Scanning Proofreading: CSH
He turned his head around and gazed at me. “We can’t shoot at Indians,” he said with a horrified expression.
“What do you do if you run into blowguns and bows?”
“You’re so old-fashioned in your thinking.” He said curtly, gazing back at Rory and Mason. Only the two had picked up their personal belongings and resumed the loading and unloading that they had been doing a moment ago as they traveled through the piles of cargo and the ship’s hold to ask questions.
The next day, things were only slightly better. Our boat pulled into a shallow area of open, slow-moving river, littered with submerged, broken grasses and trees. Pepper suggested that we not necessarily run the engine, and Jack seconded the suggestion, and the men propped up the boat with young bamboo poles cut from the forest.
It was getting scorching hot, and a swathe of small, black mosquitoes rested on us, biting frantically. I covered my hat with anti-mosquito veil, and my face looked like an Edward VII-era engine casing, cool inside but protected from mosquitoes.
As we rejoined the deeper water, the river became narrower, so narrow that I was convinced I was lost again. Abundant field objects in the form of arch caps above our heads touched us. Split tree stumps fell across the current. Hornet nests lurked in bushes entangled in trailing vines, dangling in conical shapes of yellow clay.
Jack and Matson took the lead and cleared a path ahead. Despite Pepper’s constant warnings of otter sightings, we didn’t even see a bird, let alone any other giants.
I’m convinced there were dinosaurs here. It was supernatural, not of our time, not present anywhere on earth that I knew of. The softly reverberating sound was as if we were in a green, rainy firmament, with colorful butterflies buzzing around bunches of rotting fruit.
I saw the river blackened by the leakage of benzoic acid and toxins secreted from the endless roots of the trees. Scattered leaves floated on the water, hovering sluggishly. The trees on both banks bent and haunched down toward us, their branch ends tightly intertwined and entwined. Half-submerged stumps lay in front of us, blocking our way. Behind us the river gurgled, easing our rugged path.
Men stood bare-chested in the water, dragging fallen stumps to one side, and with their hands on their machetes they chopped and slashed at the tropical fields that festered and spread in order to subdue the silent, narrow, waterway deep in the tropical jungle.
“What happened?” Margaret asked, looking at me with a strange expression.
The greedy bloodsuckers have been left far behind. Therefore I did not wear a mask so that my face could be seen.
I felt a little faint and disoriented. “I don’t know,” I replied in a low voice. “Did I fall asleep?”
“You look like you’re sick, do you have a fever? Do you have medicine for malaria with you?”
“Snakebird,” Pepper shouted and pointed.
The bird suddenly flew up from the water with a terrified cry, its slender neck, extended head, and uncontrollably fluttering tail. The body was an oily, dark green color, splattered and dirty with white mud spots.
“Yes,” I said evenly. “That’s right.” I drank a little of the sterilized purified water and felt awful, with the constant vision of double images flashing before my eyes.
“Lie down,” Margaret said briskly. “It will be cooler and shady here.”
I wanted to get out of my sticky, heavy, sweaty clothes and sleep in the cool, satiny water. I felt like sobbing.
I think I fell asleep. Upon awakening I realized the group was in an open water area with clear skies above. A large bird of prey was hovering in the air, which I presumed might be a predator.
My visual tracking was so slow that I couldn’t determine whether it was an Iris or a Vulture. I think it was a vulture.
I felt urgently that this was by no means a habitat.
We started to set up camp again for a curtained night, even though it was still early in the day. Lori came over to check on me, her expression looking sad.
“Any difficulties?” He asked in a low voice. And unclasped the silk scarf around his neck and dipped it into the water. Then carefully wiped my face.
“I think it’s too hot. Would it be safe to swim in these conditions?”
“It should be safe. Pepper and Colin have been fishing for almost an hour without a Billfish. Suppose I follow you, can you swim across?”
We sailed into the lagoon. The men climbed back into the cabin in a hurry. Billabongs are often seen here.
We took a break from fishing for a while.
“I can’t swim across,” I replied, physically weak. “I’m sure there are billabongs here.”
“So we’ll swim first. But that’s a good idea.”
We all swam across. Margaret washed my dirty clothes and Pepper made us corned beef and rice. I was a little hungry, but I feel better now.
Martha joined Lori in the rubber boat again to scrutinize the lagoon area, that’s what she said.
I was drowsy and had been planning to go back to the boat to set up my hammock and mosquito net. But I have put it off again and again, and a wave of weariness has sustained me here with the others. The truth is, I’m afraid of being alone.
Pepper whistled a tune that was not unpleasant. Margaret and Carla began to sing along with the melody.
I captured Matson’s eyes resting on me, so motionless, as if I were food. I thought of the kindness Rory had shown me, and how he had saved my life in the rapids.
I can boldly state that I am falling for this guy. That’s my most important personal injunction, never get into complicated emotional disputes; never allow yourself to become gullible. Impeccable inhibitions, those dastardly fellows always look forward to the weak moment, that’s exactly when they attack their prey.
Matson drew out a harmonica, tuned the main melody, and began to play with Pepper and the girls.
