Wait‑a‑While

In the winter of 1989 my wife and I found ourselves in a bar in a sprawling Sheraton resort in Port Douglas, Australia. Port Douglas is a tiny laid‑back tourist town located on the southern fringes of the World Heritage Daintree Rainforest in northwest Queensland. In most ways the Daintree is a typical tropical rain forest: a place of enervating humidity, riotously diverse flora and fauna, oppressively sauna‑like heat, and mysterious dark nooks and crannies unvisited by humankind. Atypically for a rain forest, its plant life is more threatening to human visitors than are the local animals. The exception is a giant flightless bird called the cassowary, which looks more like a dinosaur than any other avian with the possible exception of South America’s hoatzin.

When my wife departed for elsewhere, I lingered awhile. I found myself listening (where do writers get their ideas?) to a conversation between a couple of local gents who had popped in out of the heat for a quick one. They rambled on about sports scores, the weather, road conditions, box jellyfish, and enough local lore to apprise me of the fact that they not only lived in the area but knew it well.

Eventually one of them started talking about two women, a mother and her grown daughter, who were known to conceal themselves in the depths of the forest, not wear clothes, and generally live off the land. In the course of the tale‑teller’s talk I expected to hear derision, if not outright laughter. Instead there was more than a modicum of respect in the voices of both men. Respect for anyone, much less a couple of ladies, who would dare try to eke out an existence in a wild and inhospitable, albeit beautiful, place like the Daintree–with or without suitable attire.

The Daintree, you see, is and always has been a special place…

Michael Covey had come to Queensland looking for inspiration and had found only beer. Beer and overwhelming heat, suffocating humidity, subtle bigotry, and an all‑pervasive tropical dulling of the senses inconducive to cogent thought, much less the novel he hoped to write.

The bar in the hotel was solid Daintree hardwood, cut from the center of a single tree. From where he sat near the far end it looked expansive enough to handle the landing of a small plane. Dark brown veined with black, it resembled a slab of meat hacked from some dinosaurian flank. Sparkling empty glasses dangled like crystalline grapes from crazed brass piping. Spotted throughout the vast Byzantine reaches of the restaurant, potted plants squatted forlornly, as if marooned in amber. Tinted windows kept the unyielding equatorial sun at bay.

Covey sat alone at the bar. It was midday, a time when the rest of the hotel’s guests were out swimming, diving, sightseeing, and shopping, their relentless desperation to enjoy themselves as remorseless as the sun. Through a vast picture window he watched a quartet of Japanese golfers putting their way through the tenth green, little mechanical windup figures in perfectly pressed slacks and shirts that somehow defied the pitiless humidity.

Lucky bastards. They don’t have to think for a living. The only thing that torments them is fear of failing to please a boss‑san. He sipped cold lager.

The bartender was pale, blond, athletic, Aussie; fertile ground for skin cancer. Covey was lean, tired, nondescript; a surefire candidate for artistic anonymity. No matter where he went, no matter how often he traveled, the one thing he could not escape was the incontestable mediocrity of his talent.

“Hot,” Covey muttered.

“Too right.” A damp cloth shusshed over the counter, slick as skis on fresh powder. Ceiling fans whirred softly overhead, agitating the cold air‑conditioned atmosphere that tried to hug the tiled marble floor.

Covey shifted his butt, straightening slightly on his stool, abruptly overwhelmed with the urge to confess. “I’m a writer. I make a very nice living because I have written twenty‑four novels.”

“Good on ya, mate.”

“No, it isn’t. It isn’t good on me at all. It sucks. You want to know why?” Of course the bartender wanted to know why. It was his job. “Because all twenty‑four are exactly alike. The titles differ, so do some of the details, but basically I’ve been writing the same goddamn book over and over again for the past twenty years. Each year they sell a few more copies, and each year I get a little more in royalties and a little more disgusted with myself. Because I know I can write something else, something better.” The sanctity of the confessional was interrupted by the arrival of a trio of middle‑aged white men. They entered the bar cackling with midwestern twang. Covey tried to ignore them.

“That’s why I came here. To find inspiration. To expose myself to new surroundings, new ideas.” He held up the empty lager bottle. “So far I have found only this, and it is not worth even a novelette.”

“I tell ya, they were buck naked, the both of ’em!”

“Gawann, Fred.” The doubter wore plaid shorts and a white tennis shirt stretched taut over the anchored blimp of his belly.

