Grant peered into the tangle of branches and aerial roots. ‘It’s only a few hundred metres across. We should be able to wade through without too much trouble.’
‘And then time it so we can cross back at low tide?’
‘Yeah.’
Prabir found that part appealing; if they had to do this at all, he’d rather do it while he still had the energy.
He double-checked that all the sample tubes he was carrying were sealed; his watch and notepad were fully waterproof. There didn’t seem much point taking any of his clothes off; they’d get coated in slime however he carried them, and the more protection he had against scrapes and splinters from the roots, the better.
Grant waded in up to her knees. Prabir followed her, every step like an exaggerated mime of walking as his boots stuck afresh in the mud. The water was turbid with silt, almost opaque where it could be seen at all, but most of the surface was covered with a layer of algae and dead leaves. The odour of salt and decay was insistent—like breathing over a garden compost heap with seaweed added for effect—but not overpowering or stomach-turning. Other parts of the forest had smelt worse.
The protruding brown roots of the mangroves were dotted with snails, but Prabir spotted small brown crabs as well. Clouds of mites and mosquitoes approached them and then backed away; at least their repellent was holding out. The trees were twenty or thirty metres tall; it was eerie to look up into the branches, decorated with small white blossoms and tiny green fruit, then down into what was essentially dirty sea water, as if a forest had sprouted in the middle of the ocean.
The mud was annoying, but it wasn’t treacherous; the hidden mangrove roots were far more pernicious. Every time Prabir thought he’d learnt to judge where a clear stretch of ground might lie between two trunks, he walked into a root at shin height. The water was above his waist now, and the clues from the visible roots were getting harder to read. He’d started out following directly behind Grant, unashamedly letting her blaze the trail, but then his concentration had lapsed, and he’d skirted a submerged obstacle on his own to find that they’d been shunted to either side of it. Since then, they’d been moving further apart, following entirely separate paths through the drowned maze.
Grant called out to him, ‘Hey, watch out!’ Prabir looked around; a black snake about a metre long with narrow yellow stripes was swimming towards him. He scanned the tangle of litter around the nearest trunk, looking for a forked stick he could use to persuade the snake to keep its distance, but it veered away of its own accord, blinking elliptical green eyes like a cat’s.
The water grew deeper, reaching high on his chest; the trees thinned slightly, but not enough to compensate for the loss of visibility. Grant was a few centimetres shorter than he was, and she was submerged almost up to her chin. Prabir shouted, ‘Next time, we cheat and take the boat around the coast.’
‘Amen to that.’
‘I don’t want to come back this way, even when the tide’s out. We’d be better off walking along the beach, and swimming across the inlet if we have to.’
Grant swore suddenly; Prabir assumed she’d just been bruised twice in the same spot in rapid succession, which was particularly painful. She shouted, ‘This is ridiculous! I’m going to try swimming, here and now.’ She leant forward into the water and began a slow breast-stroke.
Prabir observed the experiment with interest. She was scooping aside some of the surface muck as she went, but it was still piling up around her face and shoulders. ‘What’s it like?’
‘Not too bad. The current’s pretty strong, though.’ She wasn’t exaggerating; as the water carried her sideways she almost collided with a trunk, but she managed to swim clear of it. It looked no more dangerous than tripping through the roots, and a whole lot faster.
Grant was wearing light canvas shoes; Prabir would have to take his boots off to swim. He hesitated, wondering if it was worth the trouble. He crouched down, submerging his head to reach the laces, but they were too slippery and waterlogged to untie; his fingernails slid uselessly over the knots he’d made to secure the bows.
He stood up, scraping mulch off his face. Grant was no longer in sight.
He shouted after her, ‘Wait for me at the shore!’
A faint reply came back. ‘Yes!’
Prabir trudged on, occasionally making a half-hearted attempt to swim over obstacles. He’d grown fitter over the last two weeks, and reached the point where their normal day-long excursions were bearable, but just stepping over the endless, unpredictable succession of mangrove roots was turning the muscles in his legs to jelly. Once he was out of this shit-hole, he had no intention of spending three hours gathering samples for Grant; he’d walk down to the ocean, wash the slime off his body, and curl up under a palm tree. How had she managed to stretch his unpaid duties so far beyond bad translations, bad cultural advice, and surprisingly reasonable cooking?
He could see a grassy clearing ahead, with ordinary trees behind it. The water was still up to his chest, but dry land was just ten or fifteen metres away. He shouted, ‘Grant? I’ve had enough! I’m going on strike!’ If she was in earshot she didn’t deign to reply.
The ground climbed abruptly, the water dropped to waist height; the shore was within reach, no longer an unattainable mirage. Prabir’s shins collided with an obstacle that felt like a large fallen branch; wearily, he stepped back in order to step over it, but then his calves hit something behind him, just as high, that felt much the same.
For a moment he was simply bemused. Could he have sleep-walked right over the first branch, without even noticing it?
Then the gap between the two obstacles tightened, and he realised that they were parts of the same thing.
He quickly pulled his right foot out of the enclosing coil, and probed forward for a safe place to put it. As his foot touched mud, the snake shifted, dragging his left leg back, overbalancing him. He hit the water with his hands over his face, cringing with fear—terrified of coming eye to eye with the thing, though he knew that was the least of his problems. He swam forward clumsily, fighting both the instinct to right himself and the weight of his boots dragging his feet down. Then he felt something pass by swiftly and smoothly in the water ahead of him, and his arms came down against the body of the snake, blocking his way again.
He backed away, staggering to his feet, shifting the tightening noose from his lungs to his abdomen just in time. He still couldn’t see any part of the snake, but he’d felt its girth. This wasn’t one of the placid four-metre pythons he’d seen feeding on birds as a child, merely adapted to salt water. It was half as thick as his torso. It would be more than capable of swallowing him.
He opened his mouth to cry for help, but the sound died in his throat. What could Grant do? Tranquilliser darts wouldn’t penetrate the water, and even if she could pump her whole supply into the snake, its body weight would be hundreds of times greater than the largest of the birds they’d used the darts to subdue. She’d end up standing helplessly on the shore watching him die, or getting killed herself trying to rescue him. He couldn’t do that to her. He couldn’t sentence her to either fate.
Prabir groped for his pocket knife, shivering with fear. He scanned the water desperately; if he plunged the knife into the snake’s head with enough force, the blade might just penetrate its skull. The coil of its body slid smoothly over his hips, tightening its hold. He followed his sense of where the motion was coming from, and saw a ripple in the water, a faint wake disturbing the surface.