They walked through the eternal dusk of the jungle, miles and miles of enormous trees for as far as an eye could see, some of them as wide as three men put in a line, all of them ancient, with the bark as solid and cool as a stone. If you lifted your head, you could catch an uneven, bright patch of the sky, far above the tops of the unbelievable giants. It was hard to comprehend that somewhere outside these living walls it was daytime and the sun was shining. Here everything seemed frozen, encapsulated.
The air was humid and seemed almost solid, a heavy weight pushing into Arthur's lungs, squeezing down his chest. It seemed to him that the trees around created some sort of real physical pressure. What kind of war could possibly brew in this environment? Arthur thought, cleaning a damp spiderweb off his face with a sleeve. It's hard to even breathe here, let alone fight.
However, the suffocating space they were crossing was alive. There was constant movement, shrieking, barking and screeching of animals and birds, the measured rocking of the vines, unsettled by some invisible travelers, the quiet, steady hum of a river somewhere nearby.
In the first ten minutes of the trip Arthur saw yellow-beaked toucans, red and blue macaws almost indistinguishable in the surrounding greenness. He could hear the monkeys following them in the vines above, and some other animals crushing through the underbrush before them. Then, he relaxed and stopped paying attention.
They traveled in a small procession: Eames walked first, slightly hunched forward, hands in the pockets of his pants, humming and mumbling something to himself, as a man used to taking long trips in his own company; he was followed by Cobb who trudged forward silently, determinedly, not even lifting his head to marvel at the height of the trees, not interested in the slightest in all the life squirming around. What would it be like for me? If it was for Mom, or Dad, or Ariadne? Arthur asked himself, and could not find an answer to this question. Arthur closed the procession. The least he could do to create an illusion of doing his work, watching Cobb's back.
"I'd still like to know, why you aren't charging a fee for your services?" Cobb asked when they just entered the jungle.
"But I've told you already, haven't I?" Eames looked at him over his shoulder. "Your wife came to me. The day she and Mercedes left. Coriolano wanted me to take them to Ashembo. But I was fucking high. So..." He crooked an apologetic smile at Dom, and for a moment looked genuinely sorry.
"So you decided to right the wrong you hadn't caused," Cobb stated, and Arthur noticed how rigid his whole body went.
"I know how you feel, that's all," said Eames and, half-turning to them, tapped a finger against the tattoo of a crucifix on his shoulder. "I know what it's like when something happens to the ones you love and you can do nothing about it."
"What happened to this woman, Kelli?" Dom asked, wiping the sheen of sweat off his forehead.
"You mean my sister," Eames said, and Arthur was surprised to hear a smile in his voice. "She was a junkie, like myself, died in a car-crash."
Eames turned around and looked at Dom, and indeed he was smiling.
"If you ask me, it was a good death. For someone like her." He chuckled. "My mom and I, we both slaved our asses to Kels. At first, we thought we could fight it. But put motherly love on the scales against an ounce of speedball, and see what's gonna win. Thank God, she didn't have the time to go all the way down."
He quickly crossed his chest and kissed the golden crucifix hanging from his neck.
"When alive, she was a living hell," he continued after a pause, "now that she's dead, we can sort of block out everything bad and focus on what we choose to remember."
He shot Cobb a quick glance, and Arthur had the familiar feeling that they were being analyzed, probed for reactions.
It seemed Cobb sensed something too, as he steered the conversation in a different direction.
"Did your father try to help?"
"Oh, he OD'd when I was six," Eames answered, checking the time on the Chromalight display of his watch. "I suppose it just runs in the family."
He straightened up and walked faster, putting an end to the chat.
So they continued their trip in absolute silence, walking over and around logs, along trails shaded by immense bamboo growths, sometimes crossing small rivers and swamps. Their shoes were wet. Arthur felt blisters starting to form on his soles. The air was hot despite the shade and sticky damp. Every few minutes, one of them raised an irritated hand to brush off a spiderweb that clang to the face like a wet film.