“He’s tellin’ the truth, Jimmy. They weren’t bad lookers, either.” A dirty snigger punctuated the observation propounded by the third man. “Shoulda seen the wife’s reaction to ’em. Edith like to have peed in her pants.” The trio chortled as one, a Topeka chorus distinctly unmelodic. The sound grated on the smooth stone of the floor.

“We tried to get the driver to stop,” said the first speaker. “Dumb Aussie ignored us. Said we were seeing things. That there wasn’t nobody living in that part of the rain forest, naked or otherwise. But I seen ’em.” He leaned forward, squinching the belly. “Bill did, too.”

“That’s right.” The second man nodded solemnly. “Buck naked, they was.”

An irritated Covey watched as the three traversed the length of the bar like oysters escaping a buffet. “What do you suppose that was all about?” He looked back to the bartender. “You have naked women living in your jungle?”

“Rain forest.” The bartender corrected him without looking up from his work. “Maybe.”

Covey chuckled, reached for his glass, hesitated. Something in the younger man’s tone…

“It’s a joke, right? You’re goofing on me.”

“No joke, mate. It’s a woman and her daughter, fair dinkum. Eleven years they been out there. Live off the land, they do. So people say.”

Covey pushed his glass aside. “Why? Why would anyone want to do that? Much less a mother and daughter.”

The bartender turned away, hunkering down with the air of a man who had already said too much. “Their business. Why ask me? You’re the writer.”

“I’m a novelist, not a reporter.” There’s something here, he found himself thinking. Something in what’s not being said. Was it worth checking out? On the face of it, the story belonged near the top of the bullshit probability index. Doubtless the bartender had overheard the three clowns from Kansas as clearly as his customer and had improvised a good gag on the spot.

But the way Covey was feeling, anything was better than flying home to face the accusatory sameness of book twenty‑five and the screeching inadequacy of his meager, overpaid talent.

“I don’t believe you, of course, but certain of my fellow travelers whom I’ve been unable to avoid keep insisting I ought to see some of the jung…the rain forest…before I go home. Assuming I decide to give it a try, how might I locate these antipodean naiads?”

“You don’t. They’re supposed to live way up in the backside of the Daintree.” As bartenders do, the young Aussie busied himself polishing a glass. “You don’t ‘find’ anybody in the Daintree. It’s a garden God planted and then forgot about and now it’s all overgrown. Nobody’ll take you into the back of in there.”

Digging into a pocket, Covey extracted a thick wad of traveler’s checks. Very slowly and deliberately he signed the one on top. “Nobody?”

Purple print caused the young bartender to waver in his better judgment.

“Maybe one larrikin. But he’s mad.” The traveler’s check vanished. “If you’re so flamin’ sure it’s a joke, why’re you suddenly so keen on checkin’ it out?”

Covey stared across at him out of eyes that could not see quite far enough. “Since my writing and I are something of a joke, I don’t see the contradiction in following up on another.”

Boris Schneemann didn’t act crazy, but he sure as hell looked the part. Covey found himself mentally recording the man’s vitals for future literary abstraction. Six‑two, 210, crowned by a mat of scraggly black hair that glistened with some kind of internal ooze, Schneemann regarded the world unblinkingly while perspiring like an asphalt‑layer working Phoenix streets in mid‑July. Originally from a corner of Germany he declined to identify more than vaguely, he had migrated to northeast Australia fourteen years ago. Now he grew bananas and dogs when not running tourists into the Daintree.

A succession of short scars ran across his Roman bridge of a nose, fossilized evidence of some ancient battle in which an opponent had tried to remove the protuberance via amateur rhinoplasty. This and other aspects of personality and self suggested that in dear old Deutschland, Schneemann had been something other than a farmer of edible fruits and lover of dogs. Covey chose not to probe too deeply too soon into his guide’s hazy history.

The battered gray Toyota Land Cruiser was to cars what a professional wrestler was to a surgeon. It did not so much drive over the road as intimidate it.

“Ninety thousand new she cost me.” Schneemann railed against faceless bureaucrats as the Land Cruiser slammed contemptuously through a bottomless pothole, sending Covey’s brains ricocheting off the top of his skull. “Auschloch import duties! Can buy nothing reasonable in this country unless it’s made here.” He pointed to his right.

“See that tree? Tulga. Forty thousand dollars it’s worth, just standing there. Most places people poach animals. Here they try to steal trees.”

“Tell me about the women.” Covey’s fingers were white and numb from clinging to the handgrip bolted to the Land Cruiser’s frame above the passenger‑side window. The so‑called road they were careening down like a runaway Baja racer, the Inner Bloomfield Track, continued snaking its way through towering green walls. The roadbed was yellow‑brown, the narrow strip of sky overhead shockingly blue, and the rest of the universe alternating shades of green hothouse gloom.

