A Speedeet & Wilar Adventure
Wilar noticed it first.
He was sitting on the big flat rock at the edge of Greenstone Creek, dangling his feet just above the water, when he saw a leaf float past — going the wrong way.
“Speedeet,” he said quietly.
“Mmm.” Speedeet was busy watching a dragonfly.
“The water going backwards.”
The dragonfly flew away. Speedeet sat up straight and looked at the creek.
The water was moving — slowly, but clearly — upstream. Toward the hill instead of away from it.
“That can’t be right,” Speedeet said.
“I know. But look.”
They both looked. A twig. A seed pod. A dead flower. All floating up the creek, slow and steady, as if the hill had decided it wanted things back.
Speedeet jumped down from the rock and crouched at the water’s edge. She put her hand in. Cold. Moving. Definitely moving the wrong way.
“Maybe it rained so heavy up the hill that water pushing down and making the creek back up?” she said.
Wilar shook his head. “It didn’t rain since Tuesday. And even when it does, the creek just rise, not reverse.”
They looked at each other.
“We should go upstream,” Speedeet said.
“I knew you going to say that,” Wilar said. “Every single time something strange happen, you want to go toward it.”
“Because that is where the answer is.”
Wilar stood up slowly. He picked up his bag. “You know what normal children do on a Sunday? They eat and watch cartoons.”
“We going to find something better than cartoons,” Speedeet said, already walking.
The creek wound through thick bush, past a stand of tall Mora trees and around a bend where the roots grew out over the bank like fingers. Speedeet walked in front, watching where she put her feet. Wilar followed, watching everything else — the birds going quiet, the insects pulling back. The forest knew something too.
Around the second bend, they found it.
A beaver dam. Except there were no beavers in Guyana, and this was not really a dam. It was more like a wall — sticks and mud and stones, packed tight across the narrow neck of the creek, with water pooling up behind it and pushing back against the current.
“Animals build this?” Wilar said.
Speedeet walked up to the edge. Wedged between the sticks were smooth grey stones — too round, too regular. And in the middle of the dam, a large flat piece of dark wood, still wet, with marks carved into it.
Not random marks.
Letters.
Speedeet leaned close. The carving was old — the edges soft with moss — but the letters were still clear.
K.A. — 1947
“Somebody built this,” Speedeet breathed. “A long time ago.”
Wilar came up beside her and read the letters. “K.A.,” he said. “Who is K.A.?”
“I don’t know. But they built something strong enough to still be standing nearly eighty years later.” She touched the edge of the carved wood carefully. “And they signed it.”
They stood there in the quiet, the creek pushing up behind them, the forest holding its breath.
“We should tell somebody,” Wilar said. “Miss Desiree. Or the Bartica heritage officer.”
“Yes.” Speedeet nodded. For once, she wasn’t charging ahead. She was thinking. “This is somebody’s work. We shouldn’t touch it more than we already did.”
Wilar looked at her, surprised. “You getting wiser,” he said.
“Don’t push it,” she said. “Race you back to the flat rock.”
She was already gone before he finished laughing.
Next week: Speedeet and Wilar bring Miss Desiree to the creek — and she recognises the initials.
Speedeet & Wilar is published by Hatchling Media. The series celebrates the rivers, forests, and communities of Guyana’s interior through the eyes of two children who never run out of questions.