Holding tight to her daughter’s hand, Alex followed the others toward a shabono that from the outside looked almost like the one they had left four days earlier. The structures were similar, yet she could see several striking differences. The natives here had cleared a circle of land immediately around the structure to grow fruit trees, including papaya, mangoes, and bananas. One towering tree dominated the field, casting a circle of shade upon the shabono, and fields of knee-high grass covered the open areas between the plants, rippling with the wind like a green sea.
Emma stared at the field with wide eyes. “It appears they’ve moved from a migrant to an agrarian society. These are orchards, not the sort of crops that are easily abandoned. Amazing.”
Olsson narrowed his eyes as he studied the crops. “These trees would make it harder for them to defend the shabono, though. They could see an enemy approaching through a flat field, but this?”
“That’s probably why they had sentinels in the woods,” Bancroft said. “They saw us coming long before we arrived. Obviously, they had time to raise an alarm and assemble a pretty efficient war party.”
Olsson shrugged. “Still seems an inefficient way to defend a village.”
Wordlessly, Alex lifted her free hand and pointed toward the fringe of the jungle, where a pair of natives had just stepped out of the dense greenery. Between them, draped over their shoulders, they carried an anaconda that had to be sixteen feet long.
Emma winked at Caitlyn. “We may be looking at our dinner. But don’t worry—I hear it tastes just like chicken.”
Caitlyn gulped, then returned Emma’s smile. “I’m hungry enough to eat a snake. I think I’d eat anything anybody gave me.”
The arrival of newcomers interrupted their discussion. Summoned by whoops from the war party, a band of women and children poured out of the shabono, their faces alert and curious. Careful to maintain their distance from the strangers, they welcomed the men with smiles and shouts.
Before greeting the women and children, however, each warrior walked toward a small hardwood tree growing outside the shabono. Without speaking, each man hung his bow, quiver, and spear from the tree’s spindly branches, then turned to greet his loved ones.
Alex caught Emma’s eye. “Aren’t they afraid those things will be stolen?”
A gentle smile ruffled the anthropologist’s mouth as she watched the odd ritual. “I’ve heard of this ceremony, but I’ve never seen it practiced.”
“What ceremony?” Caitlyn asked. “Are they decorating the tree?”
“No—they are letting the tree take their shame. Because those weapons were used today for killing, the men are unclean and unable to touch their wives, their children, or even themselves. Yet when they place their weapons on the tree, the tree accepts their shame, leaving them clean.” She bit her lip as a warrior bent to pick up a small child who had run to greet him. “Rather touching, isn’t it?”
Alex followed the anthropologist’s gaze. “The strong family structure?”
Emma shook her head. “The ritual. If Americans could set their guilt aside as easily, I’ve a feeling we could practically clear the appointment books of every therapist in the nation.”
“These people do seem well-adjusted.” Alex watched as another woman offered her baby to one of the returning warriors. “And healthy.”
Alex squeezed her daughter’s hand as she stooped to enter the wooden structure. Unlike the home of the Angry People, this shabono had been built much like a seashell—a narrow passageway led around the circular wall, forcing them to walk almost halfway around the shabono before encountering the actual entrance.
Bancroft grunted his approval. “This is clever.”
Alex squinted at him. “What’s so clever about making us walk another fifty yards?”
A grudging smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “An intruder would not only have to kill the sentry at the opening, but once the alarm was raised, he’d have to fight his way through every available man before reaching the women and children.”
“Oh.” Feeling stupid, Alex lowered her head. Her brain had not been functioning as it should, but whether her dullness resulted from fatigue or illness, she couldn’t say.
But the others had noticed her increasing weakness. Several times she’d caught Kenway looking at her with concern, and soon he’d be prying even more deeply into her affairs.
Once they reached the inside, the warriors who had escorted them shed the last vestiges of their wariness. Leaving the foreigners in the center of the shabono, the women returned to their fires, the children to the small enclosures that afforded the families a bit of privacy. The men gathered in small groups, patting each other on the back as if congratulating themselves on a mission accomplished.
Alex and her companions sank to the sandy ground around the communal fire. The women who tended the flames seemed healthy enough—though they were thin, Alex could see no signs of malnutrition or skin disease. Many of the women in the tribe had lustrous hair cascading past their waistlines; several worked with chubby infants nursing in the crook of an arm.
“I don’t know much about these things,” Alex leaned toward Emma, “but I’d say this tribe’s infant mortality rate is quite a bit lower than that of the Angry People. Have you noticed how many small children are scampering about?”
Emma bent her knees, then linked her arms around them. “The entire village is more balanced, but I’m not sure I understand why. Two groups separated by only a few miles and speaking the same language should share the same quality of life. Given the unique color of their eyes, I’m certain they sprang from the same tribe, but what made them split? Most of the native groups in this area are nomadic; they tend to splinter when food becomes scarce or an enemy threatens.”
Caitlyn waved her hand. “But you said this tribe doesn’t move, on account of the fruit trees.”