“Not much to tell, Mike Covey. They been back in here long time.”

“So you believe in them, too?”

Schneemann was silent for a while, concentrating on the road. “Ya.” He spoke softly for a change, scratching the back of his head. “Ya, I believe in them.”

“Any idea how old they are?” Covey was making mental notes.

“Mother and daughter. The girl, she would be about seventeen, I’d say.”

“And the local school authorities don’t mind that she’s not in school?”

The front end of the Land Cruiser went temporarily airborne, and the impact when it touched down stunned Covey’s sacrum.

“Oh sure, they mind. Every once in a while somebody go looking for them to bring in the daughter. School nannies, state social services. They never find them.”

“I was told that you could.”

The burly German laughed like a demented Santa Claus. “What fool bloke guy told you that? I can track them…sometimes. Naked footprints in the mud, two sets. You follow them.” There was a curious edge in his voice. “Over ridges, through trees, across streams. Until they disappear. Always,” he muttered more to himself than to his passenger, “they disappear.”

Covey began to worry that the bartender’s appraisal of the guide’s sanity was nearer the mark than he’d been willing to countenance when he had hired the man. He gazed out the window. One thing was already apparent. Any inspiration to be found out here would be heavily tinged with green.

“Yeah, sure. They ‘disappear.’”

Schneemann shrugged massively. “Maybe they go up in the trees, ya? Maybe they fly away.”

“How can they survive in this? I mean, what do they eat?”

“Mango, pawpaw, lychee, possum, snake–plenty für essen in the rain forest.” He gripped the wheel with both hands. “You hang on, Mike Covey. All the good road, she is behind us now.”

Covey swallowed hard and wondered what the hell he was trying to prove.

They spent the night on hard beds in a tiny youth hostel situated in the absolute middle of emerald nowhere. The ramshackle clapboard‑and‑metal structure squatted by the side of the track like a corrugated boil engulfed in broccoli soup. It was designed to serve backpackers, which excused Covey. The only backpacking he had ever done in his life was from shopping cart to car trunk. His idea of a nature walk was crossing Central Park from the Met to the American Museum of Natural History.

Eventually they abandoned the track entirely as Schneemann turned up a shallow stream, the Land Cruiser grinding and sloshing its way over a pavement composed of water‑polished pebbles and punky driftwood. Eels and crayfish scattered from beneath the crunching tires.

As the guide explained, the unpaved Inner Bloomfield Track more or less paralleled the coast. No roads led straight inland, into the heart of the mountainous rain forest. There was nowhere for any to go, and no way for them to get there.

When even the rugged, determined vehicle could advance no farther, Schneemann parked it on a rocky beach and broke out the packs. Covey struggled awkwardly with the shoulder straps and waist belt. Giant electric blue Ulysses and emerald‑green Cairns Birdwing butterflies fluttered through the trees and over the stream. Each time one traversed a shaft of sunlight, a flash of unbelievable color exploded against his retinas. An effervescent column of soldier ants the color of key lime pie marched across the buttressing root of a nearby white cedar. A splotch of flaming orange skimmed the glassy surface of the stream, marking the quicksilver passage of a marauding kingfisher.

Covey could not remember when heavy sweat had coated his body. It mixed with the obligatory insect repellent to form a thin, stinking paste that clung to his hot, damp skin, smothering the pores. The German chose a direction seemingly at random and struck off, leaving the huffing, heavily perspiring Covey to follow as best he could.

The crowns of Alexandra palms burst overhead like frozen green fireworks, blotting out the sky. His hiking shoes kicked up leaf litter and mold, sending tiny black shapes with too many legs scrambling in search of fresh cover.

Schneemann paused by a patch of sunlight, his machete singling out a small, innocuous‑looking plant with six‑inch‑wide, slightly pebbled leaves.

“Here is worst thing in the forest, my friend. Stinging tree. Those serrated leaves, they covered with glass spines. Glass! Each one is like a little hypodermic, verstehen? All full of a powerful alkaloid poison. Once they get in your skin, they stay there because they silicate composition, not wood. Each time you rub, or splash on cold water, or walk into an air‑conditioned room, they release a little bit more poison. The pain can last six months to two years.

“I hear of one guy got a bunch all in his face. He went mad and killed himself.”

