63
" I don’t remember much after that. It was the smoke, I think. I know there wasn’t anyone in the huts.”
“Why not?” said Finn fiercely. “They promised they’d look after you.”
“There was a wedding--an important one. They all went. And Minty, she went somewhere, too,” said Maia. “She’s left me.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no? She wasn’t there--she didn’t come back from her day off.”
“Maybe. But she won’t have left you. That isn’t what will have happened. What about the others?”
“They escaped. I saw the river ambulance take them away, but I hid. I couldn’t bear to be with them anymore. They were all quarreling and screaming. So I hid in the trees, I didn’t notice my leg at first, but then…” She shook her head. “But it doesn’t matter, Finn, none of it matters, because you came back. "
― Eva Ibbotson , Journey to the River Sea
67
" Then in an instant the worst happened. The boy gave a wild shout, a shout of pure rage. He put down the paddle, threw himself on top of her, pressing her down against the floorboards of the boat, and kept her there pinioned. She felt his breath on her cheek.
Then he released her and pointed. They had passed underneath a wicked-looking branch with spikes the size of knives. If he hadn’t forced her down, Maia would have been knocked unconscious or even blinded. As he clambered back and picked up the paddle, he was still muttering furiously in his own language and glaring at her. Without deciphering a single word, she knew he was scolding her for her carelessness, trying to explain that one had to be alert the whole time in the jungle.
“Idiota!” he said finally, and though Senhor and Senhora Olvidares in the phrase book had not used the word, Maia understood it well enough.
She was very careful after that, keeping a proper lookout, but nothing could quite quell her delight in the beauty she saw about her. It was as though she was taking the journey she had imagined on top of the library ladder the day she heard about her new
life. "
― Eva Ibbotson , Journey to the River Sea
69
" She trusted Finn completely. If he said a pool was safe to swim in, she dived in without a second thought, and the dreaded piranha fish did not tear at her flesh, nor did a caiman come at her with snapping jaws. If he told her a mushroom was safe to eat, she ate it.
“My father had this thing he used to say to me,” she told Finn. “It was in Latin. Carpe diem. ‘Seize the day.’ Get the best out of it, take hold of it and live in it as hard as you can.” She pushed back her hair. “After he died, and my mother, I couldn’t do it too well. There never seemed to be a day I wanted to seize all that much. But here…”
“Yes, some places are right for you. Your mother was a singer, wasn’t she?”
“Yes. But she never made a fuss about it. I never remember her saving her voice for the performance or gargling with eggs and all that stuff. She’d just sing--in the house, in the garden, anywhere.”
“Everyone says you ought to get your voice trained,” he said, and frowned because if she had a future as a singer, perhaps she shouldn’t be taking off into the unknown.
She shook her head. “I’m all right like this.”
“But won’t you miss music?”
“There’s always music. You just have to open your mouth. "
― Eva Ibbotson , Journey to the River Sea
72
" She was very careful after that, keeping a proper lookout, but nothing could quite quell her delight in the beauty she saw about her. It was as though she was taking the journey she had imagined on top of the library ladder the day she heard about her new
life.
Then the stream became wider, the current stronger, and she caught a glimpse of low, color-washed houses and heard a dog bark.
“Manaus,” he said. He drew up to the bank and helped her out. She took out her purse, but he wouldn’t take her money, nor would he listen to her thanks. “Teatra Amazonas,” he said, pointing straight ahead.
He would go no farther toward civilization.
The boy watched her as she ran off. She looked back once and waved, but he had already turned the boat.
He poled swiftly back through the maze of waterways. When he reached the place where he had found Maia, he smiled and half shook his head. Then he set the canoe hard at the curtain of green and vanished into his secret world. "
― Eva Ibbotson , Journey to the River Sea
78
" I would let her…have adventures. I would let her…choose her path. It would be hard…it was hard…but I would do it. Oh, not completely, of course. Some things have to go on. Cleaning one’s teeth, arithmetic. But Maia fell in love with the Amazon. It happens. The place was for her--and the people. Of course there was some danger, but there is danger everywhere. Two years ago, in this school, there was an outbreak of typhus, and three girls died. Children are knocked down and killed by horses every week, here in these streets--” She broke off, gathering her thoughts. “When she was traveling and exploring…and finding her songs, Maia wasn’t just happy, she was…herself. I think something broke in Maia when her parents died, and out there it was healed. Perhaps I’m mad--and the professor, too--but I think children must lead big lives…if it is in them to do so. And it is in Maia. "
― Eva Ibbotson , Journey to the River Sea
79
" You know you said you used to wake up every morning in the lagoon when your father was alive and think, ‘Here I am, where I want to be.’ Well, that’s how I feel when I wake up on the Arabella.”
Maia did not care whether they found the Xanti or not. It was not about arriving for her, it was about the journey. Even the sadness about Minty deserting her had gone.
For Finn, who had almost kidnapped her, there were moments of anxiety. He should have told someone that Maia was safe, instead of taking her away without a word, but gradually he stopped worrying and gave himself up to the journey.
And if Maia knew deep down that she would not be allowed to sail away forever up the rivers of the Amazon, she managed to forget it. She sang as she worked and when Finn whistled “Blow the Wind Southerly,” she smiled, because she had been wrong to be cross with the wind. The wind had brought him back, and she was content.
And when Finn complained at the end of a day that they had not come very far, she said, “What does it matter? We’ve got all the time in the world.”
Which is not always a clever thing to say. "
― Eva Ibbotson , Journey to the River Sea
80
" Bernard was afraid of loud voices. He was afraid of the dark. He was afraid of his brother, Dudley, who tried to make a man of him, and he was afraid of his sister, Joan, who threw him in the lake and held his head under the water to make him swim. When Barnard spoke to the maids, he did it quietly and he said “please” and “thank you”--and sometimes, though he was a boy and a Taverner, he cried.
His father, of course, was desperate. A boy like Bernard had never happened in his family before. He sent him away to the toughest school he could find, but though the teachers caned him even more than his father had done, and the boys did interesting things to him like squeezing lemon juice into his eyes and piercing the soles of his feet with compass needles, it seemed to make no difference. Bernard went on being quiet, and he went on being terrified of his family, and he went on saying “please” and “thank you” to the maids.
But there were some things Bernard was not afraid of. He was not afraid of spiders--when the servants screamed because there was a large one in the bath, it was to Bernard they went, and he would put a glass over it and let it out in the garden, admiring its furry legs and complicated eyes. He was not afraid of the adders that hissed on the moor. He liked the adders with their zigzag markings and flickering tongues. Bernard did not mind the rats in the cellars and he did not mind the horses. He minded the people on the horses--his sister, Joan, with her braying voice and his brother, Dudley, with his whip--but if he met the horses quietly in a field he got on well enough with them. "
― Eva Ibbotson , Journey to the River Sea