Paco stayed where he was as Omar burst past him, leaping up the stairs and into the hut. All I could do was point, before another hairy beast dropped to my shoulder with an actual thudding weight, crawled down my arm, and jumped to the thin plywood floor. I rocketed down the stairs, skipping the last three as I leapt onto the hard ground. I rolled over and looked up. Spider after spider dropped down, a dozen or more, the whole brood skittering and crossing over one another. Omar shooed them out of the hut, cursing. They trapezed down the stairs, scattering in every direction.

“Omar, what the fuck!”

“Calm down, Lily, they’re only spiders.”

“Only spiders! How can you say that? They’re fucking giant tarantulas falling all over me!” I almost added, Get me out of here, but I was too stubborn—determined to not have his words, “you’d be begging me to leave in a week,” come true. Still, I sputtered and cursed, replaying the thud of them on my back and shoulders, the feel of their scratchy fur as they leapt off me. I turned in a small, tight circle, bruised knees throbbing from my rough landing. I was so hungry. I pictured my breakfast smashed against the wall.

“Were those in the ceiling all night?”

“In the walls, more likely,” he said, gently kicking the rest of them out the door.

“I am never going in that hut again.”

Three more dropped down behind him like special ops fighters. They skittered off into the shadows of the hut. Next to me, Paco squatted in the dirt, his slight bony back glowing bronze in the sunshine. With a short stick, he poked at the air above one of the spiders, which had stopped short in front of him. It opened and closed its hairy mandibles in a vain attempt to hook onto the stick, as two of its furred, segmented limbs lifted in exploration. Finally it caught hold of one end, and Paco lifted it, laughing as he swayed the leggy creature back and forth in the heavy morning air. A few of the children running by saw the game and started to gather their own sticks.

Defeated looking, Omar came down the stairs and put his arms around me. “I’m sorry, Lily. This happens sometimes in huts when the bamboo isn’t split.”

I stepped away from him and planted my hands on my hips. “It does?”

“They like bamboo. It’s hollow, you know—”

“I know bamboo is hollow. I’m not an idiot.”

Cross-legged on the ground, chin wedged under his two fists, Paco listened intently to us argue. He pushed himself to his feet, stood in front of me, and said, “Bamboo is like a little, little house.” He held his hands cupped together as if to demonstrate a little casa for me. “Don’t be mad, Miss Lily. Everybody needs a house, even spiders.”

One of the children, a beautiful little girl who wore her hair in two impossibly thick and shining braids, jerked a bright green cricket—several inches long—tied to a string across the hard earth. It waved its orange filament antennae in alarm, trying to leap away on strong hairpin legs, but she snapped him back each time. One of the spiders reared up, dropped, and charged the insect, but the girl protracted the game, endlessly drawing the cricket away.