The Explorer

by Katherine Rundell

  She didn’t smile back.

  Fred slipped to the back of the procession. Every three or four trees he broke a branch and stuck a leaf on the hinge it made.

  Con shook her head. ‘That’s not going to be any good. You need something bigger.’ She tore one of the ruffles off her once-white blouse and tied it to a tree. ‘There.’

  Fred turned to look at her, crouched in the dappled light. She moved stiffly, as if unaccustomed to using her own body. And her clothes seemed to sit on her like a bear trap. There are outfits that suggest of their own accord that their owner should sit still and smile nicely. Con had been dressed in one such outfit, before the crash had coloured it brown and green and red.

  ‘Good thing you’ve got ruffles to spare,’ he said, and grinned.

  Con turned on him the kind of look that breaks noses. ‘Shut up, cricket jumper.’

  Fred took a step backwards. ‘I only meant – it’s useful to have clothing with extra bits attached. Boys’ clothes don’t.’

  ‘Fine. Whatever you say. You don’t have to try to be nice to me, you know.’

  ‘What?’ Fred stared, bewildered.

  ‘I just want to get out of this vile place and back to school. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m not really interested in making friends. Especially not with little kids.’

  Lila heard them. ‘I’m not a little kid,’ she said quietly. She spoke without taking her eyes off the ants. ‘I’m just small for my age.’

  ‘How old are you?’ Con turned to Fred.

  Fred told her.

  ‘But that’s hardly older than me!’ said Con.

  ‘And me,’ said Lila.

  ‘I thought you were much older!’ said Con.

  Fred shrugged. ‘Just tall,’ he said.

  ‘But that means there’s no adults! Not even any nearly-adults. Just four children. In the Amazon jungle.’

  ‘That,’ said Fred, ‘sounds true.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ said Lila.

  ‘Un-fornatuely,’ echoed Max. He wandered off a few paces, blowing nose-bubbles with his snot. Lila darted after him and grabbed him by the sleeve. ‘Stay close!’ she said. Her face was bones and eyes and nerves.

  As they walked on a smell came to Fred on the air, something sharp and fresh, something that smelt more blue than green.

  ‘Is that the river? I think I can smell it,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Con. ‘You can’t smell water –’

  But then she broke off. Through the thickly ranged trees Fred could see a flicker of something that moved.

  ‘Come on!’ called Con. ‘I’ve found the river!’

  They stood where the ground curved down to meet the river. The river was a stark, bright blue.

  ‘Do you think there are caimans?’ Lila asked. Despite the sun overhead, she shivered.

  In the long winter of Fred’s illness he’d read dozens of books about explorers venturing out into the wild armed with only a pith helmet and a penknife. He had a shelf-ful, all dog-eared and food-stained, and they had all dwelt, at great length, on caimans.

  He decided to be honest. ‘Probably,’ he said, but I don’t know how else we’re going to get water.’

  ‘What are caimans?’ asked Con.

  ‘Alligators,’ said Fred. ‘Like crocodiles. But with longer snouts.’

  ‘But they’re smaller,’ said Lila. ‘Probably.’

  ‘Probably?’ said Con. ‘Oh good.’

  ‘The caimans like the sunny side of the bank,’ said Lila. ‘And we’re in shade here. So we’re probably fine.’

  ‘Everything’s a risk here,’ said Fred. ‘I’m going in.’ Every hair on his arms stood on edge as he scanned the bank.

  He pulled off his shirt, then put it back on again. It occurred to him that it needed washing as much as he did.

  He slipped down the bank, his feet squelching in the mud, and dived in head first.

  The river was a gift. It soothed the burn of his cuts and the ache in his feet. Fred trod water, then kicked downwards, below the surface where it was colder, and sucked in a mouthful of water.

  It had a tang of mud to it, and a strand of waterweed wrapped itself around his tongue, but at that moment it was the most delicious thing he had ever drunk – better than hot chocolate at Christmas or fresh lemonade in summer. ‘Come in!’ he called.

  Lila plunged in after him, carrying Max on her shoulders. Con hesitated on the edge, her face stiff and anxious.

  ‘We didn’t do swimming at school,’ she said. ‘Only ballroom dancing.’ She entered the water slowly and swam in a nervous doggie-paddle, her chin high above the water.

