By Silas Fernandes

You can learn everything about a place and realize you know nothing when you get there.

Tatiana learns this firsthand as she scrambles through the enormous Ocotea trees of the Amazon Rainforest, trying to escape the creatures she’s awoken. She can recall the scientific names of each one, long Latin words she’d spent hours memorizing in preparation for this year’s field work. She can delineate which ones grow in what type of soil and what natural resources they provide the rainforest. She is really a mammalogist, though, which makes it all the more embarrassing that she can’t recognize the creatures pursuing her. Mammals in her family’s country, no less. She speaks near-perfect Portuguese for a Brazilian raised abroad, keeps up to date on local politics, and definitely, for certain, 100 percent knows every mammal native to the state of Amazonas.

Except, she supposes, the ones following her. Which is so disappointing, especially because she’ll probably be killed before she ever gets to publish a paper on her new discovery. It would have made it into Nature for sure.

Tatiana is actually not entirely sure that they are mammals. They erupted from the Rio Negro with thick puckered lips that could slurp Tatiana up like a noodle, gill slits as long as a basking shark’s, and enormous, fin-like tails that look much more like the great pirarucu’s than any mammal’s. These things should all make the creatures fish. However, they are also covered in long fur that vaguely resembles a capybara’s and have short, swift legs ending in three toes that together could be mistaken for hooves. So, Tatiana decides it’s a mammal because fish don’t have legs or fur. Mammals don’t have gills, either, but those are easier to develop than legs, or at least Tatiana thinks so.

There is one thing here to Tatiana’s advantage: the further she gets from the Rio Negro, the more solid the ground gets. This means that Tatiana gets faster now that her boots don’t sink into mud with each step and, being much more adapted to water than land, the creatures behind her get slower. She can no longer feel their breath on her back, which must be a good sign. She doesn’t look back, though, because that has already caused her several human-tree collisions today.

Tatiana’s limbs are completely numb when she finally reaches the red dirt roads that she’s pretty sure lead back to the small town where she and the rest of her lab have been staying for the past few weeks, or at least to some civilized society that would know how to get there. Suddenly, she feels exhausted. The adrenaline is leaving her now that she’s finally somewhere familiar, but she still needs to escape these creatures before she can rest in the way her body wants.

She stops completely when she hears a familiar voice, one she knows will be much better equipped at getting her out of this situation.

“You found them!” Dr. Machado—the professor who runs her lab—exclaims. Tatiana’s mind is too busy registering the fact that she’s alive to understand the weight of his words. “I knew you would.”

Tatiana pants for a few moments, hands on her knees, until her lungs and back finally stop burning. “Huh?”

“It’s about time. They’re said to bring good fortune, you know. Money. Success. Hasn’t failed me once. Got me tenure, you know, back in the early days of my career,” Dr. Machado explains. “I really hate to do this to you, Tati, but really, it’s for the sake of the lab.”

Dr. Machado places a hand on each of her shoulders and pushes her backwards. He doesn’t have to put in too much force for her to crumple like a plant in a drought.

She tries to get up, but now that the adrenaline’s gone, her limbs are as limp and useless as worms. She can barely feel the slimy lips of the first creature wrap around her arm. She looks helplessly toward her mentor and the road behind him, where she can see her fellow grad students walking within viewing distance but appearing conveniently too preoccupied to notice her.

“They feed on intelligence,” Dr. Machado explains. “So you should be flattered, really. It’s rare now that I get students driven by knowledge over ambition. I’m sure Nature readers will enjoy hearing all about your findings.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Silas Fernandes grew up a voracious reader who found a second home in their small town’s local library. This will be the first time their fiction writing has appeared in publication. When not reading or writing, Silas can be found knitting, looking for bugs, spending time with their cat, or finding new ways to not work on their thesis.

---