We Dine With Cannibals

by C. Alexander London

  “Sure,” Celia said, hesitant, but happy to help. She liked hearing Corey Brandt say her name. He straightened his hair again. She hit the record button.

  “Fire ants,” Corey said loudly, his brow furrowed. His voice dropped deeper. This was his serious voice and it actually didn’t sound much like him. Celia preferred when he just talked normally.

  “They may look harmless, but as I’ve learned, they can swarm by the thousands and devour a human body in seconds. The pain of their bites is enough to drive a person mad.” He smirked a little and the twins wondered if the bites had indeed driven him mad. He continued.

  “Luckily, I remembered Corey Brandt’s First Rule of Adventuring: Stay cool.”

  Oliver crossed his arms and frowned. Corey Brandt didn’t stay cool. Corey Brandt ran nearly naked through the jungle and jumped into a pool filled with piranhas.

  It was Oliver and Celia who stayed cool.

  “I also remembered that the proper response to a swarm of fire ants is full immersion in water. Even though the nearest pool was thick with piranha, I had no choice. I had to—” He looked over at Oliver. “What? What is it? Cut!”

  Celia stopped filming. “What’s wrong?” she said. She thought he’d been doing a great job.

  “Your brother,” Corey said. “He rolled his eyes.”

  “I did?” Oliver didn’t even know he’d rolled his eyes.

  “You did. You rolled them. What was it?” Corey Brandt scratched at the bites on his legs. “Was I too dramatic? Not dramatic enough? My acting coach always told me I needed to work my face more. Was there not enough face?”

  “No, no,” Oliver stammered. He had no idea how someone could not have enough face. What did that mean? “It’s just that …,” he tried. “Well … you aren’t supposed to jump into a pool of water when you’re being attacked by ants. That makes them bite. I learned that from your show. I was just wondering why you didn’t know it now when you knew it on TV? And, like, with the motorcycles. How come you don’t know how to ride a motorcycle? On Agent Zero you got your learner’s permit on a motorcycle.”

  “Well …” Corey didn’t have an answer. He scratched at a bite on the back of his neck.

  “You don’t understand,” Celia snapped at Oliver. “Hollywood isn’t like school. You don’t have to remember things after they’re done, right, Corey?”

  “Right,” the star said. “Let’s try that shot again,” he suggested with a smile.

  Celia held the camera up and Corey furrowed his brow again. He cleared his throat.

  “Action,” Celia said. She liked the sound of it. Maybe she was meant to be a TV director. It felt good to direct someone who wasn’t her brother for a change. She hoped Corey would pull it together. She zoomed in on his face. He didn’t have a freckle under his eye like a teardrop. Did he have a doctor remove it? Maybe he never had it to begin with; maybe he just had makeup artists put it on him so that little girls would get all mushy for him, just like Celia had. She started to feel angry at him. She started to feel betrayed. She had really liked that freckle.

  “Fire ants. They may look harmless, but as I’ve learned, the pain of their bites is enough to drive a person mad. In my own madness, I jumped into piranha-infested waters to escape the pain. I forgot Corey Brandt’s First Rule of Adventuring: Don’t jump into piranha-infested waters. It nearly cost me my life. Thankfully …” His voice choked up a little. “Thankfully, my friends were here to save me from myself.” He stared at the camera for a moment in silence, like he was trying to think of something else to say. “Cut.”

  Celia lowered the camera.

  She blew the hair out of her face. He called Oliver and Celia his friends. He said they’d saved him. Corey Brandt looked at them with tears in his eyes. Who needed a teardrop freckle, anyway? He was so—Celia searched for the word—vulnerable. Just like on Sunset High.

  “How was that?” Corey asked Oliver.

  Why was he asking what Oliver thought? Celia was the one who had been a fan of Corey Brandt’s since he first appeared on TV with his sparkling eyes and vampire fangs. What did Oliver know about the art of cinema that Celia didn’t?

