‘They kicked you out?’
‘They said I bullied the baby. I didn’t. But once … once it was crying, and it wouldn’t stop, and I gave it a tiny slap.’
‘Oh,’ said Lila. Her face was stricken.
‘And – I don’t know.’ She paused, swallowed, bit a slither off her thumbnail and went on. ‘They said I shouted things at the baby. It was only once, truly. And it didn’t understand, so why would it matter?’
Fred nodded.
‘My great-aunt – she sends me to spend summers with the nuns.’
‘Nuns?’
‘Convent school. That’s why I’m in Brazil. The year before that I was in India. She says the travel will improve my character. I hated it.’
‘Do you want to be improved?’ Lila seemed to be trying not to sound too sceptical.
Con tried to smile. ‘Not really. But she likes girls to be quiet and proper; she says I’m rude. I don’t mean to be. But then, when I try to be good – what I think is good – she doesn’t notice. Or maybe she doesn’t care. So mostly I just … I don’t know. Don’t bother.’
She wiped her nose with her finger and thumb. ‘And I don’t think … I don’t think she’ll have sent people to look for me. There isn’t much money. The convent school paid for my boat fare over here. They have a fund for war orphans.’ She grimaced, a deep, bitter wince away from her own words. ‘Charity case.’
‘So when you said –’
‘I lied.’
‘Your aunt sounds absolutely awful,’ said Lila.
‘Really, she does,’ Fred said. He wondered if he should punch Con on the arm, the way the other boys did at school. He decided it might not be a punching occasion.
‘She’s just old, really.’ Con breathed in a deep, shuddering breath, as if she had expelled something weighty. She scrubbed at her eyes with a handful of her hair. ‘I’ve never told anyone. About my foster family. Please don’t tell anyone.’
‘Who would we tell?’ said Fred, looking at the green wall of the jungle around them.
Lila unhooked Baca’s claws from her neck and settled him on Con’s shoulder. ‘Here. He might try to eat your ears. But he means it in a nice way.’
A tear ran down Con’s cheek. Baca licked it away.
Fred looked at Con. Fred never hugged anybody. His father didn’t believe in hugging; he said it was presumptuous and unhygienic. But Con looked so suddenly bony, and defeated. He made a fist and pushed it softly against Con’s shoulder, rocking her sideways.
Con waited longer than Fred had expected before she tensed up and, with a half-laugh, shook him off.
‘OK,’ she said. Her breath was shaky. ‘Fine. You win. We’ll follow the map.’
Fred felt something fierce and hot ignite in his stomach. ‘If we gather grubs and berries today,’ he said, ‘we could be ready to go by tomorrow.’
Lila looked at Con’s tense face. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said.
Con hunched her shoulders and bent her head. It was almost a nod.
The next day dawned swelteringly hot; all four woke slick with sweat, with dragonflies trying to drink from their skin.
For breakfast Con found a banana tree, and they made a sack from Max’s jumper and filled it until bananas poked out of the neck. They gorged on unripe bananas until Max was sick on his own shoes.
After breakfast, a wind began to pick up. It was a very welcome breeze on Fred’s face as he prepared the raft, double-checking every knot.
It was the same wind that nearly killed them. Fred and Lila were crouched on the raft in the river, testing how it moved under their weight and retying vines. Con and Max were hunting for berries to add to their provisions. Baca was half in, half out of Lila’s pocket, sniffing the breeze. A swirl of air reached them from the jungle, and Baca let out a mew. A shiver passed down Fred’s spine.
‘Does something smell odd to you?’
Baca seemed nervous. He began trying to bite Lila’s hem into ribbons.
Lila stared back towards the path to their clearing. Where there should have been shards of green sunlight there was a swirl of grey. ‘Is that … dust?’
‘It’s smoke,’ said Fred.
He sniffed again. ‘It’s a fire!’
For a moment they both stared at the billowing grey, paralysed. Then Lila let out a scream, and the scream shook the whole raft. ‘Max! Where’s Max?’
‘He was right there, on the bank, with Con!’ The smoke began to flow like water, sweeping out of the trees towards them. Fred’s eyes stung.
