The Secret Path by Karen Swan (summer beach reads TXT) 📕

throat as behind her, all around, a quick series of loud cracks made her gasp, jump and whirl round. What was that? Something running? Something approaching? She instinctively fell into a crouch, trying to make herself small as she strained to understand what was happening, her body held in a state of frozen tension, ready to run, but it was so hard to hear properly over the rain, to see through the grey haze and the mists that wound whimsically here and there. She felt horribly exposed. Jed had a knife but she had nothing, no way to protect herself. She looked around quickly for something, anything she could use, picking up a stick on the ground. It was just a stick, but it was green wood and bendy, with a sharp edge; an animal must have torn it off and dropped it. It wouldn’t provide much meaningful help against seventy kilograms of muscle but it was something to threaten with, at least, a preliminary distraction.

Her heart pounding, her eyes wide, she remembered what Jed had taught her on their adventures out here when she was little: STOP. True, they’d never come this deep into the jungle, but he’d always told her to Stop. Think. Observe. Plan. Letting her umbrella fall from her hands – getting wet was the least of her worries right now – she fell still, became quiet. Began to listen. What was after them?

A hush contracted through the jungle, like the breath before a scream. Every living thing seemed to be holding its breath and the close, unseen presences that brushed right by her had stalled like stone statues.

The momentary quiet was broken by a bird flying into the trees in a scurry of hurried wing-flaps, followed moments later by a harpy eagle gliding in pristine silence overhead, looking for a meal.

Had it been that? She turned a full 360, looking behind her and feeling jumpy, eyes scanning the dense ground cover – there was so much to see, nothing could be seen. Everything was green, thick, tremoring as the rain continued to fall, the sky lowered so that it skimmed the treetops. The quietude held and, as suddenly as it had come, whatever it was, it appeared to have gone again.

She allowed herself to breathe. She could feel the sense of danger ebb away – or perhaps she had just over-reacted in the first place? A townie’s nerves getting the better of her, every unexpected sound making her jumpy. She rose to standing again, feeling foolish, and grateful Jed hadn’t seen.

But where was he? She had to get back to him.

She looked back to check nothing was approaching from behind. Their footprints of five metres ago, still suckered in the mud, were filling quickly with water, ready to overflow, lose shape, disappear. She attuned her focus further, beginning to pick out details, seeing now a bright green, red-eyed tree frog clinging to a leaf, the drooping head of an orange orchid, a sloth hanging from a branch ten metres away, chewing slowly on a shoot . . . It was surprisingly large, unbothered by her scrutiny. Had it been that she had heard, snapping off its lunch? Or something bigger? Something fast with sharp teeth? She remembered what Jed had said to Zac the night they’d arrived here, how the jaguars stayed inland. Well, this was inland. Deep, deep inland.

It came again, from the other side of the vines, another series of cracks that pierced the drumbeat of the rain, that sense of the jungle moving and rushing. Her pulse accelerated once more and her gaze felt primed to its sharpest setting as she scanned the undergrowth with forensic scrutiny, her heart banging hard against her ribs like it wanted to be let out. She wasn’t imagining this. It wasn’t an over-reaction. There was something out there.

The stick held like a wand, waving around warningly, she took a few steps forward, towards the knotted curtain. ‘Jed?’ she whispered, but her voice was overpowered by the rain falling like a symphony, orchestral, in the round. ‘Jed?’

Slowly, she pushed through the vines, staring up at the path ahead. It was completely clear. Ferns nodded across the track like greedy hands, the vines hung from other branches forming rackety walls. Where was he?

A tree had fallen thirty metres ahead – not recently – but it created a substantial obstacle to a quick getaway. Clambering over trees wasn’t the innocent activity of her childhood; out here, everything could bite, sting, elicit an allergic reaction. Surely Jed hadn’t gotten past there already? She’d stopped for all of thirty seconds.

‘Jed?’ She shouted his name this time, raising her voice above the rain, not caring whether the big cats heard her. He had the knife, she just had to get back to him. ‘Where are you?’

She waited for his jocular reply.

Nothing came.

‘Jed, stop messing about. This isn’t funny.’ But she knew this was no prank. They were out here trying to save his child. He wouldn’t muck about at a time like this. Neither of them was in this for fun.

She turned a slow circle, feeling eyes perpetually upon her back, her heart pounding heavily from the uphill hike through the mud, from the dawning panic that she was alone. Her skills to survive somewhere like this were rudimentary at best. Without him, she had no shelter, no weapons, no map, just a backpack full of cheese and ham sandwiches and some mangoes.

Then she saw it – a deep skid mark in the mud. She had been so busy looking ahead, looking out, it hadn’t occurred to her to look down. She ran up, following where it went off the animal track and deeper into the undergrowth. A branch scratched her arm as she pushed past in a rush but she barely even noticed it.

‘Jed?’

Pushing back the thick bushes, she caught sight of something.

‘Jed!’

He was lying on the ground, his body crumpled, his face pressed in the mud. He was motionless, his arm thrown out at