Rift by Beverley Birch Page A

curiously, and then as suddenly gone.
    But the track simply left the tunnelled gloom of the trees, and the camp tents were in view, far below, coming and going through the feathery acacia branches of the lower woods. There was nothing else to see; she was being stupid. Joe had halted and was just looking down at the camp.
    She stood beside him. At once she recognised the view. ‘Charly’s map! She was here when she did it, wasn’t she?’ She pulled the letter from her pocket, showed him. He took it and nodded; he looked right and left along the ridge, watched the speck of a helicopter against the flare of the sun.
    ‘The clearest view is from here.’ Sergeant Kaonga was standing where the stony track broadened into a round platform of rock. ‘There – you see all the camp. This path goes on a little more, but stops just there –’
    ‘ No , it doesn’t stop. Just looks like it,’ broke in Joe. Since that waking moment in the hospital, this scene endlessly replayed in his head. Anna, Matt, Silowa, himself, climbing . . . ‘We went up there – right up,’ he said.
    Gigantic boulders crowned the crags in precarious knobbly formations. In one place the lip of the cliff had split, topplingboulders into a narrow cleft in the otherwise unbroken line of the heights. From this angle they could see how the cleft deepened and broadened into a plunging ravine flanked by walls of reddish rock seamed in multicoloured streaks – like ribs rippled by the play of birds across them.
    ‘Up top, it’s Silowa’s lookout place,’ Joe said. ‘There was this time Silowa got sent back from here . . . ’ he trailed off, looking around him.
    ‘And?’ Ella urged him.
    For a moment he gazed at her, as if not seeing her, as if he was thinking hard. Then he turned to Tomis. ‘That time – remember?’
    Tomis frowned. Squatting on his heels at the edge of the rock he had been scrutinising the slopes below them. Then his face cleared. ‘It is true! In all these times and all these places we go to, I forget. Yes, it is in the first days here. Everyone climbs to this place. But then – trouble, trouble, trouble!’ He clucked his tongue. ‘The expedition begins late – already it is too hot. But the teachers, they think about other things, they do not check properly. We tell them, but they do not check! Some students – no water. We must share bottles and send people back to refill from the stream. Some – no hats. Some – blisters. One, very, very bad blisters – bleeding. Everyone bad-temperedfrom the heat. Some get sick. One boy is stung –’
    ‘And Anna was talking to Silowa,’ Joe interrupted, ‘and Miss Strutton said they were slowing us down, trailing at the back, Silowa shouldn’t be hanging around us, you know the way she says! She told him to go, she told Anna to go back to camp. You said no, and then Mr Boyd came –’
    ‘No one should walk this path alone,’ emphatically Tomis agreed. ‘Always there is risk of snakes and animals. But Miss Strutton of course is in charge! This time, Ian argues with her, but Silowa – oh! He is very upset. He runs away! Anna wishes to fetch him, but Ian insists she must stay with the group. The mood is bad, very bad! But everyone continues to where the path stops. It is –’ he made a chopping movement with his hand, ‘steep there. Filled up with fallen rocks and trees. Only a monkey can pass that way.’
    ‘No, like I said, it looks like the path stops,’ Joe insisted vehemently, ‘but you go under. There’s bushes all over so you don’t notice. You can crawl right through the rocks and then you get on to the top. Silowa was going to show everyone, but instead he just brought Anna and me and Matt back. Later . . . ’
    He sees it; as if they’re with him again. Silowa’s bare feet padding between boulders; dust puffs from his heels. He looksback, beckons, and Anna races past him, Hey, Joe, up here! Here! Oh, wow! I could stay here forever. I could build a house