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?”