She prodded me again to open her gift.
I nodded, looking down on her. Slowly, I unfolded the leaf. I gazed at the tiny dark flower inside.
Sammy looked over my shoulder.
“What is it, Sebastian?”
“I —”
Could it be? I wondered. No. Not possible.
I turned it over gently.
It was an orchid, tiny by most standards. Three triangular petals came together to create a small bowl. A black eye seemed to peer out of the bowl. Whip-like appendages, three or four times longer than the petals, grew out of the end of each petal. It looked like something you would get if you crossed the dracula genus and with the masdevallia genus. Gorgeous, mesmerizing, and malevolent.
“Not possible,” I mumbled.
Sammy whistled. “Is that—”
I lifted the bloom to the sun to check its color, rotating it on a three-inch stem. The light showed no dark red or purple. It was black. All black. Pure black.
A black orchid.
I’ve photographed dozens of very dark orchids, but when I held them up to strong light, I always saw their true color glowing around the edges. I now held what appeared to be a genuine black orchid in my hand. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
Rumors about black orchids circulated all over Borneo. Botanists repeated stories the locals told. But no one had actually seen one, much less photographed it or brought it back from the wild that I knew of. “Hey, mate, you trying to catch bugs?”
Johnnie’s question broke the spell.
“What?” I said.
“Close your mouth, mate. You look like you’re a Venus flytrap or one of those tube flowers.”
“Look.”
I lifted the orchid toward Johnnie’s face.
“Whoa. Is that what I think it is?” Johnnie asked.
“I think so. Black orchid,” I said.
“You’re rich! Where did you find it?”
“I didn’t. This old woman handed it to me.”
“What old woman?”
I looked down, sun spots bursting behind my eyes. She was gone.
“She was here.”
“Sebbie, she’s over there.” Sammy pointed toward a house with a fruit basket beside the door.“Let’s get Chik and go chat this lady up.”
Johnnie was all business.
“You go ahead,” I murmured. “I want to take a few shots first. Hey, Sammy, will you get my camera bag?” I said.
“Sure, Sebbie.”
“Look, mate, I don’t think you have to stand there in the sun. That flower isn’t going anywhere,” Johnnie said.
“Right.” I didn’t move.
Sammy quickly unpacked the bag and set up my portable box studio. I gently laid the flower on the white ground sheet and started shooting. Sammy, with his huge fingers, rotated the flower until I had shot it from every angle possible.
Sweat dripped off my nose onto the camera’s eyepiece.
“Sammy, let’s get it into a plastic sleeve. It’s starting to fall apart.”
“Sebbie, I was as careful as I could be,” Sammy said.
“No, no. I’m not blaming you,” I said. “You were fantastic. It just seems to be wilting before our eyes.”
“Yeah, it doesn’t look so good,” he said.
“Well, I must have shot 300 frames, and they all look good. Let me just document you putting it into the baggie. Then we need to see where the old woman found this.”
Johnnie and Chik were squatting with the village headman and the old woman in the shade of the houses. Nobody was saying much.
I tucked the bloom into a padded pocket in my backpack and hunkered down with the rest of the group.
“What have you found out?” I said.
“Nothing. Not a bollocking thing,” Johnnie said. “The old girl’s not talking, and our host here doesn’t know where she got the orchid or even how she got here. She’s not part of this village. She was just here yesterday morning when everyone woke up. They’ll give her food and shelter for a few days, but then they’ll want her to push on. She didn’t get here by boat, though, so it isn’t clear how she’s supposed to shove off. The headman doesn’t seem terribly comfortable with her.”
“Maybe we can offer her a ride back to her village,” I said.
“We tried that,” Johnnie said. “She’s just not talking. She really had her eye on you. I mean, it’s like you were a long-lost friend. You sure you haven’t been through here before, mate? Maybe in a previous life?”
I shook my head.
“Chik, translate for me, will you?”
“Sure, Sebastian, but I don’t know that she’ll tell you anything.”
“Thank you for your beautiful flower,” I said. “I have never seen anything like it before.”
I looked the old woman in the eyes as I spoke. She stared back as Chik translated, showing nothing but deep black pools.
“My name is Sebastian. Will you tell me your name?”
No response.
“I don’t think she wants to say,” Chik said. “Some tribes don’t like sharing their names with strangers.”
“Well, I’m probably as strange a thing as she’s ever seen.”
“Maybe. She sure seems obsessed with you.”
“Okay. Let’s try again.… I’m Sebastian. Have you seen me before?”
She looked startled, then shook her head no.
“Well, that’s… I don’t know what, boss,” Chik said.
“Let’s just call it weird,” I said. “Have you seen other black flowers like the one you gave me?”
She nodded slightly.
I slowly exhaled the breath I’d just gulped and asked, “Are there many?” Again, a slight nod. I held up my left hand, fingers spread. Five?
She nodded.
I added my right hand, fingers spread. Ten?
She nodded.
Ten black orchids. Nine more than I had seen in my life—and ten more than any other outsider had encountered.
Now for the million-dollar question.
“Can you take me to see the flowers? I promise to leave them there,” I said.
Again, the nod.