A sense of loneliness rose up, a rare feeling in my head that I was too far from home. I didn’t trust my companion to make a wise decision in the face of the desire for treasure.
That’s what restored my faith. I was also horrified and distracted by it. My vulnerable subconscious wanted a protector. Lori had the familiar look of the old days, so perfect, so talented, so sexy and driven, making love like the man of my dreams, and I’d already watched him fuck the young girl, Carla.
He returned with Martha, and in passing spoke to me, inquiring how I was getting on.
“Nerd,” I said, “tell me, is there a beauty parlor around here? I need a facial or two.”
He lowered his head and grinned at me. “I think you’re pretty enough,” he bragged.
I felt quickened by the fact that his own picks had not been harmed in the least by insect bites as well as anything else, as well as being slightly enhanced by the short hair on his cheeks. I was happy that he didn’t fix his face before making love to her. Please note that I have yet to forget that scene and love it with all my heart.
He smoked for a quarter of an hour, and I realized that Carla was watching him. “We haven’t found the main exit to the lagoon,” he said, “I should say entrance, because I’m talking about the upper reaches. There are several places that could be entrances, but it’s hard to figure out the right one. Because they are so similar.”
Then we couldn’t find the correct exit to the lagoon, but not for long. The water flowed gently and meandered.
My mouth was dry, “Water flow situation?” I said quietly.
“Not too strong. You can rest easy, can’t you? I don’t have to worry about you.”
“I’m fine. I think it’s time to go to bed now.”
“Do you need help hanging up the hammock?”
“That’s great.”
As we passed Masson on board, he smiled sarcastically in the face. I was too tired to bother about him, and I felt too exhausted to be disturbed by anything else.
I was dreaming, and in a visionary dream I actually saw an aunt whom I had never met since I was ten years old. She was baking a beautiful cake with cherries on top. When she took them out of the oven, they looked like full breasts with nipples.
When I woke up, I tossed and turned in my hammock with anxiety, and then fell asleep again. Now I was dreaming of Carl’s very brief indulgence with me. On second thought, I still don’t understand why.
Somehow, in the dream Carl and I, Martha and Colin were chopping the messy wood and weeds on the way forward with our machetes in order to pass through this humid tropical jungle. I felt a glimmer of hope, believing that in the end the secrets of Vicar Bamba would be exposed before us.
Carl was drenched in sweat, and his twill expedition jacket was made up of incomplete pieces of cloth from the armpits to the back of his undershirt. His body odor was always perceived as such: that is to say, he was the kind of man who brushed his teeth three times a day, but only had a cock in the shower once a week. He controlled the smell of the jungle.
We first broke into a reclaimed field, which Colin said was my overactive mind, subconsciously trying to make sense of it and failing. There he stood, tied to the thick trunk of a mahogany tree by a number of green trailing field objects. He was completely naked, looking a few degrees of pain from having his genitals out in the open in front of Margaret, who was humming and tying on a yellow ribbon as she danced around. Phew oh, I really hate that song. Even in my dreams, as I trudged behind the smelly Carl at the moment, there was no better reason to make a loud grimace as I couldn’t help but hear the sickening song coming from Martha’s secretary’s mouth as he had all sorts of bandages tied around his head and torso.
“Pay attention to every detail,” Martha said, but Margaret just sang along at the top of her lungs, forcing me to cover my ears with my hands as hers brushed over Colin’s unimpressive chest. His lower body remained in the same state throughout, and his club-like arms and legs made me feel a little sorry for him. Because the shape was so tiny, in the dream world he had an erection that swelled rapidly before my discerning eyes until it became extremely proportional.
Unfortunately the change in appearance did not change his opinion of Margaret.
“Stop it, stop it.” He prayed, his face contorting sickeningly when Margaret suddenly stopped singing and danced a hula in front of him while reaching out with one hand to play with his manhood, trying to make it swell. Had it been any more fancy than it was, it might have withered away. “Let go of me! Please!
Get the hell out of here. You’re a stinking woman!”
Margaret sobbed from the insult and frustration and slammed down pounding the ground with both hands.
“This is cruel, Colin,” Martha denounced, staring at him with a frightening expression. “Couldn’t you have adopted a more temperate way of telling the truth? Truly, I am surprised at this attitude of yours.”
“I’m sorry,” Colin mumbled.
The vines fell away from him and in front of the bossy blonde, Colin braced himself on his hands and knees with Rory right behind him. Where had he appeared from? As he undid the cummerbund knob on his belt, quickly unzipped his pants and pulled them off, my heart began to snap, snap and sprint. His cock was so big, it had appeared in a couple of special sizes in my dreams, as thick and solid as a cucumber. He grabbed Colin’s hips and brushed the glans area of his cock over the taut musculature, in a manner that was about to enjoy penetrating Colin’s exquisite cave. Rory pushed into the cavern, the small curls of his pussy caressing Colin’s ass. He tightened his grip on the man’s slender waist and began the first slow, deep thrusts.
