PRAISE FOR ERICA FERENCIK
“A compelling read.”
—Holly FitzGerald, author of Ruthless River
“A complete tour de force.”
—Hank Phillippi Ryan, national bestselling author of Trust Me
“Absolutely intense! You’ll be on the edge of your seat until the very last word.”
—Crystal King, author of The Chef’s Secret and Feast of Sorrow, long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
“I spent hours balled up and tense, hunched over every word, deliciously creeped out, and finally out for blood.”
—Susan Bernhard, author of Winter Loon
“A thrilling saga full of vibrant, memorable characters [that] electrifies you with the nerve-jangling challenges they face.”
—Joanna Schaffhausen, author of No Mercy
“Raw, relentless, and heart-poundingly real, this book knocked me off my feet like a river in spate.”
—Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author of The Turn of the Key, on The River at Night
“[A] heart-pounding debut novel.”
—Oprah.com on The River at Night
“Terrifyingly real and impossible to put down.”
—Megan Miranda, New York Times bestselling author of Come Find Me, on The River at Night
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For George
A shaman is not a shaman until she brings back her gifts.
—Source unknown
PROLOGUE
It was past midnight, some lonely, small hour of the morning. Naked, I dropped to my knees at the shore. Moonlight glowed on the mist that roamed and drifted just above the glistening black river. I lifted a gourd full of river water and poured it over my hugely pregnant body, not caring what—or who—was watching or crawling toward me from the steaming jungle that loomed behind me. I would have done anything—was doing anything—for relief from the heat that was driving me half out of my mind, crushing me like a giant hand. I took bites of hot, sharp air. Waited for any sort of breeze. Filled the gourd again and again, drenched myself, gasping.
But the moment the water flowed off my flesh, I stippled again with sweat. My breasts glowed golden in the starlight, my nipples like sprung plugs, belly swollen drum tight, unrecognizable as my own. I squeezed my eyes shut—even my eyelids were sweating—trying to picture the beloved face of this child’s father, Omar, out hunting for game so we could survive. All around me night creatures—insects, frogs, birds—hummed, croaked, and chattered, their calls breaking off now and then as they listened for their predators’ approach.
Throwing the calabash aside, I pushed myself to my feet, stumbling up the short walk on hardened dirt to our hut. It had been three weeks since Omar and the rest of the hunters had been gone, weeks in which my belly exploded with growth. I felt the jungle wanting life, life craving more life, and I felt just one more obscene part of it; like the strangler figs choking the trees, this baby was taking me over, tapping every ounce of my strength.
Back in the gloom of the hut, I lifted the mosquito netting that draped our thin mattress, making sure the metal cans the legs of the bed stood in were brimming with kerosene. On the one night I hadn’t filled them, I woke to a five-inch translucent-green scorpion on the back of my hand, its spiral tail quivering and stuttering. My screams brought the Ayacheran women in, rubbing their eyes and laughing at me as they batted it off with a broom. Afterward they wandered back to their huts, slurring in sleepy Spanish, their children scuffing back to their beds.
I crawled onto my back on the thin mat, inhaling the smell of burning cecropia wood that sifted through the grates of our clay oven, picturing the stone-gray scales of half a dozen armored catfish, their long whiskers sizzling in the embers.
Lying so very still, I thought about the delicacy of everything that lives, how this fine mesh suspended over me—so easily torn—was the only thing between me and every vicious flying insect, every creeping beast. I thought of the parts of America I missed: Dairy Queen, the movies, candy bars, Cheerios, malls, scented soap, libraries, fall leaves, snow; things Omar had never seen, had no interest in seeing.
To calm myself, I closed my eyes and conjured a blizzard. In my mind, snow swirled down a mountain pass, sugaring the pines until the winds picked up and piles drifted against houses and barns, painting everything with the same white brush. I cracked open my mouth to taste the cold flakes on my lips and tongue; I swear the thought cooled me. I fell off into this heaven until I felt a presence near my feet.