  Fred rubbed his arms and legs, feeling his cuts sting as he scrubbed the dirt off them, then kicked below the surface again, his eyes open in the dark water. A shoal of miniature fish swam by, followed by a single, larger one. He came up for air.

  ‘There’s fish!’ he called.

  ‘Try to catch one!’ called Con.

  Fred plunged down again. The small fish darted away as he grabbed at them. The larger fish ignored him completely, but there was something eerie in its shape – almost circular, like a swimming dinner plate. The fish turned. It bared its teeth at him.

  Fred sucked in a lungful of river water and shot, coughing, to the surface. ‘Piranhas!’ he yelled. ‘Get out!’

  Max was floating near him. Fred grabbed him and struck out for the bank, fear pounding through his limbs.

  ‘What are piranhas?’ Con asked.

  ‘Fish with teeth!’

  Con screamed a word Fred hadn’t expected her to know, then swallowed a mouthful of water and disappeared under the surface.

  Lila, wild-faced, grabbed Con by the shoulders. ‘Don’t thrash!’ she said. She hooked one arm around Con’s waist, kicking for the shore. ‘Just breathe!’

  Fred and Max scrambled up the bank, Con and Lila just behind them. They lay, panting, on the hot earth.

  Con let out a groan and spat out a mouthful of weeds. ‘Fish! Fish with teeth! Nothing is safe here. You can’t even trust the fish not to eat you. What else? Pigeons with fangs? Monkeys with guns?’

  ‘I read,’ Fred gasped, ‘that they don’t bite unless they’re very hungry.’

  ‘They mostly eat small things, you know, birds and frogs,’ said Lila. She wrung out her hair. It was covered in a dusting of red-brown river silt.

  ‘It looked –’ Fred drew in a great breath and felt his heart begin to slow – ‘like it wasn’t going to do anything. It was actually quite beautiful. Silver with a red belly.’

  ‘Beautiful?’ Con stared incredulously.

  ‘As long as we’re not bleeding into the water, we won’t attract them,’ said Lila. ‘I knew that, but I panicked. We’re still safe to swim here. I think they’ll ignore us.’

  ‘You think! You think you think you think!’ Con was red in the face, sharp-boned, ferocious. ‘They’re fish with teeth! Piranhas! You can’t psychoanalyse them!’

  Lila looked at Con; her face was inscrutable. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that the plural of piranha is piranha, not piranhas.’

  ‘Oh good,’ said Con. ‘It’s always nice to be grammatically correct when you’re being eaten.’

  They padded damply back to the clearing. Lila used her wet shirt to wipe the mud off Max’s face as they went. Their bodies steamed in the sun as they dried.

  Coming back into the clearing felt surprisingly like coming home. A scarlet parrot alighted on a branch above Fred’s head, cawed in surprise at the band of dripping children, and took off again.

  Fred found the sharpest of the flints, and hacked off the bottom of his grey school trousers, making them into rough-edged shorts. The left leg was longer than the right, but he decided it didn’t matter. The cut on his leg had begun to scab nicely. He pulled off his cricket jumper and wrung it out.

  Something in Fred was beginning to glow: under the sun, and the cry of the birds, and the great expanse of vivid green around them. It was huge
and dizzying.

  It felt like hope.

  Either that, he thought, or concussion.

  Although Fred had drunk so much water that the skin on his stomach was stretched tight, he was still painfully hungry. His insides ached and growled noisily. Con giggled. Fred thumped his front with a fist. His body felt at half-mast: weak and flimsily built.

  He hadn’t eaten anything since an apple before he boarded the aeroplane. He wasn’t sure how long ago that was – a day and a half? He thought back: the flight had been on a Saturday, so today was probably – unless they’d all been unconscious for a long time – Sunday.

  Fred shivered. He shook his head, trying desperately to clear the picture of the burning plane from behind his eyes. ‘I think that there are insects you can eat,’ he blurted out, more to distract himself than anything else.

  The comment was greeted with a silence so unenthusiastic that it seemed to have its own particular smell.

  ‘And we can find fruit,’ he added. ‘There’s got to be some. There are monkeys, and the monkeys have to be eating something. Bananas, maybe. There were banana leaves in the den. Or berries.’

  ‘How will we know if the berries are safe?’ said Con.

