I was being carried on the shoulder of a man who was running through dense forest, and, though I couldn’t see him, I was aware of another man running with us. I could hear snaps and crackles, and the thud of both sets of feet. But that was all — where had the other children gone? There seemed to be an increased urgency with every stride the men took and I wondered if they were running away from something, frightened, just like I was. An animal? A monster? I knew from stories that scary monsters lived in the forests. And the men’s breathing, which I could hear was heavy with panic and perhaps exhaustion, seemed to suggest we were being chased by something dangerous.
Every so often the man who carried me would lurch alarmingly, his knees buckling. I had no idea how far we’d run, or where we were running to, but I could sense we’d come far. The man was staggering, almost falling, and as I was too terrified to think beyond the instinct to cling on to him, I could only hope that soon we’d have outrun whatever it was that was after us.
Finally, he stopped, and my whole body jerked violently. I then felt myself being whirled around, as if the man was unsure in which direction to go next. But then we were moving again, plunging onwards into deeper and denser undergrowth, before stopping again, this time even more abruptly. I tightened my grip but, aware of the aggressive way he’d grabbed me, I let my hands go as he hauled me roughly off his shoulder and dumped me onto the ground.
Dazed, I tried to scramble up and see who it was that had carried me, but by the time I had pulled myself up onto all fours and turned around, all I could see were two pairs of long legs running away. One pair of brown legs and one pair of white legs, both of which were soon lost in the gloom. I tried shouting at them, screaming at them, begging them not to leave me. Even though instinct told me that these were not good men, I was much more frightened of being left in the jungle all alone. But just like in a dream, no sound seemed to come out of my mouth, and soon even their blurred outlines began to fade, melting away into the shadows of the trees and the bushes that were all I could see. I knelt there for a long time, hardly daring to move, just peering into the dark and willing them to return, or at least hoping to hear the cry of one of those other children. I felt helpless, abandoned and so frightened of being alone. Why didn’t they come back? Why had they run away from me? Where was my mummy? How was I going to get home?
The darkness deepened and now that the men had gone away the eerie night sounds of the jungle were terrifying. I had no idea where I was, why I was there or when someone would come back for me. I had nothing on but the cotton dress and knickers my mother had dressed me in that morning, and I felt the heat of the earth on which I lay seeping into me as I curled myself into the tightest ball I could.
The sense of desolation and loneliness was gut-wrenching and I ached with it. All I could hope was that if I closed my eyes it would all go away. If I squeezed them tightly enough, perhaps the dark wouldn’t be so scary, and soon — please let it be soon — my mummy would come and find me. Perhaps if I slept, when I next woke I would be safely home in bed and would realise all this had all been just a nightmare …
2
It was the heat of the sun that first woke me. Beneath my left cheek I could feel only a warm, pungent softness but against my right there was a sensation of great heat. It was a strong, searing heat, and as I opened my eyes the light was so blinding I immediately squeezed them shut again.
I rolled onto my back, still halfway between sleeping and consciousness, aware of a new assault now. This time it was on my ears, the air as full of sound as the light was full of sparkles. There were frightening screeches and strange whoops that I couldn’t identify.
As I carefully allowed my eyelids to part again, I found myself looking straight up into a big shard of blue. Bright, bright blue, surrounded on all sides by dappled darkness, and as I looked, trying to shade my eyes from the dazzle with my fingers, I gradually realised what it was that I was seeing. It was a patch of sky encircled within a ring of leafy treetops, so high above me that they were just a raggedy black blur.
At last it became clear where I was. In the jungle! The realisation shot through me, and with it came panic, as the memories of the last evening came rushing to greet me. I had been snatched from my home by men who had then dumped me here.
I brushed dark earth from my palms and pulled myself up to my knees. Then I scrambled to my feet and began searching for a way to escape. All I could think of was to find the men who left me. To catch up with them and beg them to take me home. I wanted my mummy. Where was she? Why hadn’t she come to find me?
I had no sense of how much time had passed since I’d been abandoned here by my kidnappers. I strained my ears, hoping to hear any sort of sound that would reassure me. The laughter of children, a shout of greeting, the clatter of a cart rolling by. I cried out for my mother, sobbing as I called for her and called for her. My throat rasped with lack of moisture, but at this point I had no thought of finding something to drink or eat. I just desperately wanted to find a way home, so I tried to thrash my way out of all the undergrowth and the tangled hairy vines that looped down from the tree trunks. The gnarled branches and boughs seemed to cut off every exit, and the leaves — leaves so big and so strange and so different from one another — seemed intent on enclosing me in this frightening green hell.
But where to go? There didn’t seem to be any kind of path and I didn’t recognise anything. I couldn’t make out where I’d come from.
As I spun around, every vista seemed the same as the one before it. Trees, trees and more trees, as far as the eye could see. Now and then, as I tripped and blundered my way over and under and around all the tangled obstacles, I would get a glimpse of something brighter beyond. A distant hill, perhaps? But all too soon the plaited walls of my green prison would close in again, and the further I travelled the more a trembling panic surged inside me. This was stupid! Why was I doing this? I should go back, shouldn’t I? What if my mummy came to find me? What if she came for me but found I wasn’t there?
