River of Eden

by Glenna Mcreynolds

  “From Tutanji. He was going to turn you in for the money.”

  “Why?” she asked, legitimately confused. The Dakú were the least acculturated Indians in the Amazon. They didn't even have metal tools, not so much as an axe.

  “Last night, by the fire, Tutanji told me Vargas is holding a hundred Indians and caboclos in cages at Reino Novo, many of them Dakú. He thought he could buy them back with the reward money.”

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I think Vargas is going to kill them for his Night of the Devil.”

  Annie blanched. “A sacrifice. Yes. I can imagine him doing something that horrifying. He likes to kill things. In Yavareté, he used to kill pacas with this special poison he kept in a gold box. Then he'd cook up their blood and drink it with a bunch of other stuff in it. He spilled a lot. Believe me, it was not a pretty sight.”

  “What kind of poison?”

  She shook her head. “I'm not sure. It's a powder, an iridescent powder, some kind of hemorrhagic toxin. After he gives it to the animals, all their blood comes gushing out.”

  “Kingmaker beetle,” he said. “The ground-up carapace is an iridescent, hemorrhagic poison, but the beetle itself is extremely rare, worth a hundred times its weight in gold. That's kind of an expensive way to get paca blood.”

  “Yeah, well, I think he likes the way the blood gushes out way too much to care how much it costs.” Her hand came up in an absent, fluttering gesture, as if she were trying to push the subject away, and he imagined that she was. “I don't suppose we have time to go back to where the Sucuri sank to try to salvage some of the guns I bought?”

  “No,” he said, reaching up and giving her cheek a brief caress, his gaze skimming over the scar above her temple. “Not today.”

  Whether she'd been victimized by Vargas or not didn't matter, not anymore. Will was going to kill him, because he wasn't nearly civilized enough to let the bastard live—not even close.

  CHAPTER 24

  The sky grew overcast as they followed a game trail north through the forest. Annie had traveled with Indians and with other scientists, and Indians were quieter and faster on the trail. Will covered ground like an Indian.

  About a mile or so from the glade of the blue orchids, the first rain washed down through the trees, a gentle shower dampening the hot earth and rising again as steam. In minutes, they were walking through a dreamscape of dripping leaves and white vapor. Will kept a steady pace, and Annie stayed with him. She hadn't argued with him about going north, but just like the night the Sucuri had sunk, she felt in her gut they should stay together.

  She was about to say as much, when he came to a sudden stop.

  She'd heard it, too—a gunshot. Their eyes met, and when the next shot sounded, they both took off at a run.

  More shots came after the first two, and the sounds of distant screams and shouting. By the time they reached the place where the attack had taken place, the battle was over and the Indians were gone, but plenty of evidence to what had happened remained. Calabashes of chicha, a fermented drink, had been smashed. Manioc gratings were strewn everywhere. The trees and plants surrounding the bare place in the trail where Tutanji's tribe had been caught were riddled with bullets, their leaves and fronds in shreds, but there were no dead bodies.

  “Gather what food you can,” Will said after a quick look around. “I'll be back.”

  He started to disappear into the forest, then stopped and took off his machete.

  “Here,” he said, handing the big knife over. “Don't be afraid to use it.”

  “I won't be,” she assured him, slipping the knife through the belt on her shorts.

  “Good.” He kissed her cheek, and then was gone, melting into the trees.

  Annie looked around the trail. The Indians had been disarmed. Bows and blowguns were tossed aside. Everything they had been carrying had been haphazardly thrown into the bush. All the food containers had been smashed, their contents poured onto the ground.

  Even abandoning all standards of sanitation, she barely came up with half a dozen pieces of cassava, the bread made from manioc. Abandoning even more standards, she shoved them into her pockets. By the time Will returned, she'd salvaged what she could.

  “They're not too far ahead of us,” he told her, breathing hard. “It's not Fat Eddie's men. I would have recognized them.”

  “So who is it?”

  “Pishtacos.”

