A twitch at the tent flap. Zemba entered the scriptorium. “The Mair wishes me to inform you, they are here.”

Mair: the hero, the supernatural leader, the extraordinary man. The legend was beginning. Falcon’s own Manaos now used it among themselves; he soon expected to hear it addressed to Quinn directly in place of the commonplace Pai. Zemba had appointed himself Quinn’s lieutenant, but what else besides? Falcon realized that his opinions of Zemba were prejudices drawn from his physical size and the color of his skin. Here was a man rich in skills and insight, taken from his home and people in the sure knowledge that he would never see any of them again, that to him they were the dead, that any life he must make would be here, rootless, reduced to an insect, a speck in the vastnesses of Brazil.

“I am coming.”

Falcon stepped from the tent into a ring of blowpipes. The unworldly golden faces, the elongated, sloping foreheads of the Iguapá reminded Falcon strikingly, terrifyingly, of an altar screen by some maniacal Flemish painter, judgments and dark deliverers and strange, sharp instruments of inquiry. Twenty weapons drew on Falcon. Quinn sat at his ease propped on a barrel of salt pork, merry almost, though one of the Iguapá, a speaker of the lingua geral, stood before him in clear accusation. It was like a dance between them: the Iguapá striding forward to stab with his blowpipe, bark a question, then step back into the company. Quinn would answer in the same tongue, slowly, patiently, at his ease.

“The indio asks if the Mair is man or spirit. The Mair answers, ‘Touch my hands, my face,’ ” Zemba translated for Falcon.

Quinn held out his arms, a black crucifix. Waitacá composed himself before his hunting brothers, then stepped boldly forward and pressed the fingers of his hands into Quinn’s palms.

“The indio begs forgiveness, but it has never happened in the memory of the Iguapá that a caraíba’s soul has returned to his body from the worlds of the curupairá,” Zemba whispered. Quinn spoke, and the circle of hunters gave a low rumble of astonishment and anger. Falcon noted that some of the golden-faced warriors were still uncircumcised boys. Oh for my sketchbook! he thought. Such singular crania; they must be achieved in infancy by binding the head, as was the custom of many of the extinct peoples of the Andes.

“What did the father say there?”

“The Mair said, ‘Ask me a question, any question.’’’

The Iguapá called to each other in their own language. The Manaos waited at the edge of the firelight, suspicious, ready for fight. Falcon caught the eye of Juripari, his Manao translator. One word and the Manaos would strike. One word and it would be more bloody anonymous death on the river sand, unseen, unheard, unmourned.

Waitacá jabbed his blowpipe at Quinn with a simultaneously stabbing question.

“He says, ‘And where was your God, O priest?’”

For too many heartbeats Falcon felt every poison dart trained on him.

Then Quinn snatched the blowpipe from Wairaea’s and smartly, impertinently, rapped him on his sloping forehead. Waitacá’s hand flew to the serrated wooden dagger slung across his chest, eyes bulging in rage. Quinn held his gaze; then his face gently creased and folded into a smile, into helpless laughter. The infection of the ridiculous: Waitacá’s wounded pride evaporated like a morning mist; shaking with barely contained mirth, he took the blowpipe back from Quinn and, with deadly pomp, tapped the Jesuit on the crown of the head. Quinn exploded into guffaws; released, every Iguapá let free their repressed laughter. Wairaea managed to bellow out a choking senntence before he doubled up. Against will, reason, and sanity, Falcon felt the clench of laughter beneath his ribs.

“What did he, what did the indio say?”

“He said, ‘Of course, where else?’”

The laughter was slow spent, the madness of fear transfigured.

“Bur my friends, my friends,” Quinn said, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his filthy black robe, “I must warn you, the other father, the Black Pai, is coming. His great church is less than a day from you, and all his thought is turned upon you.” In a breath all laughter ceased. “He intends the reduction of the Iguapá, and all your concealments and traps will not avail you, for he has as many warriors as there are stars in the sky and he would sell everyone of their lives to assimilate you into his City of God. Your gods and ancestors will wander lost; your name will be forgotten.”

A warrior called out a question. Waitacá translated. “How does the Black Pai know this?”

“Because in my madness I told him,” Quinn said.

A susurrus of dismay passed from warrior to warrior. A youth, a still-fat boy, asked, “Will the Black Pai take us?”

Quinn sat back on his barrel, turned his gaze upward to the band of stars. You know the answer to that , Falcon thought. You see them still; I think you see them always, those stars of the other skies. All the worlds you told me are open to you.

“Bring your women and your children,” Quinn said. “Your beasts and your weapons, your tools and your cooking pots. Sling your hammocks upon your backs and gather up your urocum and the bones of your ancestors. Make cages for your curupaira, as many as you can carry, male and female both. When you have done all this, burn your village to the earth and follow me. There is a place for you. I have seen it, a hidden place, a safe place, not just for the Iguapá but also for everyone who flees the slave coffle and the block. There will be no slaves. This place will be rich in fish and hunting, manioc and fruits; it will be strong and defended.” Quinn inclined his head to Zemba. “No one will be able to take this place, not the bandeirantes, not the Black Pai and his Guabirú fighters. The name of it will be Cidade Maravillhosa, the Marvelous City. Falcon, gather your supplies and what equipment you deem necessary. Burn your canoes and whatever you do not require on the journey. We leave this instant. I shall lead you.”

“Quinn, Quinn, this is insanity, what madness … ?” Falcon cried, but Luis Quinn had already disappeared into the dark of the forest. One by one the golden bodies of the Iguapá followed him and vanished.

The book fitted the palm of the hand like a loved, kissed breviary; small, dense, bound in soft, mottled-gold leather that felt strangely warm and silky to Marcelina’s touch, as if it were still alive. Hand-sewn header tapes, a bookmark made from that same brass-and-gold leather, edged with new bright gold leaf; this was a volume that had been bound and rebound any times. The hand-painted endpapers were original watercolor sketches of a river journey, both banks represented, right at the top, left at the bottom, landmark trees, missions, churches all marked. Indios adorned with fantastical feathered headdresses and capes stood in canoes or on bamboo rafts; pink river dolphins leaped from the water. In the top of a dead tree red howler monkeys had been depicted in the oversize but minute detail of a dedicated chronicler. All was annotated with legends Marcelina could not decipher.

Mestre Ginga signaled for her to set the little book down. The cover bore only the outline of a frog, embossed in gold leaf. With gloved hands he moved it reverently to the end of the folding camp table before setting the coffee in front of Marcelina. She too wore gloves, and had been instructed under no circumstances to get the book wet. She sipped her coffee. Good, smoky, from a Flamengo mug. The walls of the little kitchen at the back of the fundação were painted yellow, the handmade cupboards and work surrfaces blue and green. A patriotic kitchen. A lizard sprang from stone motionnlessness to skim up the wall between the framed photographs of the great mestres and capoeiristas of the forties and fifties, before the joga became legal, let alone fashionable; men playing in Panama hats down in rodas down by the dock, stripped down to the singlets, pleat-top pants rolled up to the knees. The classic kicks and movement but with cigarettes in their mouths. That was true malandragem.