I turned straight around, choking on the sobs that kept coming, and tried to make my way back to where I’d just been. But it soon became obvious that I had completely lost my way. There was no trace of my passing, no clue to lead me back.
I cried freely now. I couldn’t stop the tears streaming from my eyes. And as I stumbled along, intermittently being scratched and snared by vicious branches, I kept trying to make some sense of how I came to be here. Had my parents planned it? Was that it? Had they wanted to get rid of me? I tried to think what I might have done to make them so cross with me. Was it the pea pods? Were they cross because I’d picked so many of them? Had my mummy or daddy asked those horrible men to come and take me?
I tried to remember the man who had taken me from the allotment. The black man, the one who’d covered my mouth with his hand. Who was he? An uncle? I tried to recall his features. He had been tall and very strong. Was he someone who knew me? One of my most treasured possessions back at home was my beautiful black dolly and for some reason this fact kept returning to me. We were a white-skinned family and yet I had a black dolly. Why was that? Did it mean something I didn’t understand?
Too drained and upset now to thrash furiously through the endless waist-high undergrowth, my pace slowed, my shoulders drooped and my spirits plummeted. Yet what else could I do but keep trudging on? So I did. It was barely a conscious decision. I just kept going because perhaps I would find a way out or someone who would help me. Or just some sign that meant I might be a step closer to going home.
But as time went on, and my limbs became criss-crossed with scratches, the fear grew in me that this was not going to happen. And when the light began to dim I felt my hope disappear with the sun. It was night-time. It was bedtime. The day was all done. A whole day had passed and I was still trapped in the jungle. I would have to spend another night alone.
The night was blacker than any other I had ever seen. Hard as I strained to see, there was not even the tini
est pinpoint of light apart from the far-away glimmer of stars. The sky itself, though, felt oddly close — almost as if it had fallen down on top of me, settling like an enormous black bedspread all around me and trapping me beneath it with the creatures of the night. Without chemicals to blur the edges of my awareness, my terror now took on an even more desperate quality than the night before. It was the noise again, the incredible volume and range of noises, which I knew, because I’d heard grown-ups talking about them, must come from the jungle beasts that came out at night. And they did that, I knew, because hidden by the dark it would be easier for them to catch their prey.
I had searched around as the blackness had swooped down to claim me and found a small patch of bare soil, unadorned by plant life, that sat within the base of a wide-trunked tree. Here I sat, and as the air grew thicker and murkier I curled myself once again into the tightest ball possible, my back against the reassuring solidity of the bark and my arms wrapped protectively around my bent knees.
I felt strongly that I needed to keep still and quiet. Like in a game, I told myself. A game of hide-and-seek. If I kept very still and didn’t make a sound, then the creatures of the night wouldn’t know I was there.
But their presence was terrifyingly obvious to me. I could hear so many different sounds, and many were close by. I could hear the same rustlings that I had made as I trampled through the foliage. Scurryings, too — the sound of small animals moving by. And then a crack. A loud crack, frighteningly close to where I cowered. The crunch of something crisp — dead twigs? — being trodden on. The noise moved around me. Whatever it was, it seemed to be circling me, waiting for the right moment to pounce. Could it make me out clearly with its big night-time eyes? And what were those swishing sounds that seemed to follow it? A tail? Was it a child-eating monster? Could it smell me?
I tried to make myself smaller. I wished so much for a cage that I could scuttle inside. A cage that would protect me from slashing claws and biting jaws. Or a light. How I longed for my mummy to bring a light that would scare the monster away.
But then something must have startled whatever it was that stalked me, for there was a rush of small sounds as it darted away, and I felt a blessed moment of relief. But it wasn’t to last. As the night wore on and I lay in my tight ball inside the tree trunk, my lack of vision merely served to terrify me even more. Frightening though it may have been to see any jungle creatures close up, I decided that not being able to see them was even worse. As it was, I could do nothing but flinch and quake in terror as creeping things crawled up and down my limbs, tried to explore the contours of my face and crept inside my ears. I longed for sleep like I had never longed for anything before, because no nightmare, however scary, could possibly be worse than the nightmare I was trapped in right now.
*
The same sun, with the same strength, shining down from the same dazzling blue sky, greeted me again the next morning. It had taken time to convince myself that I should open my eyes. In the comfort of semi-consciousness, I could almost believe that the warmth was that of the blanket on my bed and the sun was streaming in through my bedroom window. But the sounds of the waking jungle quickly dispelled that notion and dragged me cruelly back to reality.
I cried again inside my tree trunk, my throat sore and rasping, my belly aching to be filled with food. But I could only cry for so long. And who was going to hear me anyway? I rubbed the backs of my hands across the puffy surface of my tear-stained face, and as my eyes cleared I thought I saw a butterfly.
I looked again. No, not one butterfly. There were lots and lots of butterflies, in all sorts of different colours, all flitting just above my head. They were fussing around the petals of beautiful pink and white flowers hanging down on lengths of green stem that seemed to start high in the trees. They were mesmerising, and as the jungle floor steamed and made mist all around me, every scrap of my attention was held.
