The Explorer

by Katherine Rundell

  Five-year-olds were not easy to argue with, Fred thought. Max had a sweep of dirt encrusted on his cheek, and his eyebrows turned up at the corners: it gave his face a mischievous tilt.

  Fred hooked his finger into Max’s shirt collar to steer him from thorns and what looked like rabbit droppings. The ground was mossy, speckled with patches of grass and creeper. One of the trees had scarlet flowers that had fallen and red-carpeted the forest floor.

  Sitting among the flowers, under the bright white sun, Lila and Con were arguing.

  ‘You! Boy, whatsyourname, Fred!’ called Con. ‘Come and tell this girl she’s completely wrong.’

  ‘She thinks –’ began Lila, flushing.

  ‘Obviously, I think we should go back and wait near the plane,’ said Con. ‘In case they see it from the air. So they can rescue us.’

  ‘It makes more sense to stay here,’ said Lila. She pulled her knees up to her chin. ‘We’d just get lost, trying to find our way back. And I don’t think anyone will see the plane. They don’t know where we crashed; they’ll have to search the entire jungle. We’re on our own.’ She fixed her eyes on a dandelion-like plant, fierce and unblinking. ‘We’ll have to find a way to get to Manaus ourselves.’

  Fred looked at the girl properly. She had a scratch across one side of her narrow face, and hair woven into two dark plaits, one of which had been charred in the crash. She wore a scarlet skirt and a blood-red top, both now stained grey-green. She looked about his age. She was scowling at Con.

  Con glared back. ‘That’s crazy. We need to stay near the plane and wait to be rescued. My family will have sent dozens of planes to search for us by now. A hundred planes, probably.’

  ‘But,’ said Lila, ‘where we crashed is burnt by the fire. Half the trees are charcoal, and so there’ll be no animals –’

  ‘We don’t need animal friends!’ said Con. ‘This isn’t a fairy tale!’

  ‘– for us to eat,’ finished Lila. ‘And back there, there’s –’

  ‘What?’ said Con.

  ‘There’s the pilot.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Con. She seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘He can’t hurt us.’

  Lila spoke very quietly, but Fred was surprised by how authoritative she sounded. ‘We should make camp here.’

  ‘No!’ said Con. ‘That’s completely illogical.’

  ‘Fred?’ asked Lila. ‘You get the deciding vote.’

  ‘No he doesn’t!’ said Con. ‘That’s not fair; one person shouldn’t get to decide!’ She glared at Fred from foot to chin. ‘Not unless he agrees with me.’

  Fred looked around the clearing again. The air was fresh here and the sky above them a blue that does not exist in England. He was just about to answer when he saw that at the far end, where the forest grew thick and tangled, four trees had fallen together, their tops meeting in a point. The very tips of the hairs on the back of Fred’s neck began to rise.

  ‘Do you think there’s anything odd about this clearing?’ he said.

  ‘That’s not an answer to the question!’ said Con.

  ‘Why?’ asked Lila.

  ‘Those trees,’ he said, ‘over there.’ He pointed.

  ‘What about them? They fell over,’ said Con. ‘That’s what trees do.’

  ‘But they don’t look like they fell, to me,’ said Fred. He ran across the clearing. A sense was rising in him that something was strange. His curiosity pushed aside his fear.

  The largest of the trees was immense: its trunk was as thick and tall as Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. Three smaller trees leant against the thicker one. Each had grown a few feet from the next in a rough square, their branches entwined and darkened by green creepers.

  ‘Leave it alone, Fred,’ called Con. ‘Stay in the open!’

  ‘There’s something odd here.’ He ran his hand down one of the smaller trees. At the base was a mess of fernlike plants and a few mushrooms. He pushed the ferns down, and felt his stomach swoop.

  The three smaller trees didn’t have roots. They were logs, fifteen feet high, each carefully tipped against the central tree; he could see where they’d been hacked with an axe or a machete. Ferns had grown – or been planted, Fred thought – at their bases, disguising the places where the cuts showed.

  ‘A den,’ breathed Fred.

  ‘What did you say?’ called Con.

  Fred pushed at the vines that stretched between each of the logs.

  ‘It’s like a tent,’ said Fred. ‘A den.’ He bent down, ready to push past the foliage.

