Page 102 of Empire of Shadows

She had tasted coconuts before, when Florence carried one of the brown, hairy things home from the exotic grocers in Islington. This was entirely different. The liquid that poured into Ellie’s mouth was cool, sweet, and ever-so-slightly viscous.

“That’s nice,” she concluded and slumped back against the trunk of a nearby cohune palm.

Adam offered her another.

“You know, what’d really help with that hangover is taking the last couple swallows of the rum,” he suggested.

“If you bring that bottle near me, I will beat you with it,” Ellie calmly replied.

“More coconuts then,” he concluded with a cheerful toss of his machete.

?

Adam set a slow, careful pace as they started out into the wilderness. Ellie wondered whether he did it based on the assumption that she wasn’t capable of going faster, but soon came to appreciate why he’d chosen not to rush them. After a few hours of shoving through the underbrush and scrambling over rocks, her limbs began to ache.

The heat of the day thickened as the sun rose, even though the glow was barely visible through the thick canopy overhead.

Adam kept the machete in his hand. He used the enormous blade to push through brush or point out things that he instructed Ellie to avoid.

“Poisonous spikes,” he said as he aimed the knife at a spiky-trunked tree. He swung it to another target. “Deadly frog. Definitely don’t touch that.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Ellie countered tiredly.

She half expected Adam to whack their way straight through the brush with his knife, but quickly realized the impracticality of that. Instead, he led them down the thin threads of game trails, and only wove them through the thick underbrush when the trails disappeared or veered off in the wrong direction.

He had taken back his compass, which had thankfully survived its plunge into the river. He checked it regularly as they walked, adjusting their course in order to keep them on track. The art of navigation seemed to come naturally to him.

Adam also introduced Ellie to water vines. He grinned like a schoolboy as he severed one with a neat chop and revealed how cool, fresh liquid dripped from inside. Ellie had enjoyed the decidedly strange experience of drinking from a hanging vertical straw.

The day was exhausting but largely without any dramatic incident, save for a brief run-in with an angry herd of javelinas.

Adam had managed to extricate them fromthatencounter without any major injuries… though the bit where they had nearly plummeted into a sinkhole had been admittedly nerve-wracking.

Ellie had a new appreciation for the threat posed by diminutive wild pigs. When there were eighty of them on one’s tail, it didn’t matter quite so much that the animals were only eighteen inches tall.

As the sun finally dipped toward the horizon, Ellie’s muscles began to voice their protest in a loud chorus. She eyed the deeper angle of the light.

“Shouldn’t we be stopping to set up camp soon?” she asked, recalling Adam’s urgency the previous afternoon.

He flashed her an awkward look and rubbed a line of sweat from his face.

“Yeah,” he admitted.

“Then why haven’t we?”

“Because I’m deciding whether or not to make a gamble,” he admitted.

Ellie narrowed her eyes skeptically.

“What sort of gamble, exactly?” she prompted.

“Smell that?” Adam asked.

Ellie took a surprised moment to tune into her nose—and caught at a distant, wafting note of smoke.

“Fire,” she blurted. “It smells like fire.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s a milpa burn,” Adam said. “It’s the right time of year for it.”

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