-I-

Five days had pass.

Nothing worth mentioning happened on our journey to the village—unless almost being killed by the indigenous while urinating is worth mentioning, then yes, something happened to me three days ago. But the arrow wasn't even targeting me; the target had been the two-hundred-pound arapaima a few inches from the boat. It would be an infelicitous, tragic death if it hit my manhood.

I also found out that I could scream two octaves higher that day.

The weather had been severe since the day we left the transition village. It only started getting better three days ago after we visited the nearest town to stock up on gasoline.

The river had been as capricious as my dear mother—she could drive the men in the house crazy. When the storm clobbered the boat, God knows we should cling to the seat and cement our asses on it if we didn't want to die. The boat had been on the verge of foundering, and everyone (besides Chaves and the boatmen who scooped up the water while laughing at each other's antics) was wound up tighter than a banjo string.

So today, after such a fluctuating pedestrian journey, the tributary flowed into the largest lake in the upper Amazonia. The Xingu National Park and Indigenous Peoples Preserve in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil.

I knew the dawn was here when sunbeams crept over the shallow, murky water. The horizon was a beachhead of orange light. Then I saw it. The jetty to the village.

"Hey, Luuk. Help me with this drum," Chaves said five minutes later, as soon as the boat docked at the jetty.

He kept calling me by the first name as if we were on an equal footing. Perhaps he was being delusional and thought the five-day journey had evolved our status from strangers to comrade-in-arms. Telling him off was as useless as spitting in the river.

We heaved the fuel drums for the generators, satellite dishes, and his research contrivances. Alicia who was in charge of the logistics said that we could get internet reception if we were to set up the satellite dish. I could only wish for that to happen. Putting too high of an expectation would hurt more if and when I couldn't contact my family.

Four tribesmen with heavy fractal geometric tattoos on their backs helped us load the research equipment onto their flatbed trucks. One of them had tragic-looking bite scars (that could only conceivably be inflected by caiman's teeth) on his right calf. They started chatting in an alien language, and my senses intensified. The lexicon seemed as if it was revealed from planet Makemake. I couldn't decipher it.

I patted the cold sweat on my neck with my shirt and peered at our interpreter. "Hey, Essien. Do que estão eles a falar?" [What are they saying?]

The stout middle-aged interpreter rubbed his left eye (it looked more habitual than an itch) for the tenth times ever since we stepped foot here. He then responded, "Falam da grande inundação da noite passada." [They're talking about the big flood last night.] He pointed to my mud-caked boots, then to the muddy riverbank.

"De certeza que é bom," [I'm sure it's a good thing,] I said because despite not understanding them, their face showed the look of joy.

"Não chovia há quase um ano," [It hadn't rained for almost a year,] he added and climbed into a yellow pickup. "Dizem que trazes bons presságios." [They say you bring good omen with you.]

"Um bom presságio vem comigo onde quer que eu vá." [Good omen comes with me wherever I go.]

"Não para ir à igreja," [Not to the church,] da Graça whispered as he passed me.

Look at this lil' shit. Thinks he's my pal too now.

His personality really threw me a curve. He was so polite when I first met him, reticent even. But knowing him for the past few days had proven me wrong. He wasn't rude, but he wasn't polite either. He didn't cuss when he talked with me, but he had his share of jokey comments when he talked to his boyfriend.

I swatted at a bloodsucker on my knee and walked to one of the Mitsubishi 4x4 pickups. One tribesman, the amiable-looking fellow, gestured for me to ride in his pickup. So I climbed into the other vehicle because the driver looked as if he didn't have a care in the world.

"This place looks bare of people," da Graça said a few minutes after the pickup bumped and bounced along the cutup dirt road. He rolled down the window a tad.

Tsk. He didn't read about this place before coming here.

"It's bare 'cause there is barely six hundred tribespeople settling here. The place is completely off the beaten track. The village has no public accommodations. Only houses with a basic livelihood."

"Is there a government basecamp around here? I saw something like a governmental organization's insignia on this truck's registration plate," he said.

"Yes. FUNAI camp is just twenty minutes away by truck."

Hot air bled into the air-conditioned pickup and blew the hem of his short sleeve. His skin was a shade darker than ivory, but after five days, it was baked into revere pewter. He had spent most of his time traveling here under the oppressive sun. Throughout the cruise, he had also vomited several times. I realized that he was always struggling with his ochophobia—I would call it dystychiphobia, considering he adopted the fear after his accident.

I looked at the rear-view mirror when some brats screamed outside. The dirt track was deserted except for a group of naked kids who ran after us. The path was hedged with two-hundred-feet high, gigantic ficus trees. Vines crept to the top of the canopy, fighting for sunlight. Monkeys swung from one tree to another, catching up with us.