  ‘No! Don’t go in there!’ said Con. It came out in a burst. ‘It’s not that I’m scared. But please don’t. It’s not a reasonable risk.’

  Fred stared at her. ‘A what?’ He had never in his life considered whether a risk was reasonable; it sounded like something his headmaster would say.

  ‘There could be anything in there! Jaguars, or snakes, or rats,’ said Con.

  ‘I can’t not look!’ said Fred, astonished.

  ‘She might be right, though,’ said Lila. ‘About the snakes. Be careful.’

  ‘I’ll look!’ said Max grandly, jumping to his feet.

  ‘No you absolutely won’t!’ said Lila, grabbing his wrist. ‘You’re staying right here.’

  Fred pushed aside the vines hanging down between the logs.

  ‘Ach!’ He winced: some of the tendrils had tiny but vicious thorns, and they’d caught in one of his cuts. He brushed away another handful of vines, and froze. His heart, which hadn’t stopped double-beating since the crash, quickened to triple speed.

  The trees met to make a tent, high enough for a man to kneel in, or for someone Max’s height to stand. The air smelt deep green. There was a spiderweb in one corner, and below it was a pile of banana leaves, stacked a dozen leaves thick in the shape of a sleeping mat. They had been almost entirely devoured by ants.

  Fred looked up, and felt his eyes stretch wide. ‘Come and look at this!’ he called. The space between the four tree trunks had once been covered in a roof of plaited palm leaves. He reached up and touched them. The palms were riddled with holes, half-rotted, and the light shone through, but he could see how intricately they’d been woven.

  He crawled further in, slowly, looking for snakes in the green light. The ground squelched under his hands. In the far corner of the den was a hollow gourd, rotten with mildew. Fred touched it, gingerly; it was mulchy. He turned it upside down, wrinkling his nose at the smell. A cascade of flints spilt out. Half had been chipped into the shape of arrowheads; others were square and squat, large as a fist.

  ‘You two!’ He crawled backwards and stuck his head through the vines. ‘Come in! Quick, you have to see this! Someone was here!’

  ‘You’re crazy!’ spat Con. ‘If someone was here, they won’t want us trespassing. I’ve had enough of this.’ She turned and began to march back into the trees.

  ‘Wait! Con! We shouldn’t split up,’ called Fred. Infuriated, he scrambled out of the den and ran after her.

  ‘Whose house is it?’ She turned to face him. Fred was startled; there were tears in her eyes. ‘You don’t know, do you?’

  ‘Of course I don’t,’ said Fred, ‘but I just think –’

  ‘What if they come back? I’ve read about it in …’ Con hesitated, casting around for an idea, ‘… Goldilocks. I know how it ends. I’m not getting eaten!’

  ‘I’m pretty sure this place wasn’t built by bears,’ said Fred.

  ‘It could be cannibals!’

  ‘Cannibals are mostly a myth,’ said Lila.

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Everyone! Scientists. Our mama and papa.’

  ‘How do they know?’

  ‘Mama grew up in the jungle, near the Solimões River. And she’s a scientist. A botanist.’

  ‘Bottomist!’ said Max.

  Con scowled at him, the nerves in her face twitching. ‘You overrate the wit of the word “bottom”.’

  Lila put a protective arm round Max and went on as if sh
e hadn’t been interrupted. ‘And our papa’s English, and he studies the plants of the jungle. For medicine. And our grandmother was a scientist’s assistant; we were supposed to be going to visit her in England. We were going to get the boat from Manaus. She wanted to meet us before she died: she wanted to see what Max was like.’

  Con snorted. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well we crashed.’

  Lila ignored that. ‘Listen, whoever lives here – if they come back – might be able to take us to Manaus.’

  ‘Or they could eat us for dinner,’ said Con. She stared from Lila to Fred, angry and bewildered.

  ‘Just come inside,’ said Fred. ‘You’ll see. Nobody’s been here for ages.’

  Grudgingly, very slowly, Con turned round. She bent down and edged into the shelter. Lila and Max followed.

  Fred pulled at the rotten leaves lining the roof. ‘We could weave new leaves for the ceiling,’ he said, ‘and make new beds. Then it would smell less like a sock.’