“I’m so happy that everyone is so friendly,” Martha said broadly, gazing at everything without expression, “We’re such a happy, friendly group.”
I wasn’t happy at all, not at all. Seeing Lori completely submerged from behind Colin’s back made me feel quite lewd and insanely jealous.
I covered them hastily, trying to get out of Rory’s shadow. He was grinning maniacally, and that huge cock kept pulling out of Colin’s anus, then plunging back in powerfully, with guttural blatting, blatting noises. They were so determined that it was difficult to thwart them. Colin offered his anus as if it were a woman presenting her pussy, lifting and lifting, and Rory kept the manhood inserted deep, and when it was withdrawn I estimated that there were about eight inches of that frightening twelve-inch long penis from the exposed part to the base of the thighs, and then hidden in again. They seemed to adhere superbly to the thighs.
I put my hand to the front of my chinos and caressed myself with one finger and my knuckles, sighing hopelessly.
“I need a man,” I cried, being so unpleasant as to be incapable of a pleading tone.
Carl ran over and unzipped the zipper on his pants as he ran.
I shook my head hard, no, don’t want him to do that. Matson peeked out from behind Tropical Field Thingamajig, Martha, with a mischievous sardonic grin. He looked strong albeit too ugly but very strong and powerful indeed. I felt myself deflating, my body tensing up, but I would never let myself give in. Especially not to surrender to him. His concerns for me were slightly less than mine for him. He started to pull the zipper on the bulging part of his pants. “No,” I cried out with determination, and at once he faded away into nothing, along with what was left of Carl, like the Invisible Man.
“Come here, my dear,” said Martha, calmly and matter-of-factly, and handed me something from the alligator purse. The bag was alive, with a gaping, toothy mouth, and stocked with all the gadgets a woman might need on an expedition. She lent me her own spare masturbator, an old-fashioned piece of ivory daisy-carved, smooth, light grayish-white, and capable of inducing pleasure by touch.
I slowly moved it to my pussy and pushed it into my vagina, letting out an audible sigh from the refreshing filling, as I pumped the ivory inside me, watching the two men with arched backs while I teased and pleasured my clit with my free other hand. I supported my body on my hands and knees, writhing back and forth, indulging in infinite pleasure. The climax came swiftly, and I swung my body sharply, panting and moaning violently and heavily as the pleasure from the peak of my arousal poured over my entire body.
I woke up with a start.
It took a second or two for me to remember what I was doing, still out of breath and with my heart beating fast. I looked around furtively, pleading with myself that my erotic dream hadn’t woken anyone else, and took a breath of relief when I suddenly stopped again.
All but Masson were asleep. He was standing on the bank smoking a cigarette, and as he took a sharp puff the burning butt gave off a blazing red fire. He smiled heartily. “Had a good dream, eh?”
I glared and did not growl back, for fear of waking others, I had to stick out my tongue as a counterpoint.
“Swallow that back.”
I rolled my eyes furiously, struggled until I felt I had found a new, more comfortable position, and then closed them hard. I expected that after some time of false sleep, he would be gone.
“I wonder, what or who was that ‘no’ directed at?” He chuckled softly in a low voice, and after a moment’s thought, I immediately recalled the only lines of dialogue from the dream, realizing that I must have screamed them out loud then, and now just hoping for less of a chance for Matson to catch more exploitable opportunities to attack me.
The next day I was back to normal and the extreme tiredness of the night had disappeared.
It was raining heavily, a noisy, thunderous downpour for nearly an hour. The boat was rocking violently, but I saw Pepper, with an oil lamp, getting into the boat and unhooking the cable.
After breakfast, we explored how to get up and out of the lagoon. There were a total of five possible exits, each of which seemed to have exactly the same flow direction.
“That’s the one exit,” I said calmly to Pepper. The exit I was referring to was slightly smaller than the others.
“You think so?” He smiled.
“Why did you choose that one?” Margaret asked suspiciously, fanning herself with her hat for coolness as she did so.
I shrugged my shoulders.
Those on the boat in front of us were asking Pebble for advice on which exit to choose, and I was reticent.
This discussion delayed the men for half a day, and the rest of the day was redirected back to the lagoon. The men were both angry and appalled, for they were in the water with their big knives clearing the surface when a crocodile jumped from the shore and swam toward them.
Carla screamed shrilly and stood up holding onto the rail of the boat in front of her. Jack handed the rudder to Martha and stepped forward with the spar that had an iron hook on one end. Matson leapt along the side of the boat and threw the large knife in his hand into the water. Colin helped by tugging at his legs that were stretched out over the side of the boat and tied with chains. I did not witness this, but only overheard Carla talking about it later in the second boat.
Unable to catch up with the boat fast enough, Rory began to attack the crocodile and slashed at it with his large knife. The beast came to an appalling halt. Rory resumed swimming toward the boat, and immediately after the hull lightly touched his shoulders, Jack threw down the pole with its iron hooks, plucked and cleared the debris from the water around Rory, and yanked him over the gangplank.
Soon afterward we sailed into a clean stretch of water and explored it. Pepper gave a guttural shout of relief, “Hit the lagoon again,” he said.
