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

growing blacker in the fast-fading light, birds like bats against the dusk, an eerie grey mist beginning to wind through the trees.

‘That’s it over there, in the cloud forest,’ he said finally, stopping at the edge of a dramatic, narrow gorge, a pass between two mountains. The land dropped away steeply between the cliffs, down to a river fifty metres below. A single-path rope bridge connected one side to the other, looking as intricate and fragile as a spider’s web; the treads were simply split logs. Tara looked down again, not sure she trusted putting her weight onto it, but Alex stepped out and walked across without hesitation, so she followed. In this, at least, she trusted him.

She felt the change in habitat on the other side immediately. Three steps into the trees and the sky became a notional thing, completely blocked from sight by interlocking canopies that soared thirty, forty metres high. Low-sailing clouds bumped around the trunks, the ground cover reduced, making it easier to walk. Within minutes they were panting again from the steep gradient.

‘What’s that?’ she asked, as a sound came to her ear unlike anything she had heard since her first step into the jungle. In contrast to the cacophonous sharp shrieks and calls, cries and shouts of the animals that lived here, this was soaring and melodic: a clean, mellow whistle that seemed to wind around the trees, beckoning her.

‘Pan pipes.’

It was haunting, especially in the gloaming, and it stopped abruptly as they reached a grassy clearing and stood by the edge of the trees.

‘This is it,’ he said simply.

She looked at him. They were here? Just like that? After a trip in which Jed had been attacked and seriously injured, in which she had been ambushed by her past, where she had cheated death . . . they had made it? Somehow, it felt anticlimactic.

She looked on at the conical huts fully thatched to the ground with rushes, similar in style to those in Jed and Sarita’s village, but more dispersed. A man was standing by one of them, staring back, as if he’d been waiting for them. He was wearing Western trousers but with a fringed rush tabard over his chest, and in his hand was a small set of bamboo pipes.

Alex stepped forward, speaking in a language she didn’t recognize. He gesticulated back in her direction, the man’s gaze coming to her and off again. He smiled, revealing gappy teeth, then gave a laugh that sounded surprisingly matey.

Alex gestured for her to come over. ‘Tara, this is William, the Awa.’

‘William?’ she repeated in surprise. They’d just trekked two days to get here. They were by anyone’s definition in the middle of nowhere, and the Awa sounded like a public school boy from the Home Counties?

William regarded her with a look of open scrutiny, as though he was somehow reading her. Could he see what she’d been through to get here? Would he even believe it? Her face was sunburned on one side from where she’d slept on the rock, she had cuts and bruises, she was covered in mosquito bites, her leg itched like mad where the leech had stuck on. Did that tell him enough, or was she wearing her terror – and exhaustion – like a dress too?

‘He’s reading your energy,’ Alex said in a low voice, as the Awa – as in Jed’s village – took her hand and held it, his eyes closed for a moment. ‘Standard greeting here.’

William opened his eyes after a few moments and stared back at her, nodding as though she had confirmed something for him. He reached forward with his other hand and placed it on her forearm, right above her wound. She immediately winced. The scratch that had been showing signs of infection felt significantly worse again.

William took a closer look at it, peeling back her sleeve, and she wondered how he had known it was even there. The infection was setting in fast, the pustules growing larger and whiter. She stared at it, trying not to panic. The jungle was no place to accrue an infection, clearly, but she reminded herself she would be back to civilization in less than two days. That would be enough time, surely?

William walked off into the trees a few metres away, without a word, returning several moments later with a clutch of leaves.

Of course, more leaves, she thought to herself, obeying politely as William beckoned for her to follow him. She trailed him into the largest hut, her eyes widening in amazement at the sight that greeted her. It dwarfed the scale and grandeur of Jed’s Awa’s hut. Carved wooden masks hung from the walls, bows dangled by their strings; decorated gourds and carvings of animals she almost recognized, but not quite, were placed on tables and makeshift ledges propped against the walls. Hides of snakes and deer hung drying from lines, and some loosely woven twine hammocks were suspended between the giant wooden struts.

He put the leaves down on a table and, with a small knife, chopped them roughly, releasing the sap and grinding them into a paste. He worked quickly and efficiently. No one spoke. Tara just watched, too tired to protest; there was something hypnotic about his sense of purpose. Within a few minutes, he had created a bright lime green unguent and began applying it to her arm. It smelled foul but didn’t sting at least, Tara watching on sceptically as he took one large, waxy leaf, different from the others, and stuck it over the mixture like some sort of plaster. He pressed it down with the palm of his hand, holding it there for a count of ten and then stepping away. It didn’t budge when she moved her arm. He murmured something.

‘It’ll feel better tomorrow,’ Alex translated.

‘Gracias,’ was all she said. She could feel the ointment already sinking into the festering wound and a distant part of her could hardly believe that she – a doctor – had allowed a complete