There was a pounding of feet and Con came sprinting out of the bushes, her hair flying behind her, catching in the trees. She half dived, half fell into the river and swam, splashing frantically towards the raft.
‘I saw it!’ she cried, hauling herself up over the edge. ‘The clearing’s on fire! It’s horrible!’ Her eyes were red and wild. She stared around. ‘Where’s Max?’
‘I thought he was with you!’ Lila’s face was unrecognisable.
‘What? No! He said he was going to find you – he wanted to play with Baca!’
‘No! This can’t be happening!’ Lila stood up on the raft. ‘Max!’
‘Max!’ shouted Fred. ‘Max!’
‘I’m here!’ The voice was tiny and thin and sounded of pure panic.
Max had scrambled up a tree. He was sitting, whimpering, unable to scream, in the branches overhanging the river. Fred stared up at him, divided between shock and terror.
‘How did he get up there?’ said Con. ‘It’s so high!’
‘Jump in, Max! Jump into the water!’ called Lila.
‘I can’t!’
‘Max! I am ordering you!’ Her voice was shrill, wire-thin. ‘I’m your big sister and you do what I say!’
Max’s voice was a shriek. ‘I can’t!’ He started crying in long wordless wails, balanced above the river.
Fred began pulling off his boots, but Lila thrust Baca at Con and was in the water. Fred had never seen a human swim so fast. She scrambled up the bank, her nails tearing against the mud, and sprinted for the tree.
She began climbing, hauling herself up with just her arms where the footholds failed.
‘Max!’ she called. ‘Just stay there!’
Fred and Con sat on the raft below, Con holding Baca in both hands, watching, coughing as the smoke thickened around them.
Max was crouching like a sloth, with his arms and legs wrapped around the branch. Fred squinted up to see Lila crawling along the branch, talking to him, coaxing him, trying to untangle him, her body shaking as she moved. Max had stopped crying and was now rigid faced and completely silent, which was somehow more frightening than the screaming.
The first flames appeared, snaking along the path from the clearing. The heat sent up sparks, catching at Lila’s skin and Max’s feet. There was a bang, like an erupting paper bag, as below them seedpods exploded in the heat.
‘Jump in!’ Fred shouted wildly. ‘Just jump in and we’ll come and get you!’
There was only smoke now: smoke and the sound of Lila calling to Max, singing to him, coaxing him desperately.
‘Jump!’ shrieked Con. ‘Please, now!’
Then two bodies plummeted down into the river. The water closed over them.
They landed in an eddy of water and the current swept the two of them, too fast, into the middle of the river where there were rapids.
Fred squinted through the smoke. Their heads did not resurface. ‘Take the pole,’ he said to Con. He took a deep breath. ‘And if we die, tell my dad … sorry.’ He dived head first into the brown water and struck out towards the rapids.
Fred opened his eyes but all he could see was churning foam. A body smashed into his and he grabbed it; it was Max. He tried, through his panic, to remember what he had read about saving people from drowning. You had to gently cup their chin in your hand – he remembered that clearly. But how? The current was too fast to make cupping of any kind seem plausible.
Fred spun on to his back and haul
ed Max up to lie on his stomach, trying to keep the boy’s head out of the water. He couldn’t tell if Max was breathing. With one arm, he began to swim backwards towards the bank. The water was trying to pull them under; he could see only smoke and spray and the river sweeping over his face with every stroke.
‘Don’t panic,’ he whispered to himself. This would be a bad moment to panic.
A burning branch fell into the water inches away from them. Max gave a cough and spat out a water beetle, hacking weakly as the water washed over them again.
Just as Fred was starting to feel that panicking was really the only available option, he saw something in the smoke. A yell came over the sound of the fire and the water in his ears. ‘Fred! Max!’
It was Con.
‘Over here!’ he called.
‘Swim towards me!’ she screamed.
‘I can’t! The current!’ It was bitterly hard work staying in one place: one of his legs was starting to cramp and he was terrified that Max’s head would go under the water.