This is indeed the lagoon, and it looks like we’ve made a full circle.
We rested our efforts for a while, ate some food, and then resumed our deliberations on exactly which was the signal path out of the lagoon.
“It’s that way out,” I said again.
Pepper gazed at me. “Why so sure, Sidney?”
I shrugged. All the while getting lots of goosebumps along my spine. I couldn’t give a reason.
We tried another exit. And reached a swamp just before dusk.
Pepper steered the boat into the edge of the muddy swamp, trying to find a hard piece of land to dock on. But found nothing.
Water seeped between the trunks of trees, tropical grasses grew from them, and all the visible edges around them were uncomfortable-looking land, loose and insecure.
He and Martha consulted. “I’m sad that this is the wrong road again,” he said. “This swamp is extremely open. I don’t think it’s mainstream.”
We had to camp on the boat. Pepper used precious kerosene to cook the food instead of the usual campfire. The boat was packed with all the people and thus became crowded. Martha asked Colin to sleep on our boat, apparently throwing a tantrum. This is very rare. I attribute this to her losing the paddle program she usually has with Lori every night.
It was a bad night, and all through the night I heard that mentally numbing chirp, chirp, chirp, oh, yah, chirp of the horses.
Early in the morning we saw the spider monkeys, who were watching us from the shade of the trees, then chirping as they climbed on their slender arms and legs.
Pepper grinned. “Must be delicious,” he said as he rubbed his hand over his stomach.
We went back to the lagoon.
Masson cleared his throat : “I think we should go with the path Sidney suggested.”
Martha threw me watchful glances from the other boat. We both rocked equally gently. “Why?” She inquired.
“I dreamed it,” I replied jitterily.
A few moments of astonishing dumbfoundedness ensued. Then Masson let out a harrumph of laughter and slapped his thighs. “She’s so excited,” he said. “This female reporter is just crazy.”
Martha was still watching me. I rolled my white eyeballs as Pepper said, “Why don’t you try it?” It seems he kind of agrees.
“We may dream, too,” said Carla impatiently. “It’s no more ridiculous than anything else we’ve been doing.”
“That’s a minimal exit,” Colin added bitterly.
Lori didn’t say a word, just watched me intently.
After almost an hour in the channel, the waterway gradually widened. The current was slow and steady. We began to pick up speed. Not a soul, not a soul at all, spoke to me.
But Pepe was afraid in a blink of an eye at me.
We found a beautiful campground. The air seemed extraordinarily fresh that night, and the forest was so sparse and intimate. All of us felt that we had removed some formidable obstacles.
Before bedtime, Matson came up to me and took my arm. “Take a walk,” he said in a cool voice.
“No, stupid melon.”
“Well, don’t act like a careful person.”
“Go play crocodile.”
Masson was taken aback. “That’s no joke,” he said in all seriousness.
Rory came slowly over. “Hurry up then, Sidney,” he said. “It’s not a bad idea to stick out your legs and walk, eh?”
“Nice,” I replied, immediately climbing to my feet and showing my teeth to Matson. “You can take some pictures now, photographer. With that you’ll make sublime money.” With that, I strolled off with Lori.
We both walked in silence but freely, Rory marking the sides of the trail we passed with a large knife cut to make it easier to find our way back, a strong man would cheat a white man, ? To keep the mosquitoes away, wrapping him in a belt of pants, everything would get hot.
With these and other thoughts, I had a gentle and pleasing expectation, not that I really regarded it all as a sexual opening, but it was delightful to be with him. If Masson was a ragged shirt, Lori was snow-white velvet.
Between the huge scattered objects were spreading branches and overhanging vines, fanning out the leaves of the chambira palmolina. Lori suddenly told me about this strange field called chambira palmolive, which is considered of great value because its leaves, like those of the raffia tree, can be torn apart and twisted in the lap until they become like a rope. The Indians used it to make hammocks and baskets for their belongings.
I listened patiently to the meaningless words; was this man intentionally avoiding me?
At last he stopped his rambling narrative, and his eyes gazed at the glossy leaves. “Tell me, Sidney,” he asked absently, “do you often dream of funny things?”
“Never.”
“Only now are you having these dreams?”
“Exactly.”
“When did it start?”
“Occasionally started in Manaus.”
He gazed at me. “You dreamed about what happened yesterday and today?”
“Just some of those episodes. I saw the lagoon and a few moments before we sailed in.
I dreamed that Pepper was shouting about the Snakebird, but I’m not sure exactly who mentioned it in the dream.”
“That’s a bird called a cormorant, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” I said at once. “The river was moderately wide, although then we went into a slightly narrower channel. Of course, that was because we sailed into the vicinity of the lagoon.”
“You know the way out of the lagoon.”
“Of course I know,” I say without hesitation. Maybe I’ll have to remove my own chest clothing. I feel a little neurotic for being the founding father of skepticism and cynicism all rolled into one.
He sighed and grimaced as he hacked hard at the grass around him for a moment. “Do you believe in clairvoyance?”
