Contents ( 49)
- PROLOGUE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
It hit me then, even lost as I was in the cage of my own agony, that I didn’t have a corner on suffering or despair. Here, now, it was time to justify my existence with some sort of rationale that had nothing to do with my own misery.
“Who are you?” Splitfoot spat out. “Why should I let you live? Tell me.”
“In my country,” I said, “I am a shaman.”
Splitfoot snorted his derision. He wrenched his wheelchair around and began to screech his way back into the shadowy rooms, ropey arms pumping. A night bird called mournfully as it soared across the vast black sky.
I stumbled toward him, trying to cancel out the noise around me. Just before he vanished into his lair, I called out to him in my head, “IN MY COUNTRY, I AM A SHAMAN.”
He turned, his expression layered in fear, curiosity, and wonder. He said, “Who do you hunt with at night?”
I dropped my head in my hands, conjuring the whispering diamond scales and hot breath of the female anaconda that had visited me in my dreams while Omar was hunting, the one seeking revenge for his killing its mate. “MY SPIRIT HUNTS WITH THE ANACONDA.”
Slowly, Splitfoot turned his wheelchair toward me. “I have seen you in my dreams,” he said. “I have seen you by the Black Lake.”
“If you help me,” I said, “if you let me live, I will help the Tatinga. I promise you.”
He glared at me without expression. After a full minute, he gave me the slightest of nods before wheeling himself out of sight into the gloom of the roundhouse.
FORTY
They didn’t wait until morning, Omar made sure of it, his haste heightening my fear. The women who had at first run from me because they believed—according to Omar—the tale that white-skinned people strip the flesh of Indians to make fuel to fly to the moon, spread out into the night jungle with torches and gathered the plant, armfuls of an unremarkable-looking pale-green fern. They boiled down a dozen bushels into a mush, mixing it with animal fat to make a paste. While Omar slept in a nearby hammock, three Tatinga women led me to a firelit area in the roundhouse made private by two screens of split bamboo.
Chattering softly, they helped me peel off my dress in the smoke-filled room. It dropped to the hard dirt at my feet, a little pile of unthinkably filthy burlap. In their eyes, I saw just how bad I looked, and as they spoke, I hallucinated that I understood every word. There was kindness and maybe a little fear in their faces, voices, hands. They helped me get down to my knees and lie down on my side on a mat of woven palm fibers. The sound of their necklaces of heavy beads and small shells clacking together calmed me, their whiskered faces hovering over mine like curious human cats. One kept touching my hair, but I’d stopped caring about that. Buzzing all around me, they placed flat, wide clay basins at my shoulders and hips, layering the warm poultice thickly on my skin. Wherever it touched my lesions, the pain was indescribable. A rich green smell, like basil mixed with grassy dung, filled my lungs and brain.