But the pain in my stomach wouldn’t let me rest for long. I was hungry and I needed to find something to eat. But what? There were pods on the ground that I carefully inspected. They smelled good and even made the air around me smell fragrant, but they were coal-black and wizened, and I had only to snap one to see that these pods were very different from peas. Did peas grow here? Or corn? Perhaps I could find some. I got up then and began to explore my surroundings, only this time in a very different way.
Being so young, I was unaware that I could be poisoned by any of the strange plants, berries and fruits I could see. I didn’t want to eat them simply because they looked alien and unappetising. I could see nothing in the undergrowth that was familiar to me.
Once again my thoughts returned to my predicament. If I could find nothing to eat, then I would starve very quickly. And then, as I knew from stories I’d seen in picture books and the things I’d heard grown-ups say, I would die and get eaten by animals. But it seemed that there was nothing here for me to eat. And not wanting to die and be eaten by animals, once again I decided I could not stay where I was. Today I would walk. I would walk and keep walking. If help didn’t want to find me, then I would have to find it. I resolved to continue for as long as my legs could support me, which would hopefully be long enough for me to find a human being who would give me food and take me back to my parents.
I set off once again through the impenetrable thickets, with no plan other than to get away from where I was. After all, the two men had run into the jungle with me, so if I walked for long enough then I must surely get out.
Most of the time I couldn’t see further than the mesh of leaves in front of me and my skin was soon protesting at another round of scratches, as the branches I’d displaced sprang back viciously to punish me for disturbing them. It was hot and claustrophobic inside the eerie green bower, and it wasn’t long before my quest for food was forgotten. As the trees dripped above me and the mists rose and vanished, a new sensation overtook my previous raging hunger. I realised I was incredibly thirsty.
But how would I find water? I had no idea. Though everything around me seemed glossy with moisture, finding water to drink seemed impossible. I began scanning my surroundings with a keener sense of purpose. Where would I find water to drink in such a place?
I looked for hollows in stones and crevices, and scoured the forest floor for puddles. Copying the insects that buzzed and whirred in every direction, I peered hopefully into every kind of flower until finally I came across a plant with coiled, almost cup-shaped green leaves, edged with hairs. If they looked like cups, I reasoned, they might act like cups too, and, sure enough, when I peered into the interior of one of them, I saw a small pool of liquid reflecting up at me.
Feeling almost as if I had discovered a secret treasure, I pulled the cone of the leaf towards me and leaned into it. I then let my parched lips touch the glimmering surface. It felt like heaven, and I’d soon tipped the leaf carefully up and deposited the rest into my mouth. The water tasted odd. It was like drinking soil. But I didn’t care. My thirst was quenched for a moment.
And it wasn’t long before I was able to satisfy it even more. I found a tiny stream, the water trickling and splashing over rocks, and this time when I drank, it was cold and clear and pleasant. But my stomach was not to be fooled. I soon felt it grumbling and complaining, and renewed my focus on finding something to eat as I walked.
What I found was not food, but a parrot. Weak as I was with hunger, I was still entranced by it. Blue and green and yellow, and around the size of a large squash, it sat on a low branch, chattering to itself. It was reassuring, the way it sat there so boldly, just watching me, and I instinctively wanted to get closer. I reached a hand out. Perhaps it would come and sit on my finger, as the confident village parrots sometimes did.
But I was wrong. No sooner had I got within touching distance than it leaned towards me, squawked loudly and sharply bit my thumb, before flapping off in what looked like great annoyance. I looked down at my thumb, which was now throbbing painfully, and at the sight of all the bl
ood dripping across and off my palm I burst into hot, self-pitying tears again. In years to come — decades to come — that moment would be dear to me, because I would recognise it as being key to my survival. I’d been so shocked that a beautiful creature like this might want to harm me, but it was that same shock that would form the basis of what would perhaps be the greatest lesson I could learn. That this was not a man-made place, full of pretty domesticated animals. This was a wild place, and wild animals would kill to survive. As it was, I just traipsed on, dejected.
My spirits, however, soon lifted. It was shortly after the unfortunate encounter with the parrot that I noticed a change in my surroundings. The undergrowth seemed to be thinning a little. My thumb, which had been pulsating with discomfort, was forgotten, and I pushed back the ever-decreasing barricades of branches with a real sense that I might be about to escape. On and on I went, scrambling with ever more urgency as it became obvious I was reaching some sort of clearing. And the closer I got, the more my eyes seemed to confirm it. I was getting ever bigger glimpses of the jungle giving way to what looked like open space.
This must be it! So intent was I on reaching the edge now that I didn’t care how many irritable boughs and saplings lashed out and whacked me. And it was with a sense of elation that I finally burst through, to find myself at one side of a small area of grass. But my joy was cruelly short-lived. No sooner had I escaped than I saw that on the other side of the scrubby, withered circle of grass was undergrowth just as impenetrable as that from which I’d just emerged. I’d come so far! I had walked for so long! I was exhausted, still starving, and there seemed no escape route. I had, I knew for certain, just walked further into the jungle.
The Girl With No Name: The Incredible Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys Page 2
