Outside, the crickets slowed their chirping. The room slipped into deeper shadow.
“Pilar,” he said, “I have to reach a phone. Now. It could already be too late.”
She shook her head. “It’s their world, Jake, not ours.”
“People are going to die if I don’t. Thousands of people.”
She gazed at him, her eyes flickering over his face as if trying to decide if he was telling the truth or simply raving. Who could blame her? What kind of shift did it take for her to believe the words of a man who’d appeared from the jungle naked and half-dead, was growing in front of her eyes, and suddenly gibbering about people dying?
“My room is next to yours,” she said. “Sometimes in your sleep you moan. At first I thought it was pain from the growing, but you didn’t seem to be uncomfortable when you were awake. Now I think maybe the pain comes from a burden you’re carrying. What people are going to die? How? Why?”
Jake rubbed the face of his watch. He sat on the cot, lowering himself carefully from the height of his new, longer legs. She settled beside him, her posture as prim as a schoolmarm’s. He couldn’t see her face clearly in the growing darkness.
“I came here to negotiate a trade with a tribe called the Tabna for a mineral called benesha,” he said, wondering how much to tell her, what details to leave in, and what to leave out.
He wanted to tell her everything—how he’d told Mawgis the story of why he was small, the story he believed in his heart even though his mind said it wasn’t possible, there had to be some organic reason he hadn’t grown, some faulty wiring in his genes that no one could identify. He wanted to tell her about the benesha travel to the president’s bedroom and the village of the dead. About Mawgis’s seeming glee over the impending deaths of tens of thousands, and the reason Mawgis had told him the truth. What Jake believed was the truth.
Really, what proof did he have? Just Mawgis’s word, and what was that worth? That and his own gut feeling that benesha was a poison and people were going to die. What it came down to was that he trusted his gut.
He stuck to the facts with Pilar, explaining how the protein-enhancing properties of benesha had been discovered and what it could do to end hunger. He told her Mawgis had said it was a slow poison, and that everyone who ate an animal fed with benesha would die. He said he believed Mawgis, but even if it wasn’t true, people in authority had to be told so it could be checked.
She sat listening, her eyes flickering back and forth between his eyes and his mouth, listening, not interrupting once with a question. She stayed quiet when he finished. He could see she had questions, though—see it in the way her lips pulled into a line, in how her eyes slid away from him but didn’t focus on anything new. He waited for her to speak.
“How long were you with the Tabna?” she asked.
Surprised, he blinked. Of all the things she could have asked, why that? “We arrived at night. Four days after that. I walked through the forest from their camp to here.”
While he’d been talking, she’d leaned toward him, concentrating, interested. Now she pulled back.
“Three years ago,” she said, “there were no Tabna in the forest.”
He waved off the notion with his hand. “They were here. They stayed hidden.”
Outside, someone lit a fire. The sudden light focused Pilar’s features into sharp planes. The smell of smoke drifted into the room.
“I know the story of how the Salesian missionaries found this supposedly unknown tribe,” she said. “It’s not true. The entire Amazon Basin isn’t big enough to hide a tribe of even thirty people or whatever small number they’re supposed to have. Most of the tribes here are nomadic. They get around and know of every other group in the area. The Lalunta swear there were no Tabna before they were ‘discovered.’ I believe them.”
“No,” Jake said. “There was another tribe discovered not all that long ago. Two hundred people that no one knew about. There’re probably groups still out there hidden in the jungle.”
“Anglo arrogance,” Pilar said. “Just because white people didn’t know about that tribe doesn’t mean the locals weren’t aware of them. The Lalunta knew all about the ‘unknown’ tribe. They laughed and laughed with other neighboring groups about the ‘discovery.’”
“People don’t appear out of thin air.”
