A Carpet Sewn With Skeletons

THE SCENE OF THE, EH, CRIME

When the truck stops near the river, the first thing I do is open a chewing gum. It helps
me think. Joberval gets out with his agents, rifles at the ready, and spreads them across the
territory on a perimeter defined right there, in his trained eye. He makes a sign and the rest of
the group comes out. I leave last. The police truck stops a bit further ahead, in it our two
hosts.
I walk to the skeleton of a rectangular structure, the highest wall only up to my waist.
Sacks of cement and lime, bricks, concrete mixer, spatulas, water bottles, all scattered around
the grass. The construction of Pequizeiro Small Hydroelectric Plant headquarters, aborted in
its first days. A dark stain that I know is blood decorates the dwarf wall. At its feet I see a
small piece of something bloody covered with ants.
“A piece of intestine, I think,” says Rogério, the crime scene investigator, pointing to
the ants. “When I got here yesterday there was a whole belly over there.”
I stop chewing and I look at the running water of the Piraim River, the morning sun
reflected on its surface. I’m still not used to this. Quite different from the mornings buried in
books and computer screens, collecting quotes for dissertation, for thesis, for articles, building
a repertoire that would end up drawing attention from Piara Consulting. At the time I didn’t
imagine that my transition from university to the newest and most daring Brazilian company
for archaeological and ethnological research, along with a bunch of other scabrous fields —
undisclosed, of course — would take me to such backwaters, dodging the gaze from a piece
of human intestine eaten by insects.
Next to Rogério is Iasmin, investigator of the Civil Police of Barão de Melgaço. She,
the notary and some military police officers were the first on the scene. A single survivor of
the construction crew escaped in the company truck and arrived in town in the middle of the
night, bursting into the police station shouting his colleagues were all dead. Now this man was
at his home, in a semi-catatonic state.
Faced with the carnage, the police team isolated the area and called the crime scene
investigator from the capital, Cuiabá. His preliminary examination was what prompted Piara,
a police intelligence consulting firm, to be summoned from São Paulo. In a few hours our
team was dispatched in a jet to Cuiabá and from there took the road to Barão de Melgaço, the
closest city to the occurrence, with little less than 10 thousand inhabitants.
“Can I start the reconstruction now, Carina?” says Rogério.
“Do the honors,” I say.
“Everything happened in a short time frame, the exact order of deaths is yet to be
determined. We can follow the layout of the scene here to facilitate. This stain on the wall
belongs to victim 1, who was torn in half here and thrown further ahead, where we see those
two other stains,” he points to the ground a few meters ahead, and begins to walk around like
a tour guide, the group behind him. “Here, at the foot of this tree, was victim 2 with both legs
broken beside victim 3. In front of those stones we found victim 4, with lacerations and
bruises all over his body. Inside the container, where the group slept and kept supplies, we
found victims 5 and 6, apparently trampled and pushed there, their bodies full of holes. Victim
7 was found by the river bank, without an arm, which seems to have been carried by the
current. Victim 8 was hanging from the branches of this tree here, his waist twisted and pelvis
bone broken. All eight had their heads removed, without the use of cutting tools. Finally,
victim 9 was lying by the truck’s tire marks, his head crushed. After analyzing the vehicle
used in the escape, the preliminary conclusion is that victim 10, the sole survivor, ran over his
colleague.”
Tour concluded, Rogério stops and looks at the inquiring faces.
“This is an informal summary, it’s still necessary to calculate trajectories and speed
and wait for the forensic doctors to check the bodies. What I can tell you is that most of the
lesions are bruises, perhaps made by some animal, although I don’t know any animal with
such strength. Footprints on the ground are wide, feet with thick foot nails so long that they
pierce the soil. We’re definitely not talking about a human here.”

