by Ann Halam
At sunset Donny woke. She bathed his face and hands. He drank water and glucose but he sicked it up again. Tay had been refilling their water bottles with purified river water and it tasted horrible, but she couldn’t help that. Uncle brought more of his medicine leaves. They managed to get Donny to swallow some chewed goop: but the effects were less. He had a high fever again, and he started crying. He’d developed a bad cough, which was making the pain worse. Tay propped him on a pillow made of sand and shored up with rocks, with the blanket wrapped around him, and told him stories, mostly about things that had happened when he was little. When she ran out of stories, she read to him from Shakespeare. He liked A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Donny was peaceful for an hour or so, but then he started crying again.
“I want to go to sleep, Tay, but it hurts! I’m sorry I’m being such a wuss, but I can’t help it. I really can’t. I didn’t know anything could hurt this much. It’s not fair.”
“Okay, you have to take some more of the leaf medicine.”
“It doesn’t work. I won’t eat it. It’s for monkeys. It’s all covered in monkey spit. Tay, you don’t know how it hurts. It’s horrible, horrible, horrible.”
There was a froth of bright blood at the corners of his mouth. She wiped it away with a tissue and kissed his cheek. “I’m just going to talk to Uncle for a moment.”
She went down the beach, to the water’s edge, taking the first aid kit with her. Behind her Donny was crying: a sharp, miserable, hopeless sound, like an animal whining in a trap. The case with the morphine in it felt weirdly heavy when she took it out. She knew what was weighing it down. It was fear. Beside her someone heaved a sigh. She was not startled. She was used to the silent way he would appear, when she most needed him.
“What do you think?” whispered Tay. “Should I give him the morphine?
She thought Uncle said yes. He was very wise, and he’d said no before: but now it was time. This was the last resort.
Tay gave Donny half of one of the ampoules of morphine. She knew how to do it. She was only fourteen, but her home was in the heart of a beautiful, remote wilderness. Mum and Dad had made sure their children had emergency skills. And the children had been proud and happy together, sharing Mum and Dad’s adventurous life.
When her brother was asleep, she went to the river again, alone this time. The night was very still. Overhead there was a band of clear, dark blue sky. She could see a few stars. Dear God, she prayed. Please don’t let this happen. But if it has to happen, please let me do it well. I want to do it well.
Tay and Uncle nursed Donny for three more days. On the first day Tay went to Aru Batur again. She found it as deserted as before, but now fires were smoldering in many of the abandoned houses. She didn’t try to put them out. She left a message, written in English and Malay and held down by a stone, on a broken market stall; and she collected supplies. She didn’t think this counted as stealing, and she wouldn’t have cared anyway. On the way back she left a trail of markers: strips of cloth and plastic tied to trees and branches. Then she’d done everything she could think of, so she just stayed with Donny, and gave him half an ampoule of morphine every six hours. She thought he had pneumonia now, but there were no drugs for that in the first aid. He never asked if he was dying, and Tay decided there was no reason to tell him. God wouldn’t want him to be frightened. She told him he was too ill to move and that she hoped help was coming. She didn’t think he cared much. His world was reduced to being in pain, and fever dreams.
Uncle brought new green branches every morning to shield Donny from the sun and rain. Toward the end, when Donny was very weak, the great ape sat for hours with the boy cuddled in his arms, holding him up so that he could breathe. On the evening of the third day, Donny became quiet. He stopped crying, and he and Tay talked a little, about ordinary things. Funny things that had happened at his school, nice things they both remembered from Christmases and birthdays and holidays. He was lying propped up, with his head on Tay’s shoulder and holding Uncle’s hand, when he died.
The whole of that night, while she cried and cried, Tay planned to stay with her brother and guard his body until the rebels came and found her, or she died herself. In the morning she knew she had to go on. She must tell someone what had happened. That was all there was left to do for the people she loved. It was the only thing that made sense of being alive.