Eames walked fast, seemingly unaffected by the stuffiness of the air, Cobb keeping stubbornly on his heels. Dom carried his backpack in one hand, rubbing the back of his neck and his stiff shoulders with another. Arthur saw a stain of sweat grow on the back of Dom's t-shirt, it started at the neck, and spread lower and lower as the time passed. He didn't want to check what his own undershirt might look like under the hoodie.
They reached a clearing in the rainforest where a gigantic log lay across a small, clean stream. There Eames slowed down abruptly, as if having reached his destination. He looked at his wristwatch, and nodded contentedly. He then approached a heap of giant green leaves, forming a small dome on the ground. He carefully removed the leaves and the rocks keeping them in place, revealing underneath a dead hearth with a few coals and a bundle of dry twigs on top. While Arthur and Cobb drank, washed themselves with the water from the stream and reapplied the repellent, Eames stuffed his hand into a crack in the bark and searched inside the log . He took out a metallic cooking pot and a bundle of oiled paper which contained cassava bread, cuts of smoked fish, and loose tea leaves in a beaten tin.
"I told you not to bring food," Eames said to Dom and smiled his usual smile, half mocking, half shy.
A few minutes later, water was starting to boil in the pot, hung above the hearth, and they were finishing the contents of Eames's stash and emptying their own backpacks, opening the tins of sardines Coriolano had provided them with, putting the tomato drenched fish on lumps of cassava bread and gobbling it all down, and waiting for the tea, with their flasks ready.
Arthur felt as if they had been on the road for at least a week, but he knew it was four in the afternoon. They'd left the village less than eight hours before.
At an improvised briefing by the campfire, they decided not to linger and try and cover another five miles before the sun went down. Arthur assumed they had walked no less than thirty already, and, provided they kept the same walking speed the next day, they could be reaching the borders of the Ashembo territory by the following evening or the morning after that.
They left their camp after Eames had killed the fire and covered the hearth, and put the pot and the tin back inside the log. Before leaving, he washed his face in the stream and took off the bandana, hiding it in the side pocket of the backpack. He had combed his beard and his hair was in a neat pony tail. Arthur realized, with a mild surprise, that Eames was not actually bad-looking, and despite of his bad posture and lumpy midriff, he must have been in a good shape, because he had led them for several hours straight without breaking too much sweat. But this good impression was quickly quashed because five minutes into the walk Eames lit up a joint.
At the first wisp of sweet smoke, Cobb lost the faculty of speech. He turned around and stared at Arthur, his mouth slightly open, his eyes full of dread, as if it was Arthur who decided to get intoxicated whilst on a rescue mission. Dom then sped up, overtaking their ill-suited guide; infuriated, he yelled at Eames, bashing the flippant attitude and the lack of reliability Cobb had not overseen in him. Arthur had to wedge between the two of them, because the way Eames was staring at Dom, with a cold smile – half-amused, half-irked, was only going to make the matters worse. Arthur imagined very clearly Dom pulling a gun at their guide and telling him in a crisp voice to put out the joint. So he bodily moved Cobb out of the way, and then spoke to Eames.
"Are you sure you're not going to... veer off the course under influence?"
And he knew normal people did not speak that way but he needed to keep at least some semblance of sanity, an illusion of control.
"I am sure," said Eames with emphasis on 'sure'. "I've memorized the whole bloody sector."
However, he looked apologetically at Cobb and put out the joint. The tension in Dom's shoulders eased and the angry flush faded from his cheeks. From that moment on, Arthur walked next to Cobb. Dom eventually slowed down and walked behind Arthur.
"What is it that your wife is looking for at Ashembo?" Eames asked after a few minutes. "I thought all anthropologists came and went back in 1980's."
"We're not anthropologists," Dom said, "we're chemical engineers. We're developing plant-based compounds for our project."
