Alice said, “It was amazing what she did yesterday. I wanted to go with her, so did George, but she was adamant she’d be better on her own. In the end it was Emma who told us to let her go, that she knew what she was doing, and I guess she was right: we probably would have just held her up, wouldn’t we, George?”

“What? Sorry, I was thinking about fish.”

They laughed, but then Shen said, “If we can catch fish we’ll be okay, but I’ll feel better when we get onto the river.” He shrugged. “I think I’ll get some sleep now.”

He lay back against his pack and they went back to watching the fire in silence. But Tom was acutely aware of the others sleeping around them, the sound sleep of exhaustion.

Their situation felt fragile, as if at any moment something could snap and they’d all be cast into the void, but that fragility had been in the camp by the plane too—they just hadn’t been able to see it as clearly. Perhaps Tom only saw it now because he’d been bitten by that snake, and he’d been away from them for a day. He was seeing them with fresh eyes and knew it was right that they wouldn’t have survived if they’d stayed back at the crash site, but also that they wouldn’t survive through many more days of living like this.

CHAPTER 34

The next morning didn’t bring much to be optimistic about. The day broke with the same sickly orange pallor and as a group they weren’t faring well. Oscar was sick in some unknown way. Lara was still limping from her fall on the tree. Mila was still using one of the poles as a walking stick. It created the impression of a camp under siege.

Joel broke the news early that they couldn’t launch here so they would stay another day to recover before trekking over the hills. Rather than being disappointed, most of the group seemed relieved that they wouldn’t have to climb over a hill in search of a better stretch of river. There was even an uplift in spirits as Joel organized people into collecting more wood and helping Shen with the water supply.

Tom said to Alice, “How are you this morning?”

She nodded and said, “You?”

“Okay. I think I’ll climb the hill, see what the other side looks like.”

She nodded again. “I’ll come with you.”

He was glad she wanted to come, a feeling that was still new enough to take him by surprise. Just a few days ago he’d felt he had nothing in common with any of them and couldn’t have imagined himself bonding over two weeks in Costa Rica. Yet now, there were maybe half a dozen people he had bonded with and actually become friends with.