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earthy scent. A door or a gate of some kind was closed, muting the voices to a distant burble. I was marched deep into the earth and dropped into a large hole in the ground.
    No parting words of instruction, no encouragement, no sign my carriers either cared or did not care that I’d been brought into their village.
    They simply left.
    I was in my new home.
    I was in hell.

Chapter Five
    AN UNCLE had taken me and my sisters camping once. I’d spent only one night on the lumpy earth before deciding that I hated tents. The ground was hard, the smoke was rank, the night was cold, the bugs were everywhere, and I was not a happy camper. Only my sisters’ willingness to brave the harsh environment convinced me to stay the second night.
    Compared to the dank holding cell into which I’d been thrown, that tent was a palace.
    The air was cool underground, but I couldn’t appreciate the reprieve from the oppressive heat. At least in the boat I’d had gentle rocking and birdcalls to settle my thoughts.
    In that dungeon I had nothing but my own mind to keep me company, and it was clogged with impossibilities that had somehow, through the most cruel twist of fate, become certainties.
    The sea had taken my life. The jungle had stripped me of my dignity. The gods of the earth had taken my soul.
    During those three days on the river, my mind had frequently gone to God, begging him to deliver me, clinging to the vaguest hope that there might be more to my faith than mere fantasy. But there in that hole, a seed of bitterness took root deep in my heart.
    The dream that had drawn me across the ocean felt like a smudge on the edge of my consciousness. I cringed every time it slithered back into my memory, though the dream itself had not returned since I’d left Atlanta.
    Destitute, I lay still and tried to shut down my mind. In the wake of my son’s death, filled with fear and anger, I began to believe that no distant God who would allow such suffering would rescue me.
    I had left my home in good, obedient faith, eager to discover and offer wholeness and light. And I had found only wretched anguish and darkness.
    It was the first time that I’d dared curse God for my misfortune.
    “Hello?”
    My eyes snapped wide.
    “Is anyone there?”
    The voice was male. Raspy. It spoke English. My mind refused to process the sound as a reality. I was hallucinating.
    But then it spoke again, in a hushed tone from another cell that seemed not so far from my own, this time in a broken form of the language the natives spoke. I knew then that the man was not a figment of my imagination.
    I cried out, but I couldn’t form any words around the gag.
    The prisoner must have assumed I was a native, because he mumbled something in their tongue before falling silent. I cried out again, and then again, until my throat was raw. All to no avail.
    But I was no longer alone.
    My body began to tremble with hope. I lay there, bound like a cadaver awakened from death, flooded with life. Waves of elation washed over my mind.
    I was not alone!
    I was alive.
    Even more, the man spoke their language, which could only mean he’d been alive long enough to learn it.
    They say that once broken, a person often willingly subjects himself to the master who has broken him. My ordeal had shattered my strongest resolve. The men who had taken me had become my gods, and I their slave. But now I had heard the voice of another slave.
    I wanted to rush out and throw myself into his arms. I wanted to kiss him and beg him to tell me that everything would be OK, that this small interruption in my life would soon fade into the distant past, that my son was still alive and my sisters eagerly awaited my return, that my family and friends were preparing a sprawling lawn party for our reunion on the far side of the world. I would tell them of my most magnificent adventure and they would all cry and hug Stephen and me. Then they would beg me to sing for them.
    I refused to listen to the other