"Interesting," said Eames and scratched his nose. "And what kind of project would that be? D'you mind if I ask?"
"We're developing female Viagra," said Cobb without batting an eyelid.
Eames giggled at that.
"I thought they'd done that already."
"Ours will be better," Cobb replied solemnly.
They walked for another hour, Arthur was counting his steps trying to keep track of the distance they covered and keep his mind from asking questions he didn't have answers for.
"Tell us about the shaman," said Cobb after some time. "We need to know everything in this situation."
"Arasuwe," Eames began, "fifty; obnoxious; has three wives in the village and beats them all up on a regular basis; scared of men, despises women; is considered to be an extremely powerful shapori, which allows him to charge exorbitant prices for his work. Gladly puts up a show for the tourists. Over the past three months I personally have taken five touristic groups to see him perform his tricks. Four were American, the fifth one was French."
"And you don't like him why?" Cobb asked, stopping to catch his breath.
"There's nothing to like," Eames replied, "he is a fake."
"How do you know?" Arthur couldn't help wondering.
"Oh, I've been in the jungle for many years," Eames sighed. "I've seen things. Arasuwe doesn't know shit."
"That's very vague," Arthur stated and was about to ask Eames to be more specific with his response, but their guide suddenly froze in his steps, and then shushed them, pressing a finger against his chapped lips.
"Shut up now," he said in a quiet but oddly intelligible whisper. "Somebody's coming our way."
In silence they stared at the path, Arthur unbuckled the holster of his gun, Cobb and Eames did not move. A few seconds later, a dark figure appeared on top of the low-rising hill in front of them. It was a middle-aged Indian, wearing a pair of jeans, a leather quiver with rough-cut arrows, and a bow. He was not taller than 5'4, but his bulkiness and muscles made him look huge. Like most of the Yanomami, he had his hair cut as a tonsure of a Catholic monk. He saw them, smiled and raised a hand in a greeting. Eames copied the gesture and spoke to the man in a whining, nasal voice. The Indian laughed at that, uproariously, and shook Eames's hand, still giggling.
"He's laughing at the way I speak, bastard," Eames chuckled, and then asked the Indian in Spanish, "How was the road?"
"It was alright. I saw your friend," the man replied, and pressed his wrists to the back of his head, sticking his fingers out, shaping them into what looked like a mock crown or short antlers.
Eames scowled at him and switched back to Yanomaman. The conversation was short, but animated. It started out as a mild argument which was quickly replaced with mutual laugh and a friendly pat on the shoulder. The Indian then turned to Arthur and Cobb who were standing by, trying to figure out what was being discussed in secret.
"I am Etewa," he said in Spanish. "I'll be taking you to the mountain."
They shook hands.
"Now tell us what that chat was all about," Dom said tightly, his muscles coiling.
"Some bad news," Eames replied, "Etewa here says somebody has spread the rumor that we are going to Ashembo to steal shapori powers. Marikitare have opened a hunt. Their warriors are on the way to Barlovento. They also sent a squad to track us down. However, Etewa says the path is still clear, and once we reach the mountain, we're out of danger."
"Who's your friend he's been talking about?" Arthur asked.
" ," Eames answered, and Etewa nodded in affirmation, repeating his gesture from before, his fingers shaping into the crown over his head.
"The American gold-miner?" Eames continued. "He leaves further up by the river. Etewa's sister, Tutemi, is married to him. So our Etewa's been on a recon trip for me since early in this morning, to make sure our venture would be a safe one. And in the jungle he met his brother-in-law, who, by coincidence, happens to be the man who saved my ass a couple of months ago. And...he's a little crazy."
At those words, Etewa burst into loud guffaws, and bent forward, imitating the walk of an old man.
"I don't understand," Dom frowned."You yourself just said you've been taking tourists to that mountain on a regular basis. What's wrong this time? Why would the tribes hunt us?"
