A Hello That Took All Night

Tap. Tap, tap. The sound came from the side of the boat, soft as a knuckle on a door. Kit froze with one hand on her hat, which was a big leaf pinned with a fish bone, and one hand on the rail. "Faye," she whispered. "Something's knocking."

Faye didn't look up from the oars. "Mm," she said. "It'll be a mango." She pulled once, slow, and the boat slid forward. A ripe mango bobbed beside them, round and gold, and knocked on the wood again. Kit scooped it up and sniffed. Sweet, warm, jungle sweet.

All along both banks the leaves were as big as doors, and the rain didn't so much fall as take its time, gathering on the tip of one leaf and letting go onto the next. The air smelled of wet moss and ripe mango, with something green underneath. Kit put the mango in the basket with the others and licked her thumb.

She was a river pirate. She had the hat, and the coat that used to be Faye's raincoat, cut down and stitched, and the orange float coat buckled over it, and a map folded into eight squares. Kit pulled the map out of her pocket the way she did about once every ten minutes, and opened it on her knees.

The river was drawn on it in blue pencil, curly as a ribbon. The jungle was green smudges. Past the Deep Bend, where the river widened, there was an X. In the very corner of the map, in small, careful, girl's handwriting, were four words: for whoever comes next.

"Faye," said Kit. "What's buried at the X?" Faye rowed twice before she answered. "I don't know," she said. "I never got there." Kit looked up. "But it's your map." "It's my map," said Faye. "I drew it when I was your size. I got as far as the bend."

Kit looked at the river ahead. Past the mango trees, the banks came close together and the leaves met overhead, and the water went from green to blue to a dark, dark brown. Kit thought, though she didn't say it, that the bend looked like a mouth.

Her stomach went wobbly, so she counted glow-worms. There were seven strung through the branches on the left, each one a tiny lamp somebody had switched on for the evening and forgotten to switch off. It helped a little. Counting always helped a little.

"Real pirates don't get scared of water," said Kit, in a voice that was trying very hard to be a pirate voice. Faye laughed. "Who told you that?" "Nobody. It's just true." "Mm," said Faye. "Well, I've known some very fine pirates with very wobbly hands."

The boat went on. Warm rain ticked on the leaves, and the glow-worms came out properly now, six and seven and twenty and more, strung along the branches like fairy lights for a party the jungle had forgotten to end. The light went dimmer and greener. The bend came closer.

Kit's hands were shaking. She put the map away so nobody would see. "Faye," she said. "What if we turned around?" Faye stopped rowing. The oars dripped. Overhead a leaf let go of its raindrop and it fell with a soft tap on Kit's hat. "I want to," said Faye. "I've wanted to for a very long time. I get to about here and I want to."

Kit stared at her. "You're never scared." "I'm scared of the Deep Bend," said Faye. "I've been scared of it since I was nine years old, and I have never been past it. So." She held up a hand, and it shook, just a little. "Wobbly hands," she said. "That's all it takes to turn a boat around."

Kit looked at the dark water, and at Faye's hand, and something in her chest went quiet. "Or," she said, "it's all it takes to go forward." Faye looked at her for a long moment. Then she nodded, and put both hands back on the oars. "On your count," she said.

Kit licked her thumb again and held it up, the way she'd seen sailors do, and said the rhyme she'd made up when she was small. "One for the wobble." "One for the wobble," said Faye. "Two for the wish." "Two for the wish." "Three for the both of us." Their oars went in together and pulled. The boat slid forward into the shadow, and the leaves closed over them.

It took more than three strokes, of course. It took eleven. Kit counted each one out loud, which made Faye laugh, which made the counting harder. But at the eleventh stroke the leaves overhead opened like a curtain, and they were around.

The bend was wide and still and full of light. The glow-worms hung so thick here that the water held them, a whole second sky of small green lamps upside down under the boat. "Oh," said Kit. "It's not a mouth," said Faye. "It's a mirror."

Kit let out a breath she had been keeping since the mango tree. "See?" she said. "That was nothing." Faye raised one eyebrow. "Your hands are still shaking." "Only the outside," said Kit. "Inside, I'm not scared at all." Which was a lie, but a cheerful one, and Faye let her have it.

The map said to follow the wide water to a leaning mango tree and then watch the left bank. Kit watched so hard that when the tree appeared it seemed to arrive suddenly, like a friend coming out from behind a door. It leaned far out over the water, and its roots held a big flat stone, smooth as a tabletop.

