Omar grabbed my arm. “Come on, Lily, run!”

I froze in place, caught in a paralyzing cycle of fear and hesitation. His body was taut with readiness, trembling with the cool heat of the hunt. In microseconds, we exchanged an understanding of promises kept and broken, my good intentions colliding with our physical realities.

“Stay here. I’ll come back for you.”

The ground shook. Squeals, clicking teeth, barrel-chested grunts filled the air. I gathered myself to run, strapping my gun tighter to my side, but Omar gave me no second chances. He turned and flew, he and the other men out of sight before I’d taken my first step. Still, I ran toward the chaos of noise and confusion, chasing after the snorts and barking, the calls of the men to each other, the stink of the animals, until the sounds became distant, muted. With my machete I sliced my way through nests of vines woven into vast mats that tented the forest floor, pulling my feet out of swamp mud that sucked me down to my shins. I’d long stopped paying attention to what I was stepping on or over or around, ignoring the rules Omar had pounded into me: don’t touch anything, don’t lean on anything, fire ants or worse are everywhere, if you look up into the canopy and see nothing don’t believe your eyes, because a thousand things are looking back at you. Bats are hidden in the leaves. Goliath tarantulas are burrowed in nests in the ground. Scorpions that look like bark are watching you.

This is a battlefield.

His voice in my head: Think, concentrate, wait, look.

Open your third eye to see what is really there.

Be where you are.

I slowed to a fast walk, still determined to catch up with them. Their shouts and calls barely audible now; the funky smell dissipated. I stumbled into a small clearing where thin arrows of light striped across the remains of palm nuts ground up by peccaries in their search for tubers and roots.

Second by second, my breath roaring in my ears, I began to accept that I could not catch up with the men. I was a foolish, arrogant, pregnant teenager wandering through the rain forest alone. I bent over, rested my hands on my knees, panting. Breasts aching, belly bulging, energy gone. I found myself wishing for a compass, then recalled Omar telling me that the iron and other properties in Amazonian trees rendered them worthless. As if the jungle had reached into modernity and had a good laugh. It made a strange kind of sense.

I straightened up, turning in a tight circle in the sweltering green bowl; all around me things slithered, crawled, flew, all in agreement that I was the food. No need to manufacture my own chaos like I did back home; it was all around me. I was up against something I couldn’t lie to or manipulate, something I couldn’t run away from; the way I had survived my entire life.