1933, somewhere in Peru.

The sun bent down and kissed the canopy of the great Amazonian rainforest. In its branches, snakes slithered, black spider monkeys leapt, sloths slowed and jaguars slept. Hungry harpy eagles circled in great arcs overhead, pink river dolphins splashed underneath and persistent everywhere was a humid heat. It clung to the branches, rose from the earth and descended from the sky.

Somewhere in the kaleidoscope of green stood Ruth Brown, explorer and medicinal herbalist. Rage built inside her, a dog-eared little black book clutched in her hands. One hundred and forty-seven days of 1933 had so far been spent digging, sampling, scraping, testing and collecting. The ache in every muscle of her body stood testament to the hours of searching, from the earliest hours of the morning to the day’s zenith when the sky blued and the sun roared out its ferocious heat. Her legs, scratched and sore, had been ravaged by the forest floor and by the thousands of tentacles it seemed to throw out her as she made her way through it. She was used, by now, to the feeling of ants crawling over her skin, of tiny insects feeding on the sweat that pooled in the ridges at the back of her neck, in the creases of her elbows. The promise of a bathe in the waterfall pool kept was sweet but she knew her body would race with sweat even as she dried off from the cool water.

She was proud of what she had collected so far: carefully catalogued with examples of foliage pressed between the pages, a list of botanicals with properties that could redefine the future of medicine. Back at the camp, bottles full of specimens. There were plants that might provide anti-carcinogenic effects, barks such as the Tawari which might reduce inflammation around tumours. The Cordoncillo could be an interesting avenue for anaesthetic research, while the Caneilla plant might offer solutions around fertility that had not yet been explored. In this tiny leather-backed book, was the knowledge that might provide a balm for human affliction – and found in nature too, it might be a source of medicine that could be made available even to the poorest of nations. There was a whole world in that little black book, a world to which she was starting to give light and shape and colour.

And what had Robert said? That he needed that book more than she did. That a woman would never be taken seriously back in England with a book full of plants. And a woman of her colour, too?! But he? He could do so much. She should never have been on this expedition and but he – well, it would kickstart his failing career and give him the status he needed. And he could pay her alright. Twenty thousand would do her, no? Set her up in a beautiful home of her own, make her marriage material. She might even be able to afford a hothouse where she could play at growing some tropical plants.

God, she hated him. She needed air in this airless place, needed to run, to sprint, to feel the adrenaline coursing through her veins, to feel her heart pumping hard in her chest, her legs turning over and over until this mad energy, this fury broke into a thousand splinters. Before she knew where she was headed, she found herself doing the unthinkable: throwing caution to the wind and tearing through the undergrowth, ripping vines out of her path and pulling at mosses as she tore her way, directionless, through the rainforest.

A loud crack brought her to a pause. How stupid she’d been – not to take care of her footing lest she tread on a coiled snake, not to pay attention to her direction in this labyrinth where trees sent out their roots as if to ensnarl their next meal.

Again, a sharp thwack. The sound that every explorer, every botanical expert feared. It shot through her to her core.

Thwack.

The sound of metal hitting wood, of splinters flying on impact, of a tree being felled. A great mahogany, with its arms stretching high into the sky as if to embrace all the creatures who needed sanctuary. Now standing, creaking and gently swaying, soon unable to resist the deep V in its side and the pull of gravity that will bring it crashing to the ground.

Dust from the Sahara carried thousands of miles on the wind to the Amazon rainforest, loaded with life-giving phosphorous, had helped this tree grow. Its branches, like the capillaries of a lung, had helped the rainforest breathe its goodness into the world. And now it was destined for a ship where it would be transported as fashionable furniture for the dining parlours of the elite in countries far, far away. It might be a drinks cabinet, a coffee table. It might be adorned with pots of jewels, creams and powders and the gentle fingertips of a lady somewhere, looking into the mirror, dissatisfied with her life.

Thwack.

Ruth’s hand reached instinctively to her pistol. Never explore a rainforest without arms. Never fire them at anything that deserves life. She raised her hand and fired a shot into the sky. Birds leapt into the air like a shower of confetti, while the canopy screamed with animals and insects disturbed by this sound so splitting and so unnatural.

Panic in the eyes of the logger. An axe dropped to the ground and a mad dash away into the trees. A second pistol shot for good measure.

Running to the tree’s side, Ruth surveyed the damage. A deep but shallow cut, already weeping; a deep cut that might fell the tree with so much as a shove.

She patted herself down. Her fury at Robert had driven her deep into the forest carrying only her little black book. Her little black book that might bring her fame if society could permit it; or fortune if she relinquished it.

She took only a moment to make her decision.

2021, somewhere in Peru.

Grace Oyefusi had specifically been told not to enter the forest where the mahoganies were gathered, standing tall in a group about a mile away from Sir Robert Smith’s camp. The group of students were here to learn about the history of botany and to follow in the footsteps of the legendary Smith, who had claimed that the Peruvian Amazon contained medicinal plants that might change the future of modern medicine. Grace couldn’t really understand why everyone worshipped him so much. A lot of what he’d written about in the 1930s seemed to be conjecture and many of his claims since proven to be totally unfounded. She believed in the rainforest alright – but Smith was surely a charlatan. More interesting to her, was the woman on that field trip, referred to only twice in Smith’s journals as Ruth and once, about her the colour of her skin.

Grace didn’t fancy another lecture on history’s old white men, so she slipped off one lunchtime at camp to investigate, to feel what the forest felt like when she was on her own. Of course, signs of logging were abundant everywhere – cattle ranches suddenly popping up where thick undergrowth should be; and always that far-away sound too indistinct to be identified but too unnatural to be anything other than the rev of a chainsaw.

There was one part of the forest however that local lore suggested would never be cut down. It simply could not be cut down. The locals whispered of the great mahoganies behind averted eyes and cupped hands. There was a reverence about the way they bowed their heads as if they understood instinctively that the Amazon had a spirit and that its spirit grew in its trees, danced in its animals and hummed with the movement of every ant on the forest floor.

Grace lifted her feet over buttress roots so high they seemed to want to curl her inwards into an embrace; pressed fan palms back to see through to the next step on her journey and wondered at the strangler figs who reached down from the sky to take root at the floor.

She knew she’d reached the cluster of mahoganies even before she saw them.

A shaft of sunlight broke through the canopy and dappled the shrubs around her in a rich golden light. In the centre, a tree whose grace and beauty rooted her to the spot.

About half a metre from its base, just visible under a submerging layer of bark and vines, the pages of a book, the chippings of some cut wood.

Something prickled behind Grace’s eyes and a tightness built in her throat.

In that peculiar way when history’s hand reaches from the past to give us direction for the future, Grace instinctively understood what sacrifice Ruth had made. What she had given up to keep the Amazon alive.

A little black book, packed with knowledge. A little black book, wedged in a balancing act to keep a life alive. A little black book, once wood, now wood again, propping up this magnificent tree with the knowledge contained in its pages.