Alone by D J Brazier

Author:D J Brazier
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448188413
Publisher: Andersen Press Ltd

TWENTY-ONE

Midday and it’s raining. Again.

I’m stripped down to my pants but still sweating buckets as I haul a heavy branch through the thick foliage. Having used up all the driftwood along the sandspit, and unwilling to enter the jungle, I now have to fetch wood from much further along the riverbank and today I’m a long way from camp, out of sight around a steep-sided bend. And with less time to fish or harvest nuts and fruit, the constant gnawing hunger has returned. But I can handle it. I’m leaner and stronger than I’ve ever been and I reckon my stomach must have shrunk to less than half its previous size. And following my worrying discovery of big paw prints in the mud by the stream it didn’t take long for me to decide to prioritise the fire over food. But then a loud rumble in my stomach reminds me I haven’t eaten all day, so I decide to take a break and check around for nuts and fruit.

The first few trees I check are bare so I walk further along the bank. While scanning the next tree I notice a cavity in the trunk of the dead tree beside it, three or four metres off the ground, with twigs and straw sticking out, possibly a bird’s nest. With eggs!

The dead tree is branchless apart from a few stumps above the cavity and the trunk is too smooth to get a grip, but by climbing the branches of the neighbouring tree I am able to lean across and reach it. Steadying myself against the trunk I whisper, ‘Please let there be eggs, please let there be eggs,’ and peer inside, preparing myself for the exit of a startled bird. But instead of a brooding bird or a clutch of eggs, curled within the moss-lined chamber is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen. A ball of glinting golden fur, about the size of a squirrel, with a long bushy tail wrapped around its face and waves of shimmering gold rippling down its body as its tiny chest rises and falls. I freeze, hunger forgotten as I watch this gorgeous animal sleep. I instantly recognise it from the photos Gran kept in her bedside drawer, the ones she cut out of National Geographic magazine, but I can still hardly believe my eyes. Hardly believe that I’m looking at a golden lion tamarin, one of the rarest and most endangered creatures on earth and the one animal Gran wanted to see above all others!

I hold my breath as the tamarin stretches its paws, cat-like, and turns its head just enough for me to get a peek at its magnificent mane of bushy golden fur, and a soft ‘Wow!’ escapes my lips. Thankfully the tamarin doesn’t wake. I so want to stroke it, but I won’t risk alarming it, so I take one last look then climb back down the tree as quietly as I can.

Brushing twigs and minute red spiders from

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