She thought they had to bury Donny. Uncle disagreed. He wanted to cover Donny in more green branches, as if he was sleeping. They argued about it, and at last they agreed to cover Donny in green branches, with the best presents they could spare him (the last tin of peaches, his torch, some flowers), and then bury the branches under a cairn of stones. . . . Tay was dimly aware that she was making believe that Uncle talked to her and argued with her, but it didn’t matter if she was pretending because it was true that Uncle cared. He didn’t care like an animal, he cared like a person. The hardest part was when they had to cover Donny’s face and she knew that she would never, never see him again. But they did it, and they made the cairn. It took a long time, but they did it well.
Tay cried one last time, and then they set out together, the orangutan with his immense strength and Tay with her unquenchable energy, for the river crossing and whatever lay beyond.
They had to think of some way to cross the mighty Waruk River. The raft ferry that had carried vehicles at Aru Batur was grounded in the mud, tipped at a crazy angle. There were other rafts, motorboats and a few dugout canoes pulled up along the waterfront. Most of them, when you looked closely, had been put out of action in some way. Planks had been staved in, fiberglass had been smashed, the outboard motors had been wrecked. The river was wide and the current was very strong. Tay paced up and down while Uncle sat and watched from the boardwalk, chin on his furry hands. “One thing we mustn’t do,” she told him. “We mustn’t lose the radiophone, because we mustn’t lose the beacon. If we capsize, we can swim . . . but then we might lose the rucksack. Oh. Can you swim, Uncle?”
Uncle gestured reassuringly. I’ll be all right.
“Now, if Pam was here . . .” She had thought she never wanted to see Pam Taylor again, or even think of her. But she could not bear to think of Donny, or Mum and Dad, or Clint, and she must think of someone. Everything she loved had been taken away, but she must keep cheerful, for Uncle’s sake. She was the captain of this team. She had to keep up his morale.
“Pam would know what to do. You know, Uncle, she’s done some amazing things. Once she was on the coast of Vietnam, researching into the survival rate of the mangrove swamps, and she was stranded with a whole TV crew. Their support ship couldn’t reach them and tropical storms were lashing the coast, so she led the whole group through the swamps and over the mountains, and there were bandits and land mines, but she dealt with everything. There was a river that they had to cross, like this one, so she swam across it with a rope, which she tied to a tree on the other side, and then she made a harness to slide along the rope, so even the weakest TV person could be hauled across safely, and all the equipment too—”
When they’d been friends, Pam had used to tell Tay and Donny stories about her adventures as a conservation scientist. It had started when Tay was younger, so young she didn’t know what was made up and what was real. It had become very funny and silly: Pam giving herself the role of an action-movie hero and inventing ever wilder, more unlikely situations. Tay didn’t know if she was making up a new story now or if it was one she remembered. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if it was truth or fiction, so long as it made Uncle feel better. She wrapped her arms around herself, chilled by grief and helplessness. In the slick ooze under the waterfront boardwalk little mudskippers hopped about. Donny used to love watching the muddy-mudskippers.
“You see, we’re going to be all right because I’m a copy of Pam Taylor,” she explained, “and she’s a remarkable person. I’m an exact copy of a remarkable person. I hated it when I saw the Teenage Clones Are Among U
s headlines. I felt as if my life had been taken away. But now my life has been taken away, no more stories, and it turns out it’s a very good thing that I’m a photocopy of Pam. I don’t have to wonder if I’m brave or clever. I know I am. So you don’t have to worry. I can do this. I can get us through.”
Inside her a voice was crying that she had not been able to save Donny’s life. She had not been able to save Clint, or Lucia, or Mum and Dad. But that was because she had not been remembering that she was really Pam Taylor. Taylor Walker was a helpless kid. Now the copy of Pam Taylor would take over, and she’d be able to do anything.
