Amazonia

Nate realized the man must smell the stench of the massacre on his clothes and skin. He knelt nearer and spoke in Yanomamo. “Haya. Grandfather. Who are you? Are you from this village?”

He shook his head with a deep scowl. “This village is marked by shawari. Evil spirits. I came here to deliver myself to the Ban-ali. But I was too late.”

Around Nate, the arguing had stopped as they watched the exchange. Kelly whispered behind him. “He’s not spoken a word to anyone, not even Professor Kouwe.”

“Why do you seek the Blood Jaguars, the Ban-ali?”

“To save my own village. We did not heed their ways. We did not burn the body of the nabe, the white man marked as a slave of the Ban-ali. Now all our children sicken with evil magic.”

Nate suddenly understood. The white man marked by the Ban-ali had to be Gerald Clark. If so, that meant…“You’re from Wauwai.”

He nodded and spit into the dirt. “Curse that name. Curse the day we ever set foot in that nabe village.”

Nate realized this was the shaman who had tried to heal the sick mission children, then burned their village down in an attempt to protect the others. But by his own admission, the shaman must have failed. The contagion was still spreading through the Yanomamo children.

“Why come here? How did you get here?”

“I followed the nabe’s tracks to his canoe. I saw how it was painted. I know he came from this village, and I know the trails here. I came to seek the Ban-ali. To give myself to them. To beg them to lift their curse.”

Nate leaned back. The shaman, in his guilt, had come to sacrifice himself.

“But I was too late. I find only one woman still alive.” He glanced toward the site of the massacre. “I give her water, and she tells me the tale of her village.”

Nate sat up straighter.

“What is he saying?” Captain Waxman asked.

Nate waved off his question. “What happened?”

“The white man was found by hunters three moons ago, sick and bony. They saw his markings. In terror, they imprisoned the man, fearing he would come to their village. They stripped him of all his belongings and tethered him in a cage, deep in the woods, intending to leave him for the Blood Jaguars to collect. The hunters fed and cared for him, fearing to harm what belonged to the Banali. But the nabe continued to sicken. Then, a moon later, one of the hunter’s sons grew ill.”

Nate nodded. The contagious disease had spread.

“The shaman here declared them cursed and demanded the death of the nabe. They would burn his body to appease the wrath of the Ban-ali. But that morning when the hunters reached the cage, he was gone. They thought the Ban-ali had claimed him and were relieved. Only later that day would they discover one of their canoes was missing. But by then it was too late.”

The Indian grew quiet. “Over the next days, the hunter’s child died, and more in the village grew ill. Then a week ago, a woman returning from gathering bananas from the garden found a marking on the outer wall of the shabano. No one knew how it got there.” The Indian nodded to the southwest section of the roundhouse. “It is still there. The mark of the Ban-ali.”

Nate stopped the story and turned to the others. He quickly recounted what the Indian shaman had told him. Their eyes grew wide with the telling. Afterward, Captain Waxman sent Jorgensen to check that section of the outer wall.

As they waited for him to return, Nate convinced Captain Waxman to slice the wrist bindings off the prisoner. He agreed, since the man was clearly cooperating. The shaman now sat in the dirt with a canteen in hand, sipping from it gratefully.

Kelly knelt beside Nathan. “His story makes a certain sense from a medical standpoint. The tribe, when they kept Clark isolated in the jungle, almost succeeded in quarantining him. But as Clark’s disease progressed, either the man became more contagious…or perhaps the hunter, whose son got sick, had somehow contaminated himself. Either way, the disease leaped here.”

“And the tribe panicked.”

Behind them, Jorgensen ducked back into the shabano, his face grim. “The old guy’s right. There’s a scrawled drawing on the wall. Just like the tattoo on Agent Clark’s body.” His nose curled in distaste. “But the damn thing smells like it was drawn with pig shit or something. Stinks something fierce.”

Frank frowned and turned back to Nate. “See if you can find out what else the shaman knows.”

Nate nodded and turned back to the shaman. “After finding the symbol, what happened?”

The shaman scrunched up his face. “The tribe fled that same night…but…but something came for them.”

“What?”

The Indian frowned. “The woman who spoke to me was near to death. Her words began to wander. Something about the river coming to eat them. They fled, but it followed them up the little stream and caught them.”

“What? What caught them? The Ban-ali?”

The shaman gulped from the canteen. “No, that’s not what the woman said.”

“Then what?”

The shaman stared Nate in the eye to show he spoke truthfully. “The jungle. She said the jungle rose out of the river and attacked them.”

Nathan frowned.

The shaman shrugged. “I know no more. The cursed woman died, and her spirit went to join her tribe. The next day, this day, I hear you coming up the river. I go to see who you are.” He glanced over to Manny’s jaguar. “But I am found. Death scent clings to me, like it does to you.”

Nathan sat back on his heels. He stared over at Manny. The biologist had Tor-tor on a leash, but the cat was clearly agitated, pacing around and around with his hackles raised. Spooked.

Kouwe finished translating for the others. “That’s all he knows.”

Waxman waved for Jorgensen to slice the shaman’s ankle restraints, too.

“What do you make of his story?” Kelly asked, still kneeling at his side.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled, picturing the spread of bodies up the trail. He had thought something had attacked from the stream’s far side, but if the woman’s story was true, the attack had come from the stream itself.

Kouwe joined them. “The story is consistent with the myths of the Ban-ali. They’re said to be able to bend the very jungle to their will.”

“But what could come from the river and kill all those tribesmen?” Kelly asked.

Kouwe slowly shook his head. “I can’t even imagine.”

A commotion near the shabano’s door drew their attention. Staff Sergeant Kostos pushed inside, dragging a travois behind him. A dead body lay atop it. One of the massacred.