The warning was wasted on Covey, who had resolved immediately upon leaving the Land Cruiser to avoid physical contact with everything in the forest, be it dead or alive.

It rained all that afternoon and through the night, a heavy warm vertical deluge that their tent shed with admirable efficiency. Sitting in a steady downpour while simultaneously perspiring heavily was an experience Covey would gladly have done without. It inspired nothing but colorful language.

They crossed two more ridges, scrambling up slick rock and mud only to stumble and slide down the far side. Covey didn’t dare grab a tree or branch for support for fear it would bite back.

This constant drizzle was only a prelude to what Schneemann referred to as the Big Wet, the real rainy season. That could begin any day now, he declared jovially. His announcement failed to inspire Covey to greater effort.

When he lost his footing for the hundredth time and slid twenty feet downhill on the waterlogged, torn, butt‑end of his pants, he finally cast aside the unnatural enforced stoicism under which he had been laboring for days. By the time the German reached him, Covey had removed his pack and slung it to the ground.

“Fuck this, Boris! I thought you knew where the hell you were going. I thought you knew what you were doing. You’ve been leading me around in circles like a prize porker so you can scam as much per diem out of my hide as you think you can get away with! I’ve got fungus growing between my toes, an itch in my crotch that won’t go away, my clothes are starting to stink on my back, and I think all the goddamn rain’s starting to affect my hearing.” Bending over and breathing hard, he rested his mud‑caked hands on his knees while he stared up at the impassive German.

“I’ve had it with this, mein führer. You understand? You ‘versteht’ or whatever the hell it is you do?”

Schneemann seemed not to hear. His thick black brows resembled mating caterpillars as he intently scanned the opposite hillside. Finally he shrugged. “We got enough supplies to go another week.”

Covey inhaled deeply, straightened. “Fuck that. And fuck this country, too. It is my fervent hope that they log it to the ground.” Turning to his left, he spat out an earthy mixture of soil, rainwater, and saliva. Angrily snatching his pack from the mud, he started forward.

A dark, hirsute mountain, the German blocked his path, smiling down at him.

“What the hell are you grinning at?” Covey snapped.

The guide held out an astonishingly clean hand. “You forget our contract, my friend. One‑third when we start, another when we turn back, the last when I set you down, all nice and refreshed again, in your fancy hotel in Port Douglas.”

Covey gaped at him, blinking painful drizzle from his eyes. “You want money now? Here?”

Schneemann twitched slightly. “It is the contract, yes?”

“Shit,” Covey mumbled. He dragged out his shrinking packet of traveler’s checks and signed several over. Schneemann fanned them like a poker hand and frowned.

“I know you are a writer, Michael Covey, and not an accountant. This is a little short. One hundred US dollars short.”

Covey took a step backward. “That was going to be your bonus if we found the women. We didn’t find them.”

“I say I take you to where they live.” He made a sweeping gesture with his free hand. “This is where they live.”

Covey pursed his lower lip. “I don’t see no women–mate.”

The German’s expression darkened. “Don’t joke with me, herr writer. Especially about money, don’t joke with me.”

“Believe me, humor’s the last thing on my mind. You’ve spent a week dragging me through God’s own puke‑green shithouse and you’ve enjoyed every minute of it.” He smiled nastily. “Now it’s my turn to enjoy something.”

Schneemann took a step forward, halted. “I could make you sign another check, ya. But maybe you bring charges. All writers are crazy like that. So have it your way, my friend. Maybe I see you again in Port Douglas. Maybe not.”

Without another word he whirled and started off, ascending without effort the slope they had only recently clambered down.

Covey yelled imprecations in his wake. “Yeah, that’s right, go on and leave me here, jerkoff! I can find my own way back, you Teutonic asshole! You think I can’t? You think I can’t? Just watch me, man!”

Schneemann did not reply. In a very few minutes the forest had swallowed him up.

It began to rain harder.

Screw him, Covey thought furiously. It was more downhill than up all the way back. Just keep heading east and eventually he would hit the road and then the ocean. He had a week’s worth of supplies in his pack and he wasn’t sorry to see the departure of the sauna‑like tent. What the hell, he was soaked through anyway. His light sleeping bag would do him. And he was ahead a hundred bucks, maybe more.

As for inspiration, he couldn’t wait to get home and write down an account of his crazy experiences. His agent would be intrigued. A horror novel would be an interesting departure for his client. He could call it A Stroll Through the Green Hell –or had that already been used?

He had learned that when the sun went down behind the rain it got dark fast in the rain forest. Selecting a spot between the meandering roots of a massive tree, he tore down some broad pandanus leaves and improvised a roof. Highly satisfied in his righteous anger, he settled down to await the arrival of the dawn.

