Page 244 of Storm over the Caribbean
Lillian swayed. Her skin was dry, even in this jungle. Her lips looked chapped. It wasn’t the first time I had seen the signs of dehydration. Deep inside, I felt the desire to curse rise up, but suppressed it. Useless waste of time!
And speaking of waste…
Once again, I hesitated. Then I reached out and grabbed one of the remaining coconuts that were our only source of water. I would not require anything to drink anyway. After all, did I not still have plenty of liquid assets?
“Here.”
She looked up and, once she saw what I was offering to her, greedily snatched it out of my hand. Only by the time she had already downed two coconuts did she seem to realise something. Abruptly, she looked up at me, her hands tightening around the coconut.
“B-but that’s your ration, too!”
“I am aware.”
The punch to my shoulder was unexpected, but it really should not have been. Why did I think again that being chivalrous to my obstinate little feministifritof a wife was a good idea? I was not a betting man (obviously) but if I were, I would put good money on her thinking something along the lines of “chauvinist pig” at this very moment.
“You can’t just do stuff like that! We two are equals! We should get exactly the same, no more, no less!”
She obviously had problems with her maths.
“Not two.” Shaking my head, I, with gentleness usually reserved for priceless treasures, placed one hand on her stomach. “Three.”
I could see the struggle on her face, the tug of war between the independent feminist on the one hand, and the mother-to-be on the other. In the end, she did not agree with my words. But she did not hand back the coconut either.
“Come.” I gave her shoulder an encouraging squeeze. That was the body part you were supposed to squeeze to show encouragement, right? It had been so long since I had last done such a superfluous thing. At least I was fairly certain it was not the posterior, although that definitely would also have taken her mind off things. “We have to move.”
“All right.” She gave a curt nod—then abruptly raised a finger, nearly stabbing it into my nose. “Next time, webothdrink, understood?”
I didn’t even bother to dignify that with a reply. My wife, my son… Did she truly expect me to watch them die of thirst? They weremine, and I would never allow anything to be taken from me that was mine, in any sense of the word.
We set off without much further ado. I took point and, as the sun rose above the treetops, led us through the jungle and up the sloping terrain. I hadn’t walked for long, however, when footsteps neared from behind and I heard my wife’s familiar voice:
“Say…where are we going, exactly? It’s not as if we have a map of this place. How do we know we’re not just going in circles?”
“Simple.” I pointed ahead, up the incline, indicating the obvious.
She blinked, staring into the trees. “What…?”
Or not so obvious, apparently.
It took a long moment for the penny to finally drop. “We’re heading uphill! Why?”
“Two reasons.” I raised a finger. “First, water runs down from uphill, and the tops of hills encompass far smaller areas than the valleys around them. So if we go up a mountain, we will have more chances of encountering running water, within a much smaller search area.” Another finger joined the first. “Second, even if we do not find water, if we find a high enough mountain, we might be able to survey the surroundings and discover a water source that way.”
She thought it over for a moment and finally seemed to agree. Though she didn’t seem pleased by the prospect of finding water soon for some reason?
“So…we have to walk uphill all day?”
Ah. For that reason.
“No.”
Her face lit up.
“We can take a five-minute break at noon.”
Strangely, she didn’t seem very pleased by the news.
***