  He began gathering armfuls of half-decomposed foliage and pushing it outside. Underneath, the earth was soft and dusty; it smelt of a thousand warm days, layered one over the other.

  Lila brought in an armful of leaves, each as big as a pillowcase. She began to lay them down for beds.

  ‘And we could hang some extra vines over the front of the den,’ said Fred, ‘so nothing can see in.’

  Con crouched in the shelter with her arms crossed. ‘Who died and made you king?’ she asked.

  ‘Nobody!’ Fred turned, startled. ‘But if we’re going to sleep here, we might as well make it waterproof.’

  ‘I’m not sleeping here!’ said Con. ‘Someone could come back here any second.’

  ‘But they won’t,’ said Fred. ‘Did you see those flints?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘They’re covered in moss,’ he said.

  ‘So they’re dirty. Fine. How is that supposed to be reassuring?’ said Con.

  ‘He means they’re old,’ said Lila. ‘It’s deserted.’

  ‘But why do you want to risk it?’ said Con. ‘What if they come back and think we’re intruders?’

  ‘Or what if they’re never coming back, and they’ve left behind this shelter?’ said Lila. Her voice wasn’t loud, but there was a toughness to it. ‘If someone was here that means someone else thought it was a good place to rest. It means it’s safe.’

  ‘But you can’t know for sure.’

  ‘But we can’t know anything for sure!’ said Fred. ‘Lila’s right. As soon as we work out how to get out of here, we’ll leave. But until then, it makes sense to stay in a place where other people have been.’

  ‘Unless they EAT US!’ said Con.

  ‘I’m staying here,’ said Max. ‘I want to live in the tree-tent. And if you try to make me move I’ll do a wee on you.’

  ‘No you won’t!’ Con backed away, smacking her head on a tree trunk.

  ‘He does sometimes do that,’ said Lila.

  Which, for the moment at least, more or less settled it.

  It took some time to find leaves wide and strong enough for the roof. The first batch Fred tried tore in his hands; the second turned out to have something in them that made his skin turn red and itchy; but the third tree had fleshy leaves as long as his arm. He and Lila tore them into strips and then wove them into great squares, which they wedged in and out of the branches of the supporting trunks. Con sat on the grass outside the den, digging a hole in the ground with a twig.

  Fred crawled into the den and looked up. The sun no longer filtered through a thousand ant holes. The light inside was dark green, an underwater, sunken-treasure colour. He felt an unexpected surge of triumph roar through him. ‘It’s good!’ he called. ‘You can barely see the gaps.’ He heard Lila cheer. Fred backed out of the den and stood up too fast. Suddenly his head reeled, colours flashing in front of his eyes. His lungs tied in a double-knot.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Lila.

  ‘Fine,’ he said, more brusquely than he’d intended. Since his pneumonia he hated being asked if he was all right. He tried to smile. ‘Thanks,’ he added.

  Fred had been sent to Brazil to convalesce with a distant cousin. The cousin’s idea of a good time involved more playing bridge in a dark drawing room than Fred had expected. But, his father had said, it was the only sensible option.

  ‘I can’t be at home to look after you,’ he’d said. ‘The firm needs me.’

  ‘I can look after myself,’ Fred wheezed.

  ‘That’s not possible,’ his father said gruffly. He had worked longer and longer hours each year, ever since Fred could remember. Fred could not remember his mother’s face, except when he was asleep.

  He’d never seen his father dressed in anything other than a suit, and over time the suits seemed to have seeped into his father’s skin. His voice practically wore a tie.

  ‘You’re treating me like a baby,’ Fred had said.

  ‘Nonsense,’ his father replied. ‘Come on, you’re a sensible boy.’

  Fred’s boarding school report always contained that word: ‘sensible’. ‘An unobtrusive presence in the classroom’. Sometimes, when they could clearly think of nothing else that distinguished him from his classmates, they added ‘increasingly tall’.

  Fred knew he was none of those things. Or rather, he was tall. Nobody would have argued about that: he grew out of clothes so fast that his ankles were constantly cold.

  But he was not unobtrusive inside, nor was he sensible.