“That’s why they called me Taylor, because I’m Pam’s clone. I wished I had been called Mary after my mum, but I never told them, because it would have upset everyone. I think they decided it was only fair to call me after her, because I was with Mum all the time, and they didn’t want to call me Pam, because it would cause confusion. That’s what I worked out. But I never asked. I don’t like asking awkward questions. It might lead to talking about things . . . that . . . hurt.”
Uncle was watching her carefully.
“Don’t look so worried, Uncle. I’m going to save us. I’m thinking—”
The metal ropes that had guided the ferry were still stretched across the huge gray-brown face of the water. Tay selected a raft, a small raft that didn’t seem to have been damaged. She didn’t trust the motorboats, and she didn’t think she could handle one of the heavy dugout canoes. She got Uncle to haul the raft along the mud to the waterline beside the ferry pier and searched around until she found a length of rope. She slung her rope over one of the metal hawsers, brought both ends to the raft, and threaded one end between the bound poles that made the raft’s raised side.
“Now we make a really good knot.” She was trying to knot the rope as she spoke—but she wasn’t doing very well, because it was thick and hard and her hands were small. “We push our raft into the water, and we pole it across. I know how to do that. But we’ll be fastened to the ferry hawser all the time, like the harness Pam made in Vietnam. So we can’t get swept away. You’ll be quite safe. Do you see?”
Uncle looked closely at the really good knot, stuck his lip out and started to undo it.
“Hey! Stop that!”
But he was tying the knot again, and doing it much better than Tay.
“Oh, I see. I’m sorry, thank you.”
The rucksack was on the boardwalk. Uncle had been carrying it. After Donny died, Tay had forgotten that orangutans don’t carry rucksacks. She’d been letting him take turns. He was part of the team, after all. She fetched it and put it on her own back, making sure the waistband was clipped tight. They shoved the raft out into the water—Uncle did most of the shoving—and scrambled on board. At once, caught by a powerful eddy, it began to swing around like a live thing. But it couldn’t get free; and the looped rope slid along the hawser, just the way it was supposed to do.
“Aru Batur,” whispered Tay, staring passionately at the shore she was leaving. “I’ll come back, Donny. We’ll come back for you, my little brother.”
Then the river took over, and she could think of nothing except trying to keep the raft steady and keep that rope moving along. Uncle sat clinging to the side, staring at the rushing water with an expression of horror. Tay stood in the middle with her pole. The river was deep, deeper than Tay could guess, and the current was fierce. She fought doggedly, gritting her teeth and muttering, “I’m a copy of a remarkable person!” But her arms got very tired: and this time Uncle couldn’t help.
About two-thirds of the way across they met with disaster. A massive tree trunk came racing toward them from upstream. Tay thought it was going to swing by without touching them, but there were branches sticking out, hidden under the surface. A snag caught them and dragged the raft sideways. Tay lost her footing. She dropped the pole. It was lucky she did or she’d have been left stranded, hanging on to it in midstream. The tree trunk snatched the raft away, so violently that the guide rope parted. The drowned tree and the raft went whirling around, all tangled together, Tay and Uncle being flung about like rag dolls—
“Push it off us! Push it off us!” yelled Tay. But the tree trunk, unbalanced by its new burden, heaved itself up, tipping the raft upside down. The water closed over Tay’s head. She popped up to the surface and saw Uncle in the branches of the drowned tree, staring at her, terrified, as he was swept away.
“I’m coming!” she yelled. “Hang on!”
She struck out. She couldn’t fight the current, she had to let it take her, straight into the arms of the raft-snatcher tree. In a confusion of splashing, with brown foamy water in her throat and nose and eyes, she grabbed on to a branch and clung there.
“Jump!” she yelled. “You’ve got to jump, Uncle! There’s rapids and you’ll get killed. Come on, remember I’m really Pam, I can save us, only jump!”
And he was in the water with her, grabbing onto her frantically.
