We kept walking. There was more oxygen now, too. The trunks of the trees grew thinner. Laura noticed what was on the trunks before we did: it wasn’t easy to distinguish at first glance. There were hands gripping them. Many: one on top of another. Amputated hands, severed, clutching the trunks, the whole palm bent and the fingers arched. Human hands, rigid in the position of claws. The whole forest was like that along that stretch. Trunks and trunks with dead hands. Someone had mounted them when rigor mortis set in. The first trunk we saw had twelve hands. Some had more. Others just one. I thought of the Hand of Glory I longed for.

It’s a collector, I said. An artist. Or several. To the right of the Forest of Hands, as we baptized it, was what Juan would later mark on the map as the Valley of Torsos. They looked like upright stones, or headstones: a cemetery of soldiers, so symmetrical. But they were human torsos. No arms, no heads, no legs. Torsos with the spotted skin of elderly men, torsos with young girls’ lovely breasts, torsos of children, of fat men, of thin men, torsos with dark skin and torsos with very pale skin, flat bellies, huge obese stomachs, torsos of women who had breastfed. I recognized claw marks on one back, like the ones Juan gives in the Ceremonial, like the ones Stephen has on his back.

Never leave us alone in this place, said Laura. We couldn’t survive away from you. This is a mouth. Maybe it’s asleep, maybe it’s eating somewhere else, but it only respects us because we’re here with you.

At that point, Juan told us he’d had enough, and we should go back. His head was hurting again. His eyes were irritated and he looked like he was about to cry.

Laura deciphered the meaning of the ornaments the next day. Surprised, she told us she had been distracted by other possibilities instead of considering the one that was the most obvious, because it was the closest to her. I was looking for different symbols, seals, and I couldn’t find any meaning. But they’re letters. I looked at the details, the imperfections in the bone ornaments. They’re notched, and they’re trying to communicate precisely and exactly. It’s just one word, she said, and a number.

She put her drawings on the table, the progression of how she had deciphered them, her mistakes in search of a more complicated meaning.

HUNGRY, the ornaments said.

Juan leaned against the doorway of the kitchen and motioned for me to give him a cigarette.

It’s hungry? What’s the number?

It’s a 4, said Laura. I don’t understand, unless it refers to the house next door, where the bodyguards and your doctor live.

I looked at Juan, who had closed his eyes.

I know how to recognize a Place of Power. Mine is back in Misiones.