Total pages in book: 35
Estimated words: 33209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 166(@200wpm)___ 133(@250wpm)___ 111(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 33209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 166(@200wpm)___ 133(@250wpm)___ 111(@300wpm)
“The bottles,” I cried, waking Agan up.
We both dove for the bag with our empty bottles. We removed the tops and anchored each bottom in the thin sand. Then I went back to standing in the rain, enjoying the cool water on my skin and down my throat. It was a glorious moment.
Only the rain didn’t last. Not forever. And the bottles with their narrow openings didn’t collect enough to ensure our survival. But it was better than nothing.
But the rain wasn’t good for everything. Our fire was out, and the wood was wet.
“I’ll go look for wood,” he said.
“I’ll go too.”
He glanced at my bare feet. “You should probably stay. We’ll need to go farther in, closer to the mountain.”
I disagreed. “I can’t stay and do nothing.”
He closed his eyes in what I guessed was resignation. We forged deeper into the island to find kindling protected by thick vegetation that kept the ground dry, along with fallen branches. But a sight stopped me in my tracks.
“Agan,” I said, pointing off to my right.
There, off in the distance, was a tree with orange fruit hanging off of it.
“Stay here,” he said.
We’d followed a natural path free of obstructions that could hurt my feet. The vegetation toward the tree was hard to determine. “Fine, but let me know if it’s okay.”
He nodded and plodded ahead. Just as I was about to call out to him, he waved me forward. “It’s fine.”
Renewed with a burst of energy, I skipped ahead, hoping what I saw wasn’t a mirage. It wasn’t.
“Tell me those are oranges,” I said.
The ground was covered in mushy fruit. I stepped on one. The rotten pulp squeezed through my toes, and I didn’t care.
He reached up and had to get on his toes to grab one of the low-hanging fruits. He held it out to me, not to take, but to show it too was rotten. My heart sank and my stomach growled fiercely as I imagined biting into an orange. He circled the tree and when he reached me again, he held two perfectly formed oranges.
“I think they’re mandarins,” he said, handing me one of them.
With no time to waste, I worked my battered nails into the skin to peel it off. The smell hit my nose and only ratcheted up my eagerness. My mouth turned parched, and I didn’t wait to remove all the orange skin. My taste buds did a happy dance as the sweetest tang burst onto my tongue.
“This is so good,” I said, as juices leaked from the corners of my mouth. I should have been embarrassed, but I wasn’t.
“Very good,” Agan admitted with a joyful look on his face.
“Are there more?” I asked, before walking around the tree.
“Most that are reachable are bad. I can’t tell about the ones higher up.”
The tree was enormous, and I stared at the trunk. There wasn’t any place for handholds and the truck was quite thick. Without shoes, I didn’t risk climbing it. Though if it came to it, I would. I hoped we’d be long rescued before that happened.
Agan tried but couldn’t get a grip. He jumped for a branch and caught one, but it came crashing down along with him, knocking the wind out of him as I rushed forward to help him up.
He peered up at the tree and then down at the branch. He picked it up and surveyed it for fruit. None of the fruit on the branch had survived. He aimed it up and shook the nearby branches. Fruit fell, and I wandered around trying to catch any of it before it smashed on the ground. We ended up with one. The tree was winning at this point.
Agan waved off the half of the fruit I offered. “We should get that fire started. That’s more important. We’ll come back for the tree.”
Finding dry wood turned out to be as fruitless as getting an edible mandarin. We were both drained when we returned to base camp.
After we got the fire going again, I sat on the dune and stared out at the ocean.
“You will see your daughter again,” he said. I’d almost warned him off of making promises he couldn’t keep when he said, “I don’t like that sky.”
I glanced up far into the distance. Dense, ominous-looking clouds were heading our way. “A storm?”
“Worse than that. Typhoon season should be over, but that looks like more than the everyday storm.”
It felt like the world was against us. “What should we do?” My knowledge of storms extended to the snow variety. I knew nothing of typhoons, which sounded more menacing than hurricanes, something I would ask him about later.
“We need to pack up camp and find a place to hole up.”
I had no idea where that could be, but helped him untangle the tent from the raft and get all our precious bottles into the bag. Rain would be good, but if our bottles blew away in the storm, we might as well blow away with them. There was no survival without water. We had barely finished packing away the tent when the wind kicked up a notch.