The Canopy

by Angela Hunt

  She slapped at her head and screamed, beating off incorporeal assailants, then covered her stomach with her hands and tasted bitter tears. She could not bear this surreal agony. Death was a formidable foe, but this was an encounter with something far worse and far more significant.

  The old shaman had said she encountered God this morning. Maybe she had, but she had not acknowledged him. Through her rejection, had she unwittingly chosen his adversary?

  Compressed into an ever-shrinking space between the weight of reality and her own stubbornness, she brought her hands to her face. Why had she found it so hard to acknowledge the fact that healing occurred when believers sought it? Why had she been foolish enough to create the God of Desperate Women in Tropical Straits when the God had revealed himself in the sunset, in Michael Kenway, and in the healing of Shaman’s Wife?

  The answer rose like a bubble from the fountain of her soul— because she blamed God for the death of her mother, her husband’s desertion, and, most of all, for the disease that had brought her to this dire place. Yet Kenway claimed that God could take even the tragedies of a life and bend them toward good.

  If so, God was not a cosmic joker, determined to beat her down at every encounter. He was a patient and compassionate physician, tending to wounds of the heart as well as the body.

  “Y-Yai Pada Son!” Broken and desperate, she screamed the name. “Oh, God, h-h-help me!”

  The monkeys fell silent, followed by a quiet so thick the only sound was the sobbing whistle of her panicked breathing. The impish hands flew away, the agony at her foot ceased, the pain in her stomach stopped as if it had been on a switch. When she opened her eyes and looked into the darkness, she saw no sign of Delmar, not even a footprint on the muddy bank.

  But there was light . . . glowing, sparkling, loving light.

  A hallucination?

  No . . . a presence. She sensed it in the silence, felt its warmth through the chill of her sweat. The blessed light surrounding her chased away the paralyzing fear and spoke peace to her heart.

  Do not be afraid.

  The voice held no trace of intimidation, but power pulsed through it, power enough to make Delmar’s magic seem like parlor tricks. Alex relaxed, content to die in the light, then she heard a sound on the path and turned to look. The shaman of Keyba Village stood in the light, and when he extended his hand and she took it, she found him flesh and bone.

  His smile glimmered in the gloom as he pulled her to her feet. Finding her footing, Alex leaned against the tree. The shaman gestured toward the path, obviously intending to lead her back to safety.

  She shook her head. “I can’t walk.” She lowered her hands and slapped them against her trembling legs. “I’m sick.”

  The shaman’s gaze traveled over her form, then, without a word, the man who barely came up to Alex’s shoulder walked forward, turned, and pointed to his back.

  Alex coughed rather than release the wry laughter that bubbled to her lips. Did he actually intend to carry her? She hadn’t ridden piggyback since childhood.

  The shaman stood there, bent and waiting.

  Alex clung to the tree a moment more, then shivered as another truth hit like an electric tingle in her stomach. If her encounter with Delmar had been real—and she now believed that on some plane it had been—then her teammates were in danger. He would kill them all on the journey away from this place.

  Inhaling a deep breath, she released the tree and toppled forward, falling helplessly onto the shaman’s bony back.

  21 APRIL 2003

  5:00 A.M.

  Alexandra was . . . gone.

  The thought slashed into Michael’s sleep like a knife. He sat up and stared into the darkness, trying to focus as the world shifted dizzily before his eyes. A thin gray gloom covered the interior of the shabono, draping every hammock and inhabitant in shadows, but the simple fact he could see meant sunrise was not far away.

  A film of dirt itched at the back of his neck. As he lifted his hand to swipe his skin, he felt bits of grass and leaves, the detritus of last night’s frantic search, clinging to his collar.

  Alex had gone into the jungle after dark; he, Bancroft, and Delmar set out after her. They carried torches to search the field and the area around the kapok tree, but after an hour Delmar pointed to a broken branch near the fringe of the jungle. “If she went in here,” his brow creased, “we will never find her. We should continue in the morning, when the sun is up and the jaguars have gone to bed.”

