Chapter One Sienna
Off the Path
The soggy, ripped remains of what used to be the park map clung to my fingers as I picked it up from the puddle. How the fuck was I supposed to tell where I was now?
It looked less like a navigational aid and more like papier-maché crafted by a particularly angry toddler. Which, honestly, tracked with my current mood. And why was I even doing this?
Trekking through the Queensland rainforest, hauling a tent on my back like some kind of budget Bear Grylls, on a solo, what was it called again? Spiritual journey? Please. The only spirits I usually communed with came in a bottle labeled ‘Gin.’
Slap. Another mosquito met its maker on my neck, leaving behind an itchy smear of my own blood.
Perfect. Add that to the sweat gluing the shirt to my back, the chafing from the backpack straps that felt suspiciously like sandpaper, and the general aroma of Eau de Desperation and Bug Spray.
This wasn’t spiritual enlightenment but a voluntary torture disguised as self-improvement.
All because Brenda in accounting said I needed to learn how to be.
I mean, come on, I’d just broken up with Mr. Let’s Be Friends.
Naturally, the logical response was to fling myself into the wilderness armed with questionable camping gear and an even more questionable sense of direction.
With the help of being motivated by a bet with Brenda, and after my outburst in the office managing the pineapple farm, I was here. Healing.
“Find yourself, Sienna,” I’d muttered grimly while packing my bags. Right now, finding myself seemed secondary to finding a landmark that wasn’t another bloody tree and not getting eaten by whatever unseen things were rustling ominously in the undergrowth.
Okay, deep breaths. Panic wouldn’t unrip the map or magic up a signal.
I definitely needed help. My eyes scanned the dense, indifferent green wall surrounding me.
For a fleeting, ridiculous second, I remembered a weekend wellness retreat my sister dragged me to.
Some self-proclaimed guru—Rajesh Moonbeam, or something equally absurd—had droned on about connecting with nature spirits.
He’d even mentioned seeking guidance from the Green Man if ever truly lost in the wild, some ancient leafy bloke supposed to guard the forests.
Yeah, right. Like I was going to stand here and chant for a mythical shrubbery dude to pop out from behind a fern with GPS coordinates.
Nope. I was well and truly on my own out here.
My other option? Whip out the satellite phone, assuming it even worked out here, call Brenda, admit defeat, and wire her the hundred bucks I’d bet I could survive this ‘soul-searching’ expedition for one night.
No. Fucking. Way.
Pride, apparently, was a stronger motivator than common sense. I’d rather wrestle a crocodile, okay, maybe a large lizard, than give Brenda the satisfaction.
Right. Map or no map, mystical Leaf Man or no mystical Leaf Man, I was getting out of here, even if I had to chew my way through the dense growth.
I stuffed the pulpy map remnants into a pocket of my cargo pants with a final decision—no need to be reminded of my stellar planning skills. I sucked on the tube connected to the water bag in my backpack, the water blessedly cool for now, and looked ahead.
Which way screamed ‘campsite ahead’ and less ‘imminent encounter with things that have too many legs?’ Left looked marginally less like a solid, impenetrable wall of hostile vegetation. So I was going right and smiled grimly. I did rather like being right, but the joke didn’t reach my heart.
I heaved the pack higher on my back—yep, still chafing—and started walking and pushing aside a curtain of damp vines.
I might help manage farms, mostly pineapple ones back home, but that involved spreadsheets and air-conditioning, not solo trekking to ‘find myself.’ Give me a five-star accommodation over five million mosquitoes any day.
I had to admit, though, the rainforest was amazing. It would just be better without me in it.
Thick-trunked trees shot straight up toward the sky, some strangled by vines like tangled pythons. Ferns unfurled in massive, intricate spirals at ground level, looking prehistoric.
The sheer, relentless greenness of it all pressed in from every side, layer upon layer, deep and shadowed.
It was beautiful, in a way that also felt vaguely menacing.
Like admiring a tiger through cage bars, except there were no bars, and I was definitely inside the cage.
The air itself felt thick enough to chew, heavy with the smell of damp earth, sweet rot, and flowers so aggressively perfumed they bypassed pleasant and went straight to headache-inducing. Everything dripped constantly.