A shape came out of the smoke: it was the raft. Con was covered in grey ash; she was paddling hard with both hands, roaring their names as she came.
She reached Fred just as he hit a swirl in the current. There was a painful cracking as his ear smacked against the wood and a scream from Con, a great scrambling and a burning in his muscles, but then Fred was kneeling on the raft, coughing up water, and Max was there, spitting and vomiting up water and leaves and banana.
‘Where’s Lila?’ asked Con. Her voice was wild and high. ‘Where’s Lila?’
‘I couldn’t see her!’
Fred choked out a mouthful of water and crawled to the edge of the raft. He tried to draw in a deep enough breath to dive in again, but each gasp for air made him gag.
There was a great lurch and they tipped sideways. Two hands appeared, then Lila’s face, her chin on the edge of the raft.
‘Lila!’ Fred let out a noise he hadn’t known he was capable of – something between a roar and a whoop – and grabbed her wrists, then her shoulders, heaving her to the centre of the raft. She lay panting. She had a cut across the bridge of her nose, and blood ran down over her mouth and chin, but she was alive.
‘M-Max,’ she gasped.
‘He’s here, he’s fine!’ Con was shouting, though her face was very close to Lila’s. ‘Just breathe! He’s fine, I swear.’
She pushed with the pole, thrusting the raft to the side of the river where the current flowed steadily, propelling them away from the flames. At last, when the air was clear and the fire a crackling in the distance, she guided the raft into the shallows, where it stilled, swaying on the water.
A crowd of blue butterflies alighted on the bank next to them. Max was wearing pondweed on his head like a tiara. Lila cradled him in her arms. He cradled Baca. Baca cradled Max’s thumb.
It was a long time before anybody spoke.
‘What happens now?’ said Lila. ‘Do we go back?’
‘I don’t know. Everything was burnt,’ said Con. She was still shivering with shock, and although the sun was warm the hairs along her arms were standing on end. ‘I saw it.’
‘The den? And the bees?’
‘Everything. The whole clearing.’ Con wiped the ash from her face. She looked like a panda bear. ‘It was our fire. We should have left somebody to watch it. The embers were too hot.’
Fred spoke quietly. ‘So we follow the map.’
‘Wait – wasn’t the map in your pocket?’ asked Lila.
Ice swamped Fred’s gut. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh no.’ He reached into his pocket and fished out the red leather pouch.
The ink on the map had run so badly that it was no more than a blackish smudge. The paper itself was pulp, and as he passed it to Lila it tore in two.
He swallowed. ‘Sorry,’ he whispered.
Lila looked as though she might cry. ‘Don’t be,’ she said.
There was an impatient tut behind them – a sort of chough – and the sound of scratching. ‘You’re both so defeatist,’ said Con. She had pulled a flint from her pocket and, as they watched, she tore a strip of bark from the raft and began etching something on it.
‘There – that was the squiggle – and that was where the river curved,’ she said.
‘Your photogenic memory!’ said Max.
‘Photographic,’ said Con. She kept scratching. ‘There,’ she said. ‘What do you think? Does that look right?’
Fred studied her map. ‘It does look almost exactly –’
‘Not almost exactly. Exactly,’ said Con sharply. ‘I was just being polite, actually. I know it’s right.’
Fred looked at the bark, and then up at Lila, at Max, at Con. ‘Whatever it is that’s on the map, it’s got to be better than what’s back there. What do you say?’
That same feeling – fear, and hope, and something that felt like what his father called ‘sheer bloody-mindedness’ – began to churn inside his stomach.
Con bit her lip. Then, without a word, she took up the pole again and pushed the raft off the bank, back into the river and the corridor of dappled green light. ‘Left at the next fork?’ she asked.
‘Left at the next fork,’ said Lila.
They coasted onwards for that whole day. Some of the tributaries were only eight feet across, with a cathedral roof of branches above them creating a midnight darkness; others were so wide and bright it was hard to see the opposite shore.
As the sky grew pink, Fred turned and saw on the far bank a caiman as big as a Great Dane. It lay in mud, its eyes at half-mast, staring straight ahead. His heart clenched.
