The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

live in the wilderness? What wilderness, pale-face? she thought wryly.

The temperature had dropped a bit. It wasn’t as hot as Manaus, where you had to keep the air conditioner on all night long, all year round, but it was warm enough for Anita to strip down to her gun and panties. There was no mosquito net over her bed, which worried her. She kept the light on for a while, eyes scanning the small room, hoping she wouldn’t find any of the damn bloodsuckers. Then, after a couple of minutes of this ritual, she dropped heavily onto the bed. It was a hard mattress, but she had slept in worse beds. She picked up her phone to read a bit before sleep. An Elmore Leonard western, maybe?

But first, just one thing. Work before play.

She opened the case file. The Cachoeira disappearances. Seven men in seven months. All in a widespread area around the municipality of Cachoeira da Manteiga, thirty kilometres away, forming almost a perfect circle whose focal point was this exact house.

Anita couldn’t believe Elizabeth Barbosa had anything to do with it. She was a strong woman, and sure, she could picture her killing a man to stand her ground and protect herself, for instance – but seven? No.

But if not her, who? Maybe Elizabeth knew. Or even if she didn’t, she could point her to someone who did.

She tried to send a message to her superior officer just to tell him she was all right. But her phone was no good here. Captain Ferreira would have to wait a few days. That was OK. He gave her a week, but every forty-eight hours she was expected to leave a message by the edge of the road where the Federal Police jeep had dropped her. If there was none, the driver would alert a squad and they would search the area for her.

Anita closed the file and opened the western. But she barely read a couple of pages before falling asleep.

*

She woke in the middle of night, certain that she had heard something, but she was still too sleepy to register. She remained absolutely still.

Then, a shrill sound. It took a while before she recognized the sound – a whistle. A long, ear-piercing whistle. Too loud and yet distant. Too human to be an animal, but you could never know this deep in the forest.

Anita was too intrigued to be afraid. Even so, she didn’t leave the bed. If it was someone – something – out of the ordinary, then surely Elizabeth would take care of things. Anita felt her .22 under the pillow. She also could take care of things, but it would be better not to reveal her real intentions so soon. She took a while to fall asleep again.

*

Anita woke at first light, with the screams of many birds she couldn’t recognize. She was used to the noise howler monkeys used to make every dawn and dusk when she spent her school holidays at her grandparents’ home near the edge of the rainforest. But the fauna of the sertão was different.

She got dressed and opened the door. The smell of fresh coffee brought a smile to her face.

‘Morning,’ Elizabeth said, already pouring coffee into both mugs. ‘Slept well?’

‘Like a log.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘We’ll have a full day. Get something to eat, you’ll need it.’

They ate scrambled eggs and bread. There was plenty of fruits there. Anita had a banana and a tangerine. Elizabeth ate an orange.

‘That whistle last night. What was that?’

‘What whistle?’

Anita told her.

‘Probably a bird.’ Elizabeth smiled a little. ‘The people around here use to say it’s the Matinta Perera.’

‘Matintaperê?’

‘Matinta Perera.’ She pronounced both words separately, syllable by syllable.

‘Never heard of it. Some kind of animal?’

‘No. The Matinta is a woman like you and me. By day, at least.’

Anita laughed. ‘Then what? She turns into a monster? Like the Mapinguari, or the Curupira?’

‘No. As far as I know, the Matinta is not a monster, but a woman with a curse. She usually asks people for simple things, like tobacco or coffee. Or something to eat, like fish. Or cachaça to drink. Old folks around here still leave a plate with stuff outside the house just in case.’

‘And if they don’t… ’

‘Legend has it that she can do some awful things to the people in the house. She can turn into a wild creature, a mist, a sudden storm, an unspeakable thing.’

‘And she kills?’

Elizabeth shrugged.

‘When I arrived here, one of the ribeirinhas had just accused the Matinta of killing her husband’s dog.’

Anita laughed at that.

‘She could have done it, right? The wife? Maybe she didn’t like the dog.’

‘She told me that the dog had killed some of her chickens.’

‘Did she tell you where she was at the time the dog died?’

‘What do you think I am? A detective? Come on, it’s getting late. We should be on our way.’

*

They walked north. Elizabeth explained to Anita that, two or three times a week, she went to the nearest town to give some assistance to a few ribeirinhas – the women who lived in wooden shacks at the banks of the São Francisco.

‘There’s a case of domestic violence every other week,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Usually drunk husbands beating their wives and daughters. Sometimes raping them. Some of these girls have babies whose fathers are their own grandfathers.’

Anita just nodded. This sort of thing was quite common in the outskirts of Manaus as well. When she was at the police academy, she’d learned that cultural habits were hard to kill. She’d also learned that many of the law enforcement officers there, both instructors and classmates, had cases like these in their own families.

She did too.

‘A month ago, an eight-year-old boy was beaten to death by his father just because he looked gay,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Bastards.’

Anita remembered the case file. The last reported death was almost two months ago.

‘Is the father…?’

‘He ran for the forest. Most of the men who rape and kill in this region do.