“Don’t believe in it,” I replied. “Just as there’s no belief in honest policemen, the Tooth Fairy and nice men with open car doors and candy.”
“Is that what upset you today?”
“That’s exactly when it started affecting me again, when I was feeling a little uncomfortable.”
Rory gazed at me somberly. I could see the rich outline of his lips, the slight drag of his eyelids.
An emotional man, a lustful man, a man that I do crave from the bottom of my heart, and it would be a waste not to have sex with him.
“Tell me the truth, Sidney,” he said calmly.
I couldn’t help but say, “I’m wearing that mask.” As I said that, I lowered my gaze and stared at my feet.
The silence was frozen in place. When I looked up again, I only saw that his face was expressionless. He reached out and grabbed my arm, “You are an unusual woman,” he said.
I have nothing to say. Why don’t you take off my clothes yet?
“Did you work with the American?”
I was taken aback. “None will be like you,” I replied cleanly.
“I don’t trust him, Sidney. Do you?”
“There’s no question of trust between us,” I replied decisively. The problem was that he cared about that formality more than me.
“Did you tell him about all this? About the mask, I mean.”
“No, no, no. I haven’t told anyone about it since it happened, because I’m crushingly unconvinced about it myself.”
“Why not keep it a secret now?”
I stared at him and stopped the thoughts about sex. “Why do I have to keep it a secret?” I inquired warily.
“Want to know why? This expedition, minus Pepper, has a huge bonus set aside just for all of us. Maybe it could be set up for him.”
“Martha runs everything. That’s her mask.”
“Martha will go to great lengths to experiment with all her desires.”
I started walking back the way I had just come, preferring that I hadn’t said anything earlier, with Rory following behind me.
“Tell me about Vicar Bamba,” I said.
“Well, it’s time to talk about it.” He interjected, but followed it up by closing the subject, and I felt no need to ask again.
That night Martha talked about the mountain range, the one we were going to find, in the tropical jungle area.
“The mountain is huge,” she said. “High and steep, with an abrupt summit and precipitous cliffs, but I believe it is still climbable, and I hope so. We must learn its bearing as soon as possible, and climb it as soon as we can.”
“Is this where that mask came from?” I inquired curiously.
“Yes. That’s what Carl said, only he couldn’t make it.”
“Now it’s mainly a question of direction,” said Rory, “and if it starts in the right direction, it would be what the local Indians call Cloudy Mountain.”
“If this is a grand mountain range, how do you know exactly where to start?” I cross-examined.
“This mask was excavated from a cave,” Martha said. Her eyes sparkled with excitement.
“Some gold prospectors came out of there, and as something made them become alarmed, and began to climb this mountain, they soon found this cave. Inside there were camels and horses painted on the walls and on the rocks. They found this mask, but it was the only piece of woodwork in the cave, so it’s impossible to estimate how much it was worth. Carl stumbled across this occasionally in Mexico, that’s what he said. He loved it and bought it after associating it with the episode about it. He had it appraised by an expert and according to that expert it was claimed to have a typical Inca style. Carl was shocked to learn that an Inca relic had appeared so far away from the East, and it was natural to surmise that it might be the Cloudy Mountains, although the exact location of its excavation, like other such and perplexing things, was not quite clear.”
“Carl consulted several historians who have studied the period of the American Sun Empire.” Lori continued to add, tongue in cheek. “He heard something about how the city of Vicabamba disappeared a long time ago, that’s well known historical knowledge, and the Incas have had a saga of being amongst the vultures and jaguars ever since.”
“It’s between Earth and the stars,” Martha explained. She was red-faced.
Rory went on. “Then he heard of the experience of the map, a secret map said to have been made by those who had escaped from the Spaniards and lost the last of the subjects of the city of Vicabamba. For many years there had been a New Inca Republic coexisting with the Spaniards. But when an important Spanish minister was killed, the war began. The Incas abandoned Vicabamba and plundered the city themselves before the Spaniards set fire to it and looted it. The Incas fled to the east and were hidden by the tropical jungle. Tupac. Tupac Amano, the supreme Inca monarch, was immobilized by his pregnant wife, who dragged him around in a cumbersome body, and his horrible fear of canoeing, and the Spaniards finally caught up with them under the command of a Loyola-style captain named Garcia. Some of the Incas escaped, but were eventually killed by the Indians in the Amazon. It is said that the very few surviving Incas hid on the sides of the cloudy mountains, threatened from all sides. But they knew exactly where the riches of Vicabamba were hidden, and drew up this treasure map so that one day their own descendants, after defeating the Spaniards, would come east to find it and learn all the truth. That is all I know.”
Not a single word is mentioned about that dwarf from Manaus. Hm, this guy, it seems, retains a lot of the true image.
“If so, why has this cloudy mountain never been searched before?” I inquired in my own peculiarly direct way.
