The Smoke Hunter

by Jacquelyn Benson

  “What makes you so sure there’d be children?”

  “Women always want children,” he muttered.

  Ellie felt her hackles rise.

  “I don’t,” she countered.

  “Come again?”

  “They’re the quickest way for a modern woman to lose what little freedom she has.” She felt herself warm to the topic. “Do you know—if I’d even gotten engaged to be married, I would have been dismissed from the civil service? It’s one thing to be removed because you were arrested—”

  “Arrested?” he cut in. Then the other implication dawned. “You were in the civil service?”

  Ellie winced at her slip—at both of them. It must have been the rum, she thought. It seemed to be making her tongue a bit loose.

  Well, there was no denying it now.

  “I was,” she replied stiffly.

  “Sorry I seem so surprised. It’s just hard to imagine you in a typing pool.”

  “I was not a typist. I was an archivist in the Public Record Office.”

  She could see his surprise. He leaned back, considering her, and Ellie felt the instinct to defend herself begin to rear its head.

  “You must have really knocked their damned socks off.”

  She stopped, feeling her face heat. Was she blushing? She pushed the notion aside.

  “My point was—”

  “No, really,” he interrupted. “You had to have aced your exams. I can’t imagine them giving that position to a woman otherwise.”

  “I’m not sure whether to be complimented or offended right now,” she stammered.

  “Be complimented.”

  There was a quiet moment as she accepted this. He thinks I knocked their socks off. The notion made her feel a warm glow. Then again, perhaps that was just the rum.

  She cleared her throat and pressed on.

  “What I meant to say was, for a woman who wants something more than the life of a housewife, children—marriage, even—are as good as a jail sentence. But not for you. You could have all of it, if you wanted.”

  “It’s never that simple,” he countered.

  “Why not?”

  “Because people aren’t simple. No woman is going to be happy with the kind of life I live.”

  “I would be,” she blurted, then went still, slightly horrified.

  Adam looked at her skeptically.

  “Even after nearly going over a waterfall?”

  “Well, that part was a little terrifying. But also… exhilarating.” She extended her hand for the bottle. “And finding that stela…” She nodded toward where it lay, hidden in the darkness beyond the glow of the campfire. “It’s a piece of a vanished civilization, and we’re the first ones in hundreds of years to lay eyes on it. It’s wonderful.”

  He watched her as she took a healthy slug from the bottle. “You’re a rare breed, princess.”

  She smiled. “Is that another compliment?”

  He shook his head. “I’m still working that out.”

  She laughed, and he grinned, and the sight of his tanned face in the firelight made her heart do an unexpected flip. His next question did nothing to help matters.

  “So how about that arrest?” he drawled.

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Come on—you can’t let a nugget like that drop and not expect me to pick it up.”

  She felt a quick flash of nerves but caught herself. This wasn’t the Public Record Office. She was in the middle of the jungle. What did she have to lose?

  “I chained myself to the gates of Parliament.”

  Adam choked on a slug of rum. “What?”

  “It was during a suffrage rally. Things were getting rather heated, and someone—I can’t actually recall who—called for a blockade. I suppose I was caught up in the spirit of it.”

  “You chained yourself to Parliament.”

  “Yes,” she replied, meeting his gaze evenly.

  He leaned back, shaking his head. “They really broke the mold with you, didn’t they?”

  “Perhaps they did,” she replied, smoothing the legs of her trousers demurely. She glanced over at him and felt something shift in the atmosphere, a sudden thickening. She was caught in it, eyes locked with his, powerfully aware of a quickening in her chest. The sensation was foreign and utterly overwhelming.

  She wanted him. Dear God.

  Everything the temperance people said about drink was true. Here she was, just halfway through that golden bottle, and she had gone from a rational, modern woman to a primitive, lustful savage. Her brain burned with possibilities—the way that tanned, muscular chest of his would feel under her hands. How the scruff on his face would burn against her skin. What he would taste like.

  It was abominable. These were not the notions of a logical mind. Adam’s dangerously delicious liquid was transforming her into an animal. What was more, there was really nothing to prevent her from acting on her impulses.

  The realization set her heart pounding, but it was perfectly true. They were in the middle of the remote jungle. The only prying eyes around them were those of insects and the odd sloth. What happened between them in this moment need never find its way back to civilization. She could act on her wildest desires without fear of any of the social consequences.

  And at that moment, her desires were unspeakably wild.

  She looked over at him and felt their gazes lock. His eyes blazed with an emotion that amplified her own ferocity. Beyond thinking, she felt herself lean toward him. Her impulses bloomed, becoming irresistible.

  I’m going to do it, some lingering shred of her rational mind realized. I’m going to put my hands on him, and I don’t even care about the consequences.

  Then the silence of the night was shattered by a roar. It echoed off the trees, shocking the jungle into silence.

  Ellie stood up. “What is that?”

  Adam had risen beside her. She noticed that he had picked up the rifle from where it lay on the ground beside him. He held himself in an uncanny stillness as he listened.

  The silence was broken by the sound of crashing some distance away from the camp.

