[01 - THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE]

♁

Mira is learning to read sentences with me since the forest is miraculously quiet tonight. She sounds like an American kid when she's not rolling her R's. It's way too adorable, but I can't ignore that her flaccid tongue is a dead giveaway of the accelerating infection. 

"The gi...rls w...ere puh-lay-ing in the wain," Mira eventually voices out. She looks up at me, pleased with herself. 

I attempt to laugh for her. "That was good, baby. Really good. Try another one."

She nods happily and continues to take the next sentence piecemeal. "I like... w-wed shorts."

"Red."

"Wed," she repeats.

I giggle. "Wed, it is."

As her innocent voice fills the silence, I stare out at the pitch darkness of the tropics. In front of us, the fire crackled and sank lower into the forest floor, until we've become a little sun on the surface. As the sparks flew up from the temperate breeze, I cannot see the sundown anymore because of all the damn thicket. With the moist and stuffy evening escalating, Mira starts to perspire more than usual. I am relieved that she is, it's good for her to sweat it out. It's the fucking water that's killing her anyway.

I wipe away a bead of sweat that rolls down her furrowed brows. "This word please," she shows me from her workbook. 

"Raspberries," I articulate for her. Then I break it down into bits for her. 

Mira unsuccessfully repeats after me under her breath. I laugh genuinely this time—the world didn't deserve my baby girl.  

Because of that, it's also this specific time of the night that spooks me. I tend to lose track of time altogether when I'm with her. I can't gauge where my threat is imminent, and I don't have a terrific sense of direction or know how to use a gun, even though I do own one. I am unforgivably out of my depth in the forest regardless, but we've survived fifty-six days out in the Yucatán rainforests because of my dumb luck.

When Mira stops reading, I'm wide awake again. Even with her muddled ears, she can hear better. I should be ashamed for not being alert. The wilderness was the greenest metropolis with the bloodiest crimes and my daughter was never safe.

"Appa's back from pooping!" Mira suddenly informs me, giggling. 

I relax back into my position when our brown Labrador trots up to us, whining when I glare at him for being so invisible in the dark. I can't believe she's named that stupid dog after her favourite television show. Appa scoots right past me and nuzzles his head onto his best friend's lap. I know that little beast hates me back. 

Mira gives him a loving scratch behind his ears. "We should clean Appa soon. I love giving him baths."

"He'll get a bath after I've had one," I grumble. "I stink worse than that dumb dog."

She giggles. "Mommy!"

I grudgingly adjust the tubes in her oxygen tank that was getting sat on by Appa. I can't be jealous of him, he's here to stand guard for us and keep Mira entertained. Try introducing portable life support to a three-year-old and shackling her from playtime. It was absolutely necessary to distract from the sickly turmoil that clung to her. Hence, the dog.

"Will we go to a town tomorrow? I feel like slurping stew," she wonders out loud. 

More watery fucking food, I think. I've been feeding her lighter, solid meals; I am so afraid of the moisture reacting badly. The horrifying discoloured rashes, the inflammation in her eyes, the blood in her nose—I can't handle witnessing that again. And I won't allow her to succumb to it either. 

Mira's tiny body is saturated with water, inundating her physiology so much that the poor girl's been slowly drowning in her skin since the day she was born. I still can't make out if it's her genetic framework, a rare acquired disease, or how the water is being produced. I have ultimately theorized that when her cells begin to swell from the disproportionate amount of water, it becomes the cause of the splitting migraines that are more destructive than what an adult would feel. 

Imagine trying to fit an inflated balloon into a shoebox. When Mira's brain distends in her skull, it immediately fucks up her endurance. She weighs a kilo more than her real body weight so she can't maintain her balance on her feet for longer than five minutes, and it kills me to see her limit herself from running and playing when she's in high spirits. I can tell her condition's worsening when she starts to hallucinate her father, a man she's never met before. Her mad disorientation morphs into being violently sick, the kind where she's hacking up bottles and bottles of nothing but water. And I can't do anything but hold her, rock her in my arms and wait for the nightmare to pass. 

I chuck Mira's chin gently to cheer her up. No chance I'm getting her soup. "I'm not sure. I think I'll have to go on foot for a bit. Maybe meet some more people who can help us."

"More?"

"We're close. Just a bit more." It's my most effortless lie. 

She grimaces. "I don't like it. They keep touching me."

I sigh, having heard this too many times now. "They only touch you to communicate with you, Mira. To understand this... water inside of you. How it's gotten there."

And so far, nobody had a logical clue. One chieftain told me that she was the incarnation of Chaakh, the god of rain, here to sanctify the world of pollutants. They saw Mira as a messiah, travelling across the seas to meet them. Why on earth would their gods bless them with a transient protector suffering in pain?

"The baby's body is not equipped to be a vessel for Chaakh," the frail chieftain said to me, holding Mira's hands tight with devotion. "Her pain is a privilege. Our bendito." 

That's what they call her, in every community we visit. Bendito, the blessed one. I'd prefer it if they suggested me a way to reroute it to someone else.

