Nothing Else Matters (Jungle Cruise)

Chapter Five

Lily boarded the dingy boat while MacGregor attempted to haggle his luggage on board with the skipper. She wasn't quite sure why he'd thought bringing all of his luggage a second time would turn out any different than it did the first time. At least the skipper wasn't jettisoning the trunks into the water. He held up five fingers to MacGregor, then pointed at the trunks five times. MacGregor sighed, understanding, then carefully chose five trunks to take on board the boat.

The boat itself wasn't unlike La Quila, though it was a little smaller. It had a top deck and bridge, a shabby lifeboat hanging off the back, and a few small rooms below deck. The skipper boarded while MacGregor started loading. She pulled him aside and laid out her map on the side railing of the deck where they could both see.

The man said something quickly. It sounded a little like Spanish, but the pronunciation was off. Portuguese, then. Lily dug in her bag to find her dictionary. The man said something else, but he was turned to MacGregor this time, waving his arms. Satisfied with whatever the response was, he turned back to Lily and pointed at the map.

Lily nodded, then found the spot on the river where the snake bit its tail, and pointed there. "We need to go here. La Luna Rota." She said, then started flipping through her dictionary to translate.

Two deckhands boarded the boat with a large trunk and heaved it onto the deck. The boat swayed at the sudden transfer of weight, and Lily dropped the dictionary to hold on to the railing with one hand and grab the map before it landed in the water with the other.

She heard a satisfying plunk and looked down to see her dictionary sinking into the water below. She groaned, wondering if she could save it, but the man seemed unphased and grabbed the map from her, studying it. He pointed at La Luna Rota. "Aqui?"

"Uh, sí," Lily said. Spanish was similar enough to Portuguese, right? The man nodded and took the map, and started to walk away.

"Wait!" Lily called, not recalling the word in Spanish. The man stopped anyway, and she laid out the map again, and pointed to the fork where the rapids were. "Aqui. Este... rápidos." She hoped that meant "rapids here" in Portuguese as well as Spanish.

"Rápido?" The man asked. Lily felt a wave of relief. He knew the word, and she understood it even with his accent.

"Sí! Sí! Gracias!" Lily nodded and pointed to La Luna Rota again, and the man nodded in agreement. He took the map to the bridge to study it, and Lily watched with half an eye. She had more than one map, of course, but these were originals, and she didn't want to lose or damage them.

Even if she did know the cartographer personally and could easily ask for a replacement, she thought to herself. She smiled softly, and then felt a sudden pang of... something, in her gut. Like something had just been ripped out of her. Shame... or regret?

She sat and wondered what Frank was thinking right now. She hadn't told him anything, just disappeared. Doubtless he would figure out where she was going, and follow. He would be angry at her and scared for her safety. She could hear him berating her now, scolding her in between kisses. Holding her until she was breathless, (literally, until she was gasping for breath), because he couldn't stand the thought of being without her. He'd told her as much, in private. He'd confided his fear of losing anyone he loved to her, and how he'd shut the world away over the centuries to avoid the inevitable heartbreak. "I shut the world away," he'd said, "until my world came into my life, headfirst and insistent as ever."

Why hadn't she just asked him to come with her? He would have refused, yes, but come along anyway when she left, with or without him. She would have had to go back again eventually. MacGregor had insisted on bringing a trunk full of food that was not piranha, and by the time they got there that trunk would be partially empty. They could fill it with petals and they'd be able to return to England with them undetected.