“Kick for the bank!” she screamed, and choked, and went under—
Somehow, between them, they managed it. They escaped from the current. They drifted, they swam, and at last they clambered out, into the waterlogged roots of the trees on the eastern bank; and up onto solid ground.
Tay got on her hands and knees and threw up a lot of muddy water.
“Have I still got the rucksack?” she croaked. She was too dizzy to tell.
Uncle took her hand and held it to the straps. Yes, she still had the rucksack. . . . When she could manage to see straight, she took it off and checked to see what had survived. The radiophone was safe, and her torch, both still wrapped in plastic bags but wet through anyway. Tins of food, a water bottle, the map and the piece of Donny’s blanket that she had brought with her, to have something of his . . . the Shakespeare, very bedraggled. The compass was zipped into her shorts pocket, with her pocketknife and the matches. The map was useless. What was missing? She was sure there should be something else. Something important.
“Oh, Uncle! We’ve lost Clint’s important papers! They were in here, I’m sure. Do you remember when you last saw them?”
She couldn’t remember when she’d last seen that slick black package. She asked Uncle again, but he just offered her the Shakespeare.
“Not the book. Different papers with writing. Clint’s papers—”
Uncle held out his empty hands.
“No, I don’t remember either. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing to be done.”
Tay had looted the shops at Aru Batur. She didn’t think that was wrong. She’d filled the rucksack with supplies again. Some of the stuff she’d looted—tins of food mostly—was at the bottom of the river now, but they could survive for days and days. All she had to do was keep Uncle cheerful and keep them both going. If they’d managed to stay attached to the ferry hawser, there’d have been a road in front of them now. But they’d been swept downstream, so instead there was another of those walls of trees.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she told him, forgetting that to Uncle the trees were his natural home. “There’s only a thin band of forest here. Then it’s the dry corner of Kandah. It’s open country, savannah: low hills and a few trees but mostly grass. I don’t think we should try to get back to the road now. We’re better off just heading east by our compass. We’ll come out of the trees soon, and then we’ll be able to see for miles.”
Uncle took to the branches, Tay found the best route she could. The shy animals and birds of the forest floor didn’t show themselves, but she heard them rustling and stirring; and that made her feel at home. Hornbills called, and once a troupe of monkeys crashed by, far overhead. The going wasn’t hard. There were paths made by animals or people; she just switched from one to another, keeping her heading near to the east. They had left Donny’s grave at dawn. Before sunset, quite unexpectedly, Tay reached the eaves of the forest. She stood looking out over a wide-open country, under a sky colored green and pink with the reflected sunset.
/> Uncle was suddenly beside her, appearing silently as he always did.
“Over there,” said Tay, pointing. “That’s where we’re going. That’s where the coast is. There’s nothing to stop us now.”
She lay down, head buried in her arms, and began to cry.
The orangutan crouched beside her and patted her shoulder gently.
They rested overnight. At dawn Tay decided they should still follow the compass, rather than try to get back to the road. The ruined map was no use, but if they simply kept going east they must hit the coastal highway, and then they couldn’t help finding the Marine and Shore Station’s mooring. She thought it was about a hundred kilometers. Say, five days walking . . . She explained this to Uncle, making it sound as easy as she could.
The savannah country of the dry corner of Kandah was very hot in this season. Tay cut the piece of Donny’s blanket in two, gave half to Uncle and told him he should wrap it around his head and shoulders. He understood her very quickly. Then she walked stubbornly through the straw-colored scrub, and the ape kept pace with her: until the heat was so great it was frightening. They took shelter under an acacia tree. The earth was red and cracked, it reminded Tay of burned flesh.
“We’ll need to find water,” said Tay. “We’ll find some roots for you to eat. We’ll dig for edible roots in the ground. Once, when Pam Taylor was—”
She couldn’t remember the story. She took out the Shakespeare and read some of Henry V to him instead. Uncle listened attentively.
When she was tired of reading, she gave him the book. He turned the pages carefully, one by one, but he wouldn’t read aloud—
