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

were on and apart from a few oddly striped leaves, there remained no sign they’d ever been here.

‘Yes.’ The sooner they did this, the sooner they could get out of here. Back to Rory and the land of antibiotics.

She kept her eyes on his footprints as he walked, as determined as yesterday to keep pace with him and not to moan about the rubbing on her heel that started up almost immediately. Her boots might have been broken in – just not to her feet.

Within twenty minutes, their bathing efforts were undone, sweat rolling in rivulets down their skin and both were breathless as the humidity rose. She had no idea of the time; she had been without a phone for two days now but, strangely, she was increasingly less in need of a clock. What did it matter if it was six o’clock or nine? The rules were simple – if the sun was up, they could walk and when it set, they stopped before they were pitched into another black, chattering jungle night.

Still they walked. She listened to the animals’ conversations and tried to see them in the branches, she heard their songs rise with the sap, she noticed how the early sparkling sunlight sent golden shafts through the trees down to the forest floor, so that it was like walking through the place where rainbows end. The colours were intense – ten thousand shades of green, leaves that had felt blackish and mulchy in the rain yesterday now waxy and bright. The ground was firm underfoot again, shadows trembled with sharp edges and, in spite of her tiredness and resentment and developing blisters, she became aware of a strong feeling of gratitude, a recognition that life was beautiful.

It was even getting hard to keep hating him. Her gaze kept rising to him – obviously, he was her guide – but she saw the energy in his movements, his connection with this place. She wondered how many times he had walked this trail, watching as his hand would shoot out occasionally to brush against a particular plant, his fingers sliding over the leaves or flowers, looking up inquisitively beneath the canopies of particular trees. He seemed to see stories within the habitat, he could ‘read’ what he saw and understand the tiny, unseen lives that were being lived there in fragile balance. He moved with such self-assurance that she was able to relax; she didn’t need to think or orienteer. She just walked and followed. Mile after mile. One foot after the other. Up the side of a mountain, right to the very top and back down the other side.

After several hours, Alex stopped and pointed. ‘Over there.’

She followed the line of his finger, looking for something distinctive, but the land kept rolling away from them in grassy peaks, anonymous and endless.

‘Okay,’ she said tiredly, a trace of sarcasm lining the words. What was she supposed to be seeing exactly? ‘If you say so.’

He seemed irritated by her response. ‘I do say so.’

She arched an eyebrow, surprised but also somehow pleased to have got under his skin. ‘Okay. What do you want? A round of applause?’ He had about as much chance of that as forgiveness.

She saw the irritation bloom into anger behind his eyes. He resumed trekking again but his speed immediately began to feel punishing as he walked at a faster and faster rate as they went downhill. She half expected him to break into a jog and just openly run the rest of the way, but she refused to ask him to slow down. Was he wanting her to chase him? Was he trying to provoke her into asking him to stay back with her? To help her? She wouldn’t do it, she wouldn’t play the helpless little woman and let him be the hero in this. She simply kept up, kept on, matching him stride for stride, mile after mile, a stubborn silence jostling between them like a storm cloud as they headed down the valley.

She could hear a river close by – the rushing sounds growing louder; they were seemingly heading towards it – and she allowed herself to feel some relief as he finally began to slow down. They would stop now, have some lunch and rest for a while. Thanks to their silent battle, they had both pushed hard and must have covered some good ground. But her feet were killing her and she was exhausted; he’d been right – one banana had not been enough for her breakfast.

They stepped out of the trees, blinking several times as the open sky and bright light rushed at them. This part of the river was a different beast to the section they had camped by last night, or perhaps it was an entirely different river altogether? Ten times as wide and seemingly three times as deep, the water looked silken and elastic, a dark greenish-brown; it slunk heavily like an eel. She swallowed at the sight of it. Now this was crocodile country.

Downstream, she saw a deer drinking at the water’s edge. Careful, she thought, seeing its ears twitch and then its head lift as their scent carried over on the breeze; in the next moment, it had gone.

The water was running clear, stretching out of sight. She glanced over at Alex, waiting for his cue for their next step. Clearly crossing here wasn’t an option and she didn’t much like the prospect of lunching beside these waters either, not with the natives lurking in places she couldn’t see.

But, to her disappointment, it seemingly wasn’t food that was on Alex’s mind. He appeared to be looking for something. Standing on the river’s shore, he had turned his back to the water and was peering back along the banks with a look of concentration.

‘What are you looking for?’ she asked, turning back too.

‘I’m certain I left it here,’ he muttered.

‘Left what?’

His eyes narrowed, his voice distracted. ‘. . . A boat. I traded it with the Cabécar