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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.
“I have the stuff. Let’s go,” he called out over the thunder and howling wind.
It felt like déjà vu from the night on the sailboat. We hustled through thick vegetation, grass cushioning my every step. The rain came in earnest as we raced toward the mountain. I was drenched by the time we reached the base.
“I think there is a cave up there.” He pointed. I spotted something like a dark spot and trusted he was right. “Get on my back.”
The mountain was rocky and my feet would likely be torn to shreds racing up it. Agan proved to be strong. With me riding his back monkey style, he also carried our things, including the inflated raft as we didn’t have time to waste letting the air out. We were battered by the pelting rain, as Agan had to take his time, so we didn’t die.
I was shivering when we finally reached the hole in the side of the mountain. Agan set me and the bag down. He went for the bag and dug out the metallic-colored emergency blanket and wrapped it around me.
“Share with me,” I said.
“I’m going to see if there is anything I can use to start a fire.”
As he went deeper into the cave, I shrugged out of the blanket, grabbed two empty water bottles, and stepped to the lip of the cave opening. I held out my arms and watched the bottles get little to nothing captured into them. I went back and found the knife. I cut the bottles at the widest viable part of the neck and went back out into the rain. The wider opening helped and in no time the bottles were full. I went and filled up two empty bottles before going back out in the rain.
The rain continued, and I was able to fill up the remaining empty bottles. When I turned back, Agan was lighting some twigs and brush he’d scrounged up. The fire was small but warm. I handed him one of the newly filled water bottles before getting the blanket and wrapping it around us.
“Thanks for the lift,” I teased, hoping to lighten the mood.
“You’re surprisingly light.”
