Beautiful Wild - Anna Godbersen Page 0,37

she was.

A little clearing, lit by a small skylight that opened in the high foliage, at the base of a rocky hill that was grown over with vines, with small trees, with flowering bushes. Her heart still pounded, but it was slowing back down to normal again.

The bird still squawked, and another bird squawked back, and then she heard the symphony of the place, the chatter of birds and rustle of leaves and the rush of water down the side of the hill where it filled a rocky basin. This must be the bathing spot Dame Edna had told her about. Vida was still frightened, but she fixed the fear in her sights and told it to come along with her, if it absolutely must.

Holding back her skirt so as to protect it from the mud, but mostly to prevent herself from tripping again, she advanced to the pool. The surface rippled outward from the spray of the falls and it sparkled in the sun. At the edge, she removed the satin slippers she’d worn to dance in on a long-ago night, and carefully lowered herself into the still water. She knew, then, how warm the air was. The coolness of the pool stole her breath and her chest rose in shock. She knew the water became deep quickly by how cold it was on her bare feet. The water soaked her skirt, made it heavy, so she hurriedly undid the buttons at the small of her back. She slipped out of the thing and heaved it onto the sunniest piece of rock.

She reviewed sweet memories—perfumed baths Nora had prepared for her, the taste of strawberries dipped in chocolate as served in the de Young’s dining room, the sensation of Bill Halliday’s fingertips on her cheek when he was trying to lure her to a private corner. But her memory could summon nothing that felt quite as wonderful as this fresh water against her skin. Dame Edna had said naked—she didn’t go that far. She left on her bloomers and her corset (which would have been difficult for her to undo herself). The water seeped against her skin nonetheless. The trials of wind, sand, sun—all of it seemed undone by this sweet coolness that she submerged herself in again and again until her hair was unbound and she felt washed clean.

As she lay on the rock beside her dress, letting the heat absorb the beads of wetness from her skin and underclothes, the dampness from her dress, she listened more closely to the whispering of the wood. It seemed to be telling her a secret. The secret was a sound like the ocean as heard from the coil of a shell, telling her that which she had seemed to know but hadn’t really:

I am alive.

Well, of course I am, was the practiced and civilized rebuttal from the voice that went on unceasingly in the space between her ears.

But the secret persisted in its resonant tone—I am alive, I am alive, I am still alive—so that the knowledge of her aliveness seemed to echo throughout creation and also into the deepest, darkest corners of her person. And she knew it to be true in a way she hadn’t in the fog of her misery and the awful slog of survival.

Coldness seeped into her skin, making gooseflesh of her clean limbs.

The jungle was abundant with sound. So it was strange that she could hear one in particular. It was a sound that did not belong. She sat up suddenly and jerked her still damp dress over her partial nakedness.

“Who’s there?” she demanded.

Light burst against her field of vision. There was so much darkness and so much blazing color.

Her imagination conjured a great sleek cat and a three-headed beast. A thick snake hung from a low branch.

Then she saw that the snake was just a vine, and afterward she understood that the great cat was just a man. A young man. The young man was Sal, and he was bending in such a peculiar way. Bending as though he wanted to assure her with his eyes that he was not a danger—and at the same time to not look at her directly.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “I am not dressed.”

“I’m sorry.” He shielded his eyes and turned away. “You’re such a lady,” he went on. Not in the judgmental way he might have onboard the ship, but in a curious tone she could not place. It sounded almost like a lamentation. He