AS IF WE DIDN’T ALREADY KNOW

Iasmin and Rogério walk to the container turned into a tomb, she wants to ask about
something she saw there. My team stays behind, waiting for orders. For this mission the roster
is Eduarda, the technician, our Uruguayan handyman Gutiérrez, and Joberval, the commander,
with his detachment of four combat agents around the perimeter. All four are newcomers to
Piara, on their first mission, and I haven’t even memorized their names yet.
“The Pie Grande”, says Gutiérrez, pulling a cigarette from the pack.
“There’s no Big Foot here, that’s gringo stuff,” I say. “But we have Bottle Foot,
Gorjala, Capelobo, Bicho-Homem, Pai do Mato, Quibungo and Mapinguari. Our monsters,
strong to cause this amount of damage, no doubt. Bottle Foot is from this region, but if it were
it, we’d see the deep marks of its round foot. It could be some of the others, far from home.
Or something we don’t know yet.
“Weak spots, if it really is one of them?” asks Joberval.
“Navel, normally. Eduarda, triangulate the area for me. I wanna know how far these
woods extend, cut by rivers or stretches of flat land and farms. Any one of these legends
usually operates within the confines of the forest.”
“But usted know there ain’t any clear rules no more,” says Gutiérrez. “Lo que we saw
in Matozinhos, por ejemplo. That was not una de esas beasts as we know them.”
“True. But until we have proof, let’s stick to what we do know. Gutiérrez, check the
map for Indigenous Territories nearby.”
“Legalized o en legal dispute?”
“Both. I wanna know who’s closest.”
Gutiérrez takes the tablet from the backpack and starts searching. Eduarda, sitting in
the open door of the truck, analyzes the satellite images on a laptop, earphones on, head
swaying in rhythm. Joberval points to one of his men, who constantly looks over his
shoulders through the trees.
“They’re shaking like leaves in winter, the new agents. First mission is always
complicated,” he says.
“No one believes until they see, right?”
“No one. Not me. Not you, Carina.”
“It’s true. Look at that other one there, taking it out on the food,” I say, pointing with
the chin to another agent crouched before a bocaiúva tree, spitting the seed of one fruit while
cracking open another and stuffing it into his mouth.
“You know what’d be cool?” he says. “We coming back to base with them all alive
this time.”
 “I’m counting on you for that, Sergeant Barcelos.”
“Sergeant my ass, I’m no longer in the military.”
“Guatós and Bororos,” says Gutiérrez, showing the map. “But they’re to the south,
down the Cuiabá River and San Lourenço.”
“Great. Then we’ll be looking for them. After talking to the survivor.”

THE SURVIVOR, OF COURSE

We head back to town and leave the crime scene guy at the police station, where his
car is, and there we see lots of people huddled in the entrance. Small town + rumors = fire.
Apparently, they’ve not received confirmation on any of the rumors, and when they see the
man in the crime scene investigator’s uniform coming in, they start firing questions. Iasmin
only steps on it when she sees he’s entered the station, going down the avenue. We follow her.
The worried wife of the only survivor is the one who welcomes us in her house and
takes us to the bedroom. The man, lying on the bed with his eyes open, doesn’t react to any
question, to any sound. We try to show him drawings, different portraits of the monsters of
folklore we suppose may have something to do with this, but it’s no use.
When I tell Iasmin that I need to talk to some of the Guató or Bororo people, she says
that she knows a Guató that works in town, and soon we’re in front of Mercado
Independência, talking to a young man with indigenous features in a white apron dirty with
blood and white butcher boots.
“Roberto, this is Carina Jankovic, from Piara Consulting, who’s assisting us in the
investigation of the hydroelectric plant. She asked for a Guató, and you came to mind.”
“Is there anything I can help with?” asks the young man. “I didn’t know any of those
men who died.”
Of course he tries to fish something more from the accident, and Iasmin gives evasive
answers. My fault, I guess. I was the one who told her to buy us as much time as possible
before releasing information. Curious people just get in the way.
“Roberto, here’s the thing,” I say, “these deaths are quite hard to explain, and we’re
confident they were not made by any Pantanal animal. My team and I, we’ve been
specializing in handling such strange occurrences. And in these cases, I always look for the
indigenous people that live nearby and talk to the shaman, the chief, an elder, to know the
stories of the land. So, can you help me with that?”
He says that most Guatós in Mato Grosso, the State we’re in, are in their recently
demarcated territory, Guatós Bay, some 200 kilometers to the south, following the Cuiabá
River. But fortunately, his great-great-grandma, Mrs. Ivone, is staying at his father’s house,
recovering from eye surgery. His dad is the caretaker of a nearby farm, where he lives with
the rest of the family. Iasmin asks the owner of the market to lend the police his employee for
a few hours, and soon we’re on the road.

