Fat Carlos shot the tip of Dutchie’s left ear off. He dropped to his knees, clutching his head and howling, blood spurting through his fingers. Carlos holstered his gun and said, “My apologies for the domestic disturbance. Men! Get him cleaned up. We’re going to see the witch.”

Carlos, Dutchie, and their posse at my heels, I tried to shine to Beya as I walked past the huts, along the manioc fields, past the barn, all the time warning her, pleading with her to listen. There was no response.

The men paused at the entrance to the Anaconda Path, grumbling about entering the jungle or really just where I was taking them like: Is this a setup? Dutchie, bleeding through his bandages, leaned on his gun, rage and sorrow plain on his ravaged face. I stole those few seconds as they debated, closed my eyes and sent her a mental picture: Fat Carlos and Dutchie, guns in hand.

She was squatting on the large flat stone in the center of her homestead, bare feet splayed, calmly smoking a bamboo pipe. Behind her, water boiled vigorously in an iron pot over her fire. Carlos, Dutchie, and the men stumbled out from behind me into the clearing, a little at a loss, turning and squinting into the green-tinted air, sensing something they maybe shouldn’t fuck with. A few whispered to each other in Portuguese; others spat, adjusted their weapons on their belts. One wandered off to take a piss.

“Wow,” Carlos said. “Looks like they don’t want much to do with you in the village, you living way out here.”

“I live where I wish to live,” she said coolly.

“Still, it must be lonely, living far away from your people and all.”

She tapped out some ashes from her pipe. “What do you want?”

“Oh, I think you know. How many years we’ve been playing this game? A dozen? I need that grove. Now.”

“This knowledge is sacred to the people of the forest. It cannot be shared.”

Carlos unhooked his gun from his holster. “Fuck your sacred nonsense.” He cocked the gun and pointed it at her head. “You, you crazy old bat, are going to take us to the grove. Now get up.”

Beya pushed herself off the stone and rose to her full crooked height. She raised her face to him, the tattooed whiskers blacker and deeper in the rich afternoon light. She opened her mouth and let loose an unearthly cry of desolation and loneliness, like a creature calling for the last of its kind in a final bid for companionship.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Carlos said, stealing glances at the shimmering green and black of the forest. “Knock it off.”

She staggered backward slightly with her efforts, but regained her balance fast.

“I told you,” Dutchie muttered. “She’s—”

“Shut up.”

The man who was taking a piss hurriedly zipped up; otherwise no one moved.

She filled her lungs and unleashed the same heart-wrenching call; her head fell back as if to make room for the otherworldly sound.