‘What do we do?’ hissed Con. She spoke without moving a single facial muscle.
‘Nothing,’ said Lila. Fred held the pole in his hands like a spear. But the caiman didn’t move as they floated past.
The sun dipped lower over the river ahead of them. The light grew purplish and thin. Fred could no longer see beneath the surface of the water.
‘We’re not safe, are we?’ asked Con.
‘No,’ said Fred. ‘But we could pretend we are.’
Lila tightened her grip on Baca’s paw. ‘Let’s act as if the river’s on our side. Let’s act as if the jungle wants us to win.’
The stars began to come out, casting the water deep black under a silver-flecked sky.
‘Even if rivers don’t take sides?’
‘Even then.’
It was almost completely dark when they found somewhere to moor; a place where the bank didn’t rise too steeply from the river, and where the trees didn’t look so much like an army ranged on the bank. Lila steered the raft towards land, and Fred jumped ashore.
‘I’ll check there aren’t any caiman marks,’ he said.
‘I’ll come too,’ said Con.
‘No,’ said Max. He gripped her ankle. ‘Stay with me.’
Con flushed, and swallowed a smile. She stayed. Fred walked through patches of trees, his heart beating in his ears, swinging a stick ahead of him through ferns, sniffing for the smell of anything recently killed. But it smelt only of growing things, and of resin and birds.
‘It’s fine!’ he called. ‘It’s safe!’ His voice twisted, echoing through the trees to reach the others, and they shouted instructions back to him and to each other and pushed the raft ashore.
It didn’t occur to anybody not to trust one another now, he thought. They had become a pack. Or, an expedition, he corrected himself. That was what you called a group of explorers.
They slept that night on the forest floor, their backs touching. Though the day had been heavy with sun, the night was cloudless and cold, and Fred slept with his knees tucked up into his shirt. He found it was unexpectedly reassuring, now, to feel Max’s foot near his nose when he turned in the night. When the nightmares came, it was good to be able to hear the others breathing.
They travelled on for another day and another night, the river carrying them at its own pace on its silver back. None of them spoke much. They watched the
sides of the banks, waiting, alert, tense.
On the morning of the third day they had barely cast off when it started to rain. Max was sitting staring out at the splashes rebounding on the river, when he let out a scream.
‘Sharks! Lila! Sharks!’
‘Where?’ Lila grabbed Max’s wrist. ‘Hold on to me,’ she said. ‘Don’t move.’
Fred looked around. There was only the expanse of water and the thrum of falling rain.
‘There are no sharks in the Amazon, Max,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to worry.’ But even as the words were leaving his mouth he saw what Max had seen: a fin, rising up out of the water.
Con screamed. Lila let out a hiss. Fred froze. He said, speaking through rigid jaws, ‘Max. Come away from the side of the raft.’
Then the fin dipped, disappeared, and out from the water leapt an arc of pinkish-grey body, curving against the rain and the thunder-coloured sun.
‘A dolphin!’ said Lila. Her whole face was transformed.
Fred rubbed his eyes and looked again; but he hadn’t imagined it. The dolphin was pink.
The arc of pink was followed by another, dipping so that the half-curve of its back rose out of the water, and another, and then a puff of water from a dolphin’s blowhole. They were coming closer.
‘Shall we jump in?’ asked Fred. ‘Would they let us swim with them?’
‘Don’t!’ said Con. ‘There might be piranha!’
The pod of dolphins circled the raft at a distance. There were five of them, Fred thought, or possibly six. One leapt up, clean out of the water, only six feet away.
Max clapped and squealed. ‘Shh!’ said Lila. ‘We have to be quiet, Maxie. They’re deciding if they trust us.’
It did seem that this was what the dolphins were doing: there was something speculative in the way they swam closer, doubled back and away, and closer again. Then, without warning, the pod turned and began to swim away. The rain grew thicker.
Fred’s heart lurched. He couldn’t bear to see them go. He pulled off his shoes, stood up and dived in, striking hard for the disappearing dolphins.
The Explorer Page 8