She had roamed in vain through the clawing blackness that night, exhausted and famished and betrayed by her waning strength and failing senses. But she caught wind of the familiar odor and crawled along its trace until she found the moonlit path cutting through the forest. She was in haste to sate her hunger but she had to go softly because the enemy was about.
From her blind side there came a fearful snap, an ominous grunt. She turned her head and froze at the sweep of a smoldering yellow eye that glared in her direction and then blinked shut in the close darkness.
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Read another excerpt: On Jaguars and Transformation
Published by Anthropology and Humanism
Download the full story at Academia.edu and ResearchGate
Read more about jaguar transformation in the Amazon and beyond in:
"Old and in the Way: Jaguar Transformation in Matsigenka"
Read another excerpt: On Jaguars and Transformation
Published by Anthropology and Humanism
Download the full story at Academia.edu and ResearchGate
Read more about jaguar transformation in the Amazon and beyond in:
"Old and in the Way: Jaguar Transformation in Matsigenka"
Video Still: The Spirit Hunters |
"The Eye of the Needle" was published in the latest issue of Anthropology and Humanism. The tale, awarded Honorable Mention in the Society for Humanistic Anthropology's 2013 Ethnographic Fiction Contest, dramatizes indigenous Amazonian beliefs about human-jaguar transformation.
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