Chapter Seven: Into the Sunset

As the wagon rumbled to a stop, I took in the bustling city, full of merchants, artisans, and a couple beggars. “Wow,” I breathed. “This is amazing.”

Isn’t it? Skylar asked rhetorically as he leapt from the wagon and trotted to the edge of the city, pacing back and forth. I gazed up at the skyscrapers in wonder.

Kaliyan voiced my thoughts. “I never expected skyscrapers in an Amazonian city,” she mused, her gaze similar to my own. Her eyes were faced towards the tips of the towers, which weren’t all that tall. The tallest one seemed to be about 20 stories high.

There was a lurch as we came to a halt yet again, this time in the middle of a marketplace. “Your escort to the jungle will leave whenever you wish it to,” Miguel said. I jumped; I’d forgotten that he was there. “I suggest, however, that you shop a bit. The bazaar here has the most wonderful baked goods, as well as fish, rugs…basically anything you wish.”

Kaliyan expressed her gratitude with a brief thanks. “Thanks, Miguel, we’ll stay here for a little while,” she said with a half-smile that widened considerably when Miguel handed each of us a pouch of glittering silver coins, about the size of dollar coins.

“Since I very much doubt that you brought any reai, here you are.” At our blank look, he said, “The reais is the Brazilian currency. It’s worth about 52 cents.”

We nodded our thanks, then leapt off the cart to join Skylar, who’d followed us and was seated by a stall boasting large, expensive tapestries.

The woman at the stall smiled. “Eu vender-lhe-ei estes para o meio preço, desde que você é crianças,” she said, a very gracious tone to her voice.

I paused. “I didn’t understand any of that…” I muttered, then said to the woman, in Spanish, “Lo siento, no hablo portugués, y hablo solamente un poco español. ¿Usted habla inglés?” After a brief pause, I added, “Do you speak English?” in my own language.

A smile and nod was my response. “Yes, most merchants speak fluent—or close to fluent—English. I was offering you half price for one of these lovely tapestries, since you are little ones, and visitors, no less.” She gave another congenial smile as she held up one of her works.

“No, thanks,” Kaliyan and I both said, but were quickly purchasing other goods, such as arapaima, a Brazilian freshwater fish, and Pão de Queijo, a delicious cheese bread. Then we happened upon what I suppose is Manaus’s equivalent of Monster or Amp: Guaraná.

The guaraná berry apparently had two to three times the caffeine of a coffee bean. The taste wasn’t all that strong, and was sort of apple-like, with a berry after-taste. In short, Guaraná was the best energy drink that I’d ever had.

Kaliyan agreed, especially after she’d downed the whole can. Her eyes widened and she started bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. This, which began as a slight shifting of weight, escalated until she was jumping up and down into the air, as if she was on a pogo stick. “I’m so hyper right now,” she informed me, and I laughed out loud.

As if I didn’t know that already, I thought; Kaliyan beamed at me, of course having read my thoughts. “Go run around the marketplace,” I told her sarcastically. “Please, do something to burn some energy.” To my surprise, she grinned wildly and went off to do just that.

I watched her as she shot off around the bazaar, when suddenly a local boy walked up to me, towing his younger sister by the hand. “Hello,” he said, sticking out a hand to me. I shook it. “I’m Felix, and I noticed that your friend—that is your friend, I hope—was running around the square.” He paused, looking uncertain and a little amused. “This isn’t her first time having Guaraná by any chance, is it?”

“Yeah, it is,” I answered, laughing lightly. “She drank the whole can, too, so I’m a little concerned that she’ll explode or something.”

Felix’s eyes were wide as saucers. “She—honest, she did? My first time, I only could drink a few sips before I was doing flips.” He demonstrated for me right then, executing a perfect back flip and sticking his landing. “That’s…that’s amazing.”

I laughed again. “Kaliyan’s amazing, alright.”

It was then that Kaliyan herself ran back up to me, not even out of breath. “Hey, what’s your name?” she asked Felix. “Mine’s Kaliyan; I’m her best friend. We’re from Minnesota—that’s in the United States, but you probably knew that already. But did you know that Guaraná is really good?” she rambled.

She then turned to me, without pausing, and continued, “By the way, Emily, do we have any more of that stuff? ‘Cause I think I could use some more right now.”

“No way,” Felix and I said in unison, shaking our heads firmly.

Kaliyan frowned. “But why?”

“Because you’re already really, really hyper, that’s why,” I told her. “Besides, we’ve got to go soon. Our cart to the river entrance gets here in about 5 minutes.”

Felix turned to me. “You’re going to the trajeto da água?” he asked. “Why? You must be newcomers, especially since you’ve never heard about Guaraná before…At least wait a while before you take on the trajeto, or you’ll surely…miss out on other things.”

Then his little sister made herself heard by saying, “You’ll die, won’t you, Felix?”

“Not necessarily, Teresa,” Felix answered firmly, looking disapprovingly down at his sister. “Some live, but I’m not sure that unaccompanied children have ever made it.”

He was talking to us for the last part, I was sure. “Well, we’re a little bit more than children,” I informed the dusty boy before me, “and I’m sure that we’ll be fine.”

Felix took a deep breath before offering, in a voice as cautious as can be, “I could come with you. I know this part of the river pretty well, and I’m fairly strong, from hauling fish…and I could be a good translator. Plus, the Amazons think I’m cute.”

“The Amazons are real?” I queried with awe. “You are talking about the women who live in the rainforest, right?”

As Felix nodded, his grin was wide. “Sim.”

“Sim?” Kaliyan repeated, sounding dubious. “What’s that?”

Our new guide blinked, looking a little too apologetic. “It means ‘yes’ in Portuguese. The people of Manaus occasionally slip into our home language, you see…”

I grinned; he was giving us more evidence that a translator was needed. “Of course you can come, Felix, if your parents think it’s okay, and if…well, your sister probably shouldn’t come along.”

Felix nodded eagerly. “Of course not,” he agreed hastily. “Peter will take care of her.”

The first thing I noticed was that Teresa’s eyes lit up with glee, so I took it that Peter was a good person to leave her with. “Okay, Felix,” I finally said. “Welcome to the team.” Felix grinned, his teeth sparkling white in contrast to his dusty skin. “We’d better catch our cart, though, or it’ll leave us behind.”

“No chance of that,” shouted a familiar voice, and around the bend came the wagon we’d ridden there in, carrying none other than Miguel. “Hop on, e pressa!”

Felix leaned over and whispered, “He said to hurry,” into my ear, then bent his knees and literally hopped onto the wagon, while Kaliyan and I just used the ladder.

I plopped myself down on a bench near the back, next to Skylar—who had already been on the wagon—as I saw an even dirtier boy than Felix come out of a nearby shop and start talking animatedly to Teresa. Well, off we go, Skylar said musingly.

And indeed, off we went.