I hated kids and monkeys and apes. All species were buttinskies.

Looking ahead, I saw a throng of natives in the center of the village. "And the village isn't the only thing that's bare."

Da Graça glanced at me and followed my gaze. His eyes widened, and he was more than a little rubicund.

In the center of the village were half-naked Hansels and Gretels festooned with underwear made of colorful strings. Their necks and ankles were embellished with little golden bells and colorful beads. Two dozens or so women started to prance to each thud of the drum played by the men while singing in a chant-like song.

It was their welcoming dance. The song played was their kind of prayer. I remembered how Essien said they thought we bring good omens with us. Joking aside, I was religious, not superstitious. To think that heinous humans like us could bring others good omen was a religious fallacy, but this wasn't my place to dispute over their beliefs.

We climbed down from the pickup when it stopped beside a huge nondescript, oblong house made of dried leaves. Tens of the same houses surrounded the central plaza of packed dirt, creating one gigantic, round village. Inward, the place was virtually bare except for the villagers and two bicycles beside the house on my right. Outward, the forest surrounded the plaza. Banana trees grew intermittently at the edge of the village.

"Those are gigantic houses. Damn," Zack, one of the forestry students said to his friend, Michael. "Are they like a dorm or something?"

I was just about to give a rundown about the place when Ethan answered: "I've read about their livelihood from a paper written in 2000. One house could accommodate fifty people from several families. They had their own system in each house and gathers and hunts their own food. Men get food, women cook. Each nuclear family works in the traditional archetypes of patriarchy." He then asked Essien, our interpreter. "Are we allowed to enter the house? Are we staying in one? Can't wait to see the interior. I wonder if they'll let us in."

"The chief will invite you for a drink shortly," Essien said.

At least Ethan does his homework.

William, my hand-me-down RA, took a video of the indigenous people. The ceremony probably involved mere fifty people or so. The rest of the villagers was standing either in their house, in front of their own houses, or danced independently around the main group. Most of the children and teenagers weren't giving any attention to the ceremony. They were either scampering around the plaza or climbing the mango trees with monkeys.

Jesus. The monkeys. Will I get to sleep at night? Will they attack me?

I shivered thinking about my near future. I looked at the dancing nudes to calibrate my focus.

After the welcoming festival, a wizened, sunlight-beaten old man welcomed us in accented Portuguese. He introduced himself as Koto, the tribe's chief. He wore a garishly feathered crown on his head and covered his balls with a piece of black patchwork. He was painted black all over, similar to the other men in the tribe. The chief obviously survived the severe measles epidemic in 1954. The epidemic had killed all but ninety-four tribesmen in this region that year. Now they were thriving with six hundred villagers—one of the most occupied villages in Xingu National Park.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Isso é estranho." [This is awkward.] Da Graça stood beside me, scratching his scalp and looking everywhere but them. "I should've googled about this place before coming here."

"Because you're looking at bouncing tits? Outdoor naked dancers aren't an everyday scene to witness in America, no matter how liberal the people can be. So this is just a matter of exclusivity of perspective," I said. "For these people, their culture is the identity of who they are, who they belong to, and how they relate to one another. It seems like an anomaly to us, but it's their normalcy."

Chaves clasped his arm around the sensei's neck and said something I couldn't catch. The sensei pinched his arm. The couple was whispering to each other when a truck I saw at the berm earlier parked behind us. It carried dried leaves and planks.

The chief told me that two representatives from the basecamp of the National Indian Foundation, FUNAI, would come to welcome us, so we could wait inside his house.

Chaves patted my sweaty back. "Let's not take too long. We need to build our abode. It's past noon."

-II-

"You're dexterous," Chaves said with a pure look of reverence as we stood with arms akimbo eight hours later, proud of our handiwork. "You're familiar with manual labor, aren't you?"

We (me, Chaves, Michael, and Essien, as well as five of the tribesmen) had built a state-of-the-art, ten-people capacity penny-plain hut at the edge of the village next to the chief's house—strong enough to stay erected for the next three months. Da Graça, William, Zack, and Alicia were helping the tribeswomen cleaning the cooking utensils under the cooking shack. Ethan was taking pictures of them. We had had a plain supper, the same leaf-wrapped tapioca bread I gave to da Graça at the transition village.

"We cannot measure the sea with a bushel," I said, wiping the sweat on my forehead. The Chinese idiom made me feel like leaping into the lake. I was completely bushwhacked. It had been years since I did manual labor.

