You’re my favorite place, Raven,” he says. “I used to think it was this jungle. I used to love my house so much. But now I see that you, Raven, are it for me. Wherever you are.”
And I think this must be the sweetest thing anyone has said to me. I wonder where my favorite place is. Michigan with Mama? At college, with my friends, in no more danger? But I don’t have to wonder for long, because I already know my answer. I’ve known it since the day Jospin made me his.
“And you are mine.”
Chapter 36
Jospin
Raven’s laughter rings out, echoing on the walls around me. I awake groggily. I’m torn between telling her that she’s being too loud, risking our exposure, and wanting to listen to her joy for just a minute longer.
I watch the way she sits next to Clovis, amused by something. He’s smiling too, watching her face.
Raven has changed into loose cargo pants and a thin white tank top. Her hair is piled on top of her head, held there by a tie. There’s gauze wrapped around her arm, but it’s clear the bleeding has completely stopped. Her head tilts just slightly and she realizes that I’m watching her.
“You’re up,” she says, coming to my side.
When she’s close enough, I pull her in for a kiss. It’s longer than I planned, but I like the fit of her body against mine. I love the way she homes in on me when we share a room.
“Mmm,” I say as she pulls back.
Raven laughs. “How’d you sleep?”
“Well,” I reply.
I check my watch. Five hours of rest. It’s midafternoon, and I worry that poachers will be out and about.
“You need to be quieter,” I tell her. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Okay,” she agrees, and leans in for another kiss. “I must have gotten carried away. But you’re right.” She looks around the cave. “I feel safe here. I have to keep reminding myself what’s waiting out there.”
I know what it’s like to get carried away. Though the cave seems secure—and it is, to an extent—we cannot live here forever. We need daylight and freedom. We need to be able to light a fire. We should be allowed to hunt. I want to live in a place like that. Not hiding in the territory of men who want us dead.
“Let’s eat,” I say, changing the subject.
Clovis goes to the bag and removes the food that I apportioned this morning. He hands me water, a granola bar, and a banana. He hands the same to Raven.
“You know what I’d love right now?” Raven asks, taking a bite of her granola. “Ice cream.”
I almost laugh at the expression on Raven’s face, a dreamy smile, as if she’s imagining it in front of her.
“I would die for steaming hot coffee,” Clovis chimes in.
“What about you, Jospin?” Raven asks.
“Bread,” I say without pause. “I’d love bread, something to actually fill my stomach.”
With our small, rationed portions, hunger has set in for all of us.
“I’d kill for some peanut butter!” Raven says. “And jelly. I never thought I’d miss the habitat’s regular peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”
“Salted almonds,” Clovis says. “A giant bowl of them.”
“Rice,” I say, imagining more foods that could fill my stomach.
“Pop-Tarts,” Raven enthuses.
“What are Pop-Tarts?” Clovis asks. I’m interested to know too.
“Delicious pastries that are filled with something similar to jelly, in so many flavors. And some have sprinkles. And frosting!” she explains.
“I want that too,” Clovis says.
I begin to think about sweeter things. “Chocolate,” I say.
“Yes!” Raven agrees. “Fudge.”
We’ve turned it into a game: what we’d love to eat besides the food in front of us.
Clovis bites his banana in half. “Mango pie.”
I wish we could have the feast we’ve imagined in our minds. I’m about to mention fruitcake when I hear something—a sound like footfalls. Clovis hears it too.
Raven pauses mid-bite, realizing what’s happening. I don’t have to say a word, yet she knows danger is fast approaching. She sits stock-still. The steps come closer, just outside the cave this time. Whoever it is must be alone, because they aren’t speaking to anyone and I detect only one set of footfalls.
We wait as the footsteps circle the waterfall.
I think about the possibilities: It could be a poacher, a wild, Father himself. What would they do if they found us? Would we have to fight? Would they try to capture Raven?
One more circle around the waterfall, and then whoever it is leaves. Clovis relaxes, and Raven goes back to eating her food.
Though I should be happy that the threat is gone, and I am to some extent, I can’t help but wonder if staying with Raven is selfish of me. I got her into this mess in the first place. Now I need to get her out of it.
—
It’s been three days of anxiousness. The cave is safe, but it’s also confining. There’s not much room to move around. Though it’s the size of a small cottage, the cave is not as tall, and so we must crouch everywhere we walk. I’ve taken to swimming in the pool to stretch my muscles. Even when the sun is at its brightest, the cave remains dim. Sometimes I put my face up to the hole just to breathe fresh air. The food is enough to keep us alive but not enough that we ever feel full. I want to get up and do something more than leave the cave for a couple of minutes here and there to use the bathroom—that’s all we’ve allowed ourselves. My bones ache to move and feel the forest floor.
“Let’s work out,” I suggest, facing a listless Raven. “It will make you feel better.”
Raven was happy about our cave at first. Now I can tell she feels the same way I do.
