Page 36 of Shipwrecked

I have all our bamboo jugs in Mary’s net, ready to go, when Cillian comes over. His stubble is growing in dark, and his muscles look more defined than they did last week.

Cillian studies me from head to toe. “Look left.” I do. “Look right.” I do. “Up. Down.” He heaves a sigh. “I’d rather you—”

“See you all later,” I call, setting off.

I hear laughter. Mathieu. I turn on my heel, walking backwards long enough to catch his eye. He’s placing logs on the fire. He smiles at me. I smile back.

When I turn around, I feel at my neck, making sure the band is secure. I haven’t taken the quartz off since he gave it to me.

A stone cairn marks the start of the inland path. Mary has made some sort of frond shoes, and it’s a rule that you have to wear them for the trek inwards. When I bend to put mine on—they’re kept next to the path—I notice the little bite marks all over Cillian’s ankles. They’re shaped like arrowheads.

“Racer bites,” Cillian explains, slinging the net of empty bamboo jugs over his shoulder. “Non-venomous, just sore.”

“Snake bites cluster like that? I thought they had two punctures. Like vampires.”

“Some venomous ones have prominent fangs. The small guys on this path don’t. Put on those ankle pads, too.”

Frond shin guards are next, slotting protectively over my lower legs. I stare at Cillian when he doesn’t put them on.

“It’s annoying with my shoes,” he explains. His gaze lingers on my face. “Are you sure—”

“Let’s go.” I lead the way.

Cillian heaves another sigh, then lengthens his strides to catch up. “Alright, I get it. Let’s take it easy. We’re in the shade, but we don’t get the ocean breeze, so it’s muggy.”

“I can carry the bamboo.”

“We’ll take turns.”

I have a feeling I’ll have to wrestle them off Cillian for “my” turn. Which I will, because otherwise there’s no point in me being here. Cillian and Mathieu have teamed up and been like this all week, but I know Cillian is the main instigator.

The path is wide enough to walk side by side, the undergrowth flattened out after a week of trips. Cillian and I fit side by side, but if we were to divert either left or right, it would be hard going for even one person, never mind two.

“Was this a man-made path?” I ask.

“I think so,” Cillian says. “Seán says this island was likely one used as a “foraging” tourist attraction a decade ago, so having a way to get inland to find water would make sense. I’ll point it out to you in the glade, but I think some construction was done there.”

At what I guess is the halfway point, I wrestle the bamboo off Cillian.

And then, because I don’t want Cillian to notice, I hide how exhausted I am when we reach the glade.

The pool is against the hill, a mound of dark-grey rock that juts out over most of the water like an awning. The water is crystal clear. I can make out every individual stone at the bottom. “It’s beautiful.”

“See those mosses all along the edge? They’re cleaning the water. That’s why it’s so clear.”

There’s a natural half-moon-shaped area of flat ground around the pool that’s clear of trees. There are grasses and shrubbery, but nothing higher than our waists.

“How come the trees didn’t spread closer?”

Cillian digs his heel into the ground and turns up the soil. Only a few inches down is solid grey rock. “Not enough soil for their root systems.”

We kneel at the edge of the water and start filling the bamboo jugs. My tongue feels dry as I watch the crystal-clear water. It’s cool, too. “I want to jump in,” I admit. “It looks like heaven.”

Cillian’s lips twitch. “There’s a path leading to the top of that lip, there.” He points out a gap in the trees off to the right side of the pool where the hill slopes up. I see a natural break in the treeline, like the one we walked through to get here. “It goes straight to the top of the hill, but there’s a path that branches off that, and it leads to the overhang. It’s deep enough at the edge to jump in.”

I eye up the spot he pointed to.

Cillian stiffens. “Not that you’re allowed to jump in. That spot is very narrow. You’d have to keep your arms and legs tucked, and if—”