“This is fresh runoff water from those mountains.” I point in the general direction. “It’s moving and drinkable. You go first. I’ll keep watch,” I say.
She nods and then goes to her knees on the bank. I listen to her cup water with her palms and drink, once, twice, then again. Then the sound of it being splashed over her face and neck. She makes a low, involuntary sound of relief that goes south, and I redirect my attention to the water upstream.
“That was great. I’m done,” she says quietly.
I kneel where she was and drink. The water is cold and has a mineral bite to it. I drink steadily, not rushing. I splash my face once and rinse my arms. Then I wash out my mouth a few times, drinking again. I keep my eyes up all the while and my senses honed.
I straighten.
Carla is looking at the river. Something in her expression has gone thoughtful.
“Is there any way we could actually…wash?” she asks. “Properly. Like, get in? I feel so icky it isn’t even funny anymore. I swear I’ll put mud all over myself again once I’m done, but at least I’ll be clean underneath.”
I look at her. She has dried mud streaked across her jaw and her neck and through her hair. I’m pretty sure we’d be able to do a better job at masking her scent if she were clean underneath.
“It is a good idea,” I say. “But I’d need to stay close. I’d need to stay with you.”
She looks at me, and I can see her working through it.
“I’d be naked.”
“I would have my back to you. Besides, your underwear doesn’t hide much. Sorry to have to tell you.”
“At least it’s something. I know you guys aren’t fazed about being naked but?—”
“I won’t look. I swear. But it’s nonnegotiable. Either I’m in the water with you, or you don’t go in. Even then, you stick to the shallow part.”
She nods. “Okay.” Then she adds, “So how does this work, exactly?”
“I will go in deeper than you. I’ll keep watch on the water. You go in where it’s shallower on the bank side.” I look at the river and pick the best stretch of it, a place where the bank curves out slightly, and the trees give some overhead cover. “I’ll keep my back to you while watching for anything. But be quick about it.”
“I’ll be quick. I promise.”
We go in together.
The cold hits me from the feet up, and I welcome it. Cold water is useful. It does a good job of shutting down things I don’t need to be thinking about right now. I wade in to about waist depth and position myself between Carla and the center of the river, my back to her, facing the opposite bank and the long upriver stretch where the current is strongest.
I listen to the river.
I listen beyond the river.
Behind me, she gets to work. There’s the sound of water moving, of her wading further in, the soft sounds of washing. I fix my eyes on the far bank and keep them there. I busy myself with scrubbing my own arms, my chest, the back of my neck, working through it methodically. I keep my ears tuned to the water, to the jungle on both banks, to the drag of the current. I am listening for anything that doesn’t belong. I keep washing everywhere I can reach while scanning the water in all directions.
I am also actively not thinking about what is happening behind me.
I am not thinking about it at all.
There’s a splash and a rustle of movement. She must be tilting her head back to rinse her hair. I focus on a submerged log near the far bank that looked, for a half-second, like it was moving. It wasn’t. Just the current. I keep my eyes on it anyway.
Then she shrieks.
It’s short and sharp and loud enough to scatter birds from the canopy twenty feet overhead, and I am already turning before the sound is fully out of her.
Something long and dark darts away through the water between her legs. Gone in under a second, heading for the deep water.
It’s an eel. Long and fast, the bronze-brown of it disappearing into the murk.
“It’s gone,” I tell her.
