Crossing her arms, Alex tried to disguise her irritation as the doctor came into the roundhouse, sunlight glinting off his dark hair. Though the native women were now more accustomed to his presence, they actually twittered when he passed by. The doctor ignored them, but Alex knew he had to notice—and was arrogant enough to pretend he didn’t.
What quality about him fluttered feminine hearts? The long hair? None of the native men wore anything longer than an ear-length bowl cut, and not many men in the States or England wore their hair long these days, either. Kenway’s collar-length mane, while suiting him perfectly, did seem a little dashing and avant-garde.
Her thoughts came to an abrupt halt, like hitting a wall. Why was she thinking about a man when her mind should have been occupied with more important issues? She had to be experiencing a sort of dementia. Delusion, maybe. She’d be hallucinating next.
Raking her hand through her hair, she joined Delmar, the shaman, and Kenway at the sick woman’s bedside.
Sinking to the ground, Michael looked at the shaman with an uplifted brow.
Alex drew an irritated breath. “The shaman says he has to talk to her,” she snapped, “before you can take her into the tree.”
Michael shifted to meet her eyes. “So he asked me for permission?”
“Apparently he thinks you have authority over her—maybe he thinks she’s your woman.”
Kenway gaped in surprise, then turned to Delmar. “Please tell him he may speak directly to her. And if you wouldn’t mind translating, I’d like to hear what he has to say.”
Heedless of the eavesdroppers, the shaman took the woman’s limp hand and began to stroke it with gentle fingers. Slowly and softly he spoke while Delmar translated: “Great mercy is given to you, sister. The nabas have agreed to do what you cannot. They will carry you into the keyba where others have walked, and when the sun rises again you will be touched by the rays of first light. If your spirit is willing, the Great Spirit of the keyba will speak to you, filling your shabono with light and healing.”
Alex crooked a brow. Her shabono? Was he referring to this roundhouse? There’d be trouble if the tribe planned to adopt this woman as they had adopted Michael’s patient.
The mute woman did not speak, but a tide of fear washed through her eyes.
“If you let the light touch you,” the shaman finished, lowering the woman’s hand to her chest. “You will see with new eyes and honor the Spirit of the keyba in all you do.”
The woman did not answer, but a tear slipped from one drooping eye and slid down a shrunken cheek.
Glancing toward the sunlit center of the shabono, Alex saw that the sun had begun its climb toward the center of the sky. Clearing her throat, she stood and wiped sand from her palms. “Are the vines nearly ready?”
“Very nearly.” Michael nodded his appreciation to the shaman as he stood. “It’s going to be an arduous climb, so if we’re going to set out, we’d best go as soon as possible.”
“I’ll be ready.” She turned to find Caitlyn, but Michael caught and held her arm. When she turned, his face had darkened with unreadable emotions.
“Are you sure you ought to go? It’s a hard climb, and you’re not well.”
“I’m well enough.”
“Are you?” He hesitated, then released her arm and swiped his wrist across his perspiring forehead. “I could look around up there for you. I could take samples. You needn’t risk this venture.”
“Worried, Kenway?” She allowed a smile to creep across her face. “I thought you believed in the keyba. I could have sworn that earlier you were daring me to make the climb.”
“Maybe I was—I mean, I do believe there’s something up there. But I’m not sure I’d advise you to risk your life climbing two hundred feet on a few jungle vines in order to find it.”
She stood, watching him, and could not stop herself from pondering what had motivated this expression of concern. Could he be doubting his own faith in the story that had brought them to this place?
She lowered her voice. “Have you forgotten that I risk my life by not climbing that tree? If there’s a cure and I find it, I’ll halt my disease sooner.” She caught his eye to give emphasis to her words. “I’m at the point where every d-d-day counts.”
“What if you climb and find nothing? Or what if you fall?” His voice, like her nerves, was in tatters.
She closed her eyes and looked away, simultaneously pleased and irritated by his concern. He cared . . . she knew it as surely she knew the sun would rise on the morrow, because no man would risk getting close to a dying woman unless his feelings were genuine and strong.
But he was also wavering in his conviction and she needed him to be strong. For once in her life, she needed someone to offer something inviolate and immutable, something that would not fail.
“I appreciate your concern more than you can know.” She placed her hand on his arm. “But in remembering that I am weak and exhausted, you have forgotten that I am also desperate. I can make the climb. I will make the climb.”
A short silence followed, in which her words seemed to hang in the emptiness as if for inspection, then he nodded.
And as he walked away, her thoughts turned to the God of Desperate Women in Tropical Straits. . .
On occasions like this, she needed something bigger than GODWITS. She needed someone who could heal her brain, restore her body, and refresh her weary soul, but she had no idea where to find him.
