Nothing Else Matters (Jungle Cruise)

Chapter Seven

"Can we please go home, Lily?"

MacGregor walked over to Lily, who stood at the edge of a cliff, the lifeboat beached in a dry riverbed behind her. She looked down, into La Luna Rota. There had once been a large lake here, but the water had been mostly drained away during their previous visit.

"Nonsense. We've come so far!" Lily said, smiling. "We'll find a way to climb down, find the tree, and wait for the moon. We'll be on our way home by tomorrow morning. Come on." She waved at him to follow and stepped to the cliff, looking for a way to climb down. MacGregor put a hand on her shoulder and stopped her. She turned, confused, and he met her eyes.

"Lily. We almost died on those rapids. You're exhausted, I can tell. We're covered in bug bites, risking Dengue Fever and who knows what else. And," he grimaced, "I've been wearing the same clothes for a week. There were a dozen other ways to do this. You could have brought equipment, scientists, and camped here for weeks to study the petals at their source."

Lily sighed. "I suppose you're right."

"So why did you do it like this? What's so important that you had to sneak away to come back?"

Lily looked at her brother, into his tired eyes and sunburned face. She saw his clothes, torn and dirtied, prickled with spots of blood where mosquito bites had become too itchy to handle. She saw the boat behind him, the only intact remnant of the poor boat she'd hired, and the skipper she'd failed. She looked down at her feet and said nothing.

"You're not here for the petals, are you." MacGregor said quietly, but he didn't say it like a question. Lily shook her head. "You want to free those other men. They're monsters, and you want to free them!?"

"Don't they deserve to rest? That's all they ever wanted, the same as Frank!"

"Lily, they tried to kill us! They slaughtered an entire tribe, one that only wanted to protect these petals!"

"You don't know that." Lily said, almost in a whisper.

"Don't know what?"

"That what Frank said is true!" Lily said, taking a few steps away to pace. "You said it yourself, that the story didn't make sense."

"Stories don't have to make sense," MacGregor said. "I never understood why you and father were always so adamant about them."

"'All legends are born in truth,'" Lily quoted the speech she'd written. "And this one is true! You've seen it! If I have a chance to hear the truth from the source, why wouldn't I take it?"

"Frank told you the truth!"

"No," Lily said more harshly than she meant to. More calmly, she said, "No. If he'd told me the truth, it would make sense."

"You don't trust him?" MacGregor said, confused.

"I barely know the man! And he's hardly trustworthy."

He didn't reply. They stood in silence for a moment. Not even the jungle seemed to make very much noise. Lily blinked away tears that had started to form, though she didn't know why. She sat down, facing the ancient stone buildings below them, and a moment later, MacGregor settled down next to her and put an arm around her. She leaned into him and closed her eyes.

After a few minutes of sitting together, MacGregor nudged her. She opened her eyes, and he pointed to the other side of the basin, where there was a ridge that led more or less into the stone below. She frowned at him.

"You don't want to go home?"

"Of course I do. But you aren't going down there alone." MacGregor gave her pained smile. She hugged him tight, then stood up. "But there's one condition."