  “Jaguar,” he concluded.

  She felt a flash of alarm. “Are we in danger?”

  He shook his head, slinging the rifle back over his shoulder.

  “No. It won’t come near the fire. I’ll build it up before we go to bed.”

  That last word lingered awkwardly between them. Ellie thought of what she’d been about to do when the jaguar had called, and felt her face flush.

  “Yes. Well. Good night, then,” she said stiffly, then turned briskly and marched over to the hammocks, not daring to look back until she was safely within the ghostly embrace of the mosquito netting. Only then did she glance over to see him tossing logs onto the embers of the fire. The easy strength of his movements sent another jolt through her. She turned deliberately away from him, staring up at the dark shadow of the canopy, painfully aware of how close she had just come to throwing her virtue to the wind.

  Ellie had certainly never considered herself a proper lady. No female collegiate or suffragette would claim that title. But she’d at least assumed she had a certain moral core. Now she knew that to be nothing but an illusion. All it had taken was a few sips of rum to send her decency shrieking into the abyss. She had been that close to throwing herself at a man she had known for only a few weeks. A virtual stranger.

  If not for that jaguar…

  Ellie walked through a strange jungle, a thick fog obscuring the trees and shrubs around her. No, not fog—it was smoke, she realized. Thick and heavy, it crept across the ground like a living thing.

  She moved forward blindly, pushing past the vines and palms until she felt her feet contact stone instead of the soft jungle floor. She looked down and saw that she was on a road. It was wide and cleanly swept, the paving stones expertly wedged together. She began to follow it, walking steadily through the smoke.

  It was a little while later when she saw the first
of the dead. A woman lay sprawled across the stones. There were sores on her face, and her throat had been cut, the blood blanketing the road in a still, black pool.

  Skirting carefully around the corpse, she continued walking, aware now of the sounds around her—the clashing of metal, shouts and rustling footsteps. There was also a smell in the burning, something rich and fat. It brought bile into her throat and she tried to push the awareness of it from her mind.

  The path rose and she walked into the city. It was beautiful and strange, with pyramid temples and long, columned palaces, all built of the same gleaming white stone. She approached a row of arches that led into a shadowy interior, drawn to it even as it repelled her.

  It was filled with the dead, bodies stacked upon bodies like cans packed into a pantry. She saw the marks of disease on them and recognized it: smallpox. A plague to be feared, quarantined, and fled from. It had taken all of them, these stacked and stored lives.

  She turned away and quickly followed the road up onto a raised platform. It proved to be a courtyard, wide and splendid. The temples sat on either side of it, three small and one massive, looming over the others. Smoke still hung over everything. The vast space was empty as a tomb, echoing with the distant sounds of screaming and conflict.

  No—not empty. Not abandoned yet. A lone figure stood in the center of the plaza.

  It was her, the scarred woman, resplendent in the gown of feathers Ellie had seen her wearing before. Her stillness seemed utterly out of place in this jungle battlefield, where the clamor of fighting still echoed through the streets around her.

  As Ellie met her gaze, the sounds of violence seemed to fade into the background, replaced by a thick, tense silence, like snow or the muffled aftermath of a blow to the head.

  Then, for the first time, the woman spoke.

  “Listen. Can you hear it?”

  Ellie listened, and it seemed to her that there was something sliding beneath that uncanny silence, a hush like the low murmur of a thousand voices, moving through the air around her.

  “It sings to you. Whispers possibilities, dreams of blood and power.”

  “Who are you?” Ellie demanded.

  “The echo of a sacrifice,” the woman replied. The words were plain, but something hummed beneath their surface, a deeper sadness.

  The landscape around them, the gleaming courtyards, the pale ghosts of the palaces and temples, flickered like the flame of a lamp on the verge of guttering. She saw shadows out of the corner of her eyes, the beating of great black wings.

  “And this place?”

  “Is a line of communication, open to those who bear the key.”

  “What key?”

  Her glance moved to Ellie’s chest, and Ellie lifted her hand to feel the cold weight of the medallion against her skin.

  “But what does it open?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “There is a more pressing question. One that everything hangs upon.”

  “And what is that?”

  “What do you want?”

  The whispering rose, and Ellie felt it like a call, a thousand voices urging her to taste, indulge.

  See what we can give you, they seemed to say. Just a little closer.

  Then the world dissolved into darkness, and she knew no more.

  Ellie sat up with a start and immediately wished she hadn’t. The movement had awoken a ferocious pounding in her head. She winced with each throb, then realized they were coming in time with her own heartbeat.

  Moving more slowly, she carefully swung herself out of the hammock. It took her longer than usual to get her balance. By the time she slowly ducked under the net, she had a fairly good idea of what was wrong. She’d either caught some sort of jungle disease, or she was experiencing, for the first time, the legendary aftereffects of an excessive consumption of alcohol.

  The memory of the night before came back to her in a queasy rush. Horrified, she recalled the thoughts that had danced through her unruly mind—thoughts she had very nearly acted upon.

