Feeling almost as if I had discovered a secret treasure, I pulled the cone of the leaf towards me and leaned into it. I then let my parched lips touch the glimmering surface. It felt like heaven, and I’d soon tipped the leaf carefully up and deposited the rest into my mouth. The water tasted odd. It was like drinking soil. But I didn’t care. My thirst was quenched for a moment.
And it wasn’t long before I was able to satisfy it even more. I found a tiny stream, the water trickling and splashing over rocks, and this time when I drank, it was cold and clear and pleasant. But my stomach was not to be fooled. I soon felt it grumbling and complaining, and renewed my focus on finding something to eat as I walked.
What I found was not food, but a parrot. Weak as I was with hunger, I was still entranced by it. Blue and green and yellow, and around the size of a large squash, it sat on a low branch, chattering to itself. It was reassuring, the way it sat there so boldly, just watching me, and I instinctively wanted to get closer. I reached a hand out. Perhaps it would come and sit on my finger, as the confident village parrots sometimes did.
But I was wrong. No sooner had I got within touching distance than it leaned towards me, squawked loudly and sharply bit my thumb, before flapping off in what looked like great annoyance. I looked down at my thumb, which was now throbbing painfully, and at the sight of all the blood dripping across and off my palm I burst into hot, self-pitying tears again. In years to come – decades to come – that moment would be dear to me, because I would recognise it as being key to my survival. I’d been so shocked that a beautiful creature like this might want to harm me, but it was that same shock that would form the basis of what would perhaps be the greatest lesson I could learn. That this was not a man-made place, full of pretty domesticated animals. This was a wild place, and wild animals would kill to survive. As it was, I just traipsed on, dejected.
My spirits, however, soon lifted. It was shortly after the unfortunate encounter with the parrot that I noticed a change in my surroundings. The undergrowth seemed to be thinning a little. My thumb, which had been pulsating with discomfort, was forgotten, and I pushed back the ever-decreasing barricades of branches with a real sense that I might be about to escape. On and on I went, scrambling with ever more urgency as it became obvious I was reaching some sort of clearing. And the closer I got, the more my eyes seemed to confirm it. I was getting ever bigger glimpses of the jungle giving way to what looked like open space.
This must be it! So intent was I on reaching the edge now that I didn’t care how many irritable boughs and saplings lashed out and whacked me. And it was with a sense of elation that I finally burst through, to find myself at one side of a small area of grass. But my joy was cruelly short-lived. No sooner had I escaped than I saw that on the other side of the scrubby, withered circle of grass was undergrowth just as impenetrable as that from which I’d just emerged. I’d come so far! I had walked for so long! I was exhausted, still starving, and there seemed no escape route. I had, I knew for certain, just walked further into the jungle.
Why? I thought. Why, why, why, why had this happened? Why hadn’t my mother come to find me? What had I done to deserve this? And if this was a punishment for something I’d done wrong, then what was it? I looked down at my dress, which had once been pure white with pink flowers and was now a ragged grey thing, stained with soil and blood. I had no shoes and my bare feet were worn, cut and filthy, and both my stomach and mind cried out hopelessly. I slumped down into a pitiful heap on the ground, smelling the grass in my nostrils and the ever-present tang of soil. I could think of nothing else to do but just lie there and weep. I wanted home, I wanted my mother, I wanted to be comforted and cuddled. But I had nothing and no one to cling on to.
I curled up there, on my side, for what seemed an eternity, and I might even have fallen asleep for a bit. Certainly, it seemed I was experiencing nightmares. Strange jungle sounds made me jump, and loud whoops and calls seemed to taunt me. I could hear the sound of branches thwacking, grasses moving, sharp snaps and thumps.
All I wanted was to die. But eventually my hopelessness and fear turned to hunger, and the sheer physical ache from deep down in my stomach made me accept that I wasn’t going to die any time soon.
I opened one eye, just a little bit. The sunlight still bathed me. I opened it a bit more, my sightline tracking straight along the ground. And what I saw almost stopped me from opening it any further. So I closed it and, as gently and noiselessly as I could, turned my head to face the other way.
A tiny peek from the other eye confirmed I hadn’t dreamt it. I had company. In fact, I was surrounded.
3
All trace of sleep had gone now, and as I opened my eyes fully I realised I wasn’t just surrounded, I was being watched. All around me, at a distance of several paces, were monkeys. Motionless and afraid again, I tried to count them. Now I was nearly five, I could count up to ten, and it seemed there were lots more than that number ranged around me, and perhaps more behind me, out of sight, which scared me even more.
But as I watched them, and they watched me, I felt my fear ebb a little. They looked like a family. Though they were all different sizes, they looked related. Big ones and little ones. Old ones and young ones. All with the same chocolate-coloured fur and paler belly, and ranging from what looked like the size of a small dog to no bigger than the parrot who’d bitten me. I knew they were wild animals and, after my experience with that parrot, I couldn’t trust them, but some sense made me feel they wouldn’t hurt me.
That feeling didn’t last. After a short time, one of the monkeys left the circle and began to approach me. He was one of the biggest, with a coat that was greyer than the others, and there was something about the way he loped towards me so boldly that made me think he was the one who ran the family. Afraid again now, because I didn’t know what he might decide to do to me, I shrank back into a ball, trying to make myself as tiny as possible, tucking my head tight to my chest and hugging my arms around my knees.
I was just about to squeeze my eyes shut when I saw him reach out a wrinkly brown hand and, to my surprise, with one firm push, knock me over onto my side. I quivered on the soil, tensed for the second blow that was surely coming. But it didn’t, and after some seconds I dared open one eye again, only to find that the monkey had lost interest. He’d now returned to the circle, squatted back on his hind legs and resumed watching me, along with all the others.
It wasn’t long, however, before a second monkey – another of the bigger ones – began walking towards me. It approached slowly on all fours but without a trace of uncertainty. This time I instinctively scrabbled to my feet, but as soon as the monkey got to me it reached out, grabbed one of my legs and yanked it from under me, causing me to fall back on the soil again with a thump. I curled into a ball again but felt the animal begin to dig around in my hair and move its leathery fingers over my face. Now I was frightened and wriggling, trying to free myself from its questing fingers, but, like the other monkey, it seemed to have decided I was a plaything; once again, I was firmly pushed over.
This action seemed to give the other, smaller monkeys confidence. Having decided I posed no danger to them, they all seemed to want to inspect me. They had been chattering to one another – using sounds that almost seemed like they were goading each other and laughing – and in no time at all some had come to check me over. Once upon me they began to prod and push me, grabbing at my filthy dress and digging around in my hair.
‘Stop it!’ I pleaded, sobbing. ‘Get off me! Go away!!’ But they took no notice and I had to wait, cowering and whimpering, until they’d finished their inspection. I could feel myself relax just a little, however, because if they’d wanted to hurt me then surely they would have done so by now. They hadn’t and now they seemed to lose interest altogether, returning to whatever it was that they had been doing in the dense undergrowth from which I presumed they’d come.
Having nowhere to go, and still fearful of running, in