  “I think we should get a different angle,” Celia said. “The, um, lighting wasn’t good over here.”

  “The lighting’s not good anywhere,” said Oliver. “We’re in the jungle.”

  “I know that!” Celia shouted. “I am just trying to make sure Corey gets the best show possible out of this. It’d be terrible if all our adventures were for nothing.”

  “Oh, so now you’re an expert in reality television?” Oliver got right up in his sister’s face. “Whenever I want to watch reality television, you tell me it lacks emotional depth.”

  “I never said emotional depth.”

  “Did too.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did too.”

  “Did not.”

  “Uh, guys?” Corey Brandt stepped between them and pointed up with one finger.

  The three of them looked straight up to see a black jaguar pacing back and forth on the branch above them, staring down with hungry cat eyes.

  “Why don’t we … uh … keep moving,” Celia suggested, dropping her voice to a whisper.

  “Good idea,” Oliver agreed.

  Corey took the camera from Celia and filmed the panther as they backed away from it. Once they couldn’t see it anymore, they turned and walked to where they’d left their backpack. Except it wasn’t there.

  “Could the ants have taken it?” Corey wondered.

  “No,” said Oliver. “It was a monkey.”

  “How do you know that?” said Celia.

  “Because.” Oliver pointed to a vine studded with white flowers. A gray monkey with a shock of black hair on its head hung off the vine about twenty feet in the air, and the monkey was holding their backpack. He screeched at them and swung from vine to vine, heading deeper into the jungle.

  “Oh no,” said Celia.

  “More running?” said Oliver.

  “Yep,” said Celia, and off the trio raced after the monkey who had taken their backpack.

  Celia, Oliver, and Corey ran below as the monkey raced along above them, swinging and leaping effortlessly through the canopy. It was hard going on the ground. Thorns, fallen logs, and tangled vines blocked their path. Oliver kept stumbling, so Celia took the lead.

  Oliver was thrilled his sister was going first, but that only lasted until the first branch that she shoved out of the way snapped back and whacked him in the face.

  “Ow! Watch it!” he yelled.

  “I’m trying to watch the monkey!” She stopped in a small clearing and looked around at the trees, trying to see where the monkey went. “I think he went that way.” She pointed and started to move, but Oliver grabbed her arm.

  “We can’t go that way.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Look at those bent branches.” Oliver pointed at a bunch of branches that were bent back at impossible angles.

  “So? There are broken branches in the jungle. What’s your point?”

  “Those branches are a sign. They’re a warning that jungle Indians use. They mean ‘no trespassing.’”

  “Indigenous people,” Celia said.

  “What?”

  “They’re not called Indians. They’re called indigenous people.” She sang, “If you are indigenous, the city feels vertiginous—”

  “Whatever,” interrupted Oliver. “They’re a warning that indigenous people use. We’re still trespassing.”

  “But how do you know that?” Corey Brandt asked, filming the broken branches.

  “Well,” Oliver said. “You said it in Agent Zero, season one, episode nine: ‘The Dictator in Gym Class.’”

  Corey didn’t look like he knew what Oliver was talking about. Something was definitely wrong with the star, but there was no time to question him.

  “I also know because of the guy with the spear.” Oliver pointed.

  Celia and Corey tu
rned and sure enough, there was a small man covered with black and red paint from head to toe, holding a spear up behind his head, ready to throw it at them. His dark black hair was cut into a bowl shape. His face was painted with complicated patterns of black ink, and the whites of his eyes shone out from his face in sharp contrast. He didn’t move.

  “Oh,” Corey Brandt said, and swallowed hard. Suddenly, a dozen more warriors just like the first appeared all around them. They seemed to materialize from the shadows and the bushes and the earth itself. Some had spears and some had blowguns and none of them looked happy to see the Navel expedition.

  Corey Brandt tried to smile at them with his winning smile, but the angry shout that came from behind him suggested that they were not his biggest fans. Celia felt suddenly weak in the knees—and it had nothing to do with Corey Brandt’s smile.

