“Are we ready?” FrannyB said, her voice gravelly and low.

FrannyA’s eyes opened, widened. “Get that devil away from me!” she called out hoarsely, neck cording as she lifted her head.

Pressing the flask to her mouth, FrannyB forced more cane alcohol down her throat. “Relax, you fool. She’s here to help us.”

The ill missionary’s head dropped back to the pillow as she laughed maniacally, belched, then returned to her nonsense mumbling, eyes fixed on the dark conical ceiling, sooty from countless fires. Shafts of sunlight cut through the split bamboo walls, striping her stricken face.

Snapping on a pair of bright blue latex gloves, FrannyB opened a bottle of iodine and swabbed a purple circle on her belly with a piece of cotton from a decaying plastic pouch.

“This is going to hurt, for just a little bit,” FrannyB said.

“Ha ha ha, that’s okay,” FrannyA said, now in deep communion with the ceiling.

A couple of women who had been standing by with pails of water or cloths parted so Beya could walk around to FrannyA’s exposed belly. The old woman got to her knees. FrannyA panted, spilling nonsense words at the ceiling, or at her God, impossible to tell. Beya loosened her string bag and withdrew a fist-sized woven-palm box. A brilliant turquoise-and-yellow frog jumped within, its rubbery fingers probing the interlaced leaves, a black eye bulging now and again at an opening. From another, much smaller leather bag, Beya withdrew a long tobacco-leaf-wrapped package. Ceremoniously, she unwrapped it and arranged a few dozen needle-fine palm spines on FrannyB’s cloth.

The sick missionary turned to Beya, eyes narrowing. “Don’t let her touch me! B!” Fat tears rolled out of her eyes, darkening the thin cotton of the pillow.

FrannyB grabbed her by the chin and turned A’s face toward her own. “You just pay attention to me, okay? You watch my face. Every second.”

“But B—”

“We talked about this. You agreed, remember? You’re not going to leave me.”

“But she’s going to kill me, B. She’s going to—”

“Do I have to strap your head down? Because I will.”

FrannyA’s eyes squeezed shut; her eyeballs danced furiously under the thin skin.

FrannyB nodded at Beya.

The shaman drew hard on a hand-rolled cigar of wild tobacco she’d lit at the fire, forcing the air out with strenuous coughs before filling her lungs again. Clouds of musty smoke fogged the hut, swirling up into the shadows. Barefoot, Beya slowly walked around the prostrate woman, blowing smoke over her body and chanting nonstop, a song with no more than three distinct notes but a clear, syncopated rhythm. Finally she stopped where she’d begun, at FrannyA’s side.

She got to her knees and slid a palm-spine needle into the box, scraping quickly along the shining flesh of the frog. Placing one gnarled brown hand flat against FrannyA’s stomach—FrannyA jumped slightly at the contact but held steady—Beya slipped the needle at an angle into FrannyA’s taut little belly, entering a throbbing vein near her groin. FrannyA stiffened and cried out, thighs quaking under her rough black skirt.