CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Cloud Forest

Darkus, Virginia and Bertolt rose at dawn and got dressed in their trekking gear. They wore army fatigues, and filled their pockets with Base Camp beetles and a few tiny pots of jelly. Bertolt buttoned up his khaki shirt, tucking it in and straightening his collar. Darkus and Virginia left theirs undone, wearing them like jackets over their black T-shirts. Each of them carried a rucksack containing a small pooter, a bottle of water, their survival kit and their personal stuff: Bertolt had a picture of his mum, Virginia a beanbag teddy bear called Dot that only had one eye, and Darkus had his Beetle Collector’s Handbook.

Darkus knew the Amazon held many dangers, but his main concern was for their beetles. He’d read that beetles were a source of food for birds and other hungry creatures. He didn’t want Baxter to get snatched off his shoulder by the quick hands of a hungry monkey. He was grateful for Dr Ishikawa’s gift. With Baxter in the bamboo cage around his neck, he could be sure the rhinoceros beetle was safe.

Uncle Max had employed a local guide called Angelo to take them into the forest, but he’d refrained from telling him their final destination. Motty’d heard the staff back at the lodge whispering about a witch who lived deep in the forest, and Uncle Max thought it best not to mention where they were going. With the co-ordinates of the Biome plotted on a map safe inside his rucksack, everyone fell into line behind Uncle Max and Angelo, and with Motty bringing up the rear, they set out to find Lucretia Cutter’s lair.

The forest was surprisingly dark. Sunlight struggled to pierce the canopy, never getting as far as the forest floor. The air was thick with moisture from the respiring trees and the group was silent as they walked. The forest above their heads was far from quiet. Birds called and answered, brash chirrups piercing the eerie torch songs of lonely would-be lovers. Hidden toads and frogs croaked in chorus, and monkey hoots and whoops bounced from tree to tree, but despite the cacophony Darkus couldn’t see any of the creatures he could hear.

He found that even though the warm air was saturated with oxygen, the breath he was drawing into his lungs didn’t seem to quench his body’s thirst for it. His breathing came hard as he marched forward into the most diverse place on earth. After an hour of walking, they stopped for a rest and he stared up into the canopy, wondering why he couldn’t see any of the animals he could hear. After a few minutes of remaining still his focus shifted.

‘Look!’ he cried, spotting a sleeping sloth hanging upside down from a tree branch. ‘A sloth!’

‘Where?’ Virginia swung round to look.

‘Wish I could sleep like that,’ Uncle Max said, chuckling.

And then the rain came. Darkus had never understood the word ‘monsoon’ – how heavy could rain be? But this was nothing like the rain in England. This was a torrential downpour, so heavy he could barely see a metre in front of him. Their guide signalled that it was dangerous to continue, and directed them to a sheltered spot. They waited the storm out, watching as their path become a brown stream and two large otters swam by.

And then, just as suddenly as it had arrived, the rain stopped and the sun came out. The air was immediately heavy with moisture, and it was impossible to know whether the moisture in the air was condensing on your skin and forming droplets of water, or whether the dense warm air, like an unwanted layer of clothing, was drawing sweat from your body. Darkus’s dark hair stuck to his face, and his normally olive cheeks were flushed pink.

They ate as they walked. Uncle Max had obtained sandwiches and fruit from the lodge, and as the day wore on, their exclamations of wonder and pointing dwindled to nothing but grunts as they pulled aside vines, clambered over mossy rocks and tripped over twisting roots.

By mid-afternoon, Uncle Max declared that they’d made good progress and should look for a place to make camp for the night. They stopped to drink water from their bottles, and the guide indicated there was a clearing a bit further along the path.

‘Darkus!’ Bertolt waved him over. ‘Come and look at this.’ He was standing beneath a tree, peering up at the trunk. ‘It looks like a jewel beetle of some kind. It’s beautiful.’

As Bertolt shuffled through the leaf mulch to get closer to the tree, Darkus saw the head of a snake rise up out of it. ‘Bertolt!’ he shouted, running towards his friend.

Bertolt screamed, stumbling backwards and falling to the ground as the snake’s head darted forward. Angelo leapt at the attacking snake with his stick, pinning its head to the ground by its neck, before picking it up and moving it away from the group.

‘Bertolt! Are you OK?’ Virginia and Darkus helped their friend up from the forest floor.

‘Yeah— ouch! Thank you, Angelo.’ Bertolt winced as he tried to stand up. ‘The snake didn’t get me, but I think I’ve twisted my ankle.’ He put on a brave face as he limped away from the tree. ‘I’m fine. I just need a minute.’

Darkus looked at Uncle Max.

‘How about I give you a piggyback until we find a spot to set up camp?’ Uncle Max suggested to Bertolt.

‘No, really, I’m fine,’ Bertolt said, looking pale.

‘I insist.’ Uncle Max took off his rucksack and handed it to Motty. ‘Come on, hop up. We need to get set up before it gets dark.’

Bertolt scrambled on to Uncle Max’s back with Virginia’s help. ‘You’re as light as a feather, Bertolt!’ Uncle Max exclaimed, setting off after Angelo.

‘It was a fer de lance!’ Virginia whispered to Darkus. ‘It could have killed him.’

Darkus nodded. ‘But it didn’t.’ His eyes searched the ground as they walked, his heart knocking against his ribs as the image of the rising pit viper played over and over in his mind.

‘I’ve got a first-aid kit,’ Motty said to Bertolt. ‘I’ll strap your ankle up as soon as we’ve made camp.’

They finally came to a clearing of high ground surrounded by stout-trunked trees. Angelo pointed up to a long pole, a slender tree trunk that had been felled and suspended across from one tree to another, on the other side of the clearing. It seemed this spot was regularly used as a camp – there was even a charred fire pit.

Uncle Max took out a folded plastic sheet, which he called a basha. He tied a stone into one corner and threw it up over the pole. Removing the stone, he then pulled the plastic sheet out, passing guy ropes through loops at the corners and sides. He and Angelo climbed up surrounding trees, tying the ropes around the trunks, stretching the sheet out across the clearing, making a roof and giving them shelter from the rain.

Darkus and Virginia scrambled under and wriggled out of their backpacks. They pulled out their hammocks, made of orange parachute silk suspended inside a transparent tent of mosquito netting.

‘Here, give me yours, I’ll hang it for you,’ Darkus said to Bertolt who’d crawled over to sit beside him.

‘Yes, let Darkus and Virginia do the beds,’ Motty said, pulling a washbag out of her backpack and extracting a roll of bandage. ‘I need to take a look at that ankle.’

Virginia and Darkus suspended the five hammocks from the central tree, tying the foot of each to a different tree around the clearing so that they formed an orange star under the basha. Then they dug out the old fire pit and built a fire from dry kindling that Uncle Max had brought in a plastic bag in his rucksack, whilst he hunted about looking for dead wood that wasn’t too wet.

Bertolt sat with his back against the central tree, his foot on Motty’s lap as she gently removed his boot and sock. Darkus saw that his ankle was swollen, and purple with bruises.

‘Ooh, that’s nasty,’ she muttered, unreeling the bandage. ‘It looks like a sprain.’

‘I’ll be fine, though, won’t I?’ Bertolt asked anxiously. ‘I’ll be able to walk tomorrow.’

‘I’m sure you will,’ Motty said, but she sounded unconvinced.