The Other Boy

On the third day Kai found the path.

He had been following the riverbank downstream, staying close enough to the water to be seen from the river but back far enough to walk through the trees. He was getting better at moving through the jungle. He had learned to step over roots instead of tripping on them. He had learned to watch where he put his hands before grabbing branches. He had found a long straight stick to use as a walking pole and to push aside low hanging leaves.

The path was faint at first, just a slightly thinner line in the undergrowth, a place where the ferns had been bent back over time by people walking through. The soil underneath was packed down harder than the soil around it. Kai stood looking at it for a moment. He had walked straight past several animal paths over the past two days and he knew what those looked like. Low tunnels through the undergrowth, sometimes muddy, sometimes just a flattening of the grass. This was different. This path was at person height and person width.

Someone had walked this way many times.

He followed it away from the river.

After about twenty minutes he heard a sound he had not heard in three days. A human sound. Someone was singing to themselves, quietly, in a language Kai did not understand.

He stopped walking and stood very still.

The singing stopped.

\"Hello?\" said a voice. In English, which surprised Kai so much he nearly dropped his stick.

\"Hello,\" Kai said back.

A boy stepped out from behind a tree. He looked about the same age as Kai. He was shorter, with dark eyes and dark hair, and he was carrying a woven basket on his back. He was wearing a plain T-shirt and shorts that looked like they had been washed many times. He looked at Kai the way you look at something that appeared where you did not expect it.

\"You fell in the river,\" the boy said. It was not a question.

Kai stared at him. \"How do you know that?\"

\"There are always people who fall in the river.\" The boy tilted his head. \"You have been out here three days?\"

\"Yes.\"

\"I saw your smoke.\" The boy nodded slowly, like he had worked something out. \"That was smart. Come. My village is not far. Your parents have been there asking about you.\"

Kai felt something happen in his chest that he could not quite describe. His eyes went watery and he blinked hard a few times.

\"Are they okay?\" he asked.

\"Very worried,\" the boy said. \"But okay.\" He turned and started walking back down the path. \"My name is Tiago. Come on, it is going to rain again soon.\"

Kai followed him.

He had about a hundred questions but he did not ask any of them yet. He just walked and listened to the sounds of the jungle around him and thought about how three days ago he had not known the difference between a safe berry and an unsafe one, had not known how to read monkey calls, had not known how to keep a fire going through a wet jungle night.

Now he knew all of those things.

The path wound between the trees and then opened out into a clearing and Kai could see rooftops and cooking fires and the shapes of people moving about. He could hear voices. He could smell food cooking.

And running out of the village toward him, faster than anyone he had ever seen run before, were his mum and his dad.