  Michael wanted to continue the search, but even Bancroft warned against it. “We’ll get lost if we go in now,” he told Michael. “Better to let her take her chances than risk all our lives out there.”

  Michael drew a breath, about to protest, but Bancroft gave him a look that said, Now do you understand why I wanted to rescue Deborah?

  Michael snapped his mouth shut and returned to the shabono with a heavy heart. Caitlyn was waiting, exuding terror like a scent. Michael drew the frantic girl into his arms and whispered words that brought neither comfort nor assurance.

  “Your mum’s clever. She’ll be all right,” he had murmured, knowing all the while that Alex would not have gone into the forest unless she wanted to cut herself off from her life and loved ones. Like a swimmer who commits suicide by swimming toward the horizon, she had waded into the jungle knowing that each step brought her nearer to some sort of fatal encounter. Even if she did not meet a jaguar, a poisonous snake, or warriors from the Angry People, exhaustion, illness, and dehydration would claim her before too many days had passed.

  She had often remarked that finding a cure for her disease would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Finding her in this vast, uncharted jungle would be no easier.

  Leaning to peer at the hammock above him, Michael saw Caitlyn’s shadowed form curled into a ball. She had fallen asleep beneath his arm hours after the shabono had quieted. After putting her to bed, Michael had paced by the fire for what felt like an eternity before seeking his own rest.

  He glanced at the hammock next to Caitlyn’s. It still hung empty, so Alex had not come in during the night.

  Swinging his legs to the ground, he stood, then silently swatted a mosquito on the back of his hand. Moving quietly to avoid disturbing the sleeping natives, he walked through the shabono, his movements stiff and awkward. His body felt thick and unresponsive due to a lack of sleep. How must Alexandra feel after not sleeping for days?

  After moving to the communal fire in the center of the shabono, he bent to pick up a log that had rolled away from the center. Holding it so the embers on the burnt end served as a glowing torch, he walked past the family compartments and squinted into the red-tinted darkness, trying to see if Alexandra had wandered into the wrong hammock during the night.

  His heart leaped into his throat when a living thing no higher than his thigh pushed its way through the darkness at his feet, then he saw the outline of a toddling child and heard the sound of streaming water at the pile of sand the children used for a toilet.

  “Only a boy,” he whispered, “wandering about in the night like any ordinary lad.”

  Feeling foolish, Michael leaned against one of the supporting poles and forced himself to take steady breaths. The little boy toddled past Michael again, then rolled into his mother’s hammock. Save for the buzz of muffled snoring, silence reigned in the shabono until another foot snapped a twig someone had dropped onto the ground. Michael jerked to attention, then recognized the shaman’s son. Though he wore a troubled expression, the young man said nothing, but crossed to his hammock and lay down, crossing his arms over his chest.

  Michael rubbed the wiry beard at his chin. The shaman’s son had probably been drawn out of bed for the same reasons as the toddler. Even when calamity struck, the rhythms of ordinary life had to continue.

  After his search, Michael had found three empty hammocks— Alexandra’s, one in the shaman’s enclosure, and another on the pole above Bancroft. As far as he could see, Alex had not come
back.

  He’d wait, then. A few more moments of darkness, then the sun would rise and chase away the dangers of the night. He would rouse the others, and together they’d follow the trails and search for any tracks Alex might have made. For Caitlyn’s sake, he would expend every effort to find the AWOL neurologist.

  He slid down the pole, grimacing as the stern voice of reason mocked his rationalization. Who was he kidding? The woman whose name had awakened him from sleep like a sharp spur meant a great deal to him, too.

  “Father,” he whispered, lifting his eyes to the socked-in darkness above, “for the sake of those of us who love her, bring Alexandra back.”

  21 APRIL 2003

  5:15 A.M.

  Countless sleepless nights were bearing down on Alex with an irresistible warm and delicious weight. Her grip on reality, which had been weakening over the last several hours, finally loosened. Releasing herself to the inevitable, she felt herself falling, soaring through a yawning emptiness that held neither sights nor sounds.

