As the village dozed the hot afternoon away, I threaded among the huts to the perimeter of the chacra, the small field of plantain and yucca just east of the village. Subtle breaks in the jungle wall marked paths for gathering medicinal herbs or plants, or for a lone hunter to venture out for day hunts that sometimes resulted in the capture of a tapir or paca—a kind of rodent that could grow to thirty pounds—when the wait for the bigger hunts became too long and people were hungry. There was a time when the paths were all the village needed to find game, but the poachers and loggers had changed all that. Now they grew over quickly and had to be cleared by whoever had an interest in traveling on them. Each had a name: Jaguar, Anaconda, Fire Ant, and Caiman; each had several branches, unnamed, that those who traveled evidently knew.

I paused at the entrance to the Anaconda Path where, from the longhouse, I had seen Beya disappear like an apparition, only to appear hours later, a basket on her back overflowing with mysterious plants. As if standing at a great height, I felt equally pulled and repelled by the seething green.

I turned to see if anyone was watching. I was alone; with only the cor cor cor sound of the bamboo rats in the fields behind me. A whiff of wood smoke mixed with sage wafted toward me; her camp couldn’t be far. Above me, trees tangled riotously, inhaling and exhaling through giant leafy lungs. At that moment I stopped caring about being swallowed by whatever vicious thing wanted me. All the warnings, threats, stories, and myths shrunk to nothing compared to the pull of the forest’s wild green heart. I wanted to know this place, however monstrous.

I was going in.

EIGHTEEN

It wasn’t like walking into the woods of New England, or anywhere else that I knew. There was no gradual entrance into another world, no piney embrace or chittering of harmless chipmunks underfoot. Three steps in on the narrow trail, and the green curtains closed behind me. Countless plants hung unsupported in breath-warm darkness, leaves and boles and twirling vines, all in air so thick and wet you could cut it. The earth unorganized beneath me; black and green decay mingling with mosses, lichens, fungus. Actual solid ground could have been any distance beneath my feet.

I took a dozen steps toward the smell of the smoke and stopped, listening. A screeching sound; metal on metal. The braying of a donkey. I followed the sounds a hundred yards or so, considering every step. Soon, stabs of golden light filtered through, until I stumbled into an opening where full sun beat down on my head and shoulders.

In the center of a perfectly round clearing, Beya sat hugging her knees on a flat rock, facing in my direction like she’d been expecting me. She was hatless, her iron-gray hair wiry and loose around her shoulders. Her donkey, harness attached to a grindstone by a woven sisal rope, clopped along in a slow circle, lured by a plantain suspended over her nose, tied there by a stick poking out between her ears. Big belly swaying back and forth, she loped in a never-ending circle on the hard clay, turning the heavy stone. Ground up manioc fell from under the flat of the wheel into a metal bucket beneath. Beyond the donkey, sitting on thirty-foot stanchions, Beya’s ten-foot-square hut reached up into the mid-story. Half a dozen snake heads hung from the supports under the hut. If a snake was caught in the village, Ayacherans killed them and buried them head down to ward them away; I wondered if this was her version of the custom.