  At that moment, her guts churning in uncomfortable time with the pounding in her head, Ellie determined to become an ardent teetotaler.

  She looked quickly to the hammock next to her. It was empty. Adam was crouched by the fire, bringing last night’s stew up to a lively bubble. Seeing her up, he gave her a casual wave, then returned his attention to his task.

  He didn’t seem to be acting any differently. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed that she’d been about to throw herself at him.

  The thought calmed her. She reached for her boots, but her trembling hands refused to work properly. One of the pair slipped from her fingers, landing on the ground with a thud and tipping onto its side. Ellie barely repressed a shriek as a horrid-looking centipede well over four inches long scurried out of it and slipped away across the dry leaves.

  Pushing aside the netting, she stepped gingerly over to the fire. Adam looked none the worse for wear. The thought was galling. He had to have consumed just as much, if not more, of that blasted stuff as she had. Surely he deserved to be suffering at least a little. But no—his eyes lacked even a hint of redness, and his movements were just as sure and easy as ever.

  He turned to look at her as she approached, and winced. Apparently the signs of her own damage were a bit more obvious.

  “Sit,” he ordered, pointing to one of the logs by the fire. Ellie was too uncomfortable to protest. He grabbed a large green object and set it onto a flat stone, then began hacking at it with his machete, pieces of it flying off until a chop revealed an opening in the fibrous exterior.

  Ellie knew it was some sort of seed or fruit. She’d seen its like hanging under the fronds of palms back in the city.

  “Drink it,” he said, handing it to her.

  “What is it?”

  “Coconut.”

  “But coconuts are brown.” She had seen them often enough at the exotic grocers.

  “Not until they’re dry. Now drink.”

  “Drink what?”

  Thinking seemed to be something more of a challenge than usual.

  “This,” Adam explained, shaking the coconut. Ellie could hear liquid gently sloshing around inside.

  She took it and glanced up at him skeptically.

  “It’ll help with the headache.” With a few swift slices of the blade, he chopped his way to a hole in another nut. He lifted it to his lips, drinking deeply and with obvious satisfaction.

  Ellie tentatively imitated him. The liquid that poured into her mouth tasted light, cool, and slightly sweet. Her eyes brightened.

  “That’s good!”

  “Finish it and have another,” he directed.

  A few coconuts and some leftover stew later, Ellie was feeling remarkably recovered. She rose and walked over to where Adam sat, quickly but carefully completing a sketch of the stela in his journal.

  It was beautiful, every detail of the carvings captured with eloquence. Apparently Adam could add drawing to his list of talents.

  Here and there, he had copied larger versions of some of the glyphs, annotating them with his thoughts. He glanced up, noticing her attention.

  “I’d copy all of them, if we had time.”

  “We can spare a few hours, surely.”

  Adam shook his head, closing the book. “Any flexibility we might have had in terms of time went over that waterfall with the Mary Lee. If we’re going to get back to the city, we’ve got to hitch a ride. And once the rains hit, we’ll be hard-pressed to find a boat anywhere on the Belize, possibly for months.”

  He wrapped the book in oilskin and stashed it in his bag, then turned his attention to breaking down the camp.

  It didn’t take long. Everything they had fit neatly into the two packs. Adam shouldered his, tightening the straps, then moved to Ellie. He stopped just short of her, and something about the unease in his expression made her pulse skip.

  “I need to adjust the straps,” he said, nodding toward her bag.

  “T
hey’re fine,” she countered nervously.

  “They won’t be an hour from now. Hold still.”

  Bracing herself, Ellie obeyed. Adam’s hands ran over the woven straps with a practiced air, tugging here and tightening there. Ellie tried desperately to ignore the quick rush of sensation the brush of his hand elicited against her side.

  He gave the bag a final wiggle and stepped back.

  “That should do it,” he concluded, then quickly turned away. “You ready to move?”

  She nodded, then realized he was looking the other way.

  “Yes.”

  He glanced down at his compass, hefted the machete, and led her into the wilderness.

  Ellie thought the pace was slow at first, but after a few hours she appreciated why Adam had kept them from sprinting ahead. The humidity, the rough terrain, and the burden of the pack all added to the difficulty of moving forward. And she wasn’t the one hacking their path through the thicker areas of brush.

  Adam wielded the machete with an easy, swinging motion that let the sharp blade slice through the vines and shrubs blocking their way. He also carried a stick he’d cut early in their trek, which he used to shake out areas of leaves before moving through them. Ellie had her own, which she wielded to push aside certain plants Adam warned her of as they passed.

  “Thorns,” he would say, lifting the vine with his stick, or, “Poisonous.”

  “How do you mean, poisonous?” she’d asked.

  He smiled thinly. “You’d rather not find out.”

  He stopped only once. It was abrupt, a sudden coming to attention that reminded Ellie of a hunting dog. He held up a hand in a clear signal for silence, and Ellie halted. She waited for a full minute before her curiosity finally overcame obedience, and she demanded an explanation.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “Thought I heard something,” he murmured.

  “Something like what?”

  He remained still for another moment, then shrugged and started forward.