Something moved in the tree. Kit went still. It was an animal, hanging upside down by three arms and holding a mango in the fourth. It had a round, sleepy face, and one eye was open a crack. "It's a sloth," breathed Kit.

"I know him," said Faye. "Or I nearly do." She steered the boat with one oar, gentle as a whisper. "When I was your size, I came to the edge of the bend and I saw him right there, and I shouted hello across the water. I was quite a shouter, in those days." She sounded, Kit thought, a little sad.

"Did he say hello back?" "He did not," said Faye. "Not a word. I always wondered whether he heard me, or whether I made a fool of myself in front of a sloth." She smiled. "I've wondered for a long, long time."

Kit looked at the sloth. The sloth looked, very slowly, back at her. "Maybe he's shy," Kit said. "Maybe he's slow," said Faye. "I read that a sloth takes all night to say hello." "That's silly," said Kit. "Nobody takes all night to say hello."

Kit started to stand up, felt the boat shift under her, and stayed sitting, cupping her hands around her mouth instead. The quiet was big out here, wide as the water, and a small voice would get lost in it. She would have to be loud. Her heart went fast, silly and fast, like a moth in a jar.

She opened her mouth. What came out was a whisper, a very small, thin hello, a hello with no shoes on. Nothing happened. The sloth kept chewing his mango, one slow chew at a time. Kit's ears went hot. "He didn't hear," she muttered, and sat down hard.

"Say it like you mean it," said Faye, and there was nothing teasing in her voice now. So Kit cupped her hands again, and her hands were shaking, and her heart was a moth, and she filled up her lungs with jungle air and shouted, "HELLO!" so loud that the glow-worms seemed to blink.

The word went out over the water and came back off the far bank. Hello ello ello. Then everything went quiet again, and the sloth went on chewing, and Kit sat down and wished, quietly and thoroughly, that she had not done that.

"Give him a minute," said Faye, and shipped the oars. So they waited. The rain ticked on the leaves. The mango smelled warm and sweet in the basket. Kit counted glow-worms, then lost her place, then counted again. Two small bats stitched the air above the water and went away. The moon rose up over the trees and laid a path of light down the river, and they floated in it, waiting.

Kit leaned against Faye's arm. The boat rocked, slow as a hammock. She could feel Faye breathing, and the warm damp air, and the slow, slow quiet of a jungle that had all night to do nothing at all. Her eyes were almost closed.

Then, from the mango tree, so slowly that Kit wasn't sure it was happening: "Hhhh..." Kit's eyes came open. "Ehhh..." Faye's hand found her shoulder. "Llll..." It went on so long that Kit had time to count three glow-worms. "Ohhh," it finished, at last. "Hello."

Kit sat up. "He said it! Faye, he said hello!" Faye didn't answer. She was looking up into the mango tree with one hand at her throat.

"I heard you the first time," said the sloth, one careful word at a time. "Years ago. From the other side of the bend. I've been getting my answer ready ever since." He blinked, one round eye and then the other. "It's a long answer."

Faye put her hands over her mouth. Her eyes were shiny and she was smiling so wide that Kit had to smile too, and the two of them laughed together, quietly, the way you laugh at something you've waited a long time for. The sloth blinked at them, entirely pleased with himself.

Kit took out the map and her little pencil stub. Under for whoever comes next, she wrote in her very best pirate letters: He says hello back. Then she folded the map into eight squares and put it in her pocket, and her hands didn't shake at all.

"I'm Pell," said the sloth, from the tree. "That took me a while, too." "I'm Kit. This is Faye. She's the one who shouted." "I know," said Pell. "I remember." And Faye said hello, and her voice only wobbled a little, and Pell said it back, quick as anything, which for a sloth meant about a minute and a half.

Kit set two mangoes on the flat stone, one for Pell and one for whoever came next. Then Faye pushed off with one oar, and the boat slid out into the moon path. The river was slow and silver all the way home, and the bend was only a bend now, wide and kind and full of small green lights. Faye hummed a song with no words in it. Kit lay back against the mango basket and counted glow-worms, not because her stomach was wobbly, but because she wanted to.

She was asleep before they reached the leaning trees, before the big leaves closed behind them like a door left open a crack. Faye rowed, slow and steady, and the warm rain went from leaf to leaf to leaf. Behind them, at the hello stone, a sloth was already getting his next answer ready.