Holding him still, I felt my way past the kapok fluff and withdrew the dart. I dabbed the very tip of the poison dart in the still open wound, all the time telling myself it could not have been more than one drop seeping into him, likely much less. His head dropped back in the crook of my elbow and his little arms and legs fell open and back. Stifling a cry that had leapt up into my throat, I rocked him in my arms, shining to him, “I’M SORRY, I’M SORRY.” I wrapped his slack body in the blanket, tucked him carefully back in the bag, and looped the straps back over my shoulders.

I took out the fifth and final dart, loaded it, got back down on my stomach and leaned over the edge. Numerous bare male shoulders gleamed up at me from below.

Giving up on Fat Carlos, I aimed at the poacher directly beneath me, took the deepest breath of my life, and blew, imagining Omar’s steadying hand on my shoulder.

He leapt to his feet, food flipped over, screaming as he wrenched the dart out of the meat of his shoulder. “Something hit me! Fuck!” He hurled the dart to the ground, took a few stumbling steps, then swung his gun toward the platform.

Quickly, I pushed myself to my knees and stood, the plywood groaning under my feet. Struggling for balance, arms out, I backed up to the tree and—in total blackness—turned and wrapped my arms around the smooth bark. There was just enough space for my feet on the tiny lip of wood that—doughnut-like—encircled the far side of the tree. A few drops of blood dripped down my inner thigh; I squeezed my sweating eyelids shut as I pictured what the odor might attract, as I imagined my baby dangling helplessly in the string bag on my back among the coiling vines and creepers. An insect walked across my forearm; I let it. Another clicked and snapped near my ear. I didn’t move.

Fat Carlos jumped to his feet, threw down his food and barked, “Turn off the fucking radio!”

The far end of the platform—the precise spot where I’d been lying seconds ago—disintegrated as bullets blasted up through the thin wood into the branches above. Methodically, shot after shot obliterated bits of the scaffold, shards of wood flying out to all sides, the air sawdust. In seconds there was nothing left to the structure except for the narrow, back-facing rim I stood on and the ladder attached to one of the stronger tree branches.

The radio clicked off.

Animated with fury, Carlos strutted around to Beya. He bent down, picked her up by the shoulders, and shook her viciously; she hung loose as a rag doll. “You called them, didn’t you?” he spat in her ear. “If I didn’t need you, I’d kill you now, so slowly you’d beg for me to hurry the fuck up.”

The men, losing their nerve, fired off their guns haphazardly into the jungle, their unseen enemy more terrible by the second.