Something silky slid across my ankles, followed by a heavy, heated weight over my toes. Solid warmth oozed under my calves.
Still half-asleep, I got to my elbows and looked down my body at the wide, trapezoidal head of an anaconda, neon green with flecks of yellow around her cleft mouth. As if suspended by some mad puppet maker, she hovered at eye level, swaying hypnotically. My eyes followed hers back and forth, my head doing this little dip along with her. I didn’t scream because even as I watched, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.
I couldn’t tell if she was real.
She encircled my ankles. Pellet eyes locked on mine, her head made its way up the length of my body as she languidly wreathed herself around my legs and oh dear God—why, I don’t know—but I didn’t feel like struggling. She had me. I could feel her eggs, solid lumps just under the satin of her white belly. The meat of her was soft and blood warm; I couldn’t take my eyes off the grace of her as she coiled her ever thicker body around my knees now, wrapped herself around my thighs, pelvis, groin. Head swinging, unsupported, she opened her mouth. Her vermilion tongue snapped out, forked end flickering. She blew her sultry breath on me and said aahhhhhhhhh.
Each time I exhaled, she cinched tighter; she knew me. It was intimate, sensual; she melted into me, compressed me, made me smaller. I could feel her reading my muscles, mapping the suck and hush of blood in my veins; planning every bone she would snap and crush, the iridescent diamonds of her flesh whisper-dry, and I didn’t care if she kept going, it just felt so good, but one more turn and she would encase my belly.
I need to do something now, I thought. Now. This is my baby; if I can’t care about myself, I must care for this child. Omar’s child.
Her breath singed my face with all the sweetness of decay, as I thought, Come on, Lily, this is happening, do something. I remembered Omar telling me snakes smell their prey with their tongue; hers snapped in and out, ever faster, sniffing my fecundity. My ripeness seemed to enrage her. Quickly she looped herself once more around my belly, squeezing tight as if to pop me like a balloon, head raised in ecstasy.
* * *
I woke the next morning—the first day of the fourth week Omar had been gone—to the shrieks of macaws, their cries so heart-wrenching it felt like the end of the world every single day. Of course it had all been a dream; still, I couldn’t explain why my body ached, or the bruises that throbbed on my thighs. From the doorway of our hut I watched a vulture swing up and down over the river, a deathly black cutout against the pale blue sky.
I was beginning to give up.
And then I heard his voice.
The relief was chemical; his voice among the others down by the boats made something break and re-form in my chest. I was desperate to run to the shore, but
dizziness overwhelmed me and I had to sit and wait for it to pass.
He crashed into the hut, arms and chest still streaked with mud and blood from the hunt. He threw his arms around me and pulled me to my feet, stroking my hair, crying. Why was he crying?
“Lily, you’re alive. Thank God, thank God,” he sobbed. “Are you all right? Tell me you are, tell me the baby’s okay.” His wide, strong hands read my belly.
Stunned with relief, I couldn’t speak as parts of myself glued back together with the knowledge he was alive.
“I killed an anaconda last night,” he said. “I had to. He was hunting me.”
His eyes searched my face like there was something I should know about this.
“Lily, they mate for life. They come after your mate when you kill theirs. They hold grudges. It’s a spirit thing, they travel in other worlds.”
I told him about her crushing weight, her breathtaking power, the bright green scales hissing across my flesh, the wonder and terror of her visit. He listened closely, nodding, serious, his handsome face a map of exhaustion and relief. As the words tumbled out of my mouth, I felt myself giving in; believing, finally, that everything in this place was magical and connected, that nothing here was happenstance. That my child’s life depended on opening my eyes and heart to this new world.
ONE
COCHABAMBA, BOLIVIA
– MARCH 2010 –
“What do you mean, you don’t know how to steal?” I asked my two new besties who sat next to me on the hard plastic seat of the ancient, shock-less bus.
