The Brown River

Polly left the treetops and followed the great river out into the open. From the ground it had looked like a road of water, but from above it was something larger, almost a moving lake. In places it was so wide that the far bank was only a thin green line. The water was warm and brown, thick with mud carried down from mountains far away, and it slid past the forest in slow, heavy curves. Polly's small round glasses fogged in the rising heat.

Then the water broke, and a smooth pink back rolled up into the air. Polly dropped lower. River dolphins live in the Amazon, a soft rose-pink color, far from any sea. They moved in twos and threes, rising to breathe and sinking again without a sound. They have lived in these brown waters so long that their eyes have grown small, because where the water is muddy it is easier to listen than to see.

Where the river met the forest, the trees stood in the water itself. In the wet season the river climbs into the forest and floods it, and fish swim quietly between the trunks. Some of these fish eat fallen fruit, and when they move on they carry the seeds inside them to new ground. Here the river does the work that birds and wind do elsewhere. The forest and the water feed each other.

By evening the river had gone still and silver. Polly drifted down and floated for a while on the warm surface, turning slowly with the current. Somewhere ahead, thousands of miles of water were moving toward a sea she could not see. She let it carry her a little way, then rose, shook the wet from her wings, and flew back toward the trees to sleep.