It took him two days to admit that he was lost. He was reasonably certain he was still traveling east, but it might have been northwest, or southwest. Or maybe not. The permanent, oppressive cloud cover and constant rain made it difficult to guess direction. Everything looked the same: every tree, every slope, every mocking, crystal‑clear rivulet and stream. Sometimes he would find himself confronting a sheer drop‑off or impenetrable vegetation and have to backtrack. There were no landmarks; only rocks, mud, and claustrophobic verdure.

So far he had managed to avoid the stinging trees, but between the inevitable slips and falls and the occasional inimical thorn bush he was pretty well torn up. In the dank confines of the forest, several of the cuts were already beginning to fester. There was a warm wet soreness under his heels where several blisters had popped. Yesterday he’d found a leech on his right ankle and in a paroxysm of disgust had unthinkingly and unwisely pulled it off. Despite his best efforts, the bite continued to bleed.

His hat was gone and so was much of his food. Several times exhaustion and desperation had overcome his pride and he had shouted out the guide’s name. If Schneemann was secretly dogging his footsteps, waiting for his client to admit defeat, the German was taking his time about it. Surely the guide wouldn’t simply abandon an outsider to fend for himself in dangerous country like this? No reasonable professional would do such a thing.

But a crazy man might.

There was a slight break in the trees ahead, barely visible through the rain. Covey angled toward it, hoping to find a stream that flowed east toward the sea. Perspiration blended with rainwater stung his eyes. His damp breathing came in long, labored wheezes now.

Someone jabbed a white‑hot fishhook into his right forearm.

He howled and looked down at himself. Two narrow lengths of vine lay snugged against his bare, wet flesh. When he tried to pull away, they clung to him like green steel. Forcing himself to stand absolutely motionless, he contemplated the growth that had trapped him.

It wasn’t a stinging tree, thank God. Inspecting his arm, he made out two parallel sets of backward‑curving thorns running along the underside of each vine. These natural hooks were deeply embedded in his skin. Little bubbles of blood rose from the spot where each thorn had penetrated. They continued to swell until rain washed them away.

To his horror the vines seemed to contract around his arm even as he was studying the phenomenon.

“Don’t move.”

The voice startled him and he jerked involuntarily, sending fresh agony ripping through his flesh. Trembling slightly from the pain, he forced himself to stand motionless.

She glistened in the rain, naked and supple as a cream‑colored seal. Her auburn hair was neatly combed and unmatted, though the rain made it stick to her exposed skin. She had deep, dark eyes and a slim, though mature, body. Her mouth was small and moist, and her leonine muscularity reminded him of slow‑motion film he had seen of professional marathon runners.

Transfixed by both pain and surprise, he stared as she gently disengaged first one vine, then the other, from the meat of his upper arm. She offered him a half smile.

“Wait‑a‑while.” Gripping it carefully by the edges, she held up one vine for closer inspection. He flinched away. “See? The thorns are barbed. Once you’re hooked, the only way to free yourself is by backing up slowly. Move in any other direction and the barbs only dig in deeper.” Her smile widened. “It’s also called lawyer’s cane.”

A shaken Covey sat down and felt gingerly of his injured arm.

She eyed him with palpable curiosity. “What are you doing out here?”

He tried not to stare at the raindrops slithering down through her breasts and crotch. “I was looking for you.”

Her smile vanished and she peered around anxiously. “Why?”

He managed a filthy grin of his own. “I’m a writer. I was looking for inspiration for a new book.” When he lifted his arm, pain lanced through him and he winced. “I think I should’ve stuck to rewriting my old ones. My name’s Covey. Mike Covey.”

She was watching him closely. “No one told you my name, then?” He shook his head, momentarily too tired and too full of self‑pity to care about much of anything else. “I’m Annabelle.” She looked to her right. “That’s my daughter, Leea. Leea, come say hello.”

The girl was a slightly taller version of her mother, only blue‑eyed and with hair that verged on the color of night. When her mother called to her, she was sitting in a nearby tree, her legs dangling from a thick lower branch. As an exhausted Covey looked on, she lowered herself to the ground with an effortless grace and agility that was breathtaking.

Had she been there all along? he wondered. Would she have watched in silence as he’d torn his arm to pieces trying to free himself? She slowed as she approached, while the mother regarded him with a strange mixture of curiosity and sadness.

“Where’s your home?” he asked. “Do you have a lean‑to or a cabin out here, or something?”

