It was my last Shinto god. I was aboard the Marreiro II, a weathered jungle boat, as it struggled against the merging currents of the Rio Negro and the Rio Solimoes just outside the Brazilian town of Manaus.

This god, like the one I had placed two weeks earlier in South Africa, and the one I had placed a week earlier near the place where Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay meet, and all the others, was wrapped in white prayer cloth and imprinted with ancient Japanese symbols: ten (heaven) and ken (sword). I leaned carefully over the wooden railing, weak from a fever that had gripped me the day after I placed the god at the Cape of Good Hope. It grew worse as I spent days in the jungle searching for the proper resting place for the last god in my possession.

Below me were the Rio Negro, full of minerals and humus and as dark as a bat’s cave, and the Rio Solimoes, full of light Andean silt. They mixed like oil and water. I looked up from the primordial gumbo, through the moist air, only to see where huge patches of the verdant jungle had been ripped from the earth to make room for factories made of concrete.

This place is an ecological mess, I thought. I was mindful both of Shinto's worship of nature and aware that most of the jungle-destroying factories were Japanese-owned. It's not perfect, but nothing ever is.

I removed the white cloth to uncover another familiar barrier, this one of plain white paper. Just before the boat burst free from the mottled mess and entered the Negro, I heaved the heavy stone overboard. Just as the circles in the water faded, a pink dolphin, which the natives call "devil fish," swam by. The boat's only other passenger, a high school biology teacher from New York, cried out in sheer joy at the sight of the exotic mammal. He began clicking his camera madly.

I felt better the instant the hollowed stone, filled with its precious contents, splashed into the water. I watched with tears in my eyes as its impact blended the brown and black stew, creating a third distinct color, one richer and more beautiful. The mixed water, now called the mighty Amazon, moved leisurely downstream toward the distant sea.

Nearly six years had passed since I had first heard of the Sword of Heaven. Six years, five continents, and several trips to Japan. What started as a peace project to save the world had quickly become much more, shaking the core of my Western beliefs and bringing long-forgotten demons to the surface. Now, with this last god placed, my part in a grueling and marvelous project was over. Perhaps, I thought, tonight I can finally sleep in peace


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chapter one

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