  She was thinking about being turned into dinner.

  25

  WE TAKE A HIKE

  COREY, OLIVER, and Celia were led at spearpoint through the trees.

  “Ow!” Celia stumbled over some tangled roots. “Stop jabbing me.”

  The man who had been jabbing her smiled widely. The smile did not mean he was being friendly. He was showing his teeth, which he had filed down to sharp points. If you have ever had a teeth cleaning at the dentist, you know how uncomfortable just a little scraping on the teeth can be. And this spear-poking gentleman’s dental work was most assuredly not performed by a licensed dental professional.

  The group was moving very quickly into the depths of the forest. Thorny branches tore at their clothes and tangles of vines choked their path. The men made Corey Brandt tear the tangles of vines away in front of them with his bare hands.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” he said. Even though his hands were scraped and red, he was smiling. “Things just got real.”

  “That’s not a good thing,” Oliver groaned, and Celia couldn’t disagree with him. It was events just like this that made the Navel twins dislike reality. No one ever got eaten while watching soap operas. She wondered what went on in Hollywood that made Corey Brandt love jungle torture so much.

  Sometimes the hunting party would stop and crouch in silence. They pulled Oliver, Celia, and Corey down onto the ground, where they had a close-up view of thousands of bugs chewing and churning on the forest floor.

  “Ew,” Oliver said as his nose was pressed down next to a log crawling with termites.

  They waited a few seconds and then continued on. Occasionally a man would stop and break the branch of tree, bending it back at an unnatural angle.

  “A warning to anyone following us,” Oliver said.

  “So,” Corey whispered. “Have you guys been in trouble like this before? I mean, like with your explorer family and all?”

  “I guess,” Oliver said with a shrug.

  We might take this opportunity to note that on TV the same kinds of stories usually end the same way. The bad guy is caught; the monster is really still alive; the young couple kisses. If one watches enough TV, one always knows what will come next. But in real life, the past rarely makes promises about the future. Or, as Oliver might put it, just because you survive one deadly adventure with your sister doesn’t mean you’ll survive the next.

  “You think these guys took your father?” wondered Corey.

  “I hope not. There was an episode of Celebrity Whisk Warriors that tried to film in the Amazon,” Oliver said. “The whole cast came down on a seaplane and walked into the jungle just like us. Everyone vanished. Even the seaplane vanished. They had to get a new host.”

  “Celebrity Whisk Warriors?” Corey helped hoist Oliver and Celia over a large fallen log. The warriors climbed over it effortlessly. “You watch cooking shows?”

  “I guess so. You know … because of the … uh …” Oliver was actually grateful when one of the warriors poked him in the back to get him to be quiet. He didn’t want the teen star to think he was weird. But he really did like cooking shows.

  They walked for hours and hours. As they got deeper into the jungle, less and less light came through the treetops. They couldn’t tell if it was because the sun was setting or because the canopy was getting thicker. Maybe it was both.

  Oliver knew it had been over twenty-four hours since they’d eaten anything. He’d never been so hungry in all his life. Talking about Celebrity Whisk Warriors had made his mouth water. He hoped there would be food when they got where they were going. He also hoped that they wouldn’t become food when they got where they were going.

  26

  WE GET WHERE WE WERE GOING

  THEY CAME OUT of the trees into a clearing that was ringed by the jungle: the village of the Cozinheiros. There was a long building in the center, with one low door and a steep thatched roof. Smaller huts spread out around it. A few fire pits smoldered, but otherwise the village looked empty. Now that they were out of the jungle, they could see that the sun was beginning to set again. They had hiked all day. They wondered if it was already too late to save their father.

  The men pushed Oliver, Celia, and Corey toward the long building. When they stepped over the threshold, they were overwhelmed by the powerful smells of smoke and sweat. It took a second for their eyes to adjust to the dim light, but once they did, they saw that they were standing in front of the entire village.

