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

Tribes. Trades. These were insights into his life now. ‘What did they trade it for?’

‘Some radios. They’re mountain people, pretty remote, but even they want to be a bit more connected – especially for after the handover.’

Tara frowned. Why did they need more contactability after then?

‘It’s a good boat,’ he mumbled. ‘Especially useful for me to have some way of getting about that doesn’t involve walking a hundred miles. There’s a lot of gorges in this stretch; it’s hard going.’

‘So you come here a lot, then?’ It was a sardonic take on the age-old question but he missed her sarcasm. His eyes were still on the banks.

‘Reasonably often,’ he said distractedly, after a pause. ‘There’s a young female jaguar that we’ve been tracking and it quite often crosses around here.’

A jaguar? Tara looked around them again nervously but there was an ominous stillness to the trees. Only the river rushed past, in a hurry.

‘Well, could someone have taken it?’ she asked as he began walking along the shore, leaning into the bushes. He pulled out and straightened up again, unaware a leaf had become caught in his hair. Her gaze went to it but she resisted the urge to pull it free.

‘It’s possible,’ he mumbled reluctantly, as if even to talk was a waste of precious energy. ‘But unlikely. We’re pretty deep in the jungle here and I pushed it right into the bushes so it couldn’t be seen. Clearly I pushed it too damn far in.’ He squinted as he looked up at the horizon and did something with his hands, as though pinpointing markers. ‘. . . I was certain it was in the crease . . . opposite the . . .’ he muttered to himself.

Tara looked to the opposite bank, but saw only trees. Trees, trees, more trees.

‘Ah!’

Suddenly he moved, walking with purpose towards a spot a hundred yards downstream. A tree was hanging slightly forward of all the others, one of its roots exposed from the riverbank like a lover’s knot. Alex ducked as he reached it, pushing back the foliage and seconds later giving a shout of victory. He seemed very pleased to have found it and it occurred to her the rest of the journey must be gruelling if he was looking for shortcuts. She watched as he reached up and began heaving and pulling, slowly bringing out the prow of a very long and narrow wooden canoe.

‘Feel free to help!’ he called over to her sarcastically.

‘Ugh.’ She ran over and together they began dragging it off the bank, down towards the water. It was incredibly heavy and appeared to have been dug out from the trunk of a single tree; she could see the knife markings against the grain, a ladder of single seats carved across the width. It was crude and naive, but also beautiful. Sculptural, almost.

The canoe wobbled precariously as the near end was freed from the bank and nosed into the water. It reminded Tara of those old-fashioned wooden skis – so much longer and narrower than the modern designs; she didn’t know how anyone used them without breaking their legs.

After much heaving and ho-ing, they pulled the far end free too and it landed heavily in the water with a splash. Alex pushed it fully away from the bank as the canoe began to float. ‘Climb in,’ he said, unbuckling his backpack and letting it slide off his shoulders, falling into the hollow of the boat behind him. ‘I’ll grab the oars.’

Carefully, wanting to get in before the water went above her boots – she didn’t want wet feet again after yesterday’s trainers debacle – she grabbed both sides of the narrow boat to try to stabilize it, and climbed in. It rocked alarmingly and she felt nervous; she was still wearing her backpack and feeling cumbersome and off-balance. She kneeled awkwardly, waiting for the boat to stop lurching, then straightened up, still on her knees, and quickly unbuckled the backpack. It was immediate relief, again, to get the weight off her shoulders, and the boat pitched and rolled as it fell heavily into the hollow behind her. Gripping both sides again, she turned, twisting herself onto the seat—

‘Alex!’ Her voice was a cry and he turned from where he was standing in a split stance, reaching up the riverbank into the undergrowth. He had one oar by his legs and was holding the end of the other, a vine seemingly having wrapped itself around it. She saw his expression change, his face instantly pale and his mouth fall into a perfect ‘o’ as he took in the sight of her – already heading towards the middle of the channel and drifting quickly away.

‘Tara!’ He instinctively dropped the oar and ran into the water up to his thighs, but the river was thirty metres wide at least. He could never wade out to her in time.

‘Alex no! Get back! Get out of the water!’ she cried, trying to stop him from following. The water was murky and thick – anything could be below the surface. ‘The oars! I need the oars!’

They would be long enough to bridge the gap between them, something for her to grab at so he could pull her in again. He turned and ran back to the shore again but she was drifting quickly, ever further from reach and within seconds she was too far for the oars – even tied end to end – to reach. It was already too late. She was ten metres away, now twenty, the canoe gliding through the fast-flowing silky water like a cut reed. It had been made too well, by people who knew too much.

Alex was standing in frozen horror, up to his knees, knowing all of this. ‘Twig! Get out of there! Paddle back! Use your arms! Paddle!’

She leaned over the edge and stared down into the unseeable depths, but the sides of the canoe were low and even with just her transfer of weight, water slipped over easily, quickly, soaking