“None have been able to find it,” Colin continued the tale. “The Spaniards had sent several expeditions that lacked determination, yet the Indians of the Amazon and the Manari captured them. Later, the lesson was practically forgotten. It was not until the nineteenth century, when the importance of the American continent began to grow, that this history reappeared. But this area is part of the Amazon River Basin and has always been mysterious and dangerous. It was only thirty years ago that missionaries came to the tribes of the Indians, and those who mined for gold, explored for oil, lumberjacks, and field scientists had a cursory knowledge of the place. Nowadays rumors abound about the Cloudy Mountains, but as yet there has never been a thorough expedition.”
“Are you also one of the only members who obtained these riddles together?” I inquired, my expression still sweetly innocent. “That is, the same as Carl.”
“No,” replied Martha, slightly nervously. “That’s the key to all our secrets, and we had to come here on vacation under false pretenses. After it’s all over, we’ll make it public, that won’t be a problem. Currently we are not authorized to do so, and we’re not even sure what country’s territory the cloudy mountains are located in. It could be in Brazil, it could be in Colombia or Peru. These governments are so volatile and corrupt that we can’t trust them to do this noble and unique work well. It’s an architectural and artistic treasure, Sidney, just waiting to be discovered. Think about it. It’s staying there, somewhere. We must be the first to discover it, then we can protect it.”
By the light of the leaping fire, I made my rounds to see everyone. Vaguely, I heard a jaguar roar, unnoticed by anyone but me. “What an extraordinary experience.” I said slowly. “Unbelievable.” I was more than a little sarcastic that Martha’s interest in old buildings went beyond goldwork.
Matson said, “Think about the rights to the movie, Walt Disney will love it. Walt Disney would love it.”
Margaret laughed out loud, work time came to an end, and then we went to bed.
Early the next morning, I walked alone into the forest and quietly listened to the various sounds of nature. Personally, I think that repairing plumbing is also one of the two wonders of this century along with dentistry, and I sincerely hope that I will never have a toothache.
I listened to every sound while staying put, which meant I could walk back to the river as soon as someone else passed by.
Following that, I see movement. I can see others, but I won’t be seen myself.
A man appears. A frightening man. He stood there, and I had trouble seeing him clearly. He called out to my side, and when I was just about to step forward, I realized there was another man.
Carla.
Based on the man’s attire, a style of clothing that I think no one else but Pepper has among all of us, an expedition-specific shirt with pants legs tucked into boots. I could not see his face.
The only thing visible was the mask.
He stood there calling out silently, and I found my limbs shaking uncontrollably as I was incited by a strong desire to walk up to him, but Kara then appeared where I should have been and stood before the man, gazing at the mask.
Under the cover of a rainforest as eternal as a cathedral dome, there is a leafless, harassed patch of ground where Carla strips off her clothes and dances naked for the mask.
I heard that beautiful melody like I heard the call of a mask, with my heart rather than my ears. Kara let go of her dark hair, letting it fall loose over her pale shoulders as she raised her arms and danced, her head thrown back, a low, peculiar howl coming from her throat.
She leaps as she dances, a repetitive but rhythmless leap that includes a less obvious drum beat in her dance. She raised her arms above her head, crossed her wrists, leaped, spun, twisted, bent to the left, arched her back to the right, leaped, gave soft high-fives, moved her head with her long, flying hair, fast and slow, jumped, arched her back, leaped, fondled her breasts… The dance continued, her youthful breasts swaying, her dark pubic hair, a smudge of dirt, appearing at the delicate, rounded and white groin. A dark patch of pubic hair appeared on her delicate, rounded and white groin.
The mask was scrutinizing everything.
She jumped closer and closer, leaping, bending more frequently, leaping, pleadingly caressing this man’s legs, freckling, now with her knees to the ground, lightly touching his body, caressing it, constantly displaying all kinds of tricks with her hands in front of it, her body leaning backward, causing her head to gradually rotate, so that her hair slowly fell down, as she delivered her breasts to this man in front of her.
She pulled open his pants, her hands trembling with anxiety, and pulled out his genitals.
The phallus looked so large and very prominent.
She caressed it lightly, rubbing it with her hair, and managed to touch it with her own heaving breasts. She pressed her lips close to the shaft.
I caught a glimpse of her pale red tongue like the mouth of a newborn crocodile, the tip of which couldn’t stop reaching out and spitting onto the glans in front of her. She reached out with both hands and took hold of the two heavy, swinging testicles. She began to lick them carefully, first one, then the other.
Her tongue flicked and fluttered, the tip squeezing tightly around the top of the shaft and picking the thick shaft up, holding it tightly as it was about to fall over from gravity.
She licked and kissed the root of the cylindrical organ. I saw the foreskin retracting and the swollen crimson glans, the little pale red mouth opening. I saw a tongue as swift and urgent as a snake’s letter dart across the bulging glans before the lips of the mouth closed, and I saw her cheeks sucking.
The mask stood still, motionless.
Carla turned around, stood up, and then did her best to bring her hands to the ground. She stepped back until she could touch the penis, then let her body try to structure it as best it could. She began to shake up her body so that this thing inside her would give her immense pleasure.
Suddenly she stopped shaking. Slowly, she moved forward so carefully that the thick dick slipped out from between her taut, plump ass cheeks. She regained consciousness and dropped to her knees again.