  Women and children were gathered at the far end of the long building, while a group of older men stood in a ring in the center. The older men all held spears, and all their spears were pointed at Corey Brandt and the twins. They shouted and threatened. The younger men who had captured them filed in behind and blocked any hope of escape.

  The oldest man in the center stepped forward. He held a carved wooden staff with bright yellow feathers dangling from it and he waved it as he yelled at them. He must be the chief, thought Oliver. The chief always had a carved staff or something like that.

  They had no idea what he was saying, but this was hardly the first time Oliver and Celia Navel had been yelled at in a language they didn’t understand. It seemed like adults were always yelling at them in different languages. This was, however, the first time those adults might also eat them after they finished yelling.

  Corey Brandt, who seemed not to notice the danger of their situation, pulled out his little camera and started filming. The warriors rushed over to him and snatched the camera away.

  “That is the property of Corey Brandt Productions!” he announced. “I am the leader of this expedition and I am responsible for these children. Release us immediately or you will be hearing from my lawyers!”

  Celia rolled her eyes. The men murmured to each other and then pointed their spears at the celebrity. He slunk back and looked at his shoes.

  “Okay, look,” Celia said. “We don’t want any trouble. We’re just here to get our father back and be on our way.”

  “Your father?” a small voice said. From behind the wall of older men stepped a little girl about the same age as Oliver and Celia. They recognized her immediately. It was the llama girl who ran off in Machu Picchu.

  “You!” said Celia. “You’re not mute!”

  “Of course I’m not,” she said.

  “Are you going to eat us?” Oliver gulped. “We’re sorry we took your llama.”

  The girl just smirked. The chief spoke again. “He says you are trespassing on our territory,” the girl translated.

  “Are you the … um … Cozinheiros?”

  “We have been called that,” she said.

  Oliver and Celia grabbed each other’s hands.

  “Did you kidnap our father?” Celia asked with a tremor in her voice. “We’d really like to negotiate for his release.”

  “That awful man with the mustache?”

  “No, not him!” Celia shouted. “Although he got kidnapped too.”

  “Serves him right,” the girl said. “But we didn’t kidnap anyone.”

  “There were warriors,” Oliver said. “They looked just like you. They kidnapped o
ur dad from the town of Benjamin Constant.”

  “I fear,” the girl said, “that you have been tricked. We do not go into Benjamin Constant, nor do we kidnap people.” The chief spoke and several men pointed their spears and shouted. “You, however, are in big trouble. The chief says that you are with the destroyers.”

  “The destroyers?”

  “Outsiders. They came with swords and metal helmets to burn our villages.”

  “That’s the conquistadors,” said Oliver. “But that was hundreds of years ago!”

  “In the life of this forest, hundreds of years is a blink. The destroyers never stopped coming. They came with horses and swords and armor; they came with guns and airplanes; they came with cameras and microphones. Now they come with trucks and axes and they take our trees. Like that little man you were with. They sell our trees to make themselves rich.”

  “But isn’t this a nature preserve?” Oliver asked. “The mayor of Benjamin Constant said no one was allowed in.”

  The girl just snorted at the mention of the mayor.

  “The mayor is in business with the loggers. They cut down our trees and float them out on the river and the government looks the other way. Every tree is sacred to us, the way your fingers and your heart are sacred to you. They are part of us. They give us life and they make us who we are.”

  “A tree makes you who you are?” said Celia. That seemed pretty weird.

  “They tell us stories. The flowers of the jacaranda tree tell us of the seasons changing. In the large roots of the uacu tree live the bamberos, mischievous spirits who are covered head to toe in hair. My family has told me stories of the bamberos since I was little, but they vanish with the trees. What stories will I tell my children?”

  “We aren’t here to take your stories,” Celia explained. “We just want to rescue our father from whoever took him.”

  “Outsiders always brings calamity.”

  “Calamity?” Oliver whispered.