“We build shelters when and where we need them. We move around a lot. Is this how you find your inspiration, by asking questions?”

“I can’t say, not having found any yet.”

Shading her eyes, she tilted her head back. “Soon the afternoon rain will begin. The Big Wet is coming. If you don’t get out of the forest before it starts, you’ll be stuck in here till March.”

As he sat and watched, the two women quickly and without a single tool cobbled together a passable shelter out of the forest material at hand. When Annabelle directed him to crawl inside, he did not object. He was too worn out to object to anything. Then they left.

Just as he had decided they didn’t intend to come back and he would never see either of them again, they returned bearing armfuls of fruit. There were also large, white, fat insect grubs the taste of which, despite his hunger, he felt obliged to decline. Using fingernails and teeth, they peeled the various fruits as deftly as any monkey.

Later, with his belly full and feeling considerably better, he lay back against the gray rock that formed the rear of the shelter and gazed out at the monotonous scree of falling rain. As always there was no need for a fire. To make conversation he asked the woman about the rain forest. She had an answer or explanation for everything. Sensibly he did not try to inquire about her past or how she came to be in her present situation.

“I need to find certain plants to treat your wounds,” she told him the next morning, “or you’re going to develop some severe infections. A couple have already started to ulcerate.” Crawling to the shelter’s opening, she glanced back in at him. “Don’t try to go anywhere.”

“Fat chance of that,” he murmured.

They had been gone less than an hour when a shape returned. The daughter entered wordlessly. In the warm confines of the shelter, he could not avoid her nor did he try to. Her nipples brushed his bare arm as she sat down next to him, folding her thighs up against her chest and clasping her arms around her knees. Outside, the early‑morning drizzle obscured the rest of the world.

“Tell me,” she whispered in a small voice, “about the city. Mother’s told me a little, most of it bad. But I don’t see how any place so interesting can be all bad.” Her voice overflowed with eagerness. “I want to know.”

So without a moment’s thought or pause, he told her, describing life not only in the cities of his own country but in those of other lands as well. He tried to impart to her some of the excitement of Chicago, the glamour of Los Angeles, the culture of New York. She listened raptly, hanging on his every word, only occasionally interrupting with a question.

Her manner of speech was devoid of guile and long words but otherwise proper and correct. Apparently her mother had not wished her to dwell entirely in ignorance green. She had been given some home, or rather forest, schooling.

Eventually he felt secure enough in her presence to ask a few questions of his own, keeping an eye on the opening in expectation of the mother’s return. “Leea, how do you come to be here, to live like this in this place?”

She replied ingenuously. “I don’t exactly know. I was only seven when Mother brought us to the rain forest.” Her smile was as radiant and unspoiled as the rest of her, he mused. “We’ve been here ever since.”

“Hasn’t it been lonely for you without any other children to grow up with?”

“Oh no. There was always Mother and the animals. I’ve had every kind of pet you can imagine. Pythons, until they got too big, and cockatoos and possums and sugar gliders. I’ve always had playmates.”

“But you’d still like to visit a city?”

She nodded thoughtfully. “I think so. I wouldn’t want to live in one, though. I don’t think I could, after living in the forest.”

“What about–not having any clothes?”

She shrugged. “I’ve seen other people. I don’t understand clothes. You dry off much faster without them, and it hardly ever gets cold here.”

“What about people who come looking for you? Aren’t you afraid they might see you like this?”

“Well, you’re looking at me right now, and I’m not afraid.” Here was a directness of logic he rarely encountered and could not argue with. “Besides, if we don’t want to be seen by other people, we’re not.”

“You can’t move around all the time, Leea. You can’t continue to dodge the rest of the world your whole life. People will find you, eventually.”

“Not if we don’t want them to.” There was a certainty to her claim that puzzled and intrigued him. “We just walk off into the Dreamtime.”

He frowned. “I’ve heard of that. It’s the name for the Aborigine spirit world, isn’t it?”

She nodded enthusiastically. “Something like that. There are lots of Native people around here. Mostly in the Dreamtime. They’ve gone there to get away from this world. Modern Aussie people did bad things to them, so they left. Those who knew how. Sometimes Mother and I talk to them, and they teach us things. Like how to live in the forest. They taught us how to find the Dreamtime. There’s a lot of it in the Daintree.”

He shook his head impatiently. “Leea, the Dreamtime is myth. It’s the collected stories of a people. They’re very beautiful stories, but they’re just stories.”