  So this is what coma feels like.

  She had known her brain could not continue much longer. In the moment she draped herself over the shaman’s wiry back, she had known she would not walk again. This was how the disease worked, sapping the patient’s strength, draining the patient’s energy, muting the patient’s speech.

  At least the shaman had brought her to a good place. No one would find her here; none of her companions would think to look in this most obvious of locations. They would scour the fields and some of the native trails, then they would reluctantly depart Keyba Village. By the time any of them returned to continue their research, her bones would have been bleached by the sun and scoured by the wind.

  The sounds of insects and birds faded along with the raspy sounds of the shaman’s breathing as the muffling walls of coma closed around her senses.

  Alex wasn’t surprised to find that though she could no longer hear, see, or feel, her brain kept firing up thoughts, some seemingly random, others immediately connected to the situation she had just abandoned.

  Caitlyn would be terribly hurt—remember how adorable she looked as a pumpkin in her nursery school class?—but Michael would comfort her. Michael himself would be dreadfully annoyed with her sudden departure, but he might have done the same thing if the situation were reversed. Both of them knew how unpleasant the end stage of a prion disease would be.

  Mother, did you feel this? Did you know I sat by your side until the end?

  Odd, that in this coma, cut off from the world, she could feel blissfully happy and fully alive. She had never known such contentment, but it had not begun with the coma. It had begun the moment she cried out to Yai Pada Son and surrendered to his light, giving up her struggles and her arguments. In that moment, while suffering the agonies of the path she had chosen when she refused to acknowledge the God who held sway even in this remote place, she had come face to face with her own inadequacies.

  Armed with her knowledge, her intellect, and her practicality, she had substituted science for the God who created it. What a lousy bargain she had made . . .

  Alex’s thoughts slowed as she sensed a familiar presence. He was here, even in her coma, and he would remain with her until the end. But there was no end, was there? Even the people of Keyba Village knew about the bright land where people sang and celebrated. She had always considered such tales mental placebos invented to take the edge off human suffering, but that was before she met Yai Pada in the fullness of his power and glory.

  She was drifting, imagining her heavenly reunion with Caitlyn and Michael, when her thoughts skittered toward an unfamiliar sensation. Was that warmth she felt? She should not be feeling in a coma; the sense of touch was one of the first to fade . . . but undeniably, heat caressed her face. Another feeling accompanied it, the texture of dried grass beneath her hands and leaves that crackled when she moved her fingers—

  She moved her fingers! She heard the crackle!

  With an effort, Alex commanded her eyes to open. When they obeyed, a noisy, fragrant, tactile world edged back into her consciousness. She breathed in the scents of sweet grass, felt the stubble of prickly twigs beneath her bones, heard the cacophony of parrots vying to see who could best herald the Creator of the rising sun. The warmth of the sun flushed her skin, urging her to rise like a sleeping flower and greet it with strong arms, sturdy legs, and lips that parted in a shout of joy.

  Pulling herself upright, Alex stood in the woven nest and laughed aloud as the morning’s first rays bathed her restored body in a golden glow.

  21 APRIL 2003

  5:45 A.M.

  Some primitive flee-or-fight instinct tightened Michael’s nerves when he heard the sound of footsteps swishing through the grass in the alana. He stood, hoping he would be able to escort Alexandra to her daughter before Caitlyn awoke, but Delmar appeared in the entry, his trousers wet to the knees with morning dew.

  He nodded when he caught Michael’s eye, then held up a large leaf and jerked his head toward the fire. When Michael joined him there, Delmar squatted and spread the leaf on the sand. “I found this in the grass outside. No other trace of her, I’m afraid.”

  Kneeling, Michael winced as the age-old instinct seized him by the guts and yanked for his attention. “What is it?”

  “I think she tried to leave us a note.” Delmar lowered his voice. “Not a very encouraging message, I daresay.”

