He had a small knife he’d carried with him from New York. That would have to be enough.
“Wait here a moment,” he said, gesturing toward a stone on the bank of the stream. “I’ll be right back. Shout if you see or hear anything.”
She nodded, distracted by something in the distance. He walked back the way they had come, veering right when he saw a tower of pale green out of the corner of his eye. Bananas—none of them ripe, but food all the same. He sent up a prayer of gratitude to whoever might be listening as he began to pull them from the tree and stow them in the bag. The most pressing issue now was finding some kind of container in which to boil water, and locating wood and brush that were dry enough to strike up a fire.
He ran a hand along the spine of a downed tree, considering. Using his knife, he cut away a section of it and brushed off the dirt and insects. The tree was mostly hollowed out inside, and if he carved it right, it could be used as a small bowl.
Nicholas stripped off his wilted shirt, surprised to find it was already damp with sweat as he stowed it in his bag. The air had taken on the quality of the swamps down south in the colonies, pregnant with the potential for a raging storm. Perhaps they wouldn’t need to boil water at all, only catch it.
His knife chipped and cut away at the tree, and Nicholas lost himself in the good feeling of accomplishment, stopping only to relieve himself in the privacy of the leaves and eat half of a banana. He felt better for all of it, and knew she would too, once he gave her something to fill her stomach.
But when he returned to the small stream, Etta was nowhere to be found.
Disappeared.
He closed his eyes, which was a mistake. All he saw was Julian’s face, how he’d looked just as he was swallowed by mist and distance.
“Etta?” he called, his voice cracking. “Etta!”
Gone. Had she slipped somewhere? Fallen? Drowned? Panic flared in him, white-hot, leaving him dizzy with it. He charged around the clearing, straining his ears for any hint of her footsteps, any sign of her.
He had a feeling Etta hadn’t shown him whatever her true intentions were with the astrolabe—how she wanted to confront Ironwood—but she wouldn’t have just left, would she? Gone on ahead?
She did it before, a cruel part of his mind whispered, in New York.…
The brush behind him rustled and Etta stumbled back out, eyes wide. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
For a moment, the residual terror was enough to choke him, make his heart start pounding in his chest. Her hair was mussed, and there was a streak of dirt across her cheek that matched the bruise and scratch on the other. She straightened the skirt of her dress, and he had a sense of why she had momentarily disappeared.
“I—” he managed to get out. “I told you to stay put!”
Her brow furrowed at his anger, as if she couldn’t possibly understand why wandering off in the middle of a jungle could be dangerous.
“You agreed!” he said, feeling ludicrous, but a fire was blazing in his chest that he couldn’t seem to put out.
“Okay,” she said slowly, “I’m sorry—”
“You’re sorry?” Nicholas knew he should accept it, that he should move on to the business of starting a fire, but he couldn’t bring himself to move past the fear just yet. “What if something had happened? How would I have found you? When I ask you to do something, please endeavor to listen to me!”
She rose to her full height, and for the first time he noticed that she’d removed her jacket and was cradling something in it—a severed head—
Of a statue. His heart settled back into its rightful place as he took in its serene smile. It made a perfect counterpoint to the look of irritation on her face as she set it down. “I was going to say, I think I know where we are, but since you clearly know everything, I’ll let you figure it out for yourself.”
Etta stormed along the stream; Nicholas waited for her to come back and laugh after a moment, so the band of tightness around his chest would fray enough for him to breathe again. Only she didn’t, of course. She tripped, but caught herself handily, against—was that a stone wall?
It was. More than that, there were steps, and more statues that had been knocked over or absorbed into the thick bodies of trees. Most of these stone figures bore a similar face to the one Etta had found, but some had been left with no features at all. Time, and the forces of the jungle, had worn them away.
The thunder that shattered the jungle brought her up short, made her press her hands to her ears. The insects and birds became almost frantic, the latter launching themselves from the trees at the first small drops of rain.
“Oh my God,” Etta gasped, turning to look back at him. Her arm was outstretched, pointing at something orange and white a short distance away, half-hidden by foliage.
Nicholas’s eyes were fixed only on what was at her feet, and watched as its head rose up out of the mud behind her, scales glinting and slick as its hood flattened out. She must have stepped right on it and been none the wiser.
“Don’t. Move.” Terror thrummed inside of him, fast and desperate, as another burst of thunder exploded over their heads. Etta started to step back, turning to look at him, and the snake bobbed in the air, poised to strike. “Don’t move!”
He didn’t trust his aim with the knife just then; any slip, any gust of wind, and the blade would be in her leg and not in the damned snake. Before he could question himself, the revolver was in his hand, the snake lashed forward, and he fired.
THERE WAS A SMALL EXPLOSION BEHIND Etta, an instant before heat seared the back of her left calf and she was thrown forward onto her hands and knees. She looked up in time to see the tiger’s tail flash as it turned and ran deeper into the trees. Her ears were ringing, aching, as she turned around and saw the head of a cobra staring up at her, a short distance away from the long, coiled muscle of its body. Both the head and the body were still moving.
Etta stared at it, unable to so much as feel the rain that suddenly burst down, shaking the leaves, pounding the mud.
Nicholas stood a few feet back, the revolver still in his hand, looking as if he’d been the one shot, not the snake.
Etta reached down, touching her left calf muscle and coming away with blood. She stared at it long enough that the rain began to wash it away, long enough for Nicholas to snap out of his own shock. He rushed forward, kicking the snake aside.
“Did it bite you?” He took her leg in his hand, trying to see for himself, and she was right—he was shaking. “Etta! Did it bite you?”
No; but on its path to the snake, the bullet had grazed her skin, cutting close enough to leave a red, angry mark. She had been that close to getting bitten, and she hadn’t had any idea.
“Christ,” he said, pressing his hand against it. He tore the sleeve off the jacket she’d been carrying and dug through the bag for the scissors. As gently as he could, he dabbed the blood away and wrapped her leg with another, cleaner strip of fabric.
But where is the tiger? Etta wondered. When she’d spotted it, at first she had felt surprised and delighted. Its luminous eyes had tracked their progress forward with keen interest. Only then had she realized that there was no barrier between them.
Nicholas’s hands were smoothing down her wet hair, and kept moving over her shoulders, down her arms, and back up again to cup her face. He slowly came into focus, and she realized he’d been speaking to her this whole time.