Naamah's Blessing

bartered. They showed me how to tie the intricate knots, although I could not match the swift dexterity of their practiced fingers. They also showed me how to weave palm fronds into mats. They used the mats for seating, but the women indicated to me with gestures that they could also provide shelter from rainfall.
    Between the outskirts of the savannah and the inner verges of the jungle, the villagers grew a fair number of crops. There was no
maize
here, but there were many of the other fruits and vegetables I’d come to know since we’d landed on Terra Nova: nourishing sweet potatoes, rich, silken-fleshed avocados, tart fruits that resembled overgrown pinecones topped with a tufted shock of leaves, papayas like melons that grew on trees.
    Using nets and basket traps, they caught a variety of fish: big whiskered bottom-dwellers, long eel-like fish, fierce little fish with deceptively sharp teeth. I learned quickly to be wary of the latter.
    All in all, it was a rather idyllic existence; but Eyahue warned us time and time again not to be deceived.
    There would be no crops in the jungle save those stores we brought with us. What could be cultivated within its depths was guarded by wary, hostile natives who did not welcome intruders. There were fish and game, but hunting was notoriously difficult in the dense undergrowth, and even fishing was likely to prove an exhausting endeavor after a hard day’s travel.
    And so I paid attention to the village children. When they weren’t engaged in play, they spent much of their days gathering less orthodox fare to augment the village’s diet. They taught me how to chiselopen rotting palm logs using a sharp-edged rock to get at the thick, wriggling grubs inside, which they plucked out and wrapped in palm leaves to cook.
    Balthasar Shahrizai stared at me in outright horror when I sampled one. “Elua have mercy! That may be the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.”
    The flesh was chewy, but the taste was palatable. “If it’s a matter of survival, you’ll eat them too, my lord,” I said to him.
    He shuddered. “I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather die.”
    Bao reached over and popped one in his mouth, chewing with relish. “Not so bad,” he pronounced.
    The children also caught lizards and frogs when they could, showing me which were good to eat. When I spotted a brilliant blue fellow with black speckles clinging to the bark of a tree with his webbed feet, I indicated it inquiringly. They batted my hand away with alarm, shaking their heads vehemently.
    One of the older boys pointed into the depths of the jungle, then smeared his palms over his cheeks in a gesture I didn’t fully understand, although its meaning seemed clear to the others. He acted out a stealthy pantomime of hunting and stalking, raising a clenched fist to his lips and blowing sharply through it in the direction of one of his mates, who clutched at his throat and toppled over in mock rigor.
    I got the message.
    Later, Eyahue confirmed it. “Oh, yes. Anything brightly colored is like to be poisonous. Snakes, frogs, lizards.” He shrugged. “Here’s a simple rule. If it’s pretty to the eye, don’t touch it, lady.”
    “The hostiles hunt with poison?” I asked him.
    He nodded. “Blowpipes and arrows. But don’t worry.” The old
pochteca
patted my arm in a fatherly gesture. “They are very skillful in the ways of the jungle. If they decide to kill you, you’ll never even see it coming.”
    This was not exactly comforting.

FORTY-EIGHT

    S everal days after our arrival in Tipalo’s village, we took our leave of it.
    We had nine dugout canoes built of
marupa
wood; light and brittle, excavated and hewn to sophisticated sleekness with a combination of native expertise and Septimus Rousse’s knowledgeable counsel, each vessel capable of sitting up to four men.
    We left behind two pack-horses, but we had replenished food stores, as much as we could carry stuffed in satchels lashed to a cross-bar in the center of each canoe. We had a woven sisal hammock for each man among us, and an assortment of nets and fish-traps.
    I prayed it would be enough.
    Everyone with any kind of skill with a paddle had been assigned a vessel. The rest had been decided by lot. Wary of being dragged down and drowned by the weight of their armor, most of the men had elected to pile it in the bottoms of the canoes, wearing only their helmets with the chin-straps unbuckled.
    One by one, our canoes were launched.
    Standing