Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
EVIE
The next morning, Day Five, I stood beside the worktable laying out equipment for a longer hike as the forest slowly brightened beyond the platform.
The rain had stopped sometime before dawn, but water still clung to every broad leaf surrounding camp and dropped steadily whenever something disturbed the canopy overhead.
The air smelled of wet earth, damp bark, and crushed vegetation, freshly washed after the storm, though the humidity had returned quickly enough that the back of my shirt was already sticking to me before I'd finished breakfast.
Gentleman had remembered our plans from the night before.
He sat at the bottom of the platform steps, following everything that disappeared into my field bag with his green-gold gaze.
Menace occupied the opposite side of the shelter in a patch of weak morning light, and Cat waited near the trail with the patient stillness of someone who had been ready to leave for ten minutes and couldn't understand why everyone else was taking so long.
I wasn't blindly following three leopards several miles into unfamiliar rainforest just because one of them had promised birds.
Whatever strange turn my relationship with them had taken, I still had professional standards and a healthy interest in not becoming the subject of an avoidable search-and-rescue operation.
I checked the map before folding it into its waterproof sleeve.
The eastern ridge was farther than I'd traveled so far, but it remained inside the broad section Mara had cleared for fieldwork.
Beyond the ridge, the station map became less useful.
There were no maintained trails marked there, only elevation lines, streams, and broad stretches of green that told me very little about what I'd actually find beneath the canopy.
I packed enough water for the day and any other items I didn't leave camp without. The second camera body went into its padded section, and the telephoto lens went in last. Menace's ears came forward the moment he saw it.
“Don't,” I told Menace, pointing at him before his interest could become action as I lowered the padded lens into its compartment.
I didn't touch it, Menace protested, remaining stretched across the boards even though his attention stayed firmly on the open bag.
“You were about to,” I told Menace, pulling the zipper closed before he had a chance to prove me right.
You don't know that, Menace argued, lifting his head with such offended dignity that I had to fight a smile.
“I know you well enough by now,” I told Menace, settling the bag against one shoulder while he continued looking personally insulted by the accusation.
That does not make you right, Menace replied, flicking one ear toward me as though he'd found the flaw in my argument.
“It makes me right often enough,” I told Menace, giving the closed camera bag a protective pat before reaching for the radio. Menace made a low sound that was probably supposed to communicate disagreement, but after several days of knowing him, I was fairly certain he'd simply run out of arguments.
The morning radio check mattered more. I picked up the handset, gave Mara my planned route, told her where I expected to leave the maintained trail, and offered a conservative return estimate.
She asked about water, radio signal, and my locator beacon before finally sounding satisfied that I wasn't wandering into unfamiliar forest armed with nothing but a camera and questionable judgment.
“If you change direction significantly, update me before you do it,” Mara reminded me through the radio, her practical tone coming through clearly beneath a light wash of static.
“I will,” I promised Mara, pressing the transmit button before clipping the radio securely onto my waistband. By the time I finished adjusting my camera strap, all three leopards were standing and looking toward the trail.
“You know I don't need three bodyguards,” I told them, tightening one shoulder strap on my pack as I glanced between the spotted forms gathered around me.
Yes, you do, Cat replied without hesitation, stepping onto the path as if the matter had already been decided somewhere without my participation.
“I really don't,” I told Cat, following him as Menace slipped past us on the left with the restless energy he'd apparently been storing all morning.
You followed tracks yesterday, Menace reminded me, looking back over one spotted shoulder with obvious satisfaction.
“I attempted to identify tracks,” I corrected Menace, stepping around a muddy depression and adjusting the camera resting against my chest.
You tried to walk toward them, Gentleman added from my other side, matching my pace with his usual calm precision.
“I thought you were the nice one,” I told Gentleman, turning toward him as he continued down the trail as though he hadn't just betrayed me.
I am, Gentleman replied, stepping neatly over a fallen branch before glancing back at me.
“Starting to question that,” I muttered to Gentleman, ducking beneath a low vine as the slight movement of his whiskers told me he'd heard every word.
The maintained trail lasted for the first mile before Gentleman moved ahead and turned onto a narrower game path climbing gradually toward the ridge.
I checked my compass, compared our direction to the map, and followed once I was satisfied I knew where we were going.
Cat remained closest to me, rarely more than several yards away unless the path narrowed enough that one of us had to move ahead.
Menace ranged farther out, disappearing into vegetation and returning from completely different directions as though walking in a straight line offended him personally.
Gentleman maintained a steadier pace and matched mine even when I stopped to photograph something along the way.
The forest grew denser as we climbed. Massive trunks crowded the slope, some wrapped so completely in vines that the bark beneath them had disappeared beneath layers of green.
Moss softened fallen trees, broad fungi climbed dead wood in overlapping shelves, and sunlight reached the forest floor only in scattered patches that moved whenever wind disturbed the canopy.
The ordinary animal voices had changed too.
The rainforest itself remained loud—cicadas buzzed somewhere above us, birds called through the upper branches, and unseen animals moved constantly through leaves and vines—but what had changed was the way I understood them.
A pair of small monkeys crossed overhead, and instead of the clear conversation I might have heard several days earlier, I caught only impressions: food, hurry, irritation, another tree.
A toucan landed on a branch near the trail, turned one dark eye toward me, called once, and flew away without a single understandable word reaching me.
Careful. Root, Gentleman warned me from beside the path, glancing toward the ground in front of my boots as his voice came through with the same clarity it always had.
“Thank you,” I told Gentleman, catching myself before the toe of my boot struck the thick root and stepping over it carefully.
Once I was safely past it, I slowed enough to study him.
Gentleman tipped his head as though waiting for whatever question I was considering, but I kept it to myself.
Most of the animals were becoming harder to understand.
The three leopards weren't. Their voices remained perfectly clear.
Maybe familiarity mattered. I'd spent more time around them than any other animals since the nature spirit had given me this strange ability, and I'd learned their expressions and body language well enough that perhaps the magic didn't need to do as much work anymore.
It wasn't a particularly strong explanation, but it was the only one I had, and I wasn't interested in taking it apart halfway up a rainforest ridge.
The climb continued for another hour before the ground leveled beneath us.
I heard our destination before I saw it, macaw calls rolling through the canopy ahead in sharp overlapping bursts until individual birds became nearly impossible to separate by sound alone.
Gentleman moved through the last section of vegetation and stopped near the edge of a slope, and when I stepped beside him, every strange thought I'd been having disappeared.
Red, blue, and yellow flashed through the trees below us.
Several scarlet macaws clustered around a natural mineral seep exposed where part of the hillside had eroded, while others filled the surrounding branches, climbing, calling, preening, and occasionally launching themselves across the clearing in pairs.
“Okay, you win,” I told Gentleman, already reaching for my camera as excitement pushed everything else aside.
I usually do, Gentleman replied, settling onto his haunches beside me with a calm confidence that made me pause halfway through changing lenses.
“You've been spending too much time with Menace,” I told Gentleman, giving him a suspicious look as I pulled the telephoto lens free.
He could learn from me, Menace announced from several yards behind us, stepping through the vegetation with his tail raised as though Gentleman had just paid him a compliment.
“That is absolutely not what I said,” I told Menace, tightening the lens onto the camera body before settling into position.