by Georgia Byng
Petula followed blindly. She’d never been so pleased to see anyone. The man was like an angel. Any second now, Petula thought, wings would sprout from his back.
Ignoring her body’s exhaustion, Petula trotted after the man along the jungle paths. His booted feet pounded the forest paths as he walked determinedly on. Around her, the thick, muggy air seethed with insect buzz and the chatter of small animals. And far away, thunder clattered and rumbled as though it was saying good-bye. Petula panted heavily. Her heart began to pound, and then her head began to swim. She looked up. It seemed that great pale wings had grown from the man’s back. “Good-bye, good-bye,” the thunder rumbled. And now Petula wondered whether in fact she was dead.
The angel was going to fly away with Molly, Petula thought. Desperately, she squeezed out a rusty, weak bark.
“Raewerrgh! Don’t leave me!” Then she tipped as her legs gave way, and she fell to the ground.
Then Petula felt strong arms scoop her up. And she too blacked out.
Twenty-four
The man arrived at a small cluster of thatched wooden huts built on stilts. A large, scruffy brown dog rushed out of one to greet him.
“Good boy, Canis,” the man said. Canis sniffed at Petula and Molly and keenly followed the man to the largest hut. There was a veranda outside its entrance. The man placed Molly and Petula on a daybed. Molly’s bloody head immediately stained the pillow. He fetched a towel and a blanket. Then he removed Molly’s sodden sneakers and her wet outer clothes and dried her and covered her with a blanket. He toweled down Petula and put her by Molly’s side with the towel on her, too. All the while the brown dog sat by his side, watching his every move.
A warm fire burned in the veranda’s hearth. The man added kindling to it. Then he washed his hands in a tap beside the hut that was under a rain tank and he came back to Molly to tend her wound. He set up an oil lamp to inspect and clean the cut under Molly’s hair. He pasted some ointment onto it, and with a few green leaves layered on top of that, he bandaged Molly’s head.
“Must have had something to do with that explosion,” the man muttered. “Expect the noise was a plane crashing.” The dog, Canis, tilted his head to one side and woofed. “But we should be quiet now,” the man said. “Let them warm up and rest.”
Molly slept. She sank deeper and deeper into her unconscious mind, like a fish that normally swims on the surface of the sea diving down to depths it never thought possible. Like colorful deep-sea corals, powerful images passed by Molly’s closed eyes, and like ocean-dwelling monster fish, scary pictures appeared, too. Kaleidoscopic and vivid, the feelings in the dreams were equally intense. She was in a copse of trees full of birdsong and woodpeckers that rat-tat-tatted on bark. And then the rat-tat-tats became louder, becoming harsh and booming until the forest was full of the clamor of scary, hard noise. And then all the birds died and the stream became a torrent of rushing water that swept the forest animals away to their deaths. Behind, the meadow of flowers shriveled under a scorching sun and the fields became a desert and in no time at all the river dried up to a dusty, stone-filled ditch. Molly found herself calling for help as she walked along the ghostly riverbed, but no one answered. Then Miss Hunroe’s face emerged from behind a cloud, and she laughed like a crazed devil before turning into a massive black insect that flew down from the sky and bit Molly on the back of the head.
Early morning light and shade mottled the hut’s veranda floor, and like gentle fingers, they stroked Molly’s eyelids. Molly stirred. Her head hurt. She felt something warm on her leg and reached down to stroke Petula. Then, with a rush, everything came back to her. The plane! The parachute jump! The others! Where were they?
Molly opened her eyes and saw that she was now inside a hut. Her limbs were stiff and sluggish; she felt like she’d been asleep for days.
She gazed outside. In a clearing, she saw a man in khaki shorts and a whitish shirt crouch on his heels, stirring something in a campfire pot. Beside him sat a brown dog with velvety ears. The dog raised its head to look at her. Molly tried to sit up, but she grew dizzy, and too tired to do anything more, she fell back to sleep.