I could hardly contain myself. The sheikh would go nuts. Our side deal—$1 million for a single bloom—would introduce me to the land of easy living. Or at least easier living by my standards.
“When can we go?” I asked.
Nothing.
“Chik, do you think she understood? Ask again,” I said.
“She understands. I don’t know how much of a sense of time she has.”
“Can we go today?” Chik translated.
The old woman looked at the early afternoon sky, then stared at Chik.
“I think that’s a no, boss,” Chik said.
“All right. Can you take me to the flowers tomorrow?” I asked, and Chik translated.
She nodded.
“Yes!”
Startled, the old lady cringed.
“Apologize to her,” I told Chik. “Explain that I’m just very eager to see her beautiful flowers. Oh, and find out how long it will take to get there.… Hey, Johnnie, can you take another day or two out here?”
“Sure, mate. I’d stay a month just to see you this excited. I was beginning to think drowning was the only thing that got you going.”
I plopped back on my butt after squatting to interview the old woman.
“Wow.”
“Okay, then,” Johnnie said. “Let’s rest here tonight and start at first light tomorrow. We’d better check our gear and rearrange packs—I suspect we’ll be doing some walking.”
“Sammy, sharpen the machetes,” he instructed. “That old girl may be able to slip through the forest, but you and Sebastian are going to need some room.”
Snakes and bugs and bandits, I thought. We’ll find out soon enough if it’s worth $1 million to find another black orchid—if there is another black orchid.
Chapter 5
Ambush
The v
illage headman smiled as he saw us off, happy to see the old woman go.
“You come back, you stop,” he said to Chik.
“Yeah, we’ll bring you monkeys for dinner,” Chik said.
“Yes. Good. Good.” The chief rubbed his stomach.
All five of us climbed into the boat. Sammy and the old woman sat in the bow, his huge paw resting on her knee. Johnnie and I sat among the water jugs, gas cans and packs in the middle. In the stern, Chik aimed the roaring outboard motor upriver against a strong current.
The sky over the opposite bank of the river was turning orange, but behind us, our side of the river was still black, hidden from the rising sun by a wall of trees.
I went cold turkey on the Valium. Its delightful fogginess throttled my terror of drowning back to a numbness, but I wanted to be alert to where the old woman was leading us to the orchids. I kept my eyes fixed on the horizon, off the water, and wondered at the boldness of our mutual decision to follow this mystery woman.
Johnnie didn’t seem to care where we went. He was looking for Chinese, and the guys were along to help out. As we bounced over the water, I questioned my own motives. I honestly thought it was not about the sheikh’s million-dollar bounty. He already paid me well, and I would save almost my entire salary for my six-month tour in Borneo. Besides, I already had both photographic and genetic evidence of the black orchid.
That was it. The orchid. It lured me forward. I had gone out of my way to track down a rare flower before, but this was different. This was a physical craving, and I couldn’t understand it, much less explain it. Why else would I climb into a boat on the word of an ancient Dyak woman?
She hadn’t spoken since the previous afternoon. She grunted or shrugged in response to questions and pointed directions. She exhibited no emotion: No anxiety or fear, no eagerness or anticipation, no curiosity. Her emaciated five-foot frame and white hair made her look old and frail, but she had walked God-knows-how-far to reach the new village. She was tougher than she looked.
We battled the river current for more than seven hours without spotting another village or encountering a single human being. The river wound back and forth, and I doubted whether we had covered ten miles as the crow flies.
No one said so, but I knew we were getting close to limits of our journey. Chik said we had fuel for another eight hours. After that, we would have to paddle against the current, which was unlikely, or turn back.
At midday, Johnnie ordered Chik toward a small opening in the forest on the left bank of the river. The old woman made no objection.
Sammy cooked rice with meat from one of the MREs. The old woman ate a handful of rice but wouldn’t touch the meat. I didn’t blame her.
I was too anxious to even take a bite of a power bar. My gnawing fear of the water was starting to wear away my desire to find the orchid, and I was beginning to question the wisdom of following this old native.
Johnnie tried to pinpoint our location and report it to his buddies back in Kota. I tried to coax the old woman into revealing how much longer it would take to reach the flowers.
“Are we near the flowers?” I asked through Chik.
She shook her head, and that was that.
“Any idea where we are, Johnnie?” I asked.
“Farther upriver than we were seven hours ago.”
“That’s definitive.”
“It’s a remote country, and this seems remoter than other parts.”
“I wonder why the headman didn’t tell us that his village was the last outpost on this stretch of river.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know,” Johnnie said. “I don’t have a GPS signal, but our satellite pinger seems to be working.”
“Seems?”
“I can ping out, and the satellite pings back. But no one from the embassy is returning the call sign,” Johnnie said. “That’s unusual. In fact, that’s never happened before. That connection is our lifeline to civilization. I don’t like the idea of it being cut.”
“What about a paper map?”
He pulled a sheaf of laminated maps of Borneo from his backpack and shuffled through them. Pointing to one sheet, he said, “We started here yesterday morning. The new village is right about here, where the river takes a sharp turn to the right. I figure we’re in this area by now.”
“So, we’re lost,” I said, looking around for a landmark or sign.