MRS. IVONE, 96 AND COUNTING

“Mateus, Osvaldo, Antônia, Roberto, Divanize, Caíque, Ronaldo, Carol, Maria e

Cafu,” says Mrs. Ivone, pointing one by one her great- and great-great-grandchildren in a
large photograph hanging on the wall, all of them in underwear or shorts in an idyllic forest
setting, on the banks of a river, I suppose in their Indigenous Territory.
“There are so many, Mrs. Ivone. You really are very lucky.”
“Oh, I can’t deny that.”
Valter, Roberto’s father, comes in from the kitchen with a glass of water, hands it to
me and sits on the same sofa as Ivone. We are in the living room of his house, built between
the farm gate and the farmhouse, a building with large stones. The owners are not here today.
I sit on a chair near the table, in its center a woven bowl made out of water hyacinth dried
stems with lots of little acuri coconuts inside, the characteristic palm tree of the Guatós. The
woman, with braided gray hair draped over her floral blouse and skirt, has deep black eyes
framed by purplish skin, same color as her lips.
On the way to the farm, I helped my own memory with old phone notes and the
information compiled by Dr. Aristides, my boss at Piara. The trip was short, a few kilometers
on a paved road and then a few more on a dirt road, but it was enough time to remember the
basics.
The Guatós are a people of expert canoeists who live in the swampy rivers of the
Pantanal for countless generations. The earliest written records date back to the Spanish
conquistador Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1543, in this border region of Brazil with
Paraguay and Bolivia. Successive confrontations drastically reduced its population: in the
18th century with bandeirantes from São Paulo who traveled up the rivers in pursuit of gold,
in the 19th century with soldiers and diseases brought by the Paraguayan War, and in the 20th
century with big farmers and the barons of agrobusiness.
Today, the Guatós are no more than 500 individuals, spread between Mato Grosso,
Mato Grosso do Sul and our neighbor Bolivia, several of them integrated into modern society,
their ancestral language threatened with extinction in favor of Portuguese and Spanish. Many
live in cities near their territory and find work in farms and fishing grounds, prized for their
familiarity with the rivers. Their nomadic structure is giving way to permanent villages, so
common in other ethnicities, and to costumes amalgamated with those of city life. This is the
case with Mrs. Ivone, for example, who returned from Cuiabá a few days ago after cataract
surgery, and is recovering here.
Her voice is hoarse and slow, but firm.
“Valter and Roberto tell me that you come with news of death on the banks of the
Piraim.”
“Nine men last night, Mrs. Ivone. All twisted, broken, missing their heads.”
“Caiotugi.”
“What?”
“Caiotugi. The very old. It's the beast that lives there, much much longer than my
cracked feet have dragged me across this land.” Which according to Valter is 96 years. But it
might be more and it might be less since they did not record these things at the time. “The
Guatós know they’re not to come near the Piraim River from the Mouth Curve in the south to
the Calabash Curve in the north, and are to avoid all the landmarks our ancestors engraved on
the rocks.”
“Caiotugi,” I say. “An animal? Do white men not know of him?”
“We're tired of talking about it. But white man only respects what he sees. When
FUNAI* told us that the government was going to build something there, and that nothing
was going to change for the Guatós, which is a lie, it always is, even if no Guató has lived in
the Piraim itself for a long time, we told them.”
Which doesn’t help, I know. What good are the legends and precautions of the
ignorant and superstitious indigenous peoples when compared to the technical reports of
forest engineers? My whole career was built in opposition to this common sense, in this
struggle for the recognition and cataloging of the native peoples and their wealth of
knowledge. And also for what they left behind, which is how I unwittingly arrived at the
Xoktianbkhá, who lived more than 5 thousand years ago in our continent but officially never
existed. Dr. Aristides took advantage of my own exacerbated curiosity to convince me to
change career and enter Piara, where our studies and conclusions led to the creation of the
first research and defense team. We’re learning by leaps and bounds how to deal with what we
don’t know.
“Can you tell me what you know about Caiotugi, Mrs. Ivone?”
“The Guatós have tried to kill it. And when the bottom of the Piraim was a carpet
sewn with skeletons, they gave up.”
“I don’t think we have much of a choice here, with all due respect. If it isn’t us, it will
be another group. All help is welcome.”
“As they say, to each their own cross.”