Mira observes me, curious about my sudden brain fog. She pushes off the floor, steadier now, and touches my cheek. "Mommy, you okay?"

My lips tilt up. Her hand barely covers my cheek. "Just thinking. Why don't you go lie down first?"

She gratefully obeys. "Okay, goodnight."

I lean down to kiss her hair. And just like every night, I pray that she wakes up the next day healthy and smiling my favourite smile. I inhale her deeply, momentarily dreaming of a recovered Mira and I living by the sea, when I don't have to despise the water, and we surf the waves all day long. I'm beyond deluding myself with it. 

"Sleep well, baby girl," I whisper. "I love you."

"I love you," she promises and heads for the truck. Appa chases after her closely, wagging his tail and expecting to play. 

I watch them quietly, letting Mira be independent. She carefully climbs up to the passenger seat of the solar-powered truck which has been our fast and spacious mobile home for some time now. She preps her sleeping bag over the inclined seat and nestles into it, not before unfurling the pink mosquito net over the open window. Appa, realizing it's not his night, curls up in the footwell. 

Once the silence gets ripe for a nap, I try to pitch a sturdy hammock for the nth time. It thankfully sits upright, and I tumble in with a groan. I stink of dirt, my pants always itch, and my skin is sticky—I shake it all out. I move my crossed feet a little to see Mira inside. 

I smother an incredulous smile into my hand. My Mira's turning older already? My smile slips when the heartbreaking reminder comes to me. I am running out of time and options. 

In the last two months, I've spoken with over ten ancestral tribal communities and settlements in the mountains. Despite their menacing pikes and untamed lifestyle, their deeply rooted clanship, vibrancy, and connection to the forest and the sea outweigh it all. I sometimes struggle to understand their detailed language, but our common intentions are clear—the fable of the famed K'uk'ulkan. The king of the oceans, the lord of the winds, the guardian, the Atagat. He goes by many names in these regions, has had many representations, and is guarded seemingly by counts of death-defying whirlpools. In a plume of fur, a winged serpent, the god swiped his wings and cleared the air of evil. 

The directions to Tlālōcān, where K'uk'ulkan and his cosmic people reside, differ from families. But the congruity was unmissable as we began voyaging further.

Their scriptures—the most intimate and tesselated portraiture I've set my eyes on—depicted Apan, a sacred spring swathed in mist, in a cavern deep within the surface. The cave seemed to be lit up by fires, defended by weather phenomena that are unfathomable to me. I've seen enough to trust, even if these myths are shaping up into blind faith. 

When you come from a world with glorious gods falling from the sky and flying men in suits of armour start, it becomes easier to believe than deny. If I started to cling to the fact that K'uk'ulkan didn't exist, even if the constantly blitzed and self-entitled shaman Colel had told me he was an old wives' tale, I understood that this concept would hold me back from the reality. We had no evidence of his existence, except that his worshippers looked up to him for faith. The faith he'd offered for their continuation. I was going to follow them. 

It was my fundamental job, once upon a time, to understand that history can be subjective. It is sometimes concealed from us to prevent the potential that dares us to turn around and see, not ready to make the changes necessary. It was exactly when I decided that I'd rather chase the past to make the future work. 

I blink up in the darkness, too overwhelmed to let sleep take me. There's a part of me that continues to repudiate my efforts. I've given up everything for this trip; I've sold my three-bedroom flat in the city, exhausted my savings, resigned from my job, and left my whole life behind.

What if this sheltered colony was just another dead end? What if Colel was just a tricky little bitch, and I'd been too naive to take her word for it? What if the hundreds of journals I'd read about the civilization stayed hidden? What would I do then? 

Mira's wracking cough jostles me, rocking the hammock unsteadily. I shake my head and pace myself. 

I won't let my baby die. I'll dig out the dead for answers if I have to. Mira deserves a healthy life, even at the cost of my own. 

"Almost there," I murmur an affirmation. "We've almost made it."

♆

"Is she truly trespassing, K'uk'ulkan?" the king's right-hand warrior asks him.

"No doubt," Namor mutters. "No one's gotten this close before."

"She's determined to locate Talokan."

"Is she working for the Americans?"

"I believe so, sir."

"Despicable woman," he hisses out and the young spruce he clung to uproots with his wrath. "And she brings her baby along to spite me. Playing a god for a fool."

Namor's composure is untouchable as he watches the surface-dweller rest. He is aware of her delicate mortality, and how tempting it would be to drive a spear straight into her heart and be done with it. His patience was wearing thin with the foreign woman closing on his home. 

Although, it was hard not to appreciate her fortitude. She had the conviction of a seasoned warrior with none of the physical aspects. He didn't need a battalion to fight her, his one right arm was enough. What a waste of his time. 

"Head back home, Jian," he orders his troop calmly.

 "Yes, K'uk'ulkan."

He clucks his tongue. "Poor girl's been sent to her death. At least she'll have the glory of dying at the hands of Namor."

∞