Moreover, she was almost positive he didn’t dwell in the top of a kapok tree. climbers—Alex, Michael, Olsson, and Bancroft—would climb up the tree and spend the night in the canopy of the kapok.
According to Alex’s calculations, the climbing party began their ascent three hours before the sunset. The plan was simple—four
Because he was the most experienced climber, Olsson would ascend first. Once he reached the canopy, he would attempt to fashion some sort of platform where they could sit throughout the night. Alex would climb next, burdened only by pocketfuls of sterile soil wrapped in palm fronds. Bancroft would follow with the sick woman strapped to his back, while Michael brought up the rear. While they were aloft, Baklanov, Delmar, and Emma would finish their research with the Keyba tribe and prepare for the journey home.
Alex had privately drawn Baklanov aside a few moments before venturing out of the shabono. “I asked Kenway to take Caitlyn back to the States if anything should happen to me in the jungle,” she’d whispered. “But if anything should happen to us while we’re up in that tree—”
“I will see to your sweet daughter’s safety.” Baklanov slipped a fatherly arm around her shoulders. “One should offer no less to a friend.”
After saying good-bye to Caitlyn, whose eyes shone bright with unshed tears despite an attempt at nonchalant bravery, Alex waited with a length of liana in her hand. Olsson had worked out an ingenious method of scaling the tree. Using a slingshot he’d fashioned from elastic and a forked branch, he had propelled a vine-wrapped rock over the first accessible branch.
“It’s a simple process,” he’d told Alex as he reminded her how to tie a prusik knot. “When you reach that branch, I’ll have another vine waiting. Just untie your prusik knots from the first vine and attach them to the second. Slow, yes, but it will work.”
“Ready, Alex?” Olsson’s voice startled her from her reverie. “All clear.”
Releasing the liana that served as the main climbing rope, she picked up the slender lengths of vine Olsson had set aside for the prusik knots. She tied one around the rope for her left foot, then another for her right. When she was set, she grasped the line with her free hand.
“Good luck, Alex,” Bancroft called. “You can do it.”
She couldn’t look back. If she did, she’d see Caitlyn and Baklanov and Kenway, the man who had an answer for everything except what they might find in the canopy of this tree.
She slipped her right sneaker into the first loop, stepped into it, and felt the knots tighten around her foot. When she knew it would hold her weight, she slid the left loop several inches up the rope. “Here goes nothing.”
The world fell away as she swung into space. She had climbed before, but this felt different, more foreign. She clung to the vine as the wind whipped it, spinning her around and making the world below shift dizzily before her wide eyes.
She closed her eyes, then forced herself to look up. She would keep her eyes on the canopy and not allow herself to be distracted by the villagers, her companions, or the buffeting wind. Her life depended upon simple, single-minded concentration.
As the ragged sounds of her own breathing filled her ears, Alex wormed her way up the vine, only half-hearing the villagers’ admiring cries. She took her eyes from the lead rope once and realized she was climbing past a wasps’ nest bigger than a bear—after that, she kept her eyes on the vine, feeling her way upward. Her back ached between her shoulder blades, her eyes felt gritty, and her mouth had gone as dry as a desert.
She wanted to whoop in relief when she reached the first branch, but settled for a hoarse, “Finally!” Clambering aboard the wide limb, she let her trembling arms and legs hang over the edge while she flattened herself along its length. She could have closed her eyes and remained in that position all afternoon, but the sight of a determined line of ants spurred her to move again. Leaving the old prusik knots on the lower vine, she tied fresh ones to the second rope Olsson had left dangling, then began to climb again.
She took her time, knowing the others would also move slowly and cautiously. Parrots chattered in the foliage around her while a tarantula hung motionless, blending almost perfectly into the mottled brown bark. Sleeping fruit bats dotted one section of the mighty trunk, and the sight of them spurred her to pick up her pace—once night fell, the bats would wake and begin to hunt. While Caitlyn had assured her they didn’t often bite people, the thought of a blind bat tangling in her hair gave her the willies.
Down below her, she heard the villagers begin the rhythmic chant they’d picked up when they welcomed the boy after his night in the tree. Encouragement, Delmar had called it. Alex listened, trying to pick out words and phrases, but from this distance the vocal sounds escaped her. The rhythm, however, vibrated through the tree, and soon her arms and legs began to move in a coordinated fashion, steadily propelling her upward despite the tendency of her exhausted nerve endings to snap at each other.
By the time she reached the canopy, where the branches narrowed and climbing grew riskier, she heard Olsson’s welcoming voice. “Over here, Alex. You’ve almost made it.”
Looking up, she saw him above and to the west of her position, standing on a branch while he pointed to a trio of horizontal vines he had rigged between vertical limbs. “Walk on the lower rope, and hold tight to the other two.”