“Perhaps.” Emma stared out at the natives, a watchful fixity in her face. “They could move seasonally and return to this spot.”
“I don’t think this group is nomadic.” Brushing sweat-soaked hair from his temples, Michael Kenway entered the conversation. “Did you see the defensive structure outside the shabono? Do you appreciate how thoroughly we were ambushed on the trail? These people know how to defend this location. They have been here a while.”
Emma opened her mouth as if she would object, then shrugged and cupped her chin in her hand. “We’ll see.”
“Look, Mom.” Caitlyn jerked her chin toward a woman who carried food on a wooden platter. “I think it’s dinnertime.”
“Thank GODWITS.”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
Alex’s stomach growled while the women fed their men and their children, then carried platters of food to the old man who had appeared in the jungle.
Delmar waved in a subtle gesture designed to capture their attention, then inclined his head toward the grizzled fellow. “Their shaman.”
The old man accepted food from the women, uttered a flat phrase that might have indicated anything from gratitude to displeasure, then spread chunks of meat and fruit over several palm leaves. When each woman had brought a portion from her family’s share, the shaman waved his hands over the food, then looked at Delmar and spoke in a voice that crackled with age.
Surprise blossomed on the guide’s face. “It’s for us,” he said, turning to the team members. “He says it’s all for us.”
Alex couldn’t recall when she’d been more grateful to be included in a meal. Drawing Caitlyn with her, she walked to the delicacies spread over the palm leaves, then knelt to gather a handful. Along with bananas and chunks of papaya, she picked up bits of brown meat that looked like tiny crab legs.
She winked at her daughter. “This does not look like an anaconda.”
Delmar did not hesitate to scoop up a handful and drop them into his palm, then he threw a mischievous glance over his shoulder. “If Senorita Simons were here, she’d probably identify this with no trouble. It’s tarantula.”
Caitlyn’s face blanched. “Mom, I don’t think I can—”
“Eat it,” Alex commanded, adopting her own mother’s voice as memories of ancient food arguments floated to the top of her thoughts. Her mother had always insisted she eat lima beans, and Alex decided long ago that no food could possibly be as dreadful as mushy tree frog–colored beans.
“This other dish,” Delmar continued, digging out a handful of soft gray mash from a gourd, “is monkey brain. These chunks are stewed monkey meat, but I don’t think you’ll find it very delicious. Monkeys are very skinny animals—no fat, no flavor.”
Alex gave her daughter a stern look. “Eat a little bit of everything, but don’t touch the brain.”
She had good reasons for her warning, though this was not the time or place to share them. Research had proven that encephalopathies were transmitted more readily when people ate infected brain tissue. Though she’d heard nothing about mad monkeys, one couldn’t be too careful in an area where humans were infected with anything resembling a “shuddering disease.” She’d seen no signs of the disease among the people of Keyba Village, yet Shaman’s Wife had contacted it from something in the area . . .
Without commenting further, Alex returned to her place by the fire and tried to savor the food in her palm. The fruit was delicious and the meat . . . interesting. At home she would have eaten more than this for an appetizer, but no one had taken a generous portion. The shaman, in fact, hadn’t eaten a single bite. The palm leaves before him, once laden with food, were now shiny with fruit juice and nothing else.
Alex froze, her hand halfway to her mouth, when she realized she and her friends had literally stripped his plate. Looking up, she caught Delmar’s eye. “The shaman—will he eat later?”
The guide glanced at the old man. “I doubt it. They seem to have enough for everyone, but not much extra for outsiders.”
As her blood ran thick with guilt, Alex lowered her hand. “He shared with us—should we share with him, or would that be a breech of etiquette?”
“You’ll need every bite to keep up your strength, señora.” A wry glint appeared in the guide’s eyes. “I suggest you save your pity and concentrate on survival. He is an old man, and you are starving.”
While Alex’s conscience wrestled with her raving appetite, Kenway approached the old man, then knelt respectfully and offered the food remaining in his hand—a banana and two long tarantula legs. The old shaman smiled, his face creasing in a toothless grin. Clapping Kenway on the shoulder, he accepted the food and began to eat.
“It’s amazing we got anything at all,” Emma murmured. “The law of the jungle does not usually encourage such generosity.”
“Maybe this tribe has managed to advance beyond the law of the jungle.” Alex looked around the circle. “Think about it—the other tribes know them as healers, and that signifies some sort of advanced learning. Maybe they have found more cures, or discovered some substance that provides nutrition and enables them to do more than live hand to mouth. Perhaps this tribe is an anomaly—when the others stopped learning, something enabled this group to keep adding to their store of knowledge.”
Olsson stopped licking monkey grease from his fingers long enough to gesture at the crude wooden structure around them. “How advanced can they be, Alex? They haven’t even discovered the wheel.”
Spreading her hands in a gesture of appeal, Alex looked to Emma for an answer, but the anthropologist offered only one comment: “Time will tell us.”