A day later, Molly woke up properly. The man was beside her. Molly stared at him, not fully understanding where she was. She looked at the man’s matted, shoulder-length hair and the feather earring in his right ear. His eyes were green and his face was very tanned, so that when he smiled, his teeth seemed especially white. His nose was straight and his cheeks were ruddy. He wore a red-and-orange bead necklace that sat above his collarbones, and a white shirt with a print of leaves on it, and shorts.
“How you feeling?” he asked gently, with an accent that sounded French.
Molly slowly sat up, leaning her shoulders heavily against the wall of the hut, and she reached to the back of her head to touch it. It had a big bandage. She wondered how badly she had hurt herself and how long she had been unconscious. Petula nuzzled at her leg. Molly felt her face. Her eyes were puffy and her forehead and cheekbones bruised. Molly remembered the huge hailstones that had smashed into her in the sky. Then she swallowed hard. She was horribly thirsty.
“Have a drink,” the man said, offering a cup to her.
The water tasted deliciously sweet and pure. Molly took small sips at first. Then she gulped down the whole cup and chased it with another. Dazed as she was, Molly found herself wondering whether the water was from the spring of the Coca River. Her body, like a parched plant, soaked up the fluid. It cleared her head. Suddenly Molly felt ravenous.
“Um, I’m sorry about this,” she said to the man. “I know you’ve saved my life and everything, and you want to know things, but I’m really hun—” Before Molly had finished her sentence, the man passed her a plate of food.
“It looks a little strange,” he said, “but it tastes great. You’ll see.”
Molly began to eat. It was delicious—some sort of vegetable mixed with onions, herbs, and garlic. But her mouth had forgotten how to chew, and her stomach had shrunk to the size of a Ping-Pong ball. After only a couple of mouthfuls, Molly felt full.
Molly wiped her mouth. “Thank you,” she said, her brain now ticking properly. “Where am I? Are the others here, too?”
“You’re the only one I’ve found,” the man said.
Molly shook her head in horror. Then she studied the man’s face. “And…and who are you?”
“My name’s Bas.” The man smiled. “Basile is my real name, but people call me Bas. Basile is like your English name Basil. You know basil leaves; they’re green and taste really nice with tomatoes. Kinda funny name to have, I suppose. I’m a botanist—I study plants. It’s like my parents knew I would like plants. And as you can see, we are right in the middle of a place with a lot of green stuff.”
Molly reached down and stroked Petula. She could feel her strength coming back by the minute. She looked up at Bas gratefully.
“Thank you for finding me. I could have died.”
“Certainly could have. You were lucky that I was out that night tracking a wild pig. You are also fortunate that I know a lot about the medicinal properties of rain-forest plants. I was able to mix an ointment that was perfect for fixing your wound.”
“Was it bad?” Molly asked, reaching up to the lump on the back of her head.
“Pretty bad. You kind of split it and bumped it. You’ve been concussed for a few days. Knocked out. Have you got a headache?”
“No.” Molly suddenly felt sick with fear. She was alive because she had been lucky. What about the others? “Do you think the others are dead?”
Bas tilted his head. “We can look for them,” he said. “The best thing is to stay optimistic, and you mustn’t worry.” He paused and changed the subject. “You’ve probably acclimatized to the mountain air while you’ve been asleep. It’s really high up here where we are. Less oxygen in the air. Takes a bit of getting used to. Are you feeling okay?”
Molly nodded. She wondered how long he had lived in the Ecuadorian jungle
.
“How come you’re here?” she asked.
“Oh, I’m writing a book. It’s been taking me years to research. Three years and four months so far, to be precise. It’s all about the precious herbs and plants in the cloud forest and how they can help cure people. It’s all about not letting the forest be chopped down. Because if we lose the trees and the unique plants and fungi here, we lose the wisdom of the place. There are amazing cures for human illnesses in this jungle.” Petula gave a little growl. “Okay, and for dog illnesses, too. How about cat illnesses?” Bas studied Petula’s face. “Can’t imagine you care so much about cats.”
Molly laughed.