Pilar stood and paced the small room, her arms wrapped tightly across her chest. “The Lalunta have a whole array of spirits both good and bad, but the Tabna—they regard the Tabna as evil beyond evil. If Naheyo knew you’d been staying with them, I doubt she’d do the exorcism.” She rubbed her hand across her mouth. “In any event, Naheyo and the Helpers aren’t going to let you leave until your demon is driven out. Their beliefs are real to them, and as I said, it’s their world, not ours. They set the rules.” She stopped and turned toward him. Her voice dropped low. “Jake, this is bad.”
His mouth felt like he’d been chewing dirt.
More logs must have been thrown on the fire outside. Light filled the room like a sudden explosion. A couple of Helpers passed by, talking. Jake and Pilar waited until the women were gone.
“I’ll tell you something else about the Tabna,” Pilar said. “They’re supposed to be nomadic, right? They stayed hidden all those years because they kept moving all the time? But while Father Canas stayed with them, the Tabna never strayed from where they’d been found. The Salesians took their position with GPS. I’m willing to bet that’s how you found them yourselves, with GPS coordinates. If they’re nomadic, how could you have known where they were?”
“The people at FUNAI arranged the visit,” Jake said. “The Tabna, knowing we were coming, were in a prearranged spot at a prearranged time.”
“Maybe,” she said, but he could tell she didn’t believe it. He was beginning to wonder if he did.
“How do you know so much about all this?” he asked. She was standing in front of the cot, and he was seated. He hardly had to look up at all to see her face. It was confusing still, this vantage point, but he wouldn’t want to give it up.
“Everybody knows everything out here,” she said. “The forest is an insular world. Gossip, information, is valuable coin. There are precious few secrets.”
He nodded. It wasn’t only the forest where that was true.
“If what you’re saying about the Tabna is right,” he said, “that’s all the more reason to help me reach the people who can stop benesha meat from being eaten. You have to help me get to a phone.”
The firelight died down, leaving Pilar and the room in shadow. “I’m trying to help you, Jake. Naheyo won’t let you leave as long as she thinks you’re a threat.”
“I don’t think she can stop me.”
His ankle felt almost healed. Probably was healed, given the amount of time he’d actually been in the compound—the stiffness and soreness more from lack of use than the sprain. It would take time, but he could walk to Catalous on his own if he had to. He stared at Pilar a long moment, gauging whether she’d help him leave the camp. She stood with her hands on her hips. She tilted her head and her eyes shifted to the small window, toward the ground space beyond the room’s walls, where the women were. She wouldn’t go against Naheyo.
Her gaze came back to him. “This is the Amazon,” she said, her voice so low he could barely hear her, “not Eden, and not America. The rules you live by don’t apply. Infanticide is common here. Indians and Anglos murder each other all the time, and neither side thinks much about it. I told you, the Lalunta don’t consider you human. You try to leave before Naheyo is willing to let you go, and she’ll kill you like she would any other dangerous beast. I wouldn’t be able to stop her.”
Her voice wavered just the slightest bit. Someone not paying close attention wouldn’t have noticed, but Jake did. She was frightened. He was frightened himself.
“If I let her do what she wants, can you guarantee I’ll be helped to reach a phone?”
Pilar exhaled, and Jake realized she’
d been holding her breath. “Naheyo says you can leave as soon as your demon is gone. She knows you want to reach a phone. She’s promised to give you a fast paddler for your canoe. She’s never broken her word.”
His breath caught in his throat. Is this what it came down to, the fate of hundreds, maybe thousands of people resting on the whim of a thirteen-year-old girl? Jake toyed with his watch. “Is there a ceremony of some sort?”
She sat down next to him again, the sides of their legs almost touching. “Naheyo will give you some drugs. She’ll call the good spirits to you and ask for their help in driving out the demon. You’ll do the same. You’ll get a sign about what to do next, how to get rid of the demon.”
“And if it can’t be driven off?”
“Naheyo rarely fails at anything.”
“Lucky for me.” Sweat pooled under his armpits. “When does she want to do this?”
“Tomorrow morning. Tonight you need to be properly prepared, your soul nourished and made strong for the battle.”