  “The fat-eaters?” Pishtacos were the bogeymen of the Amazon.

  “According to Tutanji, they've been raiding all along the river, pishtacos and garimpeiros, and taking Indians to work in the mines. It's the ones who can't work anymore who are put into the cages.”

  “Indians don't last very long in the mines.”

  “And their women fare even less well in the brothels,” Will agreed. “The best I can tell, Vargas must have sent out two parties of men to track you, the group on Fat Eddie's men's tail, and one down from the mines, the ones who did this. We're close enough to the Cauaburi now for them to have gotten this far.”

  “And we're following the ones who did this, right?”

  “Right. Help me find some darts, and be careful. They're all tipped with curare.” Curare was the famous hunting poison of the Amazon.

  With a blowgun Will picked up from the side of the trail and a few darts found here and there in the bush and slipped into his quiver, they took off, running along the forest path, following Vargas's garimpeiros and their captives.

  Hours later, Annie sank down on the trail next to where Will had stopped for a moment, her muscles aching, her breath ragged. She'd been up north for a year, and a week on a riverboat hadn't done a damn thing to reacclimate her to the equatorial tropics.

  God. She was drenched in sweat, the air temperature felt about a hundred and twenty, and the humidity had been hovering all day between “downpour” and “drizzle.”

  “Tired?” he asked, kneeling down beside her.

  “A little,” she lied, wiping the moisture from her brow.

  “Here,” he said, pulling the top off a gourd kept tied on the same string as his quiver. “Open your mouth.”

  She did as he asked, and he scooped out two fingerfuls of a green powder and put it on her tongue. It was like talc, very fine and smoky tasting.

  “Make a paste out of it with your saliva, and just let it sit in your mouth for as long as you can,” he said, dipping out a larger scoop for himself.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Something from Tutanji.” He smiled. “It's good for you.”

  They sat silently for a few minutes, waiting for the plant powder to take effect, and eventually, Annie wasn't so hungry, the heat wasn't so terrible, and she had the strength to get to her feet.

  When he asked if she was ready to go, she didn't hesitate. The next time they stopped, dusk was falling and they were nearing the river, and she could hear Vargas's men and the Indians up ahead. Women were crying. Men were shouting, and Annie wondered how in the hell they were going to save anybody from a bunch of armed men.

  Will had a plan, though, and it started with him taking feathers out of his hair and working them into hers. He tied them on top, a dark green parrot and the black toucan, letting them stand straight up.

  “There,” he said with a quick grin, sitting back on his haunches and checking out his handiwork. “You look like a bird. Now I'm going to make you look like the forest.”

  Using a handful of mud like an artist's palette, he painted triangles and stripes on her face, and she helped by putting stripes down her arms and legs. When he was finished, he handed her his bow and the gourds on his quiver, keeping only the blowgun.

  “We'll follow them to their boats and make our move on the beach. You stay hidden where you can see what's going on, and when the time comes, head for the last boat. That's the one we're taking to Reino Novo.”

  She nodded, hoping to hell it was dark by then, because feathers or no feathers, she wou
ld stick out like a sore thumb in the company heading down to the river-bank.

  Will slipped into the trees, and Annie followed, until the river came into view. Five boats were moored on the beach. She knew there had been exactly twenty-three Indians in Tutanji's group, and there looked to be half again as many garimpeiros. There were a ragged bunch in ragged clothes ordered about by a few men wearing the uniform of the Brazilian army. Vargas, for all his grand schemes, was still exercising his commission, which made the Brazilians culpable in the forthcoming massacre— unless she and Will could somehow stop it.

  With a touch on her arm to stay, Will left her, disappearing into the forest.

  Annie looked down at the machete and the bow. Even given his blowgun, they were woefully underequipped for the task ahead.

  A fire was started on the white sand beach for the miners to cook their food, while the Indians were herded into a makeshift compound guarded by the soldiers with the automatic weapons.