  ‘I’ll test them,’ said Fred.

  ‘What if you die?’ she asked.

  ‘Maybe we should all test them, if we find any,’ said Lila. ‘But not Max.’

  ‘Why not Max?’ said Con. ‘If we’re risking our lives, why shouldn’t he?’

  ‘Because he’s too young!’ said Lila. ‘And he has allergies.’

  ‘That’s not fair!’ said Con. She smacked a small rock against a large one, making Max jump.

  Fred could feel his own temper slipping away; the heat was burning, and his stomach felt bitter. ‘Con,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

  ‘You don’t know me well enough to tell me to come on. Nobody voted you leader.’

  Fred bit his tongue, feeling his nostrils flare angrily. ‘I didn’t say I was!’

  Lila’s face was crumpling. ‘Don’t.’ She swallowed back a noise that might have been the beginning of tears, or a scream, and tried to change the subject. ‘What were you saying about insects?’

  ‘One of my books said you can eat the insects that eat cocoa pods.’

  ‘What book?’

  ‘Just a book about explorers.’ It was a book about Percy Fawcett, a man who had come to the Amazon in search of golden cities. It was the kind of book that left you breathless and eye-stretched.

  ‘What did your book,’ Con pronounced the word with distrust, ‘say the insects look like?’

  ‘Small,’ said Fred. ‘It said not to eat any insect too big to put up your nostril.’

  ‘Any further detail on that?’ asked Con. Even her teeth looked sarcastic.

  ‘No.’ Fred wished, not for the first time, that more of his books had had pictures.

  ‘Lila will know,’ said Max proudly. ‘Lila knows all about animals. She nearly got expelled for trying to keep a squirrel in her desk.’ He grinned. ‘Mama was so angry.’

  ‘Shush, Max!’ Lila glared at her brother.

  ‘Well, insects aren’t animals!’ said Con. ‘So none of this is useful.’

  ‘Do you know?’ Fred asked Lila. There was a spark of something stirring behind her eyes.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Lila. ‘But, actually –’ she jumped to her feet – ‘Max, stay here. I’ll be right back.’

  ‘What? No!’ Max put down the leaf he was chewing on and screwed his face into an angry ball. ‘Wait!’

  But Lila had gone, running out of the clearing, her half-burnt plaits swinging behind her.

  The fifteen minutes that followed were not peaceful. Max tried to follow Lila, but Lila had disappeared into the undergrowth and couldn’t be found. Fred picked Max up to stop him from running out through the unmarked, thick-crowded trees. Max bit him on the back of the hand; Con called him a brat; Max bit Con on the shin.

  Before Con could bite Max back Lila burst out of the trees. Her eyes were raw with relief. ‘Thank goodness! I thought I was lost! I missed a turn somewhere,’ she said, her breath jagged-edged and her forehead shining with sweat. She had made her jersey into a kind of sack, which she held in both arms.

  ‘Did you find food?’ asked Con.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. Then her honesty got the better of her and she added, ‘Almost.’ She opened her improvised sack and poured out dozens of pods on to the grass.

  ‘They don’t all have larvae holes in them,’ she said. ‘But I thought we could eat the cocoa beans too.’ She began breaking them open with her nails.

  Fred picked up one of the pods; there were two holes in the top. ‘There’s something in here.’ He tried to shake the something out, but it didn’t come. He poked a stick into a hole and shook it again, and a fat little grub, two centimetres long, tipped out on to his palm.

  ‘That’s it!’ said Lila. ‘That’s the grub! You can eat it!’

  ‘Oh good,’ lied Fred. The grub lay on his hand: it didn’t move, but seemed to be pulsating slightly. He sniffed it.

  ‘Go on,’ said Con. ‘It was your idea.’

  ‘Ugh.’ Fred pinched his nose, braced himself, and bit the grub in half. It was soft, but its insides were sandy, and the crunch of it against his teeth made him shudder. He swallowed with difficulty. ‘It tastes a tiny bit like chocolate,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’ said Con. Her whole face, and even her ears, were sceptical. It’s difficult to make ears register emotion, but Con managed it.

  ‘But mostly like dirt,’ Fred admitted. ‘Peanuts and dirt.’

  Soon the grubs lay in a pinkish writhing pyramid. Fred tried to feel grateful that they had any food at all. He failed, badly.