For me, thieving was a life skill, like lying my way out of a jam, or taking off at the first sign of trouble. Most nineteen-year-olds bum around Europe a month or two, then scoot back home to college like good boys and girls. Well, fuck that. I was a half-starved, high-strung wild child who lived out of a backpack, homeless since I was thirteen, obsessed with Spanish-speaking countries, animals, and the jungle. I was also a desperately lonely, cocky-yet-petrified infant. In the space of a minute I could drown in self-pity for what I thought I’d missed—a real family—then toss that aside to satisfy a rabid curiosity for the world and everything in it. That second part may have been what saved me in the end.
On my right, seventeen-year-old Britta from Austria gazed out the open window, taciturn, dreamy, dark hair blowing back from her pale face. “I stole something once,” she said. “Mints. From a restaurant.”
Molly, a tall, talky American from Seattle, grinned and leaned in to her with a bony shoulder. “News flash: those are free.” A ghost of a pedicure clung to her dusty feet in beat-up sandals, just flecks of red polish on every other toenail.
Britta shrugged. “I took more than one.”
Molly and I howled with laughter. “Mint stealer! They’re gonna lock you up, girl.”
Below us, the narrow one-way street buzzed with lawless vitality and frenetic energy. Small European cars blew past stop signs with only a warning honk, pausing barely long enough for a withered Bolivian woman to yank a stubborn llama across the cobblestones. Young men on motorcycles cut between cars, even zoomed across sidewalks. These weren’t the downtown Boston streets I knew that zipped up at night with crusty Brahmin efficiency; this was raw, stinky chaos, life out loud with all its mess, sprawl, and noise, and I couldn’t get enough of it.
We three groaned each time we slammed into a pothole, tailbones bruised and aching. Laughing with fear and exhilaration, we clung to the windowsills, the seats in front of us, or each other as the cigar-chomping driver took every turn too hard and too fast. Pop music blared from the bus’s tinny speakers. Diesel gassed us through the open windows. Chickens squawked and scattered across the road as we blasted by.
We bulleted around one last corner, the bus practically coasting on its left side wheels as we turned onto a flagstone courtyard. I relished the feel of my switchblade cool against my thigh, nestled in the long pockets of my baggy shorts, my beloved backpack clutched under one bony arm. With a last belch of black smoke, the bus ground to a stop near a small farmacia tucked between rows of vegetable stands.
“This is it,” I said, jumping to my feet. “Let’s go.”
“Okay, chiquita,” Molly said, tumbling out her side of the seat. “We’re going, we’re going.”
We squinted into the afternoon sun’s last rays as they sliced across the plaza, the towers of a looming seventeenth-century church casting cold black shadows across us. We wove our way past shopkeepers hawking jewelry, clothing, blankets, and cheap knickknacks, their stores squeezed into impossibly thin corridors between crumbling stone buildings. The usual stew of fear, pride, and excitement that preceded a heist—big or small—churned in my stomach. Everywhere the sweetish whiff of rotting vegetables mixed with a low note of sizzling meat, a smell that—those days—only ratcheted up the pain in my gut.
Britta pulled up short at a stall where a young girl was flipping fried corn cakes filled with melting cheese. She scouted around in her bag for some change.
“Come on, Brit,” I said. “Later.” Never rob a store on a full stomach: seriously, did I really need to explain this?
“But I’m starving.”
“Not now.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Just because you never eat.”
I tugged the straps of my backpack tighter across my shoulders. Pitiful as the contents were, I always had food, whether stolen or bought. Ziplock bags of dusty peanuts, half-melted candy bars, sad old apples, stale M&M’s, anything I could get my hands on. The truth was, I was always hungry; it was just a matter of degree. Growing up with seven other foster kids had me well acquainted with a chronic emptiness in my gut.