Now it was getting even thicker. She thrust her breasts forward, tilting her head back and hanging it so that her hair fell down her back. She dropped to her knees and pushed forward, the cock slipping into her mouth and drowning between her lips and teeth. She tilted her face up and sucked and swallowed as much as she could, her cheeks sucking. Her mouth was open so that I could watch the rapidly churning tongue. Then she started sucking again, her fingers resting on her balls. Now she held the cock in one hand, licking and sucking more vigorously, masturbating the thing. I could make out her mouthful of white teeth.
Then her mouth opened again. The man’s loins pushed violently, and she kept sucking and swallowing, yet his loins were still pumping fiercely. She opened her mouth wide again, her head tilted back, and I saw a stream of a pearly, mucousy body squirt into her open mouth. Then she closed her mouth and swallowed the jet in her mouth. She licked and sucked and sucked again, her body shuddering more than a little as she turned into a calm and peaceful state.
The man under the mask withdrew his manhood, which had grown flaccid in her mouth, and turned to fade into the forest.
Carla was kneeling naked and she seemed to be unconscious for a moment. I saw her look around as she awakened, her eyes looking down at herself, a clearly audible gasp escaping her mouth. She slipped on her shoes and anxiously dragged over her clothes and put them on before running back towards the river.
I stood there, trying to shake off what I had just seen, and then walked back to the river as well, unwilling to be left alone in the forest with that mask again.
I surveyed the camp carefully. Pepper was smoking his own post-breakfast pipe, Martha was talking to Jack with her two heads together about something, and Margaret was writing something in a notebook, I think she was keeping a diary.
Carla wasn’t there. Colin, Matson and Lori weren’t there either.
It had been raining for nearly five bells. We steered the boat upstream through currents that tumbled and swirled with brownish-brown eddies, and there was nothing to see but dimness. When we hit a safe, smooth current, Margaret and I took turns at the helm so that Pepper could rest for a while.
I was a little cool all over, but it was the only day I was free and not harassed by mosquitoes.
About five o’clock in the afternoon the rain stopped, and the sky then cleared as quickly as it had boiled, and the clouds dispersed.
A frightening shout came from the boat in front of them. It caused an overwhelming mass of startled birds to chirp and scurry into the sky. We gazed up and were quite appalled.
At first I thought it came out of the other mass of dark clouds, black smoke and gloom that was now ahead of us. Gradually the upper part became as if it were a sugar boat.
“Cloudy Mountain,” said Pepper, with a satisfied voice.
“Cloudy Mountain,” said Margaret, gazing with glaring eyes.
Oh yo, so that’s the mountain. What a great way to find it, just in time for the scheduled time.
Who is utilizing these expeditions in the name of the Savior? Who is manipulating in the shadows?
I mentally shrugged. Maybe it was just me being abnormal, my own innate power real hard to accept the things and behaviors they expected.
They talked objectively as they gazed at the legend. We pushed on with more power, as far southwest as we could, although at times the main current veered to the northeast, and the river was so winding and twisting that the Amazon basin was immense, with only a very small drop from the eastern side of the Andes to the section where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean, a distance of dozens of English miles. In the rainy season, even the whole river there reverses its original course.
Nowadays, as we keep zigzagging, we see the cloudy mountain again and again, but it always seems to be a long way away from us. We only hope to reach it at dawn tomorrow morning.
Strangely, Matson seemed to read my mind and said, “The Inca natives usually call it night out.”
“The mountain seems to lie on the west side,” I said, not quite sure.
“Totally.”
I gazed at him. He looked bronzed and exuded rugged fitness these days due to his travels through the tropical jungle. His ugly, comical face looked so calm.
Could this serenity be due to the fact that there had been a young girl sucking a prick this morning in the cup? Carla was not yet twenty years old.
Or is his calmness coming out of the same madness as everyone else’s, in the feverish belief that his dream is about to come true?
“Where does all this leave you, Matson?” I asked coldly.
“What does all this bring for me? I think it’s probably excitement and thrill.”
“So you’re beyond the consideration of wealth, are you? How noble.”
“I’ve never turned my back on money, sweetheart. It’s just that I’m telling the truth.”
“This excitement. Is it because of the thought of that treasure, or is it related to archaeology?”
“Treasure?” He interjected absently. “That will only be believed when I see it with my own eyes.”
“But you were sure of that map.”
His eyes were a brownish-yellow color and glittered with imperceptible penetration. “You think it’s just a piece of wood, don’t you?” He asked.
My nostrils quivered in abhorrence. So it seemed that he was the man in the forest, the energetic man, the man in the mask, this false mask.
Matson and Margaret were far away, and Martha was watching me, twinkling her eyes at me as she watched the backs of the two of them go by in the distance. “A love story, don’t you think?”
“With Mason?” I stopped the conversation abruptly, a look of horror covering my face. “Then the woman is either crazy or too desperate.”
Martha raised one eyebrow. “I think you two…” she shrugged. “Never mind. Forget it.”