“Not lost. We know how to get back. And we’ve got the old woman. I assume she knows this part of the river. We just don’t know where we’re going.”
“How much farther do we go? I understand we can’t go on forever.”
Johnnie consulted his watch. “It’s almost one o’clock now. Within three or four hours we should be looking hard for a village or a clearing where we can stay overnight. It gets dark fast, and we can’t be on the river when that happens.”
“Agreed.” I tried a smile but produced a frown instead. “How did she get this far?”
The Aussie looked puzzled.
“How did the old woman get to that new village?” I asked. “She had no boat, and we’ve been on the water for half a day. How long does it take to walk that far in that forest? I didn’t even see a way she could get out of the village on foot. There was simply no path.”
“Bear in mind, mate, that she lives here and knows things we don’t,” Johnnie said.
“It’s not adding up. She carried the orchid. It was still fresh but getting fragile. Orchids decay fast when they go. You saw how it almost fell apart after I photographed it.”
“She had it wrapped in leaves. Who knows how long it would keep that way?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I just…”
“Fear of water getting to you?”
I looked around.
“Maybe. Fear of something,” I said.
We motored on. Trees grew right to the water’s edge. I thought of Joseph Conrad and “Heart of Darkness.” Where had he seen those descriptions of the African jungle? Some place like this?
An hour past lunch, the old woman poked Sammy and pointed toward the right bank. I saw nothing but trees lining the bank shoulder to shoulder.
Chik cut the engine back, and we drifted toward the bank.
“Anybody see an opening?” Johnnie shouted over the noise of the engine.
“Not me,” Sammy answered.
“Nothing,” I said.
Johnnie swiveled back toward to Chik.
“Let her guide us in.” The old woman directed us toward a solid wall of trees. At least the ground was level with the water. In most places, the eroded banks rose two to three feet above water level. Swarms of mosquitoes descended like a cloud as the bow nudged the river bottom a dozen feet from the trees.
The old woman rolled over the inflated side of the boat and slogged through knee-deep water to the trees. Chik abandoned the motor and jumped after her.
Johnnie grabbed the tiller and twisted the throttle, driving the inflatable closer to shore. Sammy swung his bulk over the side, a bowline in hand.
I looked at the tree line, but neither Chik nor the old lady was there. They were gone, just like that.
Sammy tied the boat to a tree; Johnnie cut the engine, and the current shoved the rubber craft against the shore.
The old woman materialized through a gap in the trees with Chik right behind her. The trees grew so close together it seemed impossible there could be an opening, but there they stood.
Johnnie issued orders.
“Chik, ask her if there is a path to her village or wherever she’s taking us. Sammy, cut us an opening we can get our gear through. Sebastian, load up and be prepared to follow Sammy. I’m going to ping our location.”
We all moved to obey.
I peered over the side of the boat. The bottom of the inflatable rested in mud about three feet from the tree line. No one in his right mind would be bothered by that.
Around water, however, I was far from my right mind. I calculated the distance again. If the boat were steady, w
hich it wasn’t, I could jump to land with room to spare. In my heart, however, I knew I would have to step into the water. Bile rose in my throat. I spit into the muddy soup surrounding us.
I searched for a rock or submerged log to step on but found only wavelets of chocolate-colored water churned up by our activity. I was living my worst nightmare, and something about this place, this part of the forest, made me feel even more uneasy. I shuddered and muttered to myself, “Get a grip. The damned water is turning you into a wuss.”
Scanning the trees one last time, plotting the shortest path to land, I noticed that Chik and the old woman had disappeared again. “Hey,” I called out. “Where’d they go? Chik?”
“Don’t worry, mate,” Johnnie said. “She knows her way around. They slipped sideways right through there.” He pointed over my left shoulder.
I couldn’t make out any gap until the old lady and Chik slid back into view again, Chik gripping her wrist.
“We’ve got to be close,” Chik said. “She’s really wanting to go.”
“That’s spooky,” I said. “That’s how superstitions get started. How are we supposed to get through there?”
“Suck that belly in and go sideways, mate,” Johnnie said.
I shrugged off the camera pack I had just put on. I could never get through the trees with it, and I didn’t want to cross the water with a load on my back. If I slipped in the mud…
“Johnnie, got our location? We can go get help and come back later,” I said.
“Same as before, mate. A definite maybe. Settle down. This is where we want to be.”
He gave me a grin and called out to Sammy and Chik.
“Break out the machetes, gents. We need to cut a proper landing before we go exploring for Sebastian’s million-dollar orchid. And when we find it, he’s going to share it with us.”
“All right!” Sammy said. “We’re going to be part millionaires.” Standing in ankle deep water, he dug into the equipment at my feet.
“Chik, step aside and let Sebastian get ashore,” Johnnie said. “Sebastian, you keep track of the old woman.”
“Okay,” Chik said. “Sebastian, you can move sideways, but you won’t be able to turn around. It will take us hours to hack our way in there.”
“Is there a path?” I asked.
“Not so much. You kind of slide sideways. Just follow the old woman.”
The Mark of the Spider: A Black Orchid Chronicle Page 4