I tilted my head up only to see the setting sun above the treetops. The orange smear on the sky blinded me for a second. Today was the fourth of July. Instead of burning with patriotism, I was burning under the sun. A mosquito gorged on my forearm. It became a bloody mess a second later. Wiping it off, I realized a clear tan line had formed on my arm. It was supposed to be winter here, but winter in the Amazon jungle means rain. Though I did expect it to be relatively stagnant, limited to rain and drought.

"¿Hay alguna fuente de agua por aquí?" [Are there any water sources around here?] I asked Chaves. "Please don't tell me we have to wash up in the lake. I need a shower, and I need it bad."

"Yo... no estoy seguro. Pensé que vi Chen y John tomó agua de algún lugar detrás de esa casa." [I'm... not sure. I thought I saw Chen and John took water from somewhere behind that house.] He rubbernecked toward the chief's house on our left.

"There's a tap behind Chief Koto's house," Essien said while tying up the final hammock.

So there I was ten minutes later, washing up all the grime and sweat on my body. The night was humid, but the water was numbing. My every sinew and muscle creaked every time I crouched down to fill the ladle with water. Several tribeswomen came to take some water while I was changing into dry clothes. Essien said that the villagers would bathe either at the lake or the creek five minutes away from here. The tap water was mostly for cooking. But it had a constant supply of water, so no harm was done.

Despite the tumultuous ribbiting and stridulating and droning of the insects, I could hear the rushing of water somewhere behind me as I disinterred the muds under my toenails. The river was closer than I expected.

Adrenaline surged in me when I heard leaves ruffling on my right. I had enough experience with the jungle to know that the sound belonged to something big, or many. A deer, a jaguar, worst—a troop of monkeys.

Ladle and towel in one hand, I turned slowly. My heart collided with my chest. Something bitter welled up in my throat.

A troop of monkeys.

Ten monkeys ran out of the shrubbery. My breath stopped. I was about to run for my precious life when I saw da Graça trailing behind them. Flailing my hand to him, praying that he would reach me before the rogues did, I half-shouted to him, asking for help.

He fucking laughed before he approached me. The troop followed him.

"No, no. Don't bring those little shits with you." I frankly thought I would drop dead today, either from my heart bursting or from anthropophagy.

"They're harmless, Professor. They accompanied me bathing in the river just now." He ruffled his wet hair, sending it every which way.

"They're as untrustworthy as humans." My heart kept hitting my ribcage.

He flapped his red towel on his shoulder. "Do you trust me then?" He offered me his hand and smiled.

One monkey stood on the ground between us. Its small, demonic eyes were scanning my body. I backtracked ten steps, as fast as my heartbeat. I would kick it away if I had enough strength. But I couldn't. My legs were giving up on me. I had to lean on the chief's house for support.

"I would trust you if you kick them out of my path."

"Hey, that's cruel! Don't become a Joseph Stalin." He giggled and shooed the monkey away. "And the monkeys will not harm you, I promise. Let's go. I have nyctalopia and it's getting dark. I don't wear my glasses."

I don't even gamble money. My life is too salient to depend on luck. But at that moment, I gambled my life. I took da Graça's hand and sidestepped the monkey.

The sensei sighed and stared at the sky. "You didn't bring a flashlight. I forgot mine at the riverbank." His voice quivered.

I could sense his steps were getting smaller. I could also sense the monkeys were still following us. I looked back. They were following us. "You're extremely careless for a martial artist, you know." My grip on his arm became firmer, my eyes were stuck on the monkeys.

"You're being extremely stereotypical, you know. You think I should fit the stereotypical masculine image of toughness just because I do martial arts?" He shook his head. "And it's obviously irrelevant. You didn't bring one either."

"In my defense, I didn't know the tap was five minutes away." The next moment I looked back, the monkeys weren't within my sight anymore, but I could hear the sand shuffling.

Sun is an eerie creation of God. For such a huge, bright fireball, it knows how to slip over the horizon and suck away all of its light with it in a matter of seconds.

The intermittent hovering light from our hut was our only guide.

I couldn't see the monkeys now, which was a good thing. The bad thing was, I became more paranoid as the sky darkened. It was pitch black, but not without a Milky Way of stars. I would appreciate the delicacy of it if the dark wasn't taking my breath away. Literally. My chest felt constricted. Monkeys loomed around me but I couldn't see them. It became twice as scary when they were invisible. Invisible monkeys. Violent shivers ran all over my body.

"Aren't you afraid of spiders?" I asked to distract myself. "What would you do if Aragog and his hordes of children found you?"

He shivered. "That's why I don't wear my glasses. I don't fear what I can't see."

"That's the stupidest thing I've legitimately ever heard. One, you still have to fear God even if you can't see Him. Two, you could put yourself in substantial danger. Three, you don't have to see them to feel them on you."