Martha is a respectable, sensible lady who knows exactly when the best time to end a conversation is.
“I’m going to sleep a little,” she decided, stretching back to her boat. Jack was wandering around, as usual, and Pepper was already leaning against a tree, snoring himself to sleep, the hand-woven straw hat pulled down over his face.
I looked around, having trouble determining what I was going to do. Colin was scrutinizing a particular orchid that had been found at dawn, and Carla and Lori were both leaning in.
The orchid specimen Colin had been studying had come into the notebook to be taken back for closer study, and when Lori and Carla left, Colin slowly trailed behind, keeping his distance. I was paying close attention to everything, and it piqued my great interest and curiosity to finally have something to do. I wondered where they were going. I had a hunch that I had made the right decision.
In an open space not too far from the camp, Kara had donned a mask and assumed an influential and peculiarly eccentric look.
I retreated behind the bushes, expecting the lush grass to hide me, so that the magical power of that mask wouldn’t affect me at this distance.
Her clothes came off, followed by Lori’s. And I could see that at the edge of the clearing, Colin was in a trance, peeling off his own pants, his slender cock already standing up like a bamboo pole for pitching a tent.
I began to feel very hot and uncomfortable, and the clothes I was wearing were very uncomfortable. Without realizing it I also stripped down to nothing and began to move towards the two unusual, writhing guys. The two of them were clinging to each other, their arms gripping each other like a deeply possessed party, and I felt the masks changing expression and grinning at me. I hugged Rory tightly, my round breasts squeezing his toned chest.
Carla spoke up. “Make me happy and fuck her.”
Rory immediately piled me down then got on top of me so that his tongue could gradually touch Carla’s pussy lips from top to bottom, with Carla standing right next to my head, legs spread wide and wearing an awesome Inca mask.
“Be quick,” she ordered.
Something in my head told me I didn’t really like what was about to happen, but I was out of control and seemed to have no choice but to let the fit, fully nude Lori do whatever she wanted.
He grabbed my legs and lifted them up so that my knees were resting tightly against my own chest as he lowered his engorged, erect manhood to my fully exposed pussy, causing an expectant shudder and contraction that glistened pale red everywhere. The thick, stiff man-root was full of desire, and a crystalline, glistening bead of fluid oozed from the center of the angrily swollen, crimson glans. He placed it at the gate of pleasure where I was opening my little mouth, stroked it swiftly, at the same time placing a finger against the opening of my cunt, and then, as he began to suck and lick and lick and suck on Carla’s cunt, which was more important than all the kinky ones, he plunged his cock hard into my cunt.
This position made the cock stuff my cunt in a way that was almost uncomfortable, pushing up against it and squeezing me even physically and mentally. It was too much, I felt like a tied up cockatoo, and couldn’t even attempt to stretch my legs, which were firmly gripped by Rory, a man who was energetic in every way was already a willing, strong and powerful servant for us.
Over Rory’s shoulder between Carla’s splayed legs, I could see what was happening; I could see pale Colin moving forward, kneeling behind Rory, stroking his back, his balls, caressing the cock that was pushing in and out of me. He licked and sucked Rory’s anus, managed to get a finger inside and dabbed some slime on my vaginal opening to lubricate the tight, fold-wrapped hole, then he waited for the right opportunity while propping up my hips with another finger and inspecting Rory’s cock intently and lovingly. The added stimulation made my orgasm almost imminent, tearing me into a million pieces. I was drowning in endless pleasure, twitching and shuddering with excitement, loosening my entire body in a joyful near-trance. Immediately afterward, Lori let go of me, supporting my body on my hands and knees so that I could wriggle limply and move my tangled body.
He was still licking and sucking on the masked and fearsome figure, Carla, who was enjoying the power, and after a joyous turn of events he jerked his body forward, and when Colin made to arch open Lori’s wrinkled anal muscles with the swollen glans at the front of his cock and plunged to the hilt, Lori cried out in a high pitched voice, and Colin didn’t jerk back at all, but only moved slightly, which should have been a muscular spasm of the cunt, to be precise.
Karaha laughed at the appalling expression on Rory’s face. Apparently no one had ever done this to him before this. It seemed he didn’t like the way it was done, yet became a subject of this strange mask like the rest of them, and he obediently waited for Colin to sodomize him.
Never before had I seen two men fuck like this, and at the moment all attention was focused on the throbbing manhood, Lori’s hips were coming apart at the seams from an emotionally aroused Colin.
Poor Rory, suffering such abuse, he just lost his self-control as I did. I felt some sympathy for him, but not a lot. He knelt there, hips rocking, balls dangling, cock once again in a state of semi-excitement, a slave to the masked Carla, who licked and sucked endlessly while pushing his pointed tongue against her moist cunt, causing her to whimper wildly once more after many, her parted legs trembling, her belly squeezing and pushing hard into his face. At the same time Colin’s orgasm came, hooting loudly and pumping furiously as if he wanted it to last forever.
I had retrieved my clothes and felt much more sane again. I tiptoed into my clothes, thinking that this was probably the best way to just pretend that nothing had happened.