  Inside, Fred was hunger and hope and wire. It was just that there had never yet been a chance to prove it; his father always insisted so unswervingly on clean shoes and unrebellious eyebrows. But Fred’s mind was quick, with sharp edges. He wanted more from the world than it had yet given.

  Now he tried to grin at Lila. ‘I’m just dehydrated. We need to find something to drink,’ he said. ‘You can live for a long time without eating –’

  ‘No you absolutely can’t,’ said Max indignantly.

  ‘– but you can’t live for long without water.’

  ‘Do you think we can drink from the …’ Lila hesitated, searching for the words, ‘… tiny cesspool?’

  Fred looked across at the puddle of water. ‘We could, but I don’t think we’d live very long if we did. But we’re near the river – we must be,’ he said.

  ‘It was on our left when we crashed,’ said Lila eagerly.

  ‘Which direction did we run?’ said Con.

  ‘Well, the sun rises in the east. So, facing this way, left is north-east,’ said Fred.

  ‘How does that help, if we don’t know which direction we ran?’ snapped Con. She was pale and there were circles under her eyes, as if someone had pressed a paint-smeared thumb to her face.

  ‘It doesn’t, much,’ admitted Fred. But north-east of here was England. The thump in his chest slowed a little: north-east led to his bedroom at home, his bookcase, his cricket bat propped up against the wall. It led to his father.

  Con squared her shoulders as if readying to fight. ‘Are we just going to guess, then?’

  ‘I heard,’ Fred said, ‘that you can follow ants and they’ll take you to water.’

  ‘Ants!’ said Con. ‘We’re going to take directions from ants?’

  Lila stared hard at Con, and then at the ground, combing the leaves with her eyes. ‘Do you have a different suggestion?’ she said.

  Con sighed, and bent to look under a log.

  The first set of ants was a disappointment. Max found a trail of tiny red ones and bent down to stroke them. ‘Look! They’re shining!’

  ‘Don’t touch!’ said Lila, snatching him back. ‘Some ants out here are dangerous.’

  ‘These ones?’ asked Con, taking a step backwards.

  ‘I don’t know, that’s the problem! The dangerous ones are called bullet ants, but I don’t know what they look like.’

  ‘Bullets, presumably,’ said Con.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Lila. ‘Dogfish don’t look like dog
s. I remember being very disappointed.’

  ‘These ones just look like ants,’ said Max.

  ‘You’re still not allowed to touch them,’ said Lila. ‘So don’t try.’

  They walked at a safe distance, all four of them with their chins on their chests, along a snaking line of trees. The ants led them to a large pile of leaves.

  ‘Oh.’ Fred nudged the leaves with a stick, just in case there was water underneath. He recoiled. The ants were swarming over the carcass of a bird. It looked like it had, once, been a vulture. Now, though, it was equal parts bones and smell.

  ‘That isn’t exactly what I was hoping for.’ You could not, he thought, trust an ant’s sense of priorities.

  ‘What now, then?’ asked Con, crossing her arms.

  ‘Let’s try again,’ said Lila. ‘Maybe those were the wrong kind of ants.’

  It was Lila who found the trail of larger ants: ants with heads as big as ball bearings. They followed the track deep into the woods, Lila leading. Fred watched her. She was small and moved on the edge of her muscles, like an animal – a deer or a lemur – as if she heard things other people did not.

  ‘I can’t believe we’re trusting ants,’ said Con. She brushed a cobweb out of her hair and ducked under a branch. ‘Even in fairy stories, it’s a wise owl or something. Nobody goes to bloody ants for help.’ She looked defiantly at Fred as she said the word ‘bloody’, and then a thorn caught on the skin above her eyebrow and she let out a yelp. ‘I hate this place!’

  Fred looked back and found, with a lurch to his stomach, that the clearing had entirely disappeared.

  ‘Which way is the way back?’ he said. The green of the forest seemed to thrum around them.

  ‘Left at that tree that was covered in mushrooms, and then right at the bush with green thorns,’ said Con. She didn’t look at him – didn’t see the surprise on his face, which he immediately tried to hide.

  ‘We should mark a path,’ he said, ‘so we can find our way back.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Con. ‘Unless you want to ask the opinion of, I don’t know, a passing maggot?’

  Fred tried to grin. ‘Well, maggots are much slower walkers than ants – they’d make terrible guides.’