Page 11 of Love in the Wild

Thorne stopped a short distance from the body and crouched, studying him. The creature had different feet than him, and his face held no hair along his jaw and mouth like Thorne. He reached out, his fingers touching the male’s face. His skin appeared smooth, but beneath his fingertips, Thorne felt the bristle of hair, much like his had felt when he’d been younger. Despite his size, perhaps he was not yet grown?

Suddenly the male’s eyes snapped open, and he stared in horror at Thorne.

“Gorilla.” Thorne repeated the word, finding it easier to say than he expected. He tapped his own chest and repeated. “Gorilla.”

“What?” the man said. “No. Not gorilla.”

Not. That word Thorne recognized too.

The male looked him over, as amazed by Thorne as Thorne was by him. Eventually he nodded and tapped his chest.

“Human,” the male said. “Man.”

Thorne stared at him, bewildered as the tongue that he had been born to speak came back to him in hazy flashes.

“Boy,” he said.

B is for boy. You’re a boy, Thorne.A female’s face flashed in his mind, the woman he’d glimpsed in his mind with sunlight-gold hair who smiled.

“G is for gorilla.” Thorne whispered the words, his voice rasping. He had not used his vocal cords like this in years. It almost hurt to speak.

“You speak English?”

“Ing-leesh?” Thorne murmured the familiar word.

“Yes, English,” the male said with excitement, smiling.

“Yes,” Thorne echoed. He pressed his calloused palm on the man’s chest, their eyes locked on each other. Around them the jungle murmured softly, and Thorne smiled as he looked at the man.

“Friend?” Thorne asked. There was something about the man’s face, a kindness and quick intelligence in his eyes that made Thorne trust him.

The man nodded, now solemn. “Friend.”

3

Uganda—Present Day

Eden Matthews grinned at the people nearest her as she got in line with a small group of visitors at Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park. For $600 and a park entry fee, she was about to have the experience of a lifetime, hiking her way deep into the mountainous terrain of the jungle to see the mountain gorillas.

At twenty-four, she was one of the youngest photographers to have made the journey forNational Parkmagazine. For as long as she could remember, she’d been obsessed with conservation. Her parents had taken her to zoos and aquariums when she was a child, and seeing those animals, knowing their natural habitats were being destroyed, had changed her life.

She swung her camera bag over her shoulder and tightened the elastic hair tie holding her blonde hair out of her face. She had been warned more than once about the humidity and the steepness of the climb she was about to make, but it would all be worth it.

“Everyone, stay close, please,” one of the guides called out. “We are going to start the hike now. Stay in pairs if you can, and please watch the forest floor. Beauty may be above you, but danger will be below you.”

“Goodness, that sounds ominous, doesn’t it, Harold?” one of the older women asked her husband.

“He’s probably talking about snakes, Mags.” Harold put an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “They have those snakes here that if they bite you, you can take ten steps before you keel over dead.”

Mags whipped her head up to look at him in shock.

Eden bit her lip, trying not to laugh. It was clear Harold was teasing, but his wife seemed too anxious to realize that.

“We’ll be fine,” Eden told her. “Just watch where you walk. I’m Eden Matthews.”

“Maggie Fitzpatrick. This is my husband, Harold. Are you from the States?”

Eden smiled. “From Arkansas. You?”

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