Free Taylor Five by Ann Halam Page A

running roughly parallel to the backcountry road to the coast. That had to be this stream, in its steep narrow valley—and they were in luck. The stream went on running parallel to the road, all the way, until it ran down to join the Waruk, one of Kandah River Region’s biggest rivers—
    “What are you doing?” said Donny’s voice. He was beside her, still wrapped in that grubby yellow blanket.
    “Finding where we are. Look, it’s going to be easy. We can stay off the road and follow this stream until it joins the big river, and we’ll be at Aru Batur. You know, the river crossing with the floating-bridge ferry. We might find people to help us there.”
    Three summers ago, before Donny went to boarding school, the Marine and Shore Station had been moored on the same coast. Pam Taylor had been there and the Walkers had gone to visit her, making an overland trek and camping out. It had been fun crossing the river at Aru Batur, on the giant raft they called their “floating bridge.”
    “What if we don’t?” said Donny. “What’ll we do then?”
    Aru Batur was the only settlement on the way to the coast, as far as Tay knew. She turned the map over. There was a smaller scale map of the whole of Kandah on the other side: it didn’t tell her much. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “We’ll head for the river crossing. If we can’t get help there, well, we’ll carry on. We have a compass. It’ll take us a few days, but we’ll reach the Marine and Shore—”
    “And then Pam will negotiate with the rebels, so Mum and Dad and everyone will be rescued? She can get Lifeforce to give them masses of money, can’t she?”
    “Yes,” said Tay, biting her lip and trying to sound cheerful. “That’s what she’ll do, right away.” She folded up the map: and then she jumped, startled. A shaggy rust-red shape had suddenly appeared beside them, completely silently.
    “Uncle!” cried Donny. “Uncle! You came back! Oh, great!”
    The ape sat with his long arms trailing as if they were broken. He looked at Tay and made his Clint noise, in a questioning way: but without much hope.
    Donny is a child, thought Tay. Uncle
knows
. She shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said.
    It was hard not to believe that the ape understood her.
    “They took him away,” explained Donny. “The rebels kidnapped him.”
    Uncle put his shaggy hands over his jowly face: looking so human in his grief, it gave Tay a strange feeling. Then he raised his fingers to his mouth, several times, the way he’d done when he meant the ground was too hot to walk on. Ouch, ouch ouch—
    “Ouch, ouch, ouch,” said Tay. “Me too, Uncle.”
    Donny reached behind him. “My back hurts,” he complained, but then he cheered up again. “Hey, I just realized, now it doesn’t matter that you don’t know the way after the Waruk! Uncle will look after us. He’ll be our trusty native guide.”
    The ape was a wise and faithful friend, but he wouldn’t make much of a guide. He’d hardly ever left the refuge clearing. Tay was going to say this . . . but she changed her mind. She must not say negative things. They had to think positively. “You’re right. He’ll be very useful. But now the native guide and the fugitives need some breakfast. Look in the pack, Donny, and choose something.”
    “We can take turns to choose. It’ll make eating more interesting.”
    The three of them shared a tin of peaches and a packet of chocolate biscuits and drank bottled water. They had water-purifying tablets, but they’d save them until their water bottles were empty.
    “We’ll try to walk fifteen kilometers today,” Tay said as they packed up. “We might not make that much, but it will be our goal, our personal best. That makes two days to the river. After the river crossing we can get back on the road, and we’ll meet the Lifeforce people like Clint said. They’ll be on their way to look for us.”
    “Hey. You said we’d find help at Aru