“So I’m here,” Bas continued. “Eating what grows here and kinda getting away from it all. Hardly talk to anyone. My radio, you know, the type to communicate with people, is broken. Every so often I take a trip on my motorbike to the town, thirty miles away. I stock up with supplies of stuff that I can’t grow, like chocolate. And coffee, and matches and pasta. Stuff like that. I’m pretty self-sufficient. I have a little windmill that makes electricity, and some solar panels, too, that harvest energy from the sun. I collect rainwater…there’s a lot of water up here. And I grow things. Got a big vegetable patch. Just have to watch the naughty critters who come to nibble at it. Grow everything from garlic to soy—I’m a vegetarian, see, so need some protein.” He pointed to Petula. “Your dog seems to like the soy, too. Anyway, corn, salad, potatoes, tomatoes, pumpkins. Everything grows here. So fertile. And I keep chickens for their eggs. Got a natural loo. Full of sawdust and sprinkle bacteria on it and it all just rots away in an amazing way. It doesn’t even smell. And I got Canis here. Oh, where is he? Anyway, got my dog. And all the company of the forest, with its birds and monkeys, and I’ve got a good library, so lots to read, and occasionally I watch a movie on my computer. Got about fifty movies.”
Molly realized that Bas had been hit by a torrent of verbal diarrhea. He obviously hadn’t spoken to anyone for months. Then her mind changed gear.
“Erm, Bas,” Molly said. “My friends—I know you said not to worry, but…Do you think they’re all right?”
Bas looked Molly in the eye. “How many of you were there?”
“Four. Malcolm, the pilot, and my brother, Micky, and a girl called Lily. We were trying to find the Logan Stones. We’ve got to sort out a big problem.” Molly tried to swing her legs out of bed. Her head swam.
“You can’t move today,” Bas said. “But you can tell me your story. And maybe by tomorrow, you will feel better enough to start searching for your friends. They may have been lucky,” he added kindly. “There is lots to eat in the forest. I heard the plane come down. We can search for them. The dogs can help. But for now, see whether you can eat some more. And tell me about your problem. Maybe I can help.”
And so Molly ate a little more and told Bas everything.
The more she talked, the more anxious she grew about her friends and Micky, and the more worried she became about Miss Hunroe’s plan. Molly was the only person left in the world who might be able to stop Miss Hunroe. The weight of her responsibility sank in as Molly told Bas her story. The lush and peaceful forest rippled with birdsong as though refusing to believe that anything bad was happening. But Bas’s face dropped as he listened.
“You probably think I’m delirious or something,”
Molly concluded. “I mean, hypnotism, morphing, and all that must sound pretty far-fetched. Like I’ve gone funny in the head since being knocked out.”
“Well, I’m not sure,” said Bas. “I mean, you could hypnotize me to prove it, or even morph into me! But you might relapse and knock yourself out again with the effort.” Molly was too tired to read Bas’s mind to see whether he believed her. He went on talking. “No, the best thing, seems to me, is that tomorrow we ought to go to my viewing crane. I’ve got this crane that’s high up in the canopy that I normally use for inspecting plants and stuff. The views from it are expansive, to say the least. You never know what we might see from up there. And as far as the Logan Stones go, I know where they are.”
“You do?” Molly gulped as she spoke. She hadn’t expected this. Bas’s revelation had tripped off his tongue so lightly.
“Sure. They are quite a way from here. But I can show you.”
Twenty-five
Molly got stronger. She ate and ate, little bits here and there, and by the end of the day she had polished off a whole bowl of Bas’s sweet-potato soup in one sitting. By the evening Molly was walking about his encampment, admiring his vegetable garden. It was a fantastic mountain allotment fenced in with rabbit-proof wire mesh. Bas had a book called The Vegetable A to Z, and it seemed that he grew everything in it. From artichokes to zucchinis. Molly tried to feel optimistic, but she couldn’t help being dreadfully anxious. She sat on a rock and stared at a bean plant. And, as though her body could no longer take being strong, as though it could no longer contain the relief of being alive mixed with the worry for the others, she cried.
