.png)
by Ethan Stevens
The three explorers had been making their way through the jungle for a long time—none of them could remember how long. There was fruit in abundance, and though their stomachs hurt, they were well fed. They had grown skilled at putting a razor edge back on their machetes with a few strokes of a whetstone, though one of them had broken the blade of his and now followed in the wake of the others as they cleared the path. It was he that carried most of the gear, while the other man and the woman cut through the undergrowth, well experienced in how to avoid thorns and wasp’s nests, their eyes attuned to venomous snakes, which they killed with automatic flicks of the blade. They would cut a path on and on, straight as they could make it. When they came to a swamp or river too deep or swift or wade they spent a days cutting down branches to bind together with vines for a raft. Each night they boiled stream or dew water for the next day over a fire built of damp wood to keep the mosquitos off, and slept till day, when they started again.
The breaking of the machete, which had belonged to the younger of the two men, had been the only significant thing to happen in a long time, and the younger man had volunteered to to carry more of the gear so that he would remain useful. But now that his routine had been broken, he was beginning to be discontented. The greens, browns and splashes of color from fruits and flowers that surrounded them made it impossible to orient themselves in one direction, yet still they went on, pausing only to pluck fruit when hunger overwhelmed the sour feeling in their stomachs, or to ask the younger man for a whetstone, stopping only when night fell.
That night the younger man ventured to ask, “Why do you think no one has has ever returned from seeking the green people?” “Someone has to have returned” the older man said, “Otherwise we wouldn’t know they exist. Most people just go farther than they have supplies for, but we won’t make that mistake.” He turned away to signal the discussion was over.
The next day, the younger man continued to trudge along just as he had on all the previous days, but when there was a pause for the other two to sharpen their machetes, he looked at his companions for the first time in as long as he could remember. The woman was older than him, but still young, about the same age as the older man. Her pale hair had grown all the way down her back, and her arms and legs were strong from her time in the jungle. The older man was blond haired as well, and clean shaven—something he did with the blade of his machete each morning. He was short, but like the woman and the younger man, he was lean and muscled from their trek. The younger man wondered what he must look like, but realized he must resemble them in one respect. Both were filthy, streaked with grime and muddy to the thigh, so it was impossible to tell if they were wearing shoes or not. Their clothes were rags, but they were so streaked with dirt and smeared with moss that it was impossible to tell where cloth ended and skin began. He realized he himself did not know if he had shoes on his feet beneath the mud, but they started moving again before he could check, and he was too exhausted to remember to when they camped that night.
That night, as they settled down to sleep without blankets or pillows, the young man suggested “Perhaps we should go back, we can launch another expedition next season.” But the older man shook his head, “We still have enough supplies to continue. It would be a waste of all the time we’ve spent to turn back now.” So that was the end of it.
The next day the older man’s machete broke as he was trying to pull it from a rotten tree trunk. The woman offered him hers, but he declined, and instead took half the younger man’s load. The young man took a place before the older man in the single file line they now made. He saw that, in spite of all the dirt, the woman’s hair had not become matted, and despite being worn loose it had not become tangled. However, she must have caught some burrs or insects in it, because little balls of color kept appearing and disappearing among it as she moved, ones he could never quite focus on. Near evening they came to a shallow stream, and as they waded through it, the younger man stopped and tried to wash some of the mud from his feet, but though plenty of mud came off, they didn’t seem to change.
That night, as they built their smokey fire, the younger man asked “What will we do when we find the green people?” “We’ll study them and collect notes for a detailed report,” The older man replied. “And then?” “Then we’ll follow our trail back to civilization.” The woman spoke for the first time in as long as they could remember. Her voice was low and strangely lilted. “Won’t the plants have grown back to cover our trail?” The older man said “By the time we get to where the plants have grown back, we’ll be close enough to find our way without getting lost,” too confidently to allow questioning, then rolled over and went to sleep. The smoke stung the younger man’s eyes, and as he lay down he realized the mosquitoes had not bothered him in a long time, but his skin as he ran his hand over it still felt soft, and a little damp.
The next day they came to a swamp and began using the remaining machete and the two broken blades to cut down tree limbs and strong vines. With only one machete it was a long, slow business, and they slept in the same place for two nights in a row. The work was hard and took much skill, but they had grown experienced with it, and it occupied them so that only as they were drifting off into the swamp that the younger man thought to look back and try to find their trail. When he had had his machete he had always been looking forward, then when he was carrying most of the gear he had been always hunched over, then with less gear the older man had walked behind him, so he had never looked back in all this time. Now he saw the spot on the bank where they had camped and the trees lacking branches, but of the trail by which they came, he could see no sign in the thick undergrowth.
The raft came up against a bank before long, but after they had left the raft to drift off and the woman had cut a trail for them for a few hundred yards, they came out on the swamp again and found they were on an island. There were no strong vines in the island’s trees, so the older man declared they would fell a tree and burn it out as a canoe. This was longer and harder work than the first, for they were inexperienced at it, and they were on the island four days before they finished a dugout big enough for the woman and gear to ride in while the two men held onto the sides. It was as they drifted unsteadily away from the island that the woman remarked “There was no fruit on the island. We didn’t eat anything all that time we worked, but I’m not hungry”. The older man blustered something under his breath and then they were all silent. They drifted till the current began to quicken and they came to the river outlet from the swamp. As they approached the bank, the younger man let go of the canoe without warning, causing it to tip over. The woman grasped the machete as she fell but the rest of the gear was lost and the canoe was far downstream by the time they made it to the bank.
It was only emerging from the water, the mud washed from them, that the younger man realized none of them wore clothes any longer. Their skin was mottled mud brown and green and moss grew upon them like fur over their lower bodies. For the next two days, as the woman lead them with the older man behind her and the younger man in the rear, he had time to watch the older man’s hair grow dark green with algae, and his own skin begin to whorl like soft sapling bark. It was only when they came to another stream and stopped walking single file for a moment that he realized that the woman’s hair had bloomed, the tiny colored buds opening into violet and orange flowers.
The next day the woman began to sing to herself and the other two see joined in, an endless, strange melody, made by tongues not meant to eat or drink. The woman had lost or thrown aside her machete long ago, they made their way through the jungle without needing a clear path, meandering where they sensed the way was clear.
Around sunset of the next day, they reached their tribe—a few dozen green people stopping to sleep as the sun set. Walking into the midst of the welcoming throng, joyful voices calling out with sounds like birds calls or like running water, the woman kissed the older man who had been her husband, then turned to the younger man who had been her son, and spoke her last words in a human language.
“They told us the truth when we set off. No one returns alive from seeking the green people.”
Comments