GRAB A CHAIR ‘CAUSE IT’S STORY TIME

“The white man first came through these lands on the way to silver and gold in the
Andes. And only then after indians to make cheap slaves. They killed and enslaved many
groups, many families, and many of our own people, who always lived on the banks of the
rivers that were the roads of yesterday. One of our ancestors, named Tumuque, a great warrior
master of the bow and arrow, was returning from a hunt when he saw his whole family dead
in his embankment. The bandeirantes were there, bragging, and chased him through the
woods. Tumuque was fast, but the men had harquebuses and pistols and hit him in the leg.
“Captured, Tumuque said he knew that the white men wanted gold and could show
where there was a lot of gold to be found. The white men did not understand the Guató
language, nor did the enslaved Guarani that guided them. But Tumuque saw a gold pendant
hanging on the chest of the captain of the bandeira, and his gestures pointing to the icon were
enough for the man to understand and save his life.
 “While they waited for the Guató to recover from his wounded leg, the captain
entrusted one of the Guarani, who already knew a bit of Portuguese, to learn what he could
from the captured man's language. This is how he understood that Tumuque told of a river
bank where gold shone during daylight. They left, going up a bifurcation of the Cuiabá River,
the Piraim, for eight days.
“What Tumuque did not tell them was that when he was a boy his father took him on a
long trip to the headwaters of the Piraim, way north of Barão de Melgaço, and in the middle
of the journey, when they slept on the river bank, the father had a dream and entered the
woods. He returned talking to himself, with a large golden stone full of drawings and
symbols, wrapped in a banana leaf. It was the work of a forgotten people, carved in a stone of
solid gold, and the father told his son not to touch it, for it was under strong protection.
“Tumuque then guided the bandeirantes to that same river bank, pointed the spot on
the ground and the Guaranis began to dig. The captain, impatient from the moment he did not
see the promised gold on the bank’s surface, was about to kill the man when the stone was
found, still wrapped in the banana leaf. Tumuque jumped inside the hole and raised it
carefully, placing it in the arms of the captain, who unveiled and contemplated it in awe.
When struck by the sun, the stone reflected a strong glow. The captain laid his hand on it, and
at that very moment collapsed on the ground.
“Right then and there his clothes were ripped, his arms and legs grew, his skin became
as green and hard as an alligator's, his face was deformed and bones jumped out, the nose
narrowed, eyes expanded, his mouth grew into a big black hole that took all of his chest, a
beast the size of two men and the teeth of an animal. What had been the captain turned against
those of his bandeira and began to kill them one by one, not bothering with the shots, the
arrows, the blows of the bordunas.
“What is known of this story was told by the Guarani who fell wounded in one of the
canoes and floated down the river, struggling with fever and fighting death, and ended up
rescued by a Guató family. It was the same Guarani who had learned a bit of the language.
Many Guatós, for a long time, went up the Piraim to that point and did not return. The elders
banned the territory, demarcating the contours to ensure that it would not happen again. So
much time passed and the beast is still there, cursed by Tumuque and its matá stone, or fire
stone, symbol of the white man’s greed. The Portuguese captain, whose name was lost,
became old, very old, and was from then on called by us Caiotugi.
 “The Guatós have always avoided the region. If anyone needs to go through that
territory, he does it fast, and never takes anything, absolutely nothing of that land with him,
because he knows that the forest, the animals, the water, everything there is protected. We
tried to warn them, child.”

WELL, NOW WE KNOW WHAT WE’RE DEALING WITH

I still try to get some more information, such as details of the Matá Stone and the
forgotten people who left it there. But Mrs. Ivone doesn’t know, and if the first Guatós who
passed on the story knew, their heritage eroded with time. When I leave the house, thanking
the hosts, I see the entire team sitting at a table in the porch of the farmhouse. Valter's wife
poured everyone a cup of water. Gutiérrez, excited as always, tells some stories of his climbs
and trails in Spanglish, and Roberto, his mother and three younger brothers laugh hearing
about them. When Eduarda sees me coming, she walks towards me to talk in private.
“Boss, Iasmin sent a message from the station. She said the survivor of the attack is in
the wind.”
“What do you mean? He ran away?”
“Apparently. There’s no sign of break-in or struggle in the house. And his old lady
didn’t leave it for a minute. No one can explain. They’re checking the area. The crazy ass just
up and puff, gone.”
Besides being a first-rate assassin, what else does this Caiotugi keep up his sleeve? I
call Dr. Aristides to update her. She says she’s never heard of Matá Stone or Caiotugi, and that
we may have come across an unprecedented finding here. If she doesn’t know, it’s because
none of this has ever been quoted in an ethnographic account. And as per the transformation
Ivone described, the chances of being an Xoktianbkhá artifact are high. Of course our focus
changes with this development, and finding the stone becomes as important as finding — and
knocking the hell out of — the beast. She's willing to send in more agents and bargain her
influence if the need arises.
I talk to Joberval to decide what to do next.
“Look, Carina, if we have to find this Caiotugi in the thick of Pantanal, the team we
brought is enough, a good number for such treacherous and uneven terrain.”
“Don’t forget he killed nine men as if they were toys.”
“Nine non-combatants. In the dark. Unarmed. Taken by surprise.”
“Mrs. Ivone said bullets don’t hurt the thing.”
“And a grenade in the gut? I bet that does some tickling.”
“Your call, Joberval.”
“Let's go back to the attack site and go from there.”