Petula was worried too, but in another way she had never felt happier. For when she’d been spinning down through the sky in the storm, she had realized she wasn’t ready to die yet. She wanted to live. Life was wonderful—full of life. Sucking a stone and sitting comfortably here on a warm rock, watching Molly as she walked through the vegetable garden, Petula sniffed the air to see what lovely things the cloud forest had to offer. Petula smelled a monkey nearby, and then she detected the scent of the mountain dog.
A mongrel with wolflike features and scruffy, tufty brown hair. This was the closest he’d come to her. It was as if he wanted to introduce himself, for he looked straight at her and sniffed at the air. Then he approached.
“Good evening,” he said, sitting down beside her. “I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to introduce myself. My name is Canis. I don’t think I’ve ever seen your breed before.” Petula was impressed. Most dogs couldn’t help having a close sniff before they introduced themselves. This dog had manners.
“I’m a pug,” she explained. “I come from a long way away. My name is Petula. It’s great to meet you—I haven’t spoken to another dog for days.”
“That makes two of us!” Canis replied.
He was one of the messiest-faced dogs Petula had ever met, but his eyes were wise and gentle.
“In fact,” he went on, “the last dog I spoke to was in the village down the mountain, and that was weeks ago. I met a couple of wild dogs a few months back, but usually they’re on a different mountainside. Occasionally I hear them howl at night.”
Molly heard the sound of a generator burrowing mechanical noise into the evening air. It was coming from a hut nearby. She knocked on the door.
“Come in!”
The door creaked as it swung open. The main room was small and very full. Its walls were lined with books, and the tables were laden with microscopes of varying sizes and pads with writing on them and white sheets of paper with drawings. Bas was working on a drawing now, under a bright light. The wind-powered generator provided the electricity for this light, and Bas obviously only turned it on when he really needed it.
“You’re very good at drawing,” Molly observed. “I would never dare to do it in ink straightaway like that. I’d smudge it or make a mistake. Anyway, I can’t draw anywhere near as well as that.”
“Oh, well, you have other talents,” Bas said. “This bobbly plant with its dangling fronds is from a tree called dragon’s blood. This variety grows in the cloud forest. Under its bark is a resin that is bloodred. It is good for healing wounds. I used it on your head wound. You’d be amazed how many amazing plant medicines there are up here. It’s like nature’s pharmacy. That’s one good reason why we should stop chopping the forest down, just in case there is a cure for some disease in the forest.” He shook his head. “There are amazing orchids up here, too. So pretty. I like the insects, too, and sometimes draw them just for fun.” He pointed to one wall covered with drawings of insects. “My favorite one is that in
sect that looks like a leaf.” There were photographs of monkeys and birds and spiders.
“Did you take these?” asked Molly.
“Yes,” Bas said, concentrating on the stem of his dragon’s blood plant. “That little monkey is a capuchin monkey. Call him Cappuccino. See the way his black hair looks like a skullcap on the top of his head? And the way he’s all fluffy with that white part there? Well, he looks a bit like a nice frothy cup of coffee, doesn’t he? Cappucinno suits him.” Molly looked at the small brown monkey with the furry white chest and face. “He’s eating a tomato I gave him. Sweet, isn’t he? He’s around here a lot. Mind you, he’s not always sweet. He’s a very good judge of people. Anyway, I’ve been thinking. I reckon you’re strong enough to make the journey to the Logan Stones. On the way, we can look for your friends. Chances are, if they’ve got the coordinates, they’ll be heading in that direction, too. Now, want to draw a picture? It might relax you. Take your mind off your troubles.”
Molly sat down. Bas passed her a pencil and an eraser. “Fancy drawing a twig? Twigs are good. I love twigs. Don’t hurry it. You’ve got the whole evening. The more you practice, the better you will get, for sure.” A scratching noise outside attracted his attention. “Or look,” he said, pointing to a tree outside. “There’s Cappuccino. You could try to draw him. He will move a bit, but it might be fun to try.”
