The Amazing Adventure of Amanderella Gottsnobbler Chapter 10

Chapter 10:

Find your own path.

Ramone’s engine droned steadily, breaking the hush of the river. His boat was stacked with bread, tins of fruit, and a wheel of jungle cheese. He hauled the bundles ashore, brushed off palm leaves, and looked at Amanderella.

“You’ve been here seven days,” he said. “How are you getting on?”

Amanderella adjusted her pointed hat, her knapsack worn from wandering, her notebook thick with sketches of insects and empty paths. She looked at him, then at the seven trails leading into the jungle, each marked with its explorer’s symbol, each leading only to silence.

“I have found nothing,” she said at last. “Except the hush of the jungle and insects that march like explorers in a line. But sometimes finding nothing is part of the finding.”

Ramone frowned, half understanding.

“I have followed all these paths to their ends,” she sighed. “Not a sign of a Blue Whistling Monkey. What if they are only imagination?”

Ramone chuckled. “If explorers only found what they expected, we’d all be home by now. Besides, Carmelita says the jungle’s too noisy to be empty she can’t sleep for the frogs.”

 He dropped the supplies with a grunt and held out a fresh set of clothes. “She insists explorers shouldn’t smell like goats,” he said with a grin. “I will take your dirty ones back for washing and bring them back next time.”

After changing, she helped him with the boxes as best she could though some of the boxes were very heavy.

Ramone wiped his hands and climbed back on board. He turned back and asked, “Anything you’d like me to bring next week?”

“Coffee,” she said. “This lot only drink tea.”

“Finest Brazilian coffee it is,” he replied. The engine roared back to life. As the boat pulled away, he called: “Sometimes you just have to find your own path.”

His words lingered long after the drone faded. Amanderella whispered them under her breath, tasting them like coffee she had not yet drunk. The jungle seemed to stir, leaves rustling as though it too had heard.

She tightened her knapsack straps, looked once more at the seven marked trails — then stepped away from them. Vines clutched at her sleeves, branches snagged her hair, roots twisted underfoot. She pressed on, tying back leaves with her ball of string, forcing her way where no one had gone.

“This is my path,” she whispered. And the jungle seemed to listen.

Birds shrieked overhead, frogs croaked in comic chorus, snakes slid into roots, insects hummed and clicked. Life pressed in on every side. On the explorers’ paths there had been nothing; here the jungle was noisy, restless, alive.

She sketched quickly: a parrot with feathers like fire, a snake coiled in mud, a beetle dragging itself from the ooze. “So, this is what they missed,” she murmured.

At the riverbank she found a single rare stalk, pale and fragile, bending under its grain. She touched it gently, sketched it. Proof that the jungle held what the explorers sought — but not where they had looked.

“So, it does exist,” she whispered. “Pity I cannot tell him where.”

The river gurgled softly, as if agreeing. The jungle pressed close, its chorus of buzzing, croaking, and rustling wrapping around her like a blanket. She paused by a patch of mud where rainwater had gathered, dark and sluggish.

Something stirred. From behind a tree, a jaguar stepped, whiskers quivering. Amanderella stood absolutely still. She knew from her reading about explorers that big cats can be very dangerous. This one sniffed the air, but did not move towards her. Heart pounding, Amanderella felt both fear and awe as the powerful creature drew near, its feline grace both terrifying and mesmerizing. Its ears flicked as if it heard something, then without a sound or a backward glance, its muscles rippled once, and the great cat slipped between the trees as if the shadows themselves had opened to receive it. The sunlight caught its tail for a heartbeat, a flick of pale gold, and then it was gone — swallowed by leaves and silence, leaving only the faint tremor of branches where it had passed.

Amanderella quickly brought out her notebook and sketched the beautiful animal. “At least mine won’t look like a cow,” she thought.

The light was beginning to fade now, so, reluctantly, she turned and followed her string trail back to the camp site. “Tomorrow,” she promised herself. “Tomorrow I will find another new path.”

The others were already there sat round the camp fire, discussing loudly their failure once again.

 She knew that her journey was just beginning, and not finding the monkeys felt less like failure and more like an invitation to seek more wonders hidden beneath the jungle's  leafy roof.

The fire was lit, smoke curling into the damp night. It was Professor Thimblewhack’s turn to cook, and he stood gloomily over a pot of worms, measuring them with his tape before dropping them in. The smell was enough to make even Colonel Jibberjack cough into his cup.

Amanderella sat quietly outside her hut, notebook closed, her knapsack heavy with sketches she could not share. She had found the grain stalk, proof that at least one of the explorers’ quests was real. But she could not tell him. The code bound her, and besides, they would never believe her.

The Professor shuffled over, tape dangling, eyes pleading. “I don’t suppose,” he whispered, “you might… do the cooking again? Just this once? The worms are not… cooperating.”

Amanderella sighed, then smiled faintly. She opened Ramone’s supplies and set to work. Soon fritters hissed in her tin cup, rice bubbled with dried fish, and jungle cheese melted over bread. The smell drifted across the camp, stronger than the smoke. As the wormy pot sputtered and hissed, Amanderella's fritters sizzled in her tin cup, the rich smell of spices and melting cheese wafting through the camp, an aromatic rebellion against the bleakness of the Professor’s dish.

One by one the explorers sidled closer, bowls hidden behind their backs. Colonel Jibberjack muttered, “Explorers march on glory, not fritters,” but his stomach growled louder than his words. Doctor Porridgepump waved his spoon, then dropped it in the mud. Reverend Tiddlewink coughed into his ribbons, and Lord Crankleboot tapped his cane nervously.

Each whispered the same line, “I don’t suppose you have any of that to spare?”

Amanderella spooned them generous helpings. They ate heartily, their pompous speeches silenced.

Each generous helping she served to the others felt like a weight on her shoulders, a secret kept from curious minds that might help unlock the jungle's mysteries

She sat quietly with her tin cup, knowing she had fed them all — and knowing, too, that she had seen the jungle’s secrets. Hopefully might find the Whistling Blue monkeys.

Professor Thimblewhack wrote it all down in his battered book as he did at the end of every day.