Jake sighed, nervous and resigned. “What do I have to do? Eat ritual food? Be scourged with nettles?”
She looked at him a long moment, her eyes narrowing. “Nothing so bad as nettles,” she said, and started toward the doorway.
Nine
Pilar returned carrying two beat-up-looking plastic tumblers—one green, one orange—the kind his family had used on picnics when he was young. Whatever was in them smelled like wet fur.
“You’re supposed to drink this,” she said. “It’s a natural, light sedative. It’ll help you relax and then sleep.”
He took the cup she offered, reaching out two hands, still half-surprised that with his new, larger hands he needed only one. Small twigs and leaves floated in an oily black brew. The wet fur smell grew stronger with the cup closer to his face, and he wrinkled his nose.
“Try it,” she said. “It’s good.”
He shot her a skeptical eye, but raised the cup to his lips and tasted. It wasn’t bad—lukewarm, and milder and more floral than its look and smell had made him expect. Pilar sipped at her own drink. She’d sat on the cot beside him again, and it struck him that she could have sat in the faded blue chair that was still in the room. She could have kept some distance if she’d wanted.
Outside the compound, in what Jake guessed was the courtyard beyond the door at the end of the hallway, the women were singing, their voices low pitched and sweet, every voice holding the same note. He realized that what he’d thought drumming was in fact the sound of many feet slapping the ground in unison.
“Are they singing for us?”
“For you,” Pilar said. “They’re calling the helpful spirits, telling them that tomorrow Naheyo will ask them to drive out the demon that has possessed the pale foreigner. They have to sing extra hard since you’re not quite human and the spirits might be reluctant to help. They’ll probably sing all night.”
“Do you believe in this”—Jake turned up his palms, at a loss for a polite word—“hocus-pocus?”
Pilar shrugged. She didn’t seem to take offense. “I’m a scientist. I’m supposed to be non-judgmental about cultural differences.”
“You’re human,” he said. “So you have an opinion anyway.”
Singing voices wove through the small silence. Pilar smoothed her hair away from her face and sighed.
“There are spirits here,” she said. “And magic is real.”
He stared at her.
“You know it too, Jake.” She looked hard into his eyes. “You’ve seen things. Say the truth, do you believe Mawgis is a man or something else? How can you explain your growth, except by magic?”
He opened his mouth to answer, then shut it. He’d been afraid to tell her all that had happened in the Tabna camp, afraid she wouldn’t believe him, and here she was talking about magic like it was one of the physical laws of nature. Then again, with Pilar beside him, the women singing outside, the wood-and-flower night scents of the forest floating in the room, and the brew providing its own peace—magic seemed as good an answer as anything else.
Except it was “magic” that drove the exorcism he faced in the morning—and he didn’t believe in demons. He drank some more of the brew. He thought maybe he should gulp it down in hope of falling unconscious. He’d grown tired of thinking. Of plots and plans. Whatever was in the brew was working. He found his mind too lazy to worry. His body felt heavy. He slumped back against the wall.
“How’d you wind up here?” he asked, unwilling to let sleep have him just yet.
Pilar seemed relaxed, too. She too slouched against the wall, her arm resting across his leg. Jake liked the casualness of it. How they’d slipped into a sort of “we’re in this together” mindset. How maybe that could turn into something more.
“Two years ago,” she said, “I came on a research mission with another anthropologist, a man. We stayed a year with the Lalunta. I learned their language. I seem to have a facility for languages. And the women appreciated that I’d eat monkey brains and grubs without flinching—a good trick for a middle-class, all-American, white-bread girl like me. Mike—Dr. Samuelson—was more squeamish.”
“White-bread?” Dark-skinned and dark-haired, with round brown, almost-black eyes, she looked anything but that.
“As white as they come,” she said. “I’m fourth-generation American. I have a sister named Heather, a brother named Brent, and another named Taylor. We watched American TV, not the Spanish channels. We sang ‘Baby Beluga’ and ‘The Streets of Laredo’ as kids, not corrido songs. I’m no more Mexican than you are of whatever culture your ancestors came from.”