  Michael stared at the huge leaf. In an uneven, primitive script, his friend had written:

  I, Alexandra Pace, want my daughter Caitlyn Grace to be the ward of Michael Kenway if I predecease either of them.

  Groaning, he sank onto the ground and dropped his head onto his hand. His heart kept telling him that Alexandra wouldn’t do this, but the message before him seemed to indicate otherwise.

  Beside him, Delmar cleared his throat. “We need to make preparations for leaving, Doc. You said it yourself—our presence here is taxing these people.”

  Lifting his head, Michael looked at the guide through bleary eyes. This is how Bancroft felt when we left Deborah Simons with the other tribe.

  “Now that the sun is up, we need to search again.” His voice scraped like sandpaper against his own ears.

  “I’ve already looked. I was out there before sunrise with a torch, and I found this leaf after the sun came up.”

  “I didn’t hear you go. Where did you search?”

  “Everywhere. I walked all through the field and followed fifty yards of the nearest trails. If Dr. Pace spent the night walking through the jungle . . . well, I am afraid she is beyond our reach.” A regretful smile flitted across the guide’s face. “Sorry, Doctor, I know you liked her a lot. But she was sick, and I think this may have been her escape.”

  Michael looked away, lest Delmar read agreement in his eyes. Alexandra had been upset last night, but if she had decided to flee, surely her common sense and logic would compel her to return this morning. The old saying about things looking better in the bright light of day held a lot of truth. If Alex would only come back, she would certainly see that suicide was not the answer.

  Standing, Delmar moved to the communal water jug. “Some of the tribes have a practice—when food is scarce, they take their old ones into the jungle, settle them into their hammocks, and walk away. You nabas think that is harsh, but it is really better for everyone. Apparently Dr. Pace thought so.”

  Michael stared at the guide. “I can’t believe Alex would do that to Caitlyn. When the others wake, I’d like to form search parties and spread out over the area. It’s entirely possible she survived the night and got lost while trying to return—”

  Delmar shook his head. “She had no hammock. The ants would have gotten her if she fell asleep.”

  “She wouldn’t fall asleep, don’t you understand? She can’t sleep! That’s what’s killing her!”

  “She is gone, I tell you.” Delmar splashed water into a gourd, then lifted it. “Still, we will look. But only for a short
while. Then we are leaving, because we need to make good progress before the sun sets.”

  A suffocating sensation tightened Michael’s throat as the native tracker moved away. He could plead Alex’s case with Bancroft, but with Deborah’s death weighing on the guard’s heart, he would probably not do more than a perfunctory search. Like Delmar, he would look at this leaf and assume Alex meant to die, though for Caitlyn’s sake he would never voice that thought. Baklanov, Olsson, and Emma would be sympathetic, but they were ready to leave. They’d probably join in the search for an hour, then pack up their samples and happily say farewell to Keyba Village.

  Caitlyn, however—he swallowed hard and leaned forward, wrapping his arms around himself. How could he, a man who had never had a daughter, look into that little girl’s eyes and soothe an agony like this? Caitlyn had known about her mother’s illness, but she had not expected to be abandoned in the jungle. She’d be traumatized, and when the feeling of numbness passed, she’d be furious at Alex for leaving and at Michael for not moving heaven and earth to find her mum.

  Several of the women and children had risen by the time Michael stood and made his way toward the place where Caitlyn slept. She looked so vulnerable in the hammock, so much like a child, that his resolve rushed away like water going a drain.

  He was praying for strength and wisdom when a woman’s cry drifted into the shabono through the open roof. “Hey! Anybody awake down there?”

  The voice was clear, female . . . and American.

  Caitlyn sat straight up in her hammock, her eyes wide as saucers. “That’s Mom!”

  “Alexandra?” Michael cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, but the sound didn’t seem to travel beyond the circle of sleepy villagers. After reaching for Caitlyn’s hand, Michael hurried through the alana and into the open field.

  “Alex?” Yelling at the top of his lungs, he shielded his eyes from the blinding sun and peered toward the forest.