  Standing silent and still behind the buttressed roots of a strangler fig, she concentrated on her breathing, keeping it gentle and even, keeping herself calm. Whatever Will was going to do, she needed to be ready.

  Down by the river, two of the garimpeiros walked up to the compound and tried to take a woman, her friend from the morning, Ajaju. The other Indians immediately became excited, objecting loudly and scrambling to keep Ajaju with them. Ajaju screamed, her face stark with fear, but the miners kept pulling at her, hitting the Indians who were holding on to her. Her children began to cry, and for a minute, Annie feared the garimpeiros would succeed, but finally, one of the soldiers interceded, threatening the miners with his rifle.

  Angry grumbling ran through the other garimpeiros. Rape was their expected reward.

  Annie grew even more still, her breath even softer as she witnessed the further rough treatment of the Indians, the garimpeiros throwing things, the soldiers ignoring them. Up until Yavareté, she'd lived a sheltered life. She'd seen hardship and poverty, had experienced a little poverty herself on the ranch, at least compared to the other kids at school who'd had new clothes instead of Mad Jack's way too big hand-me-downs to wear. In South America, she'd seen real poverty, the kind that crushed people, the kind perpetuated by ineffective governments run by people whose sense of privilege far outstripped their sense of justice.

  But in Yavareté, she'd witnessed brutality, psychotic brutality. She'd experienced it for herself, and it had changed her more profoundly than she'd thought.

  She had come back for vengeance, an inarticulated vengeance that nonetheless had compelled her to buy guns. Standing in the trees, her body no more than another living, growing part of the forest, her breath no different from the transpiration of the leaves, she quietly came to the realization that she could kill.

  The knowledge shifted her awareness of the world around her. She was no longer carefully apart, separated from the people in front of her by virtue of her intelligence and her education, or by her culture and her passport. She was no different from any of them, soldier, miner, Indian. Her hand went to the quartzite crystal and the jaguar fangs hanging around her neck. She was no different from Will.

  She knew where he was, to her left, about fifty yards away near the far end of the beach, and she knew what he was doing—waiting like a jaguar with his curare-tipped darts. He had eight, and she knew eight men would die.

  She was a jaguar now, too. Like a cat, she kept herself still, waiting, and when her chance came, she would not hesitate.

  Vargas's men had eaten and were breaking their quick camp, when a cloud passed over the sun, laying a shadow on the river.

  That's when the first man died. No one else saw, but Annie had watched the garimpeiro wander into the edge of the forest at the far end of the beach and unzip his pants. Then his hand had come up to his throat, and he'd crumpled, falling into the forest vegetation and disappearing.

  Another garimpeiro followed blindly in the first one's footsteps, heading to the edge of the forest to relieve himself, and meeting an instant, silent death.

  Dusk had fallen with the shadows of the clouds. Night would come quickly. Annie felt her muscles tense in readiness. The Indians were already being put on the boats. The fires were doused. Someone hollered a name into the deepening darkness and shouted louder when he didn't get a response.

  “Jose! Agora mesmo!”

  “Um momento!” An answer finally came from the forest, and Annie recognized Will's voice.

  She couldn't remember ever having stood so still for so long, so painlessly. She could have waited hours longer, if necessary, being a jaguar.

  Another movement at the far end of the beach caught her eye, someone coming out of the tent. Food had been brought to him there, but now two soldiers were standing by, ready to strike the canvas. It was time to go.

  At first Annie thought two people were coming out at once, and was quickly revising her and Will's odds in her head, but as the two came farther out on the beach, their bodies remaining in perfect synchronization, the truth dawned on her with growing distress.

  It wasn't two people. It was one very large man, a six-foot-eight-inch giant with a huge barrel chest and trunklike legs.

  It was Fernando.

  Her instinct was to flee, her breath instantly becoming ragged and fast, and she actually moved, before she stopped herself.

  She was a jaguar. A cat. Even a giant was no match for her. She believed it, but she couldn't stop trembling, and she couldn't take her eyes off him. He was dressed as an officer, something she hadn't known about him before, and he was carrying an assault rifle.