  Lila picked the three plumpest and offered them, palm up, to Max.

  ‘No! That’s not food. Max only eats actual food. Mama says, don’t eat insects.’

  Lila sighed. ‘He talks about himself as if he were another person when he’s nervous.’

  ‘Max isn’t nervous,’ said Max. ‘Maxie is just being good.’ He rubbed at a cut on his knee, and began to hiccup. ‘I want to go home,’ he said.

  ‘I know you do,’ said Lila. She pulled him closer. ‘But this is all we have. I don’t know what else to do, Maxie.’

  He pushed her away. ‘Mama would know!’ His nail caught on the cut on Lila’s cheek.

  ‘But Mama’s not here!’ She blinked hard and wiped her nose on her wrist.

  ‘What if we fry them?’ said Fred. ‘And make them into a pancake?’

  ‘Fry on what? We don’t have a pan,’ said Con.

  ‘But we’ve got stones,’ said Lila. She scrubbed her face with her top and tried to sound bright. ‘We could make chocolate pancakes. Sort of.’

  ‘Sort of,’ said Con. ‘Really quite amazingly sort of.’

  The grubs, when mixed with the cocoa beans and pounded with a clean stick, turned into a paste which, if you squinted and were of an optimistic temperament, looked like flour and water.

  ‘Now we just make a fire and cook them,’ said Fred.

  ‘Just,’ said Con.

  ‘We need a flint,’ said Fred.

  ‘We need kindling,’ said Lila.

  ‘And matches,’ said Con.

  ‘I’ll do the kindling,’ said Fred. Most of the wood surrounding them had dried since the rain the night before. He held the hem of his cricket jumper in his teeth and made a hammock for the wood. The night in the jungle had not improved the taste of the wool.

  He came back to the clearing and tipped the wood into a pile, a few paces away from the den.

  ‘There were flints in there,’ said Lila. ‘We could rub away the moss and use them to make a spark. Flints don’t go off.’

  ‘Flints aren’t enough by themselves,’ said Fred. ‘I’ve tried. You need a bit of steel.’

  Lila ducked into the den to fetch the flint. Con was staring at Fred’s watch. ‘What’s that made of?’

  Fred stared do
wn at the watch, covering it protectively with his hand. ‘Glass.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And steel,’ he said. ‘My father gave it to me, when I went to boarding school.’

  ‘But it’s broken,’ said Con.

  ‘I know that,’ he said.

  ‘So,’ said Con, ‘if it’s broken, it’s not really a watch any more, is it? But what it is, is a lump of steel.’

  Fred jerked his hand back. His father never bought his birthday gifts; he left it to his secretary to take Fred to Harrods and pick out something sensible. This was the only gift Fred could remember his father choosing himself. He had had it engraved with Fred’s initials.

  Lila nodded. ‘It might be the only way,’ she said; her voice had sympathy in it, but grit too.

  ‘Fine!’ said Fred. He had an unaccountable, absurd need to cry. ‘Fine! We’ll use it.’

  ‘Can I have first try?’ asked Con.

  ‘It’s my watch!’

  ‘I know. But I’ve never lit a fire before,’ she said, ‘not even the ones in the fireplaces at home.’

  ‘Not even on Bonfire Night?’ Fred asked.

  ‘Not allowed.’ There was longing and hunger in her eyes. She looked away from him, turning the flint over and over in her hand as if it was a jewel. But there was something written in her face, Fred thought, something in a code he couldn’t begin to read.

  ‘Here.’ Slowly, he undid the strap. He held the watch in his fist, surreptitiously tracing the letters on the back with his thumb. Con watched in silence. He put it in her palm. ‘I get second go.’

  Lila heaped shredded leaves and dried grass in a pile. ‘You do it over that,’ she said, ‘so the spark has something to catch.’

  Con struck the back of the watch against the stone. Fred winced. She overshot and dug the flint into her own skin. She said nothing and tried again. She bit down on her tongue, concentrating, her eyebrows furrowed so deeply they nudged against her eyelashes, striking and striking until her fingers were raw.

  Suddenly flint and steel let off a tiny spark. Con was so stunned she fumbled the flint.

  ‘Again!’ shrieked Max. ‘Again, again!’