The problem was, every rustle in the undergrowth made my head snap around.
Was that just a bird or something sizing me up for lunch?
This place felt ancient, utterly indifferent to my pathetic office drama and the pineapple incident.
Which was probably the whole point of this stupid ‘healing journey,’ wasn’t it?
To feel insignificant? Mission accomplished, I guess.
Still didn’t make finding my way to the campsite any easier.
Didn’t matter. Left foot, right foot. Brenda wasn’t getting that hundred bucks.
I wasn’t crawling back from this misadventure.
Just had to keep moving. Find the damn trail.
I was sure it was up ahead somewhere, maybe just past this dense patch.
Then I would just need to follow it from memory for another mile or so to a small clearing where it was safe to set up my tent for the night. Easy. Probably. Maybe not.
Just when my thighs were starting to scream obscenities louder than I usually did after a bad date, and I was seriously considering just sitting and letting the jungle reclaim me, I saw it.
Through a gap in the suffocating green, almost hidden behind a curtain of hanging moss, was a small, faded orange arrow nailed to a tree.
The trail. Hallelujah. Or, you know, whatever the nonspiritual equivalent was. Finally.
I stumbled toward it, pushing aside a final branch that slapped me wetly across the face.
Thanks, nature. The path itself wasn’t exactly a highway—more like a slightly less dense suggestion of where feet had trodden before—but it was there.
Marked. Sensible. Predictable. Everything I apparently wasn’t, according to Brenda, anyway.
I took a step onto the slightly firmer ground, ready to follow the orange arrow pointing dutifully left, toward the clearing I remembered from the now-deceased map. One mile, maybe less. Tent, lukewarm ration pack dinner, blissful unconsciousness. Easy peasy.
Then, zip. A flash of color so bright it almost hurt my eyes.
Electric blue wings, impossibly vibrant against the endless green and brown, flickered past my nose.
A tiny bird, no bigger than my thumb, darted off the path and vanished into the dense tangle to my right.
No trail there. Just more jungle. More potential ways to get ridiculously, irrevocably lost.
My brain, the sensible part that handled spreadsheets and remembered to pay bills, screamed No, you idiot, follow the damn arrow!
But my feet, apparently bored with sensible and still stinging from Brenda’s smugness, twitched.
Where did the little blue spark go? Was there something interesting over there?
A hidden waterfall? A viewpoint not obscured by ten million leaves?
Or, more likely, a nest of particularly venomous spiders?
The little orange arrow pointed left. Safety. Logic. The way back to civilization, eventually.
I looked right, into the unmarked, shadow-dappled chaos where the bird had disappeared. A smirk tugged at my lips. Standard operating procedure, really. When given a clear, sensible path, veer wildly in the opposite direction.
“Screw it,” I muttered to a nearby giant fern, which remained impassive. “Maybe blue birds know a shortcut.”
Ignoring the silent judgment of the orange arrow, I turned right and plunged back into the thick, untamed green. What could possibly go wrong?
The spot where the little blue bird vanished looked deceptively open from the trail.
Ha. Famous last thoughts. Ten steps in, and the ‘intriguing gap’ slammed shut behind me like a leafy green door.
Suddenly, I wasn’t pushing aside the occasional vine, I was wading through a solid wall of vegetation.
Twigs with an attitude snagged my shirt, pulling threads loose.
Low-slung vines seemed to actively reach out, catching my boots like spiteful tripwires, sending me stumbling more than once.
“Okay, very funny,” I muttered, batting away a spiderweb that stretched across my face with the tenacity of cling film. “Where’d you go, you little blue menace?”
Silence. Well, not silence exactly. The constant drip-drip-buzz-rustle symphony of the rainforest continued, but my feathered guide was nowhere to be seen.
And annoyingly, neither was anything resembling a path.
Not even a hint of one. Every direction looked identical like a chaotic jumble of thick trunks, dangling vines, giant leaves, and shadowed undergrowth.
Which tree had I just passed? Was it that one with the weird knobbly bark, or the other one with the weird knobbly bark?
They all started blurring into one giant, indifferent green and knobbly bark wall.