Alex gulped, forcing down the sudden lurch of her stomach. “You expect me to walk a tightrope?”
Olsson laughed. “It’s easy.”
“Easy for y-y-you.” Determined not to look down, she kept her eyes on the bearded face among the leaves and pulled her feet out of the prusik loops. To her astonishment, once she gripped the “handrails” and established her balance, walking on the rope was not as dizzying as she’d feared. Olsson’s strong voice urged her forward, and by the time she reached him, she discovered that he’d led her to the very heart of the tree, where someone had built a sort of platform.
Relieved at the thought of resting in anything solid, Alex dropped into the stick-and-straw structure, then snatched at the edges when it rocked slightly. “Don’t tell me,” she said, swallowing the panic in her throat, “you just happened to discover a prehistoric pterodactyl nest.”
“It does look a bit birdlike, doesn’t it?” Olsson took an admiring look at the odd formation. “For a split second I wondered if perhaps this could have been the home of a gigantic bird, but I don’t think so. The center has been padded with grasses, and I found a few banana peels around the edges. This is definitely man-made.”
“I don’t care. I’m just grateful it’s here.”
Olsson grinned at her as he wound a length of vine between his thumb and elbow. “This nest will be a bit cozy for the five of us, but someone did a good job of constructing it. It’s been well maintained, too. Those banana peels are only a few days old.”
Sitting up, Alex fingered the grass beneath her and found it fresh, still green in spots.
“The grass.” She looked at Olsson, her jaw dropping. “Why, those patches of grass between the fruit trees aren’t a fluke, they’re crops. They grow the grass to maintain this tree house.”
Olsson lifted a brow. “You may be right; such fields do not occur naturally anywhere else in the forest. You’d probably be surprised how much work is required to keep the forest from taking over those little patches.”
“No wonder the women and children work in the fields every day! They’re not only gathering food, they’re tending this . . . thing.” She shook her head. “Such wasted effort. Energy they could spend on hunting or weaving is going into the maintenance of a useless bird’s nest—”
She paused as Bancroft’s voice floated from beneath them. “Alex? Olsson?”
“Keep coming,” Alex called. “You’ve almost made it.”
A few moments later, Bancroft’s red face appeared through a tapestry of green leaves. Though drenched in perspiration and breathing heavily, the former soldier seemed in good spirits.
“Great heavens,” he panted, squinting up at them. “What are you sitting in?”
Alex managed a weak laugh. “Come on over. You’ll see soon enough.”
After walking the tightrope, his biceps clenching as he gripped the vines, Bancroft climbed into the nest and scrambled toward the grassy center, bending forward until Alex and Olsson could unstrap the native woman who hung like a corpse from the soldier’s back.
For a moment Alex feared their patient had died during the climb, but though her eyelids hung heavy and her pulse was weak and thready, Shaman’s Wife still breathed. Speaking in a soothing voice, Alex helped Bancroft settle the woman in the most heavily padded section of the nest, then she tugged on a spray of leaves from an overhanging branch to provide their patient with some shade.
After snapping the slender limb from the branch, she rubbed the broken end over her palm. When a thin smear of wetness appeared on her skin, she brought her hand to her nostrils and sniffed. Might the cure be found in sap formed only in the canopy? Was it possible that others with the shuddering disease had climbed up here and broken off a branch in the same way, seeking shade from the blast of the setting sun?
After jamming the leafy branch into the woven nest so that it provided a margin of shade for Shaman’s Wife, she plucked other leaves, then rubbed and tasted them. Olsson gave her an indulgent smile, like a parent amused by the antics of his child. “I have already gathered samples,” he assured her. “Leaves from the canopy as well as the understory. If an unusual element exists in this layer of growth, we will find it.”
“The curative agent may be something quite ordinary,” Alex thrust another broken stem into the woven nest, “but something we’ve never applied to cellular physiology.” She twisted the branch, adjusting it until the shade speckled the sick woman’s face. Sighing, she looked at Olsson. “Like looking for a needle in a haystack, isn’t it?”
“That is the nature of research,” he answered. “But when we find the answer—ah! Then the work is worthwhile.”
Yes . . . but sometimes the answer came too late. Field trials proving the effectiveness of Salk’s polio vaccine weren’t conducted until 1954, but during the epidemic of 1916, that disease struck nine thousand children in New York City alone. And how many lives were lost before medical researchers produced the “AIDS cocktail” that effectively slowed the destruction of the deadly HIV virus?
“Here comes the doctor,” Bancroft announced. He and Olsson shifted positions to make room for one more.
Leaning back into the nest, Alex hugged her knees and closed her eyes. She had to admire Kenway’s tenacity. He no longer had any personal stake in prion research, yet curiosity and commitment to a single patient had brought him to this precarious predicament. . .
Grudgingly, she admitted the man had courage.