Free Journey to the River Sea - 10th Anniversary Edition by Eva Ibbotson Page B

hanging from a branch, glowed like a jewel in a shaft of sun.
    ‘Oh, but it is beautiful!’ she said aloud, and drew the damp, earthy, slightly rotten smell into her lungs.
    But it was a mistake to be so rapt about the beauty of nature because the path was not quite as simple as it had appeared on the map. She knew she had to keep the sun on her right; but the sun could not be relied upon: sometimes the canopy of leaves was so dense that she seemed to be walking in twilight. And the streams kept branching ... She stayed beside the widest of them, but the path made by the rubber-gatherers was overgrown; she stumbled over roots of trees, trod on strange fungi, orange and mauve ... Sometimes a smaller stream cut across her path and she had to jump it or paddle. Once something ran through the trees ahead of her, a grey snuffling creature ...
    She couldn’t have told the exact moment at which she knew she was lost. First there was just doubt, as she took one path rather than another. Then doubt became fear and fear became panic, and she had to take deep breaths to stop herself from crying out. At the same time the clouds began to cover the sun. Even those rays of light she had had to steer by had gone.
    They’re right, the beastly Carters; the jungle is our enemy, she thought. Why didn’t I listen?
    She would have done anything to be back in the gloomy bungalow eating tinned beetroot and being glared at by the twins. Trying to pull herself together, she walked faster. The stream she was following was quite big; a river really and the current was fast: it must lead to Manaus.
    Blinking away tears, she trudged on. Then her foot caught in a liana, a long branch hanging like a rope from the top of a tree, and she fell.
    It was a heavy fall; her foot was trapped – and in putting out her hand to save herself she had clutched a branch of thorns. Furious with herself, hurt, lost, she lay for a few moments helpless.
    When she sat up again something strange had happened. The stream by which she had fallen disappeared behind her in a curtain of green; more than a curtain, a wall of reeds and creepers and half-submerged trees. Yet from this green barrier there had appeared a canoe, coming towards her silently like a boat in a dream.
    The canoe was being poled by an Indian boy who stood in the prow and was steering it in an unhurried, easy way so that the water seemed scarcely to be disturbed.
    Maia watched for a moment, not quite believing what she saw; then she stumbled to her feet.
    ‘Please can you help me?’ she shouted, stupidly in English, then desperately in her few words of Portuguese.
    The boy looked at her; he seemed surprised by her look of agitation. Then he brought the canoe silently alongside. Still he did not speak.
    ‘I have to get to Manaus. I have to,’ Maia said, and pointed to where she thought the city was. ‘Manaus is there?’
    The boy smiled, and suddenly he seemed just a boy of about her own age; not a mysterious and possibly threatening stranger, emerged from a curtain of green.
    He shook his head. ‘Manaus,’ he said, and pointed almost in the opposite direction.
    She was utterly crestfallen. So much for her map, her understanding of the jungle – and her hand was bleeding.
    ‘I have to get to Manaus. I promised a friend ... amigo . . . I have to ...’ she repeated. What little Portuguese she had learned seemed to have gone from her. She could only look at him and entreat.
    The boy did not answer. He was dressed in the work clothes worn by the local Indians: a blue cotton shirt faded from washing and cotton trousers – but round his head he wore a broad band which partly covered his thick, coal-black hair, and a pattern of red zigzags was painted on his cheekbones. His skin was a light bronze and his eyes the same colour as Maia’s own, a deep dark brown.
    For a moment he stood upright in the canoe, thinking. Then he stretched out his hand and made a movement of his head which was unmistakable. She