Beautiful Wild - Anna Godbersen Page 0,68

which the stream trickled and grew into the waterfall. On the other, the ridge jutted in the direction of the open sea. Before them the little plateau curved and fell away to a verdant valley. For the first time, Vida saw the far side of the island—beyond the valley was more jungle, more hills, and another rocky pinnacle beyond which lay beaches and the same ocean—that watery plain that continued on in every direction.

“Wild, isn’t it?” Camilla said.

Vida startled, surprised that Camilla had known she was being followed. She took a thoughtless step that sent pebbles cascading off into the nothing below.

“Careful,” Camilla said. When Vida saw the play of her smile she knew that she had misinterpreted her old rival’s mood.

“I was going to say the same thing to you,” Vida whispered.

“Oh.” Camilla leaned her head back from her body and assessed Vida. “I know what you thought. It’s not that. We can’t all be you, you know—daring and resourceful. But I know our situation is different now. There’s no time for moping. Still, I loved him. I like coming up here, seeing this, and thinking how he would have loved it, too.”

Vida wasn’t sure whether Camilla was talking about Carlton or Fitz, and for a moment of burning discomfort she tried very hard not to want to know. Then she realized it didn’t matter. “Who wouldn’t?” she whispered.

“Oh—plenty wouldn’t. That Mrs. Brinkley person you’re on the wrong side of, for one. She would have fainted away to see where we really are. But I like it.”

“What’s that way?” Vida asked, pointing toward the peak.

Camilla’s eyes went in the direction that Vida had indicated, and when she looked back at her friend her own gaze shone with fear and wonder. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t you want to know?”

“It’s so high that way!”

“Yes, exactly—we’ll be able to see everything.”

They hesitated in nervous excitement, and then Vida put down her spear.

They went, Vida first and Camilla close behind, clinging to the vines until there was no more vegetation, until it was just rock and they had to use their hands as much as their feet to reach the peak. The air became cooler, their breath labored. In a little while they ran out of mountain. They were so high they might have been upon the throne of a goddess, the place where some pagan deity went to rest and observe her worshipers.

“I’m dizzy,” Camilla whispered.

“Me too,” Vida said. But she wasn’t. The atmosphere had a different quality here—it was less dense with moisture, with salt; it had a coolness that she felt at the roots of her hair. Her heart was beating steady and clear as a church bell. She took Camilla’s hand and said, “Don’t worry.”

“If you say so.”

“Don’t you think it was all worth it, just to see this?”

Camilla murmured uncertainly. But Vida thrilled to this rare vantage, to see all the world roll slowly down, down, to the shimmery carpet of the sea as it unfurled onward to infinity. “Should we go back?” Camilla asked.

Vida agreed that was probably best. But she hesitated. And in that moment of hesitation she noticed something she had not seen before.

In the grassy open space way below were a pack of dark, wild creatures chasing each other in circles, rutting and turning on fast, sturdy legs. Pigs! She could scarcely credit the existence of yet more life, just beyond the summit, but there it was.

“Come, please, if you like me at all,” Camilla was saying as she little by little scaled backward down the mountain.

“I do,” Vida replied gallantly, and followed her.

In fact she liked—no, loved—everyone and everything.

All the sprouts and weeds and pebbles and trees and birds and eggs and shells and grains of sand and flowery smells, and all the beings big and small, near and far, hideous and lovely, mean-hearted or kind, that had ever been.

And another notion was gladdening Vida’s mind. She knew what that spear could be used for. She had the answer to Sal’s question; she couldn’t wait to tell him.

Twenty-Three

“Well, go on, guess what I saw,” Vida said as she sank down beside Sal.

While she was gone he had woven the vines together into something like a basket. Otherwise, he was as he had been when she left—his long legs folded beneath him, his injury hidden as he sat beside the steadily burning embers. He was very Sal about this, and did not do as she commanded. He just glanced up at her with an expression