For long minutes she crouched, still, drifting between abstract thoughts. At one point the ache on her skull grew like a boulder in her mind, and she put her fingers into a gash along her crown. A sticky wetness she thought must be blood drenched her hair. She wondered what would happen if a spider laid its eggs in that gash up there. Mother had warned her a hundred times, “An insect’s eggs can be much more dangerous than its bite, Tanya. You be careful in those rivers, you hear?”

Yes, Mom, I hear. But now I don’t hear. I don’t hear a thing ’cause you’re dead, aren’t you, Mother? They killed you, didn’t they? She cried after that thought.

Her mind cleared slowly. A pain gnawed in her arm, and she ran her fingertips down to a deep cut below her elbow. Now the spiders would have two places to plant their eggs. Tanya sucked deep, suddenly aware that the air in her hole was stuffy, maybe recycled already. She could suffocate—drown in her own carbon dioxide.

She reached for the ceiling again and pushed. It might as well have been a brick wall.

Her head ballooned with pain. If she had to die, a quick death would be good. But she wasn’t ready to die, and the thought of dying slowly in this black box made her cry again.

A voice called from her memory—her father in his deep, confident way, “Tanya! Tanya, where are you, honey? Come to the hall; I want to show you something.” It was her first week in the jungle. She’d been ten then. Father had come ahead of her and Mother to build the house. Now, after three months they’d joined him. Three months of waiting and explaining to her American friends that yes, she was leaving them for a very long time, but not to worry, she would write. She’d written three times.

“Come here, honey.” She found her father looking into the hall closet and smiling proudly.

“What is it, Papa?” He’d ushered her to the spot and squatted next to her. “It is a secret storage place,” he’d said, beaming. “Think of it as a place we can hide things.”

She had peered into the dark square and shuddered. “It’s so dark. Why do you want to hide things?”

Her mother had intervened then. “Oh, you never mind your father, Tanya. He’s just playing out his childhood fantasies. You are not to go in there. It’s not safe. You understand? Never.”

Jonathan had chuckled and Tanya had skipped away, giggling. There were many more interesting things in her new surroundings than a box in the ground. In fact, her father had never actually used the hiding place, at least to her knowledge.

Except now. Now he had led his daughter down in there and left her to die. The thought stung and Tanya widened her eyes despite their blindness. All right, she had to think this through or she might do just that. She might die.