The disease might have granted us mercy, but the forest didn't. When we disentangle from each other's arms and leave the plane, we see the whole place has been trashed. The fence has numerous holes in it. The rudimentary shelters Tristan and I built for practice are in ruins, bearing traces of fangs and claws at work. This wasn't the doing of just one jaguar.
The mother and her remaining cubs are upon us.
The fact that we killed one of the cubs doesn’t seem like a victory anymore now that the rest of the pack is attacking us.
"We prepare for two days," Tristan says. "Then we leave." I don't argue, even though he is weak and I'd like for him to be in excellent shape when we leave. We can't afford to wait any longer. "In the meantime, make sure you carry your bow with you at all times. And stay in my sight." There's no jaguar inside the fence, but I don't feel safe. I shudder… they could be on the other side of the fence. How we'll manage to leave with the pack surrounding us, preparing to attack, I don't know. Tristan wants to mix some of the stored animal fat with blood and smear it on a freshly caught animal. He plans to use that as bait and throw it as far outside the fence as possible, hoping the smell will lure the jaguars long enough to give us time to escape. I'm not convinced it'll work.
I'm not very productive in preparation, because I keep glancing at Tristan every few minutes, terrified he might get sick again. A few months into a new relationship, my friends would often wonder if what they felt toward the guy they were dating was love. How can you tell, they asked me (as if I was somehow a relationship specialist), if he's indeed the one. I was in the dark about the answer then, but now I am in the know. You feel complete, and you wonder how you could ever think you were complete before. It's a sensation that fills every pore, every cell with a devastating, almost explosive energy. Like loops of mist after a rain in the forest—it’s everywhere.
But another feeling also loiters around. Fear. Terror. Of losing him and that feeling of completeness. Here in the rainforest, where dangers await at every step, this fear follows me. Even more so now, after his illness.
Love has an effect few other things have: to empower you with happiness, and at the same time, strip you of all power, making you a prisoner of fear.
It's late afternoon when Tristan bellows, "Aimee." I spin around, a pit already forming in my stomach. But Tristan isn't alarmed or threatened in any way I can tell. He's staring at something high above us in the distance. I follow his gaze, baffled. The canopy, thick as always, doesn't seem to hold any more threats than usual. I squint my eyes in concentration. And then in the distance, where the canopy is sparser, I see the very thing Tristan sees.
It's not a threat.
It's hope.
In the form of thick, black smoke, rising in swirls up in the sky. Euphoria, the way I don't remember feeling for months, years, perhaps ever, rises from somewhere deep inside me, thick and furious, like the swirls of black smoke I can't take my eyes off.
"What does it mean? Is there a rescue team out there?" I ask.
"We'll find out in a second." Tristan strides toward the plane.
“Where are you going?”
"To get some of those mirror shards I took from the bathroom right after the crash. I can use them to reflect sunlight and send them signals. Keep watch while I get them."
I smile. We're finally a team. I eye the holes in the fence, my fingers tight around the bow, an arrow in place, ready to shoot at a millisecond notice. The swirls of hope inside me turn to tiny, sprinkly bubbles, as if I'm drinking glass after glass of champagne. By the time Tristan returns holding two palm-sized mirror shards, I am drunk on hope. At last, something to look forward to other than a jaguar attack or endless weeks of walking through the rainforest aimlessly. Something good for once. A thread of hope at last.
"I'll climb that tree," Tristan says, pointing to the tree I climbed on our first day. He’s also holding a sheet of paper and a pen. They were in the cockpit and we never used those in our poetry sessions because Tristan wanted to save them precisely in case something like this happened, and he needed to write a message. "On second thought, let's both climb it. I don't want you to stay here alone."
Tristan takes the lead, but between trying to be careful with the mirror shards and his weakness, he's slow. On a normal day, he can climb a tree twice as fast as me. Three branches separate us from the top of the tree when Tristan says, "There aren't enough strong branches at the top to sustain both of us. Wait for me here, all right?"
I'd like nothing better than to climb with him, and see the signals he's going to send with my own eyes, but I do as he says. I rest against a branch, careful to stay out of the way of any animal. I lean my head back, looking up at Tristan until I get dizzy and almost fall from the tree.
"What kind of signals are you sending them?" I ask.
"Morse code."
"Will they understand it?"
"If they set out to rescue us they should."
"Have you finished sending the signal?"
"Yes."
"Are they answering?"
Silence.
Sweat claims my skin as minutes pass with no answer. The euphoria from earlier turns to dread. What if it's not a rescue team after all? What if it's a native tribe that lit up a fire? Tribes can be friendly or hostile. That was always one of the risks awaiting us out here. No, it can't be a tribe. If there was a tribe nearby, we would've realized it before. Unless they migrate. Are there even tribes that do that? Has our own signal fire alerted them of a foreign presence, and they decided to deal with us now?
I take a deep breath, forcing myself to remain calm. An impossible task. Horrifying images of natives and jaguars attacking us play in my mind until I'm so stiff with fear, I doubt I'll be able to move from here if Tristan tells me there is no rescue team after all.
"They're answering," Tristan's voice reverberates through the branches, liquefying me. "They're answering right now." In his voice I recognize the same euphoria that threatens to burst from my chest. I stay silent, much as I'm dying to learn what they're saying. I don't want Tristan to miss one single bit of whatever they are communicating to us. Morse code isn’t terribly difficult. Tristan explained it to me the first days after the crash. Each numeral and letter has an equivalent in Morse code—a combination of dots and dashes. One can use a mirror to reflect sunlight to send Morse code signals: moving the mirror quickly to reflect light in dots, and longer movements to reflect light in dashes. It’s tricky getting the right angle of reflection, but I have full confidence in Tristan. He taught me how to send an SOS signal. The letter S is made of three dots, and the letter O of three dashes. SOS, or the signal for distress, would mean three dots, three dashes, and three dots. Sending a longer message is possible; it just takes more time. And because it takes so long, it’s easy to forget parts of the message if you don’t write it down. I’m glad we kept the paper and pen, and that he brought them with him.