“You need to stretch your scarred arm,” I add.
And I realize once I say it that both her arms are now scarred. Obviously the one that suffered a gorilla attack is worse, but neither is uninjured. Her wounds are healing on the outside, but her muscles still need to be exercised.
While Clovis sharpens knives in the corner, Raven and I crouch at the water’s edge. A rock wall juts out enough to offer a bit of privacy. Out of Clovis’s sight, Raven gets undressed. I follow. Leaving only our underwear on, we enter the warmth of the pool.
Raven smiles, takes a deep breath, and plunges underwater. She swims in circles near the bottom, running her hands over uneven rock. She comes up for a breath and does it again, this time feeling along the sides of the pool, as though she is memorizing it by touch. I love watching her swim.
When Raven surfaces a second time, she takes my hand and pulls me under. I open my eyes and watch Raven’s hair float around her head. Her eyes are open too as she pushes off toward me, still unable to kick well with her leg. And then she kisses me underwater. I want to stay there with her. I don’t want to come up for air, though that’s exactly what I have to do.
“Tell me about your family,” I request, taking her by surprise.
She smiles. “Well, you got to know a little about my dad by going through his things, but what you don’t know is that he was a terrible cook.” Raven’s laugh is soft. “Absolutely horrific. You’d need a stomach of steel to eat his food. I remember this time he thought it would be sweet to make breakfast for Mama and me. Eggs, bacon, and toast.”
“Sounds delicious,” I say.
“It was not,” Raven replies, still smiling. “The toast was so hard we couldn’t even bite into it. The bacon was burned to a crisp. And he scorched the butter in the pan before adding and scrambling the eggs, so the eggs turned out brown and tasted terrible. The smoke alarm went off. Dad had no idea how to quiet it.”
I picture Raven’s father rushing around the kitchen. I smile. This man knew how to navigate a dense rain forest, yet the kitchen was unknown territory for him.
“We ate it anyway—except for the toast; that was inedible—on the condition that he never cook for us again,” she says. “Of course he tried every few years, just to see if he was any better. He never was.”
Raven’s face is a picture of happiness. I want to remember her like this, the exact way she looks now. Wet and smiling and oblivious to all our problems, lost in a time when life was better for her.
“And your mother?” I ask.
“Mama is an excellent cook,” she says. “And she is an even better friend. There was nothing I couldn’t go to her with. I miss her terribly. I miss my friends too. I even miss how my best friend Audrey used to borrow my clothes without asking and then forget to give them back. She ruined my favorite pair of jeans—the ones that were so comfortably worn in, they didn’t even feel like jeans anymore. What I wouldn’t give to return to a time when that’s what I considered a big problem. And Caden, my other best friend, I miss him too. He would leave disgusting, stinky gym clothes around the apartment he shares with Audrey. I refused to use his bathroom because of it—we’d joke about how many germs must be living there.”
Raven peers down at herself and then around the cave, taking a moment to remember where she is.
“Now look at me,” she says. “I’m in a rain forest, with who knows how many germs, eating whatever I can to sustain me. I never would
have thought…”
She trails off. I’m thrilled to finally hear a little about her life back home. Yet I also want the jungle to become her home.
“Raven,” I say, wiping water off my face. “Will you run away with me when this is all over?”
She smiles. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about what happens next,” she teases.
“Well,” I say, “if there is a next, if we get through this, I want you to run away with me. Will you?”
Raven kisses me again, pressing her hips to mine. “Maybe,” she answers. “Or maybe you can run away with me, back to the States.”
“Maybe,” I say.
It would be hard, but there must be places where I could still get the feel of nature, where we could have land that has trees and forest, though it wouldn’t be the same as the home I’ve always known. But maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe I need a change.
“So you would do it?” Raven asks. “You would go back to the States with me?”
“Would you stay here with me?” I counter.
The way Raven looks off and bites her lip lets me know that she’s honestly thinking about it.
“I haven’t decided,” she admits. “I love the jungle and I love the creatures, but I do not love the poaching or the violence or the constant threat to survival.”
For some reason, this makes me think of the letter her father left for her.
“I have something for you,” I say.
I quickly dry myself off, then go to my bag and retrieve the paper from a small inside pocket. Raven is still sponging the water out of her hair when I hold it out to her.
“It’s from your father,” I explain. “It’s the message I was trying so hard to crack.”
Raven’s eyes widen. “You did it?” Her voice softens. “Of course you did. That must be how you found his evidence.”
I nod.
“Thank you.” She takes the letter and unfolds the crinkly paper, one crease at a time, careful to not tear it. When it’s open completely, Raven begins to read. Her eyes gloss over with unshed tears. I wait a minute, watching as her eyes skip back to the beginning to reread.
“He knew there was a possibility that the jungle would cause his death,” Raven whispers with a sad smile. “And he stayed anyway.”