He knew what she meant. “Euro-trash, my mother calls our forbearers. A mix of poor and working-class people from six or seven countries who fled famines and wars or chased dreams to America. I guess you could call us mutts.”
She smiled at that.
“I chose my work because I felt I’d lost my heritage,” she said. “If I couldn’t have it myself, at least I could try to help others preserve their cultures for themselves.” She took another swallow of the oily brew. “Naheyo took a liking to me and asked me to come back alone. She said if I came again, I could come to the compound—we’d been in the main village before—and she would teach me to be human. For a researcher, the opportunity was too precious to turn down. It meant the women would share their entire culture with me, not just the parts they wanted the outside world to see. I was able to get a grant based on the uniqueness of the research, and here I am.”
His eyelids felt heavy. He tried to hold back from falling asleep. “If the Lalunta don’t want their entire culture exposed, aren’t you betraying their trust by doing your job?”
Pilar nodded slowly. “I’ve thought about that. Of course I’m recording everything. I keep notebooks and I have a camera. When I go home, I’ll lecture and write a book.”
“It is a betrayal, then,” Jake said.
She set her now-empty cup on the floor. “Cultures are fluid. All cultures eventually die or are so absorbed into another that they might as well be dead. If I don’t record everything accurately, knowledge of Lalunta life as it exists now will be lost forever. Fifty, a hundred years from now, the children’s children of these women will be able to see what I recorded here and know their true past. I think that’s worth doing. They do too, or they wouldn’t have invited me here.”
The voices of the women grew louder, coming toward the window.
“They’ll be singing out there for a while,” she said. “These are songs your companion is supposed to sing. I haven’t learned them, so they’re doing it for me. They’re supposed to help you sleep.”
They weren’t what he would have called lullabies—more like spirituals, with intricate, soaring tunes. Still, they did their job. Pilar slid down next to him, drowsy, as he was, her back against him. The cot was narrow. He lifted his arm to put it around her and drew it back, unsure. And then did drape his arm over her, his hand gently resting on her belly. She leaned
into him, a soft comfort on a hard night.
Parrots squawked in stands of banana trees just beyond the cane field. Monkeys with white and brown fur and completely black Yoda faces clambered through the branches of a tall Brazil nut tree. Purple orchids burst through the fat green leaves of a gray-barked tree like tethered birds aching to take flight. Jake saw and heard all this in a flash, as though he had been blind and deaf to the forest and only now saw it as it was, not cacophony but opera: spectacle, music, and beauty. Leftover effects from last night’s oily drink, he figured, and was glad of it—a sense of wonder to damp down the fear.
The Helpers stood in a horseshoe in the field, each clutching a walking stick much like the one Naheyo had given him. Ten Helpers, like exotic flowers themselves, wrapped in capes of monkey fur or feathers in neon colors—blues, greens, yellows, oranges, and scarlet. The colors appeared brighter in the wet, gray morning, the way fog made headlights glow.
Naheyo sat apart, her back to them, waiting while Pilar and Jake crossed the open ground between the compound and the field. Naheyo had insisted he not use the cane. He leaned lightly against Pilar’s shoulder, still favoring his ankle, though he thought maybe it was from habit now more than need. The calm the brew had provided had fled, and his stomach knotted from nerves and hunger. The shaman had been adamant that he not eat. Probably to help the drugs work quickly, but she might have had other ideas—notions of providing an empty vessel for the good spirits to enter for the fight, or maybe of starving out the demon.
Maybe it was nothing like that at all. Naheyo had her own reasons for what she did—reasons too different from his own way of thinking to make sense to him.
The air felt squeezed from his lungs as they passed the first Helper and entered into the horseshoe. He was grateful Pilar would interpret, and stay at his side. He wanted to take her hand—the feel and warmth of her skin a promise that everything would be all right, that he’d get out of there and be able to warn people about benesha. He rubbed his hand over the face of his watch, for luck.
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