CAIOTUGIS CAN BE SUCH BUZKILLS

Gutiérrez drives the truck slowly down the dirt road, a vehicle borrowed from the
Bomb Squad of the capital’s Battalion of Special Operations, enough to allocate the team and
equipment with room to spare. I’m always impressed with the favors Mrs. Valéria Jordão,
founder and president of Piara Consulting, is able to pull in with police forces and the
government on such short notice. Adapted, the rear of the truck has a lateral door but is
otherwise closed and windowless, except for a small acrylic one on the cabin partition where
we see the gray-haired head of the driver bobbling in the rhythm of the road bumps.
That’s why I appreciate the opportunity to see the landscape when we’re forced to
come out of the vehicle a bit after the farm gate, where they built a pinguela over a stream, a
small wooden bridge on top of an improvised column. We did the same thing on the way here.
Gutiérrez argues it’s safer to cross it without the additional weight of the team, and aligns its
wheels on the larger wood slats. We follow on foot.
On another trip to Cuiabá years ago, for a symposium during which we took a day for
exploring, I and a group of undergraduates drove down Transpantaneira, a road that goes a
long way into the heart of the Pantanal, with more than a hundred small bridges like this. I
remember seeing alligators, jabirus and capybaras all along the way. But the trip down
memory lane doesn’t last long. Soon we’re back on the bouncing of the road.
I think of what Eduarda said about the survivor. He didn’t seem able to do anything
when we saw him. Would it be some kind of link, of influence from the beast that had
anything to do with his supposed fleeing? Or would the animal itself come out of its protected
area if it wanted to? That hadn’t crossed my mind, it leaving the woods. But if I didn’t know a
Caiotugi until now, who am I to say what he can or cannot do? It's actually funny that I hear a
roar in my head when I consider this. But the whole team looks at each other. It's not in my
head.
It happens before we reach the paved road.
Something bumps into the side of the truck with such force that there is nothing
Gutiérrez can do behind the wheel to prevent the vehicle from tipping over and plunging into
a dive, skidding sideways across the land. Thanks to belts buckled, we’re not thrown against
each other and against the side that is now the floor, but the equipment flies and smashes
everywhere.
“Están todos bien?” I can hear Gutiérrez screaming behind the partition, looking back
through the little window. Damn truck with no back door. Our only way out is pressed against
the ground. Only Gutiérrez can leave through the driver's door. Or something come in.
“Gutiérrez, get away from the door, now!” I say, releasing the belt and balancing
myself to stand up. The bump on the side heavily caved in the wall above us, crushing one of
the agents, still pressed against his body. He’s unconscious. I can’t see blood anywhere, but
I’m sure it doesn’t look good. Gutiérrez obeys me and disappears from the window.
Outside, much closer now, the guttural roar. And then a new bump on the vehicle,
above, the caved-in side. Claws, or what appear to be claws, thick and pointed, penetrate the
ceiling in two places. One of them is near the crushed agent, and a claw trespasses his head.
Joberval fires a whole magazine, and the other agents do the same. The claws disappear. And
then we’re all deaf, the smell of gunpowder clinging to our tongues, sunlight coming through
the bullet holes.
"To the corners, clear the center!" says Joberval. “If the beast jumps again it falls on
our head.” I see Eduarda cowering in the back and putting her hands to her ears.
It's the Caiotugi. But why here? Then it dawns on me.
“Think fast,” I say, “who picked anything from the attack site? A pebble, something
off the ground, anything?”
One of the agents pulls out three bocaiúvas from his pocket.
“I didn’t think it’d be a problem,” he says, “the grass was covered with them.” I take
the fruits out of his hand and we hear Gutiérrez yelling in the front.
“Here, here, el maldito!” And then the sound of glass breaking, shots, another roar
over Gutiérrez's cries.
I punch the weakest part of the shot ceiling to clear a hole with the butt of the pistol,
stick my hand out, and throw all three bocaiúvas far.
Gutiérrez’s shouting stops. We hear two more roars. One close, the other distant.
Eduarda is still covering her ears. The agents look at me, waiting for orders.
“What are you waiting for? Make way, we need to get out,” I say, pointing the shot to
hell ceiling.