Her smile and her eyes were full of secrets, like pearls at the bottom of a dark, dark pool. “The deeper you go into the Daintree, the closer you get to the Dreamtime, Michael. This is one of the oldest forests that has been on the Earth, one of the very first, and the Dreamtime is the first place. They’re very near to each other, the Daintree and the Dreamtime. You just have to know how to look.”

Girl, I’ve spent my whole life trying to learn how to look. Her mother has fed her this, he realized suddenly. To keep her here, away from civilization, away from other people. But why?

“When we don’t want to be seen or found, we just find a piece of the Dreamtime and go into it,” she was saying. “The people who are looking for us walk right past. They don’t see us. They don’t know how to find the Dreamtime, so they don’t see it, either.”

“What’s it like?” He wondered what a psychologist would make of her delusions.

She lapsed into dreamy, exquisite reminiscence. “A lot of it is forest, like this, but before the loggers and highway people came. There are no cities, no airplane tracks in the sky. No white people. Only the Aborigines, and Mother and I. It’s like it was when the Earth was before people.”

There was movement outside. Annabelle entered, clutching a handful of leaves and stems that were oozing sap. “This won’t take long.” She didn’t even glance in her daughter’s direction.

She’s crazier than Schneemann, Covey thought, isolating herself and her daughter out here like this. Warily he eyed the vegetation she had brought back.

The poultice she fashioned lessened the fire in his wounds. He was less eager to sip the tea she brewed, but did not know how to refuse. It put him to sleep almost immediately.

When he awoke, stiff and cramped but otherwise feeling better, they had both gone.

Staggering out of the shelter, he stumbled unexpectedly into full, searing sunshine. He felt himself blinded by a thousand emerald mirrors. Thick gray mist clung to treetops where unseen lorikeets fussed. The air had the clarity of a sudden vision.

“Annabelle!” He turned a slow circle as he shouted. “Leea!” Within his limited range of vision, nothing moved. There was no reply.

“Leea!”

He thought he heard a voice. Most probably it was some kind of animal, but he pursued it anyway. It was all there was.

The voices grew louder, contentious. Among them was one deeper than any he had heard in days. Eyes widening, he increased his pace, suddenly heedless of the possibility of encountering stinging trees, or worse.

He came up short, breathing hard, on the steep bank of a deep gully. Leea was there, her hands cupped over her mouth, eyes wide and staring. He could hear her muffled screams clearly.

Boris Schneemann, his agonized face framed by his wild black mane, knelt by the drop‑off. His thick, callused hands clutched the edge and he was sobbing and screaming in a berserk, unintelligible mix of German, French, and English.

Not far below him the twisted, naked form of Annabelle hung crucified in a tangled mat of wait‑a‑while. Where the unrelenting vines had torn her flesh, blood flowed freely in thin, viscous streamlets. Her head was bent back so far that Covey could not see her face. It rested at an angle unnatural to her shoulders.

One large vine was wrapped tightly around her neck.

The anguish that welled up unexpectedly in his throat far exceeded anything he felt in his arm or feet. Anger glazed his eyes as he rushed forward.

Leea turned to him, her ethereally beautiful unblemished face wide‑eyed with shock. Schneemann rose slowly. Then he threw back his head and shook his clenched fists at whatever gods hid behind the mist‑shrouded sky, screaming in guttural, uncontrollable, wretched German.

“You rotten, rotten bastard.” Covey eyed the other man carefully as he approached. “What the fuck happened?”

Schneemann suddenly became aware of his presence. “It was an accident. She would not listen. I only wanted to talk and she would not listen. She ran from me. Toward the Dreamtime, she said. Where she would be safe. Crazy, crazy! Gott in himmel. She ran and she fell.” He looked down. “There.” He inhaled massively then turned and, before she could retreat, grabbed Leea’s wrist.

“You. Leea. You are all that is left. You come back with me now.”

The girl stared at him, half mad with terror and despair. “N‑no. I don’t want to go with you. I don’t want to.”

“You must. Now.”

“No!” She dug her heels into the mud, sliding forward as he dragged her, beating at him with her free hand. He took no notice of the feeble resistance.

The air went out of him when Covey tackled him around both legs.

They went down in a damp, muddy heap. Covey struck out blindly, furiously, slamming fist after fist into the German’s face. With a roar like a wounded rhino, Schneemann threw him off.

Rolling over, Covey saw the guide grinning insanely back at him. The big man was back on his feet, tense as a panther, a knife clutched in his right fist. In Covey’s eyes the short, thick blade loomed as large as a ceremonial sword. Reaching up, he felt blood streaming from his nose.