I glanced around nervously. “We’ll get something after, okay?” As used to copping things as I was, it had only just occurred to me that the punishment here might be a lot less lenient than in the States. Would it be actual jail time? Hard labor? And how in fuck would I get myself out with barely a boliviano to my name?
Grumbling, Britta zipped her sweatshirt to her chin with a shiver and joined Molly and me as we huddled outside the pharmacy. “So, Molly, you’ve stolen things before?” she asked.
Molly gave me a sly look. “Of course.”
“What’s the biggest thing you’ve ever stolen?”
“A boyfriend.”
“Good to know.” Britta laughed, then turned to me. “Lily? Biggest thing?”
“As in size? Or worth?”
“Size.”
“A turkey. For Thanksgiving.”
“Did you get caught?”
“Nope.”
Molly whistled, impressed, but back on task as she glanced apprehensively at the drugstore. “So, how is this going to go—?”
“We go in,” I said. “We’re super friendly. Smile and say hola. You know that much Spanish, right?” I pulled out a beat-up map from my backpack and handed it to Molly. “Just do what we talked about. We’ll be fine.”
Molly’s head knocked into a little cowbell that hung over the door, announcing our entrance more than I would have liked. She giggled as she approached a solemn-faced woman who slouched behind a cash register staring out a narrow lead-paned window. Molly and Britta stood near her to block her view of me. I cased the aisles quickly: the place was dirty, everything looked old and beat. Pawed-over packets of Band-Aids, dusty bottles of American shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant. We honestly could have used all of it, but I had to concentrate on what we came for. Even before they had unfolded the map and began to ask the proprietor in stumbling Spanish the best way to get to La Paz by bus, I had lifted a roll of rubbers, three boxes of tampons, three small bags of rough-cut tobacco, and rolling papers.
“Hey, Molly,” I called out. This was the signal that I was done, and they could step apart. The woman peered down at me as I picked through some dry goods. “You wanted cornmeal, right, Molls?” The absolute cheapest thing in the store, at twenty-five centavos a half kilo.
“Sure, yeah.”
I grabbed a small package a
nd took it to the counter. A glass bowl of wrapped mints sat near the old-fashioned crank register. I took three and laid them next to the cornmeal. “How much?” I asked in Spanish, counting out a few coins.
“The mints?” she said with a gap-toothed smile. “Those are free.”
Molly burst out laughing and couldn’t stop. Britta fought to contain herself and was unsuccessful, turning crimson as she folded the map. The woman’s smile soured as she watched us, folding her arms across her sparrow chest. She looked me dead in the eye and said, “Show me what is in your backpack.”
“Why?”
Her face grew stone-hard. “My son is outside. He’s a big man. He’ll open it for me.”
Feigning offense, I counted out twenty-five centavos and stuffed the cornmeal in my bag. “Buenos días, señora.”
I took a big stride toward the door, but she cut me off and ran past us into the square, shouting, “Diego! Diego! They robbed me, Diego!” We sprinted past her toward the bus that had just fired up its engine, leaping aboard as it lurched into motion. In seconds, the square receded behind us and we were climbing the steep hills back to the city center.
* * *
Screaming and laughing, high from our theft, we burst into the Hostel Versailles Cochabamba—a hilariously named fleabag where we all worked for room and board—and raced down to the basement, our roach-infested “staff apartment,” which was just a moldy bunk room the size of a jail cell, complete with cold, always-damp cement walls. I dumped the contents of my backpack onto a broken-down couch squeezed between the cots.
All the stolen goodies tumbled out, along with a beat-up copy of a book I’d lifted from my last group home in Boston. Reddening, I reached for it, but Molly grabbed the book and turned it over, while Britta nabbed a pouch of tobacco and rolling papers and bolted up the stairs.
“Charlotte’s Web?” Molly said, examining me. “I remember this book from when I was a kid. Can’t remember reading much since, if you want to know the truth.”
Into the Jungle Page 1