Daniel knew exactly what book Mae was referring to, and oddly enough, Daniel had a copy of it in his backpack. He pulled out The Last Shaman: Searching for New Medicines in the Amazon by Martin J. Lefbrevor, PhD, which had been required reading in his and Mae’s Intro to Ethnobotany course—a three-credit elective in biological sciences they had taken during sophomore year. Jordan Mae had also been a biology major, but the following semester he had switched to computer science.

Daniel flipped open the well-worn pages of the book and found the glossy pictures at its center. One of the pictures was of a golden jaguar faceup in the earth. Daniel held the picture up and compared it to the one on the computer screen.

They were identical.

Daniel didn’t need to reread the book to remember that after finding the golden jaguar, Martin Lefbrevor had walked another mile and stumbled on a large jungle pyramid. Lefbrevor then walked two more days, at which point he encountered a vicious tribe: the Nsé-Eja.

During the ethnobotanist’s seventeen days in captivity, the Nsé-Eja shaman spoke bits and pieces of Portuguese to him. While Martin was held captive, the shaman often visited him. Martin learned the tribe was extraordinarily, almost mythically, healthy and had no known incidence of cancer. Then, somehow, Martin escaped.

Scientists had been looking for this theoretical tribe since Martin’s book had been published in 1984. Martin refused to divulge where the tribe was located, only that it was in the Amazon jungle. Most people assumed the tribe was in the jungles of Brazil, where there had been a few other apparent Nsé-Eja encounters.

No one had ever thought to look in Bolivia.

≈

It took Daniel three days of travel to get to the capital of the Pando Department, Cobija, then another two days to arrive at the jungle town of Las Piedras. It was May 8 when Daniel found a café with internet access and sent his father his weekly update. He told him he was headed into an isolated area of the northern Bolivian jungle and that his father might not hear from him for a month. He didn’t tell his father about the images and coordinates Jordan Mae had sent him; he didn’t want to get his father’s hopes up. Nor did he want his father to know that his only child was venturing into an area where he could possibly encounter a ruthless and vicious tribe.

Two days later, he found himself in another small jungle town, Campo Verde. For a small fee, the owner of a shop in town agreed to store the majority of Daniel’s research equipment until he returned.