Beneath a Southern Sky Read Online Free PDF Page A

couldn’t continue to wait indefinitely, doing nothing at all. Perhaps she had already waited too long. Yet even if she could convince Anazu or his nephews to take her to San José, she worried that there was nothing she could do when she got there.
    She castigated herself for not learning the Timoné language more fluently. During the year before they arrived, she and Nate had studied the Castilian Spanish spoken in most of Colombia, but they were not prepared for how different the Indian dialect of the Timoné was. She had depended too much on Nathan to communicate in the primitive tongue that was a peculiar mix of Spanish and Portuguese with a smattering of Swahili—from the African slaves brought to Colombia centuries before, they’d been told. Nate was beginning to speak the language quite passably and was teaching English to Tados and Quimico, his young protégés. But Daria still struggled. She had taught the children a few English words. They were quick and eager students. But now she knew she should have concentrated more on learning Timoné from them.
    As she walked through the village, searching again for Anazu, such aimless ramblings filled her thoughts, veiling the growing knowledge that something terrible had happened to her husband.
    Later that morning, Dana went through the motions of her Bible lessons. She tried not to think that this might be her last time with these children, perhaps forever. But when she found a round mahogany face and two brown beads of eyes staring up at her after class, her throat tightened. The young boy clutched something behind his back.
    “ Hollio , Tommi.” It was a shortened version of his given name, which was, for her, unpronounceable. She had bestowed the nickname on him, and it had stuck. Even his mother now sometimes called him “Tommi.”
    She knelt down in the soft dirt beside him. “What have you got there?”
    The broad grin he gave her made narrow slits of his dark eyes. “I give,” he said in English, holding out a greenish banana. He thrust the sweet-smelling fruit at her. “Teacher,” he said simply.
    She held the banana to her nose and sniffed it appreciatively. “Thank you, Tommi. Just the way I like them. Green.” Always the teacher, she pointed to the green stem and repeated her comments in her broken Timoné.
    “Green,” Tommi repeated, still grinning. Then he ran off to join the other children for a splash in the cool stream. Watching them, Daria fought back tears. These children had become such a part of her life, giving her so much more than she could offer them. Their sweet kindnesses, simple trust. Their love.
    That afternoon Anazu began to ready the small boat that his nephews would carry on their heads through the rain forest until they reached the first entry into the Rio Guaviare.
    “Thank you, Lord,” Daria whispered as she watched the strong, sun-burnished backs of Anazu’s nephews, Motsu and Javier, loading provisions into the boat.
    She walked back through the village and climbed the stairs to sit on the stoop. The afternoon rains had ceased, and now the sun coaxed vapors of steam from the damp forest floor. Daria sat there, listening to the children playing across the stream, and yet a panic began to wrap its paralyzing tendrils around her. A small, still-sane part of her brain told her that she must go to San José del Guaviare exactly as she’d been instructed. If the search didn’t turn up something right away, she knew they would probably offer to fly her out of Colombia and back to the States. But she couldn’t bear to think of leaving Nathan behind.
    The visceral part of her brain told her to get up and run. Run down the tangled path where she had seen her husband’s broad back disappear almost three weeks ago. Run and search every green, wet inch of the godforsaken forest that had taken him away from her. Search until she found him and brought him home—home to Timoné.
    But she stayed on the stoop late into the