"Not only us, remember? Marikitare are seriously pissed at the Yanomami for giving you shelter," Eames replied, chewing at his nail. "Do you have any enemies here? Because somebody's trying really hard to get you killed."
xxx
The night fell unexpectedly. It was light only moments ago, but already shadows were closing in on them. Eames built a small fire in the shade of a gigantic bamboo growth, within a few feet from a shallow stream. Etewa disappeared in the jungle and returned fifteen minutes later, bringing with him a small tapir he had hunted in the falling dark.
"You bring luck," he smiled at Arthur and Dom.
They ate the wiry, bitter-tasting meat Etewa had cut and wrapped in bamboo leaves, and cooked in the embers of the hearth, dipping the morsels into the ash to add some saltiness and improve the taste.
Eames and the Indian hung four hammocks near the hearth, using vines and lianas as ropes. Etewa's hammock was made using a narrow strip of tree bark. Arthur noticed it was barely wide enough for a person to turn on his side. Dom's hammock was hanging closest to the fire, next to him slept Arthur, followed by Eames, and finally the Indian. The night was cold, and Arthur offered Etewa a spare blanket he'd brought in his backpack, which the Yanomamo gladly accepted.
They decided to move out at dawn; that left them about seven hours of sleep, and Eames and Etewa were to serve as the lookouts during that time. They refused Arthur's offer to take on some of the hours on the grounds that Arthur and Dom were paying customers, which was only partially true.
They settled down in their swinging beds, and the silence stretched around them. Etewa rocked his hammock as a pendulum and fell asleep before the motion stopped; Dom lay quiet and still as a stone, Arthur heard him sigh, exhausted, as he fell asleep. Eames who was supposed to be on a watch showed no sign of life, his breathing quiet and even, his body a heavy, relaxed weight, straining the flower-printed fabric of his hammock.
Arthur himself was about to give up all the caring and slide into oblivion, when he heard something move on the ground below him. He froze in his hammock, and then looked down to see what it was. He saw nothing, but his sleep was ruined. As if coming to himself, he realized that the night surrounding them was moving, breathing and crying. Something was lurking in the shadows around the hearth, gleaming eyes were following them from the darkness. There was shrieking, howling and hyenic laughter very close to the place where they stopped. As the fire in the hearth began to die out, an animal roared in the bamboo growth right behind Arthur's back. It was the last straw, he was not going to lie there and just wait until something happened. He forced himself to sit up in his bed, his back ramrod straight, his nerves high-strung. He didn't know what exactly he was going to do – add some twigs to the dying hearth – probably, go and kick Eames awake – maybe...
"Arthur," Eames said quietly from his hammock, startling him even more, "quit tossing around. You're wheezing like a bear."
Arthur wanted to give some sort of an adequate reply, ask whether Eames had been awake this entire time, but he suddenly felt too tired to talk, and, besides, there was really no point answering. He lay back down, and, with surprise, watched Eames get up and hoist his hammock closer to Arthur's. Eames fed some wood to the weakening flame and climbed back up into his swinging bed. Now he was lying so close that Arthur could feel the warmth of his body through the chilly air.
"It's perfectly normal," Eames began as he settled down under the patched blanket, "to be scared on your first night in the rainforest. I remember my own first time here. I was terrified, couldn't close my eyes for a minute."
"When was that?" Arthur mumbled, feeling inexplicably tongue-tied.
"Oh, more than eight years ago." Eames answered, flicked open a lighter and lit up a joint which he then handed to Arthur. Arthur hesitated before accepting it. He took a draw and returned the joint to Eames who was staring at him, smiling. Eames's fingers, warm and calloused, lingered on Arthur's wrist, and he laughed quietly as Arthur jerked his hand back, embarrased.
"Sorry, that was unacceptable."
Arthur decided to ignore the quip, and thought that Eames, when not grimacing or trying to be obnoxious, was a beautiful man. Or maybe that was just the light from the campfire that sent the shadows running across Eames's face, making Arthur see something that really wasn't there. Meanwhile Eames got back to playing with his lighter, looking directly in front of him, lost in a thought.