"Can't show you cuz it's dark, but I wear knee-high socks so I won't feel them."

"So you expect being a schoolgirl will help you?" I laughed.

He clicked his tongue. "I think you're right about something."

"Empirically, I'm always right about everything. But which one is it?"

"Knowing you for a week has made me feel annoyed more than I've ever felt my whole life." He pushed my hand, sounding morose.

I grabbed his arm. "Look, you can spend the rest of the expedition being bitter about me, but don't you dare let go." The vein in my temples pulsed. "Are you trying to kill me?" My gaze hovered around the pitch-black path.

"Tenho a certeza que os macacos o farão se eu não o fizer." [I'm sure the monkeys will if I don't.]

"Porra, isto não tem graça." [Fuck, that's not funny.]

"Jona, ¿eres tú?" [Is that you?] Chaves's voice echoed through the dark. He illuminated da Graça's face from a few feet away.

"Sim, ignora isso," [Yeah, put that away,] da Graça shouted, shielding his face with his arm.

"Estoy a punto de buscarte. Dejaste tus gafas. Parece que Luuk te ha salvado." [I'm just about to search for you. You left your glasses. It looks like Luuk has saved you.]

"O quê? Fui eu quem—" [What? It was me who—]

I tugged his hand. "You'd better keep your bazoo shut about the monkeys," I whispered to him.

"Or else?" he said.

I couldn't see it, but I could hear his smirk.

"Or I'll pester you into becoming my best friend."

He snorted with laugher.

"Where's my spot again?" I asked when I ducked into the hut and grabbed the nearest flashlight. I swept the light behind me, and the damn monkeys were still there, sitting on the ground in a group of five. My mouth dried.

"There. The cozy little spot you requested for." Dr. John pointed toward a hammock right in front of the entrance.

"But I demanded the one beside the wall," I said in dread.

"That's Jona's hammock," Chaves said.

"And I'm sure Jona would appreciate it if he could sleep with you instead?" I said.

"Oh, believe me. I won't," the sensei said and sat in my hammock.

"Give me that spot," I insisted and pointed the flashlight to his face.

"Sí, dáselo. Puedes dormir en mi hamaca si no te gusta la tuya, querida," [Yeah, give it to him. You can sleep in my hammock if you don't like yours, honey,] Chaves said and patted the strings of his hammock.

"Naõ," the sensei said.

"Why wouldn't you want to spend your first night here with your boyfriend?" I murmured, swaying the light onto his face.

His golden eyes gleamed like a feline.

"Quem te deu a ideia de que somos namorados?" [Who gave you the idea that we're boyfriends?] he hissed. He bent over and massaged his right thigh, just above his white stocking.

"Uh... you?"

"Mantenha a luz longe do meu rosto." [Keep the light away from my face.] He pushed my hand aside. "Just... go to your hammock. Why are you sitting here?" He grabbed my flashlight and pointed it to my face as I sat next to him.

Our arms bumped together when my ass slid down the hammock. He had been tactile for the whole week, so I didn't care about the contact anymore. And amazingly, the close proximity calmed my jitters.

"I've reserved this spot," I said.

"What are you? Sheldon Cooper?"

"I don't adhere to Mathology. But we do share the same IQ. Oh, dear God. Please. Let me have this hammock." My eyes watered from the light, but it served its purpose as an appeal. "You should know by now that I'm afraid of monkeys. I'm in imminent danger if I sleep closer to the entrance. What if there's an attack? Aren't you gonna help me a bit here, sensei?"

He scrutinized me for seconds. He then folded his towel and threw it on the neighboring hammock. "You should've told me the reason sooner. I'm bad at reading people. Remember how I thought you were a nice guy?"

"That's... actually a valid example."

We spent the next hour eating packed food and discussing tomorrow's task. Da Graça and Chaves would start surveying the jungle with the locals tomorrow. They talked about the topographic variations of tree species diversity; I wouldn't act like I was an expert. My expertise was ethnolinguistic. My group was here to study the shift in the tribe's language and to re-transcribe the previous lexicon written in the early 2000s in case of any language shift.

As the hour went by, the buzz of conversation in the hut morphed into snores. I hugged the warm flashlight. I bought a lot of batteries before coming here so I could sleep with the flashlight on. Petrichor filled the humid air. Drops of rain pitter-pattered on the roof. We had lined it with canvas before we stacked the dried leaves so that water couldn't dribble into the hut.

Da Graça said goodnight to me. Our conversation died, just like that. For the first time in forever, I wanted to keep the conversation going. There was something preternaturally enjoyable about him.

He hit my soft spot.