? ? ?
We crawled on hands and knees out of our nest of branches and stiffly got to our feet. Shivering, I pulled my still-damp shirt and shorts away from my skin, nostalgic for that vile latrine back at the lodge, chemicals, whining overhead lights, beetles, and all. I squatted next to a rock shaped like a slumbering bear while Pia relieved herself on the other side of it. As I looked up into the blackness, I concentrated on relaxing enough to do what I had come for. The release of peeing felt almost sexual, the hot stream coming out of me a reminder that there was still heat, still life in me. The rain had passed, leaving a cold mist that cast a ghostly pallor over the trees and water.
“Wini!” Pia whispered hoarsely from the darkness. I heard her zip her shorts, the jangle of her belt buckle. “Do you smell that?”
I did. A whiff of home, of comfort. My shattered mind finally came around to naming it. Woodsmoke.
I heard splashing behind me. Muffled swearing. Then: “Get over here.”
My eyes fully adjusted to the dark now, I turned toward her voice. Pia crouched on a slab of stone a few yards out into the river. “Win, you have to—”
“I’m coming, give me a sec.” I was loath to get into the water again, but I had to do it, at least up to my thighs, to climb up to where she was. Even then, she had to lean down and give me a hand.
Rachel’s voice came from the bank. “What are you doing?”
“I see something!”
High up in the belly of the dark mountain, a smudge of bone-colored smoke gathered, twisting up into the night sky.
“What do you see?” Sandra called out.
“A fire!” Pia dropped back into the water. “Guys—someone’s up there! I think we’re going to be okay.”
I waded behind her toward the shore, teeth chattering.
“How far away is it, do you think?” Rachel rushed to meet us at the narrow bank.
“It’s hard to say. Maybe half a mile?” I strained to see back up the mountain, but nothing was visible from the bank. “Who’s camping way out here?”
I surveyed our exhausted, grimy faces and remembered someone telling me that hope is always the last thing to die.
“They could be anyone,” I said, fear audible in my voice.
“That’s who we need,” Rachel said. “Anyone.”
“Should we yell up to them?” Sandra ventured a few steps toward the inky-black woods. Before we could stop her, she opened her mouth and screamed, “Help! Help us, please! We’re down by the river!”
Her words echoed back at us. A stillness before the chorus of insects charged up again.
“I wonder who they are,” Pia said quietly. “What they’re doing out here.”
“Well, they couldn’t have come from the lodge. It’s just too far,” Rachel said.
“Maybe there’s another lodge around here,” Pia said.
“I don’t know, Pia.” I thought of Rory’s map, as well as his comment that the closest town was thirty miles away.
“Maybe they’re lost too, whoever they are,” Sandra said.
“I vote we go up there in the morning,” I said, a sick worry in my gut.
“I vote we go up there now,” Rachel said. “What if they’re gone by morning?”
“I’m with you, Rachel,” Pia said. “This could be our only chance.”
26
My foreboding only grew as we climbed toward the smell of the fire, which had begun to mix with the smoky tang of cooking meat—what kind, I had no idea. We fumbled blindly and painfully over rocks, roots, and fallen trees, wearing the soft-soled water shoes that never seemed to dry. Branches whipped at us. Blackflies hummed in our ears and hung at our eyes and mouths. Partially blind, Rachel gripped the waist strap of my vest to guide her, keeping us both at a crawl. Sandra kept pace with Pia, whose white T-shirt glowed in the darkness. Their silver helmets bobbed ahead of us like beacons as we made our way ever higher; the light on the mountain growing brighter with every step.
Pia stopped short at the lip of a rain-swollen stream that flowed down to the river. We stumbled up behind her, but she shushed us hard, so we did what she said, then followed with our eyes her pale fingers as they pointed into the forest beyond the stream.
Just yards away, a dark figure crouched over a fire pit in the earth that glowed orange and red. Flames leapt up, licking at the sooty forms of rodent-looking creatures skewered nose to anus on a stick wedged between stacked stones. Fat dripped down, spitting and popping. The smell was gamy, but the heart of it was meat—food—and it reminded me of my animal hunger.