"Nothing here," he said after a moment, "wants trouble with us, Arthur. We are the most dangerous predators in this jungle."
Arthur did not reply because he was suddenly sound asleep.
xxx
They were not, it appeared, the most dangerous of the predators.
It was three in the afternoon of the following day, and the forest around them began to thin down as they were approaching the territory of the mountain. The terrain became hilly, and Arthur could swear he heard the roar of falling water somewhere at a distance. The air was fresher and more ionized, announcing that the waterfalls of Ashembo were nearby. There was a cautious gleam of hope in Dom's eyes as he shot a look at Arthur on the way up a rocky hill. Eames and Etewa perked up and walked faster, talking quietly in Spanish. Eames took Dom's money out of the back pocket of his pants and handed it to their bodyguard. They were almost there, Arthur realized, Etewa would be leaving soon.
Arthur stopped and leaned against a tree, trying to pry the bottle of water out of a side pocket of his backpack, thinking about what they would find in the cave, if they found anything at all. It was then that he heard a quiet whistling sound and the bark of the tree next to his neck suddenly cracked and sent splinters of wood flying in Arthur's hair. Arthur turned around and abruptly fell to the ground, his body acting before he realized what his eyes just saw. He slid down, falling between the giant roots, flailing his hands as he went, spilling the water all around. His unzipped hoodie remained hanging in the air, the hood pinned to the tree by a rough-cut, wooden arrow that looked just like the ones Etewa carried around in his quiver.
Other members of their party were already on the ground. Eames and Etewa, gun and bow ready, took position behind a small boulder. Cobb, who appeared to be the only civilian among the four of them, was hiding behind a tree nearby. His face was white, lips thinned into a determined line, and the edge of an army knife that he'd got God knows where gleamed in his hand.
The attackers did not make them wait. In complete silence, running warriors started pouring from the top of the hill they had been climbing. So, Marikitare had been waiting for them at the border of the sacred land, by the end of the only path. A foolproof strategy; Arthur would have done the same.
They were short, bulky men, completely naked, save for the waist string tying their dicks up and the ritual feathers attached to the white wooden sticks protruding from the pierced skin around their mouths and ears. Their faces were blackened with soot, the sign of war. The warriors were massive, there was no chance of survival for any of Arthur's party in case of close combat, not even for Etewa.
If Arthur started shooting then, it would be murder, plain and simple, but it would be death for all of them if he didn't. He chanced a glance at Eames and Etewa; the two were apparently having the same thoughts, as they looked at the approaching warriors, but did not dare open fire.
One of the attackers raised his spear, aiming in the direction of Cobb, Arthur supposed, and Arthur's steady hand conveniently made a decision for him. Arthur had a perfect aim. He shot the man in the head, before Eames and Etewa managed to raise their arms. Then he shot the man that followed the ill-fated spear-launcher, and another one, and then three more. He aimed mostly at the legs, as he would not, he could not kill any more. He heard Eames and Etewa start firing shots as well. And then, a few seconds later, it was the feared cross combat, and Arthur tossed away the now useless Glock, and whipped out Coriolano's present. The machete felt light and insubstantial in his hand, like a child's toy, but when its edge collided with the short blade in the hands of the first Marikitare to accost him, the sparks that flew in the air were perfectly real.
Etewa and Eames were fighting back to back, using their machetes to fend off the attackers. Clearly outnumbered, they both looked scared. The Marikitare slowly encircled them, grinning silently, their faces soot-covered masks, their teeth – sharpened, triangular fangs. Arthur neutralized his attacker with a cut into left upper arm, not serious enough to kill, but painful enough to fend the offense. From the corner of an eye, he saw a tall, massive Indian lunge at Eames. The warrior's knife cut through the fabric of Eames's t-shirt at the same time as Eames's machete cut through the warrior's skull with a thickening cracking sound. The camo on Eames's stomach quickly turned bright red. The Indian roared, grabbing the blade with his bare hands, blood running over his fingers, and swung back, pulling the machete out of Eames's hand. The Marikitare stumbled backwards, tripping over a giant root, and sat heavily on the mossy ground, mortally wounded. Eames whipped out the SwissChamp, ready for the next assault. As if in a nightmare, Arthur saw the warriors closing in on the guides, another Indian advancing at Eames with a predatory smile.
