After taking a few minutes to wash myself in the pot of now warm water, I tore up the shirts into strips and wrapped them around my waist and between my legs, mentally apologizing to Beya for ruining her clothes. My bleeding had slowed, but fatigue ground every sensation to a fine point. I made my way past the sprawling base of the lupuna tree, to where the young rubber sapling burst through the pile of rotted logs. Globs of dark honey still stuck to the abandoned bees nest. Bullet ants swarmed it as they carted off small amber chunks, carrying them aloft in their pincers.

Crouching in the humid green cave, I dug out some honey with a stick and poked gobs of it into the tube. Picturing Beya in my mind’s eye, I laid it on a patch of moss near a line of ants. Immediately, dozens branched from the throng and filled the tube to overflowing. With the stick I nudged it away from the nest; it fell to my feet. As she had done, I stepped on the tube, rolling it back and forth under my sandaled foot to kill all the ants on the outside. Snapping on the rubber cap, I slipped the bamboo tube into my shoulder bag along with the blowgun and darts.

I fed Beya’s donkey a couple of armfuls of hay that had been just out of her reach, walking past the dead paca before it occurred to me that I might be able to use it. I wrapped the already stiffening, twenty-pound rodent in palm leaves and fit it into my shoulder bag.

At dusk, in the jungle, there is this moment of stillness, of heightened awareness by all creatures, during this palpable shift to night. You know that this is the moment you need to get home, or make sure your shelter is built. This was the time of day that I left for Ayachero.

Sleeping newborn on my back, dead paca and supplies in front, I took a few moments to find my equilibrium with all this strange cargo before turning toward the darkening path.

I shined to Beya, “I’M COMING.”

There was no answer.

FORTY-FOUR

Never leaving the cover of the jungle, I crept along the boundary of the village, past the now-empty barn and the manioc fields, the plants shirring against one another in a light evening breeze from the river. I concentrated on silence in every step, searching out any variation in the darkness to light my way: glowing mosses, lichens dotted with bioluminescence, giant buzzing insects with blinking tails; beyond these, the flicker of the torches from the longhouse and Anaconda Bar guided me forward. Occasionally I stopped—unwilling to take one more step until I felt him breathe against me.

Sparks shot up into the night. Over the blare of the radio, more whoops, a shriek. Barking male laughter up the hill, full of cruelty. A sulfur smell.

The thumping sound of two people running full speed across the hard earth of the settlement.