hope that perhaps the water would one day dry up and I would see that magical glint once again, it never happened, and eventually I accepted its loss, even though it stayed on my mind.
I was bereft for a long time without my tiny talisman. It was like I’d lost a friend and, even more than that, a protector. Now the genie was out of the bottle and I could sense my difference from my loving family, having the fragment of mirror had made me feel less alone. It was almost as if someone was looking out for me, somehow. Just looking into it made me feel safer.
*
That there was a world beyond the boundary of what I now thought of as ‘our’ territory had never been in doubt. Not the world outside the jungle – I had long since ceased to be aware of that – but the world of other territories, other monkeys, other animals. I was reminded of this every time another troop of monkeys came to fight us, or when, while playing up high in the canopy, the breeze would carry strange, distant sounds. And as I grew in confidence and inquisitiveness to match my growing body, so I felt brave enough to explore further afield.
Initially, I didn’t wander far. I had come to realise that the jungle seemed to be divided into territories, each one home to different kinds of animals. And they didn’t tend to mix; each type of creature seemed to stay in its own region, which I realised was the reason there was always such a big fight when a different kind of monkey troop strayed into ours. There seemed to be any number of these territories. As well as our ‘monkey land’, and others nearby which were like it, there seemed to be a land mostly inhabited by toucans, another by parrots, and, I think, one ruled by big cats of some kind, though I had only once fleetingly seen a big, scary feline, as I was too frightened to venture further to find out.
There was also a river, I’d discovered since I’d managed to reach the canopy: a wide silver snake that coiled between the pillowy green forests, which I could only see from one part of our territory. I would sit high in my eyrie and watch it for long periods. I was scared of it yet also mesmerised, my fear of water accompanied by a compelling fascination for something so different from the enclosed emerald world I already knew.
The animals that seemed to rule the river-land were caimans. I didn’t know the name for them at the time, but I would crouch safely up in the canopy and watch them slithering off the riverbank, and instinctively knew that these were creatures I didn’t wish to meet. They would slip so silently into the water, had such a cold, unfriendly look to them, and, even at a distance of many, many feet, I could see just how many pointed teeth they had in their gaping mouths.
And they were teeth I saw them use to good effect. I soon realised that when any animals ventured to the riverbank to drink, the action – which, frustratingly, I couldn’t always see – seemed to be done in groups, with much splashing. I also noticed how the caimans would lie and watch what was going on, sometimes slipping into the water and causing even more noise, as the animals would splash around in terror.
It was a big bird, however, that I first saw killed by a caiman. A big, ugly grey bird, which I suspect might have been a vulture and which took its last drink oblivious of the silent devil that watched it from beneath the surface. I had never seen anything so dreadful or so bloody. The bird was gobbled up in three enormous bites.
But although I was sensible enough to keep away from the river, my curiosity about the world beyond our territory grew. It was to be rewarded by the discovery of a territory that belonged to a whole other species, one that I had never seen before in the jungle and perhaps the last that I would ever have expected.
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