I turned straight around, choking on the sobs that kept coming, and tried to make my way back to where I’d just been. But it soon became obvious that I had completely lost my way. There was no trace of my passing, no clue to lead me back.
I cried freely now. I couldn’t stop the tears streaming from my eyes. And as I stumbled along, intermittently being scratched and snared by vicious branches, I kept trying to make some sense of how I came to be here. Had my parents planned it? Was that it? Had they wanted to get rid of me? I tried to think what I might have done to make them so cross with me. Was it the pea pods? Were they cross because I’d picked so many of them? Had my mummy or daddy asked those horrible men to come and take me?
I tried to remember the man who had taken me from the allotment. The black man, the one who’d covered my mouth with his hand. Who was he? An uncle? I tried to recall his features. He had been tall and very strong. Was he someone who knew me? One of my most treasured possessions back at home was my beautiful black dolly and for some reason this fact kept returning to me. We were a white-skinned family and yet I had a black dolly. Why was that? Did it mean something I didn’t understand?
Too drained and upset now to thrash furiously through the endless waist-high undergrowth, my pace slowed, my shoulders drooped and my spirits plummeted. Yet what else could I do but keep trudging on? So I did. It was barely a conscious decision. I just kept going because perhaps I would find a way out or someone who would help me. Or just some sign that meant I might be a step closer to going home.
But as time went on, and my limbs became criss-crossed with scratches, the fear grew in me that this was not going to happen. And when the light began to dim I felt my hope disappear with the sun. It was night-time. It was bedtime. The day was all done. A whole day had passed and I was still trapped in the jungle. I would have to spend another night alone.
The night was blacker than any other I had ever seen. Hard as I strained to see, there was not even the tiniest pinpoint of light apart from the far-away glimmer of stars. The sky itself, though, felt oddly close – almost as if it had fallen down on top of me, settling like an enormous black bedspread all around me and trapping me beneath it with the creatures of the night. Without chemicals to blur the edges of my awareness, my terror now took on an even more desperate quality than the night before. It was the noise again, the incredible volume and range of noises, which I knew, because I’d heard grown-ups talking about them, must come from the jungle beasts that came out at night. And they did that, I knew, because hidden by the dark it would be easier for them to catch their prey.
I had searched around as the blackness had swooped down to claim me and found a small patch of bare soil, unadorned by plant life, that sat within the base of a wide-trunked tree. Here I sat, and as the air grew thicker and murkier I curled myself once again into the tightest ball possible, my back against the reassuring solidity of the bark and my arms wrapped protectively around my bent knees.
I felt strongly that I needed to keep still and quiet. Like in a game, I told myself. A game of hide-and-seek. If I kept very still and didn’t make a sound, then the creatures of the night wouldn’t know I was there.
But their presence was terrifyingly obvious to me. I could hear so many different sounds, and many were close by. I could hear the same rustlings that I had made as I trampled through the foliage. Scurryings, too – the sound of small animals moving by. And then a crack. A loud crack, frighteningly close to where I cowered. The crunch of something crisp – dead twigs? – being trodden on. The noise moved around me. Whatever it was, it seemed to be circling me, waiting for the right moment to pounce. Could it make me out clearly with its big night-time eyes? And what were those swishing sounds that seemed to follow it? A tail? Was it a child-eating monster? Could it smell me?
I tried to make myself smaller. I wished so much for a cage that I could scuttle inside. A cage that would protect me from slashing claws and biting jaws. Or a light. How I longed for my mummy to bring a light that would scare the monster away.
But then something must have startled whatever it was that stalked me, for there was a rush of small sounds as it darted away, and I felt a blessed moment of relief. But it wasn’t to last. As the night wore on and I lay in my tight ball inside the tree trunk, my lack of vision merely served to terrify me even more. Frightening though it may have been to see any jungle creatures close up, I decided that not being able to see them was even worse. As it was, I could do nothing but flinch and quake in terror as creeping things crawled up and down my limbs, tried to explore the contours of my face and crept inside my ears. I longed for sleep like I had never longed for anything before, because no nightmare, however scary, could possibly be worse than the nightmare I was trapped in right now.
*
The same sun, with the same strength, shining down from the same dazzling blue sky, greeted me again the next morning. It had taken time to convince myself that I should open my eyes. In the comfort of semi-consciousness, I could almost believe that the warmth was that of the blanket on my bed and the sun was streaming in through my bedroom window. But the sounds of the waking jungle quickly dispelled that notion and dragged me cruelly back to reality.
I cried again inside my tree trunk, my throat sore and rasping, my belly aching to be filled with food. But I could only cry for so long. And who was going to hear me anyway? I rubbed the backs of my hands across the puffy surface of my tear-stained face, and as my eyes cleared I thought I saw a butterfly.
I looked again. No, not one butterfly. There were lots and lots of butterflies, in all sorts of different colours, all flitting just above my head. They were fussing around the petals of beautiful pink and white flowers hanging down on lengths of green stem that seemed to start high in the trees. They were mesmerising, and as the jungle floor steamed and made mist all around me, every scrap of my attention was held.
But the pain in my stomach wouldn’t let me rest for long. I was hungry and I needed to find something to eat. But what? There were pods on the ground that I carefully inspected. They smelled good and even made the air around me smell fragrant, but they were coal-black and wizened, and I had only to snap one to see that these pods were very different from peas. Did peas grow here? Or corn? Perhaps I could find some. I got up then and began to explore my surroundings, only this time in a very different way.
Being so young, I was unaware that I could be poisoned by any of the strange plants, berries and fruits I could see. I didn’t want to eat them simply because they looked alien and unappetising. I could see nothing in the undergrowth that was familiar to me.
Once again my thoughts returned to my predicament. If I could find nothing to eat, then I would starve very quickly. And then, as I knew from stories I’d seen in picture books and the things I’d heard grown-ups say, I would die and get eaten by animals. But it seemed that there was nothing here for me to eat. And not wanting to die and be eaten by animals, once again I decided I could not stay where I was. Today I would walk. I would walk and keep walking. If help didn’t want to find me, then I would have to find it. I resolved to continue for as long as my legs could support me, which would hopefully be long enough for me to find a human being who would give me food and take me back to my parents.
I set off once again through the impenetrable thickets, with no plan other than to get away from where I was. After all, the two men had run into the jungle with me, so if I walked for long enough then I must surely get out.
Most of the time I couldn’t see further than the mesh of leaves in front of me and my skin was soon protesting at another round of scratches, as the branches I’d displaced sprang back viciously to punish me for disturbing them. It was hot and claustrophobic inside the eerie green bower, and it wasn’t long before my quest for food was forgotten. As the trees dripped above me and the mists rose and vanished, a new sensation overtook my previous raging hunger. I realised I was incredibly thirsty.
But how would I find water? I had no idea. Though everything around me seemed glossy with moisture, finding water to drink seemed impossible. I began scanning my surroundings with a keener sense of purpose. Where would I find water to drink in such a place?
I looked for hollows in stones and crevices, and scoured the