AND THEN YOU REMEMBER HOW TO BREATH

“Gutiérrez, how you holdin’ up?” I say, kneeling before him in the dirt, his left arm
limp at his side, a tear that starts at the shoulder and runs to the elbow dripping blood, his
right hand holding a cigarette in his mouth.
“Could be better, jefa.” He points to the dead agent's body on the ground beside the
overturned truck. The bump broke his arm and some ribs, but it was the hole in the head,
which starts in the back of it and comes out on the cheek, what did him for good. “Or worse.”
Joberval offers to stitch Gutiérrez's wound, but he says he’s better off getting stitches
sucking a bottle of pinga at the health center back at Barão de Melgaço. Eduarda ties a cloth
under the wound so blood doesn’t run down his hand. The other three agents wrap the dead
colleague in a body bag. Iasmin arrives a few minutes later, responding to our call, with two
military police officers in tow.
I explain the situation to her while Gutiérrez insists with the others that they can turn
the truck back up without breaking the wheels if they make two supports. Improvising with
rocks and wood that Roberto's family brings from the farm, everyone chips in to raise the
vehicle without forcing the axles, and it sets with a resentful thump, crooked, shot and bloody.
Eduarda is the one who drives it back to town, the wind sinking its teeth through the hole and
drying the blood-soaked seat padding.
We drop Gutiérrez at the health center with his promised bottle of pinga. The nurses
complain, but Iasmin calms them down and says she'll stick around to get his testimony in
more detail. People on the streets are overwhelmed by the crippled truck, taking pictures with
their phones. This kind of publicity only gives us headaches, especially with borrowed
vehicles. Valéria is gonna have to sugar coat it somehow.
Besides the pinga, Eduarda brings from the market two bags of mini baguettes, ham,
cheese and tubaína soda. We've been here since early morning and it's now mid-afternoon. I
eat two sandwiches and drink the soda sitting on the short wall outside the health center.
Joberval eats three.
“Plans haven’t changed, Carina,” he says. “We can pick up where we left off.”
“Your team is short.”
“We got reinforcements,” he points out the two military police officers leaning against
their car, under Iasmin's request to assist us. “The beast killed one of ours. It won’t get off
easy.”