  He went to the lead boat out of the five moored on the beach. There was one armed soldier for each boat, and two garimpeiros to guard the Indians. Darkness fell with the sudden swiftness of the tropics, and one by one the boats took off up the river, leaving the last soldier to holler for dead men. As the fourth boat turned into the current, Will struck with uncanny accuracy, hitting the soldier, who slumped over the wheel. The man's rifle went clattering into the bottom of the boat. The bound Indians reacted instantly, jumping into the shallows and onto the beach, but no more instantly than she did. She broke into a run, bursting out of the trees the same time that Will hit the beach.

  With her knife free, she cut the Indians loose. Neither Tutanji or Ajaju were among the five. Will spoke quickly, and in seconds the freed man nodded. Gesturing for the two women and the children to follow, he took off into the forest.

  Annie was already on the boat, firing it up, when Will jumped on board. In the darkness up ahead, someone shouted back at them, and Will answered, saying something that made the other soldier laugh.

  “Take the wheel,” he told her. “I'll put the dead man overboard.”

  She guided the boat out into the river and heard the body hit the water with a splash.

  Will came back to her side and leaned close to her ear to be heard above the sound of the outboard engines. “Try to get some sleep. We've got a few hours to the mines.”

  She nodded. “You saw the giant come out of the tent?”

  “Yes.” He took the wheel from her.

  “Fernando,” she said.

  He nodded silently and touched his hand to the feathers in her hair. “You look like a bird, but you're really a jaguar. I saw you in the forest, waiting.”

  She held his gaze for a moment, the wind whipping at their hair, the stars shining above.

  “Yes,” she said. “That was me.”

  He grinned, a flash of white in the dark night. “Get some sleep.”

  She was too tired to object, and when her head rested on the wooden bench running the length of the starboard side, it was like settling into a down-filled pillow.

  HOURS LATER, it was the silence that woke her, the silence and the chill of early morning, before dawn had broken the sky.

  Will had cut the engines and the lights, and they were drifting down the shoreline. Branches and leaves slapped at the boat. He grabbed for them as they pa
ssed, holding on just long enough to keep the boat from slipping farther into the current.

  Annie raised her head to a startling sight—Reino Novo, as she'd never imagined it. In the middle of thousands of miles of unremitting darkness, it was a city of lights, ballpark lights illuminating the gouged and gaping holes of the mines, the yellow and orange hoses of the pumps and generators snaking out of their black depths like miles of intestines.

  All along the scarred faces of the mines, miners scurried like formigas, ants. Some manned the hoses, blasting away at the earth with high-powered jets of water. It was a twenty-four-hours-a-day operation awash in water and mud and misery, a cacophany of noise and violence within the great womb of the forest.

  She'd seen gold mines before, but never anything on such a scale. There were open pits on both sides of the river, each as horrible as the other.

  “Are we still on the Cauaburi?” she asked.

  “No.” Will stopped them by tying off on a sturdy branch. “We came off the main river a couple of hours ago. This is a tributary off to the west.”

  “Where are the other boats?”

  He pointed toward the mines, and Annie saw a series of docks jutting out into the river from both sides. Four boats were pulling up to the docks on the south bank, their side, and a commotion was being made.

  “Come on. We have to hurry, if we're going to keep up.”

  She was glad he hadn't asked her to stay with the boat. She could see the Indians being herded off onto the docks, and she could sense their fear and confusion. Reino Novo had changed to the point of being unrecognizable compared to what she'd seen a year ago. It was huge, completely contained. Fires from a smelter belched smoke and soot into the sky, laying an added pall of stench over the area.

  On the north bank, a town had risen up, muddy streets of whorehouses and cantinas. Farther upriver, hundred-gallon tanks of the gas and oil needed to run the generators lined both shores, the iridescent smear of leaks making a glossy coat on the water. The smell of the place alone was enough to terrify the forest people. It was enough to terrify her.