“ Chikuatta, ” she whispered back.

They did not hurt him. They did worse. They gave him a piece of candy and asked him, “Where are the big trees, little one?”

“Have you heard of chikuatta ?”

“The jungle. By the ceiba. Abuela’s word.”

The loggers. Sofía had heard the story as a fairy tale: men with chainsaws who arrived in the village when her mother was a girl. They had offered money for the oldest trees—the ceibas, the ironwoods, the ones the Yanesha called the standing elders . Abuela Clara had refused to show them. One night, the loggers came anyway. They didn’t find the trees. But they found Clara’s youngest son—Sofía’s uncle, a boy of seven—playing near the creek.