AND THAT’S THE VERY PROBLEM

Joberval holds up his hand and shows three fingers. Two. One. Zero. Each man pulls
the pin from a grenade and throws it across the river, among the trees. As the Caiotugi is the
protector of this area and is meticulous enough to come after a handful of fruits, Joberval's
idea is that he will not let a bunch of punks blow things up in his backyard.
Explosions reverberate, smoke rises. We wait. The men keep their rifle butt plates
pressed hard against their shoulders, breathing slowly.
Eduarda and I are on the front seat of the truck, watching from a distance, waving the
mosquitoes off our faces. Spread in a long line on the bank of the river where the
hydroelectric plant was beginning to take shape, the three Piara agents, their commander and
the two military police officers, all with spare magazines in their pockets. Joberval also has a
grenade launcher hanging from his gun sling. Eduarda sees on the laptop screen what the
drone camera captures, 40 meters above us, the river and the surrounding trees. On my head,
the headset linked to the receiver in the commander's ear. We expect to see some movement in
the surroundings, the beast approaching in that same fond and affectionate way it approached
our truck on the road. A minute goes by and nothing.
“Aerial is dead, Joberval.”
 I think about the real possibility of entering the Pantanal to hunt down this beast. In
addition to strength and agility, it has dominated the territory for hundreds of years. Joberval
may want to do a Rambo if the plan doesn’t work out. But I can’t authorize it, not in good
conscience.
Another minute. “Still dead.”
There’s no third warning. There’s not even a chance to calculate a warning. Caiotugi
comes from the water, from the bottom of the river, a greenish blur that opens its husky arms
during the leap and hammers far away the agent at the end of the line. The others reposition
themselves and open fire. The beast turns its back and all of it hits its scaled green skin.
Caiotugi is about ten feet long, has long arms with round fingers, huge claws protruding from
his feet. Mrs. Ivone was right. Bullets don’t seem to hurt it.
Joberval signals the agents to move further away, one on each side, in an attempt to
flank it. The two policemen approach the commander and kneel, to stabilize the shots.
Eduarda descends the drone, now flying at about our height, over the water. I still haven’t
been able to see the creature's face.
Caiotugi roars, turning its head toward one of the agents. The man stops, ceases fire.
Then he points the gun at his colleagues and pulls the trigger. Both policemen kneeled in front
of Joberval fall down, caught by surprise. I can hear the “shit” shouted by the commander
from the truck. He drops his subordinate himself with a bullet on the forehead. The second
one, who went the other direction, opens fire, gunning for the beast’s side. A few bullets hit its
belly and it grunts, jumping on its attacker, who rolls and escapes a kick by mere inches,
running towards the commander.
At this moment Joberval is kneeled, the grenade launcher at the ready, and when the
beast turns in pursuit, he fires. Eduarda and I see, though from a distance, a face of protruding
bones and big white eyes, its huge mouth open from mid face to mid belly. With the impact he
falls back. Joberval gets up, takes another shot, lets the gun hang from the sling and picks up
the policemen rifles on the ground. He approaches the Caiotugi firing, reloads and keeps at it.
The other agent imitates him. A few meters away, they stop. There’s no reaction. Then the
beast raises its foot and kicks, thrusting the claws in the chest of the agent, crossing over to
his back. Another audible "shit." Joberval takes a third shot with the grenade launcher inside
its open mouth. Then there’s only really half a Caiotugi left.
Eduarda breathes a sigh of relief, and circles the place with the drone, capturing the
details. It's too morbid for me. I get out of the truck, returning my pistol to its holster, its grip
all sticky with sweat. I walk to the commander. Before we can say anything, we hear a
scream. A human scream. We run to the agent who was hurled away, a broken leg and an arm
at an odd angle. But alive.
“What's your name again, agent?” I say.
“Faracos,” he answers, grimacing.
“This time I won’t forget. Promise.”

I GOTTA STOP MAKING PROMISES

When I walk into Dr. Aristides's office at our base, she has several photos of the Matá
Stone spread over the table from various angles. It took us two more days going up and down
the Piraim River banks with metal detectors to find it. I supervised the excavation with
Eduarda and a team of archaeologists working with special gloves and all kinds of protection.
It was then transported with the pomp of an exclusive security team to our underground
facilities, locked in a bulletproof glass case inside a room more protected than a bank vault.
Ironically, right underneath our open to the public ethnological museum.
“Hello, Carina. How are you?”
“Still getting it together.”
“Our assumption was right. The amount of information on this Matá Stone alone is
incomparable with all our other findings. I think it even justifies creating a dedicated
linguistics department.”
“I was expecting something along those lines.”
“It's too early to confirm it, but I do not doubt that this will become our Xoktianbkhá
Rosetta Stone. We’re on the right track here.”
“That's exciting, doctor. But I need some time. I’m not sure I was cut out for this sort
of thing.”
“Field work, you mean?”
“This kind of fieldwork. In less than ten missions, we lost more agents than a platoon
usually loses during wartime.”
 “You can take the time you want, Carina. Come and work in the lab for a while, where
they’re studying the Caiotugi, or here with me. It will be a pleasure. But you know we need a
field specialist, and right now you're the best candidate for the job.”
“For now I just need a break.”
I stop by the infirmary, where Faracos is recovering from a broken collarbone and a
broken femur. In the cafeteria, Eduarda and Gutiérrez play canastra, he holds the cards with
his arm all sewn and purplish, his pet Panama hat throwing a shadow over his sloppy beard.
Eduarda looks like a child near him, which she practically is. Joberval is away on a long trip
to enlist ex-military for the company.
In my dormitory, I grab a newly printed dissertation on the Xavantes funeral rite. Only
thing missing is a good wine.
Nothing beats coming back home.

___
* FUNAI: National Indian Foundation (Fundação Nacional do Índio) - Brazilian
governmental protection agency for Indigenous interests and their culture.