“So little writer wants to fight, eh?” Covey scrambled to his feet, only to find himself caught between the drop‑off and his opponent. “You verdampt swine, you niggly little son‑of‑a‑bitch. Ten years I spend looking for these two. Ten years of my life hacking and sweating at this stinking jungle, and you, city man, you find them. And then she don’t listen to me.” His face contorted and he began to sob anew.

“No more Anna. No more Anna! She wouldn’t listen to me,” he bawled. “I just wanted to talk!” The sobbing snapped like a worn tape. A rictus of gut‑seated pain, the kind that twists bowels and haunts eyes, made a horrible, inhuman mask of his face. “Ten years, little writer. Ten long, terrible years tearing me to tiny pieces. Ten years in which to think too much.”

“She’s dead.” Covey’s gaze hung on the point of the knife as intently as if he were tracking the movements of a weaving cobra. “What do you want from the girl? Leave her alone!”

Schneemann stared at him out of eyes that were dull and empty, like a shark’s. “What do I want from her? What do I want from her? You stupid brainless American shit, she’s my daughter!” With a rasping cry of inhuman rage and frustration, he threw himself forward, a black‑maned juggernaut wielding a knife that gleamed like death itself in the hazy light.

Covey tried to block the thrust. As he did so he lost his footing in the mud and fell. The knife sliced air above his head as the onrushing German tried to redirect his bull‑like charge. His legs struck Covey’s sprawling form, and the bigger man tripped over him.

He went over the drop without a sound.

“Christ.” Covey scrambled to the edge on hands and knees. Schneemann lay on his back on a barbed pillow of wait‑a‑while, the knife protruding from his chest like fresh new rain forest growth. His eyes stared sightlessly at the sky. Drizzle filled the sockets, masking the pupils, spilling over both sides of his face in tiny twin waterfalls. The naked woman who had given birth to his daughter lay nearby, in death enshrouded by the rain forest she had loved: the greenery that had sheltered her, fed her, and ultimately protected her from her abusive, enraged lover for ten long years of hiding and wandering.

The wait‑a‑while would hold them close even as it kept them apart.

Fighting to catch his breath, Covey rose slowly and turned. Leea was nowhere to be seen.

He ran to the edge of the dense undergrowth. “Leea! Leea!” Ignoring the thorns and vines that tore at him, restrained him, deliberately held him back, he searched for her all the rest of that dreadful day and all the next, screaming her name at the silent, uncaring trees.

“Leea! Leea, I love you! Le‑aaaaa! ”

Two days later his food ran out. He kept going, eating what fruits he could scavenge, trying and failing to kill small animals. Eventually he was reduced to scrabbling for lizards and insects, until they, too, were insufficient to replenish his strength.

He lasted three more days before he collapsed, half blind and utterly spent, on the soft, moist leaf litter that carpeted the forest floor.

“Leea…,” he sobbed. Something crawled onto his neck and bit, testing him. He did not have strength enough remaining to swat it away. The rain started; the warm, omnipresent rain, running into his ears and eyes. At least, he thought wearily, he would not die of thirst. He had heard that it was a bad way to die.

He slept then. Later, he dreamed that something touched him, and he struggled one final time to open his eyes.

For a local eccentric to vanish without warning was sufficient to raise a knowing alarm, but the disappearance of a foreign tourist was enough to bring out the police and forest rangers in full strength.

They found a collapsed, temporary shelter of sticks and leaves. Then they found the bodies of Boris Schneemann and his long‑missing paramour. Carefully they hacked the bodies free from the tangle of wait‑a‑while, which even when severed seemed reluctant to let the dead couple go.

Of the American writer of modest reputation and desperate desire they found no sign. No tracks, no broken branches to show that he had once passed this way, no blood or bone. Then the Big Wet arrived with a vengeance and the search had to be called off. Nothing could move in the Daintree until it ended, hopefully sometime in March.

The consensus among the rain‑forest‑wise citizens of Mossman and Port Douglas was that with luck they might find his body come next year, perhaps washed down from the hills by the rains. He’d gone troppo for sure, stumbling madly off into the forest without direction or knowledge, searching for his hoped‑for inspiration.

What they did not, could not know, was that Michael Covey found it, though it was not of a kind he had ever imagined. It lay just a little farther on, just a shade deeper back in the dark green depths of the Daintree. If one looked long and hard enough, one could find anything in the Daintree. Even the Dreamtime. Even inspiration.

Even innocence.