Arthur remembered the stories of cannibalism in Amazonian tribes he'd read in the National Geographic as a child. There was no way he was going to end up as somebody's dinner, neither were Eames and Etewa. Forgotten by the warriors, he crawled to the spot where he'd dropped his gun. He used the last three rounds to take out the Marikitare attacking Eames and then, the one who was trying to strangle Etewa. The gunshots caused a short-lived panic among the Indians. Two warriors left the group and ran towards Arthur who'd taken up position behind a tree, his machete ready, considering his odds. Eames and Etewa were left two against three, but there was nothing Arthur could do to help them at that point.
The combat was fierce and short, ending as abruptly as it had began, with the Marikitare retreating unexpectedly and disappearing into the forest as if by a signal. A few seconds later one would have never guessed blood had spilled on those rocks, if it hadn't been for the several dead bodies left on the ground.
Arthur saw 'his' spear-launcher, two Marikitare with Etewa's arrows sticking out of their necks, and the knife-bearing Indian, lying on his back in a puddle, Eames's machete sitting in the crack that split his skull in two. Eames was standing above the dead body, his chin propped up against the back of his hand, obviously contemplating the possible ways of extracting his weapon from the corpse's head. Eames's face and neck were splashed with human blood and crushed bone, and the chest of his top bore a bloodied cut, blood was seeping down from it on his stomach and pants. A nervous jitter was running through Eames's frame in violent waves, but he seemed unaware of the fact, the expression on his face pensive, almost absent.
Once Arthur fell in the action mode, he usually felt calm, almost detached from the fighting, his emotions going silent, letting his brain and body do the necessary work. He would get scared later, in the comfort of his home. He would be terrified and probably shit himself at the danger he'd escaped, and get filthy drunk in an attempt to erase the memory. It would all happen after, but for now he had no time to mull over the risk. He had to fight. It was a simple survival mechanism, and Arthur always felt compassionate towards people who lacked one.
That was why he pulled Eames by the upper arm and led him away from the corpse. Arthur made him sit down on the boulder and gave him a gourd with water to wash his face. Eames blinked at him, not recognizing, then looked at the gourd, and suddenly his face fell back in place. "Oh," he said, taking the gourd from Arthur's hand. And then, "Oh," as he ran his fingers over the blood-weeping cut on his chest.
Arthur went to fetch his backpack from under the tree where it was still laying in a gap between the mossy roots. He stopped for a minute to unpin his hoodie and put his Glock back into the holster. Eames was waiting for him on the boulder, clutching at the gourd as it were a lifebuoy. Arthur made him take off his top and examined the wound, which turned out to be nothing but a skin-deep scratch that nonetheless was bleeding profusely and needed to be closed. Arthur took his first aid kit out of the backpack and began mending Eames's chest. As he was working, he could not fight the feeling that he was doing something wrong, but no matter how hard he focused, he could not pin down what was off. When Eames, breathing heavily and squinting at Arthur's needlework, was finally sewn up, bandaged and dressed into Arthur's spare t-shirt which was too tight for him in the shoulders, Arthur collected the waste and discarded it in one of Eames's inescapable Ziplocs.
He then looked around and saw Etewa milling about, grabbing the dead bodies by their legs and arranging them in a line in the shade of the boulder Eames was perched upon. There was no sight of the wounded, and Arthur wondered when and how they might have left the site.
And then he wondered why he did not see Cobb anywhere around.
