Naamah's Blessing

communion.
    In the morning, both of us were heavy-eyed for lack of sleep. The others regarded us with good-natured amusement, but no one begrudged us a night of pleasure, although Balthasar had a few choice words of warning for us.
    “Don’t let it make you careless,” he said. “I didn’t survive an infestation of bad spirits to capsize and drown on that damn river.”
    Bao yawned. “It won’t. And I told you, it wasn’t bad spirits.”
    “It might as well have been.” Balthasar hefted a satchel of powdered
cinchona
bark that Atoc had given us. According to the shaman, if our recovering men didn’t continue drinking the brew, the fever would return. “Gods know, this stuff’s vile enough to keep a host of bad things at bay.”
    Paullu and a handful of villagers accompanied us on our return journey to the big river, where the rest of our company hailed our arrival with obvious relief. We redistributed our renewed stores, and in short order, were ready to depart once more.
    “
Sulpayki
, Paullu.” I offered him a final bow in parting. Once again, he returned it with dignity. “Thank you for all your kindness.”
    He nodded, but made no reply.
    One by one, we launched our canoes while Paullu and his hunters climbed the emerald cliff alongside the sparkling waterfall. Before we resumed our journey downriver, I turned back to see the villagers arrayed in a line atop the cliff, their crimson-painted faces vivid in the morning light.
    “Does anyone else have the impression they think we’re headed to our deaths?” Balthasar inquired wryly.
    In the prow of our canoe, Bao began paddling purposefully. “Who along the way hasn’t thought the same?” he retorted. “And yet we’re still here.”
    “Not all of us,” I murmured.
    “No.” Bao gave me a somber glance over his shoulder, reminded of our losses. “Not all of us.”
    By Eyahue’s estimate, we were still a week’s travel away from Vilcabamba. The days of sameness resumed. We paddled through rain showers until the sun reemerged to steam us dry. When the river was wide and placid, we bent our backs to the labor, paddling hard, our palms toughened and our muscles long accustomed to the effort. Where it ran swift, we forged paths through rapids, all of us grown to be expert navigators.
    In the evenings, we made landfall along the rocky shores, slinging our hammocks along the verges of the jungle.
    We fished and foraged, augmenting our stores of sweet potatoes that ever dwindled too quickly.
    I didn’t bother keeping count of the days. I’d long ago lost track of the length of our journey. And despite Balthasar’s and Denis’ assurances to the contrary, I privately thought that Thierry de la Courcel must have done the same.
    It was the sameness.
    The sameness was mesmerizing; the endless river, the endless green of the jungle. The incessant heat, the constant clouds of mosquitoes andgnats. The gnawing sense of hunger that never quite went away as there was never quite enough to eat. The myriad deadly dangers to be avoided. The ever-present sound of rushing water; whispering at times, roaring at others. It lulled one’s mind into a strange state of wary torpor, where one’s only thoughts were of survival and the never-ending journey.
    And yet all journeys end.
    “Tomorrow, I think,” Eyahue announced unexpectedly one evening, using a stick to poke at a sweet potato roasting in the ashes, rolling it within reach. “Tomorrow, we will come to Vilcabamba.”
    I lifted my head to stare at him. “You’re sure?”
    He grabbed the potato and dropped it with alacrity, sucking his burned fingers. “Sure, no. But I think so.”
    The rumor spread through our camp, raising hope and dispelling the torpor that all of us felt.
    “What is it like there?” someone asked. I translated the question for Eyahue.
    “Very fine.” The old
pochteca
cackled and exposed his gums and remaining teeth in a broad grin. “Oh, yes! Very fine indeed.”
    Eyahue spun a tale of a great city of stone rising from the jungle, accessed by hanging bridges built over vast chasms in the earth. It was the easternmost stronghold of the empire of Tawantinsuyo, a name that in itself referred to the four disparate quarters of the empire of the Quechua folk. They possessed gold in abundance, he told us, for it was sacred to the sun god Inti they worshipped. The Emperor of Tawantinsuyo made his permanent residence in another city far away in the mountains, but Vilcabamba, where