The Smoke Hunter

by Jacquelyn Benson

  “Probably nothing.”

  “But what did you think it was?” she demanded.

  “We’re not the only ones in this jungle, princess. Uncharted doesn’t mean uninhabited.”

  He slashed cheerfully at the brush, Ellie staring after him.

  By noon, the sun had reached its zenith and the moist heat penetrated even through the thick canopy. She could feel exhaustion approaching. It made her slow to recognize the low buzzing ahead of them. But it grew louder as they approached, suddenly registering in her awareness with a thrill of danger.

  “What on earth—”

  “It’s fine,” he assured her with a strange look. “Follow me.”

  The sound, like the swarming of giant bees, grew until at last they stepped out into a clearing. In the center of it was a massive tree dripping with ripe fruits. Many had fallen to the ground and split open, revealing pink flesh. Around the tree, the source of the buzzing could be seen flitting and hovering—a flock of hummingbirds sipping the sugary juices. Both jewel-toned males and dully camouflaged females moved dizzyingly fast around the tree and its bounty.

  The sight was stunning. For a moment, Ellie stood transfixed. Then Adam moved past her.

  “Lunch,” he announced.

  She gratefully lowered the pack from her shoulders and followed him. He pulled down one of the fruits.

  “Don’t eat the seeds,” he cautioned. He sliced it in half and handed it to her. The interior of the strange-looking fruit was a soft pinkish-red, and the flavor, when she bit into it, was gently sweet, refreshing after the long morning hike. She dug in greedily.

  The hummingbirds had fled as they approached but gradually returned as they sat and rested, buzzing around them. Then, halfway through her second fruit, the tiny jewel-like birds suddenly rose and raced away into the jungle. Adam frowned, casting a sharp eye around the clearing.

  Across the way, the bushes suddenly rustled. The hairs on her neck rose warningly.

  “Stand up, slowly. Put on your pack,” Adam ordered, his voice a low murmur. She obeyed as the brush rustled again. Adam slowly reached behind him and slid the rifle out from where it was strapped to his back. He leveled it as two small creatures suddenly burst from the brush and tumbled into the clearing. To Ellie, they looked like piglets covered in soft, gray fur.

  She felt a flash of relief, realizing the pair were obviously young and were mainly interested in rooting among the fallen fruits.

  Beside her, Adam cocked the express.

  “They’re just babies,” she protested.

  “It’s not them I’m worried about.”

  The brush rustled again, more loudly than before, and a much larger creature pushed through. It sported a pair of wickedly curving tusks, and its small, dark eyes moved from Ellie and Adam to the pair of infants gamboling at their feet.

  Adam cursed under his breath and raised the gun, readying himself for the shot.

  The boar screeched and was answered with a great shaking of foliage. Adam lowered the gun, his face pale, as a series of grunts and screams sounded from the brush before them. A moment later, four more of the hulking, black-bristled monsters blasted out of the greenery and stood glowering at them.

  “Walk backward. Slowly,” he ordered. They took a tentative step back, then another. “If you see them move…”

  With a roar, the biggest of the boars leaped into motion. Adam shoved Ellie by her pack.

  “Run!”

  She didn’t need to be told twice. Oblivious to the weight on her back, she flew through the forest, vines and branches snapping as she raced past. She could feel Adam close behind her and could hear the outraged screams of their pursuers—screams that were getting closer.

  She picked up her pace, leaping nimbly over tangled roots and fallen branches. Then she burst through a thick wall of ferns and the ground beneath her vanished.

  She twisted forward, unable to stop her momentum, grabbing hold of one of the thick vines that spilled down from the branches of the overhanging trees. The instinct saved her, halting her with one foot still resting on solid ground.

  Then Adam pummeled into her.

  She slipped, feet tripping out over the edge. With a crack, the vine loosened from its lower anchor and they swung out over the abyss.

  The ground spun beneath them. The treetops below were so far away, they looked like a distant green carpet. She was hanging over an immense bowl sunken into the earth, surrounded by cliffs of sheer, jagged limestone.

  Her hands, sweaty from the chase and slick from the fruit, slipped on the smooth surface of the vine. With a sickening feeling in her stomach, she felt herself drop by a foot. Adam’s own grip on the vine stopped her fall, but the move put her face-to-face with him as he quickly twisted the vine around his leg, locking himself into place.

  “Grab onto me,” he barked.

  Ellie felt her face flush.

  “I couldn’t possibly—”

  “I can’t hold you and the vine. Grab on!”

  She obeyed, switching her sliding grip from the vine to Adam’s shoulders.

  “Put your arms around my neck and hang on,” he directed her.

  The grip his instructions gave her did feel more secure, but her legs still dangled loosely, and she knew she would not be strong enough to hold her weight for long. So did Adam.

  “Wrap your legs around my waist.”

  She stared at him, shocked.

  “Princess—” he growled in warning. With a silent prayer to the gods of mortification, she wrapped her legs around him.

  “Higher. Settle your thighs on my hips. That’s better,” he said.

  With the solidity of his body beneath her, she could take some of the weight from her already aching shoulders. But, as she was entirely too well aware, the position also forced their bodies together in a way that was unsettling, to say the least. The broad expanse of his chest pressed against her, and his waist was trapped between her thighs. Her mind was momentarily filled with the image of him standing, shirtless and soaked, trousers clinging, on the deck of the Mary Lee.

  It was almost enough to make her let go.

  The edge of the cliff was perhaps ten feet away. It made safety seem tantalizingly close, but the distance might as well have been a mile. As Ellie looked at it longingly, she watched their pursuers crash out of the jungle, skidding to a stop before the drop. Slowly turning as she dangled, she saw the frustration in their eyes as they pawed, bellowing, then retreated, huffing, making their way back into the bush.

  Painfully aware of the feeling of Adam’s body radiating heat between her thighs, Ellie forced herself to study the landscape around them. The cliffs marked off a roughly circular area of land. It seemed nearly a half mile across, the ground hundreds of feet below the level of the rest of the jungle. She could see birds flitting under her feet, colorful specks against the distant green canopy.

  “It’s a sinkhole,” Adam offered. She could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek as she clung to him. “Probably an underground lake that drained and collapsed.”

  His face looked pale. Ellie realized that his breathing had also grown shallow, and she felt a quick burst of panic. Was he hurt? If something had happened to him in their race through the jungle, maybe an encounter with one of those poisonous shrubs he’d shown her carefully to avoid…

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, unable to keep the panic from her tone.

  “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  He was clearly not fine.

  “Have you been poisoned?” she demanded.

  “I’m afraid of heights,” he said with forced deliberateness.

  “Oh.” Ellie looked down. The ground was rather far away.

  “We need to get back to the ledge.”

  “How do we do that?”

  He didn’t answer. Another look told her why. His face seemed to have entirely drained of blood.

  “Open your eyes,” she ordered sharply.

  “I’m not sure that’s a g
ood idea.”

  “Open them, and look at me.”

  He obeyed, and she realized just how close his face was to her own.

  “Isn’t that better?” she asked weakly.

  “Marginally.”

  Even with his eyes open, Adam clearly wasn’t going to be much use. If they were going to get out of this, Ellie would have to be the one to do the thinking.

  The vine spun slowly over the abyss. As it turned, the ledge came back into view. It seemed dishearteningly far away, and was, if anything, slightly above the level at which they currently dangled.

  We’re like a pendulum, she thought vaguely.

  A pendulum. The answer came to her in an instant, slipping from her mind out onto her tongue.

  “We just need to swing.”

  “Swing?” Adam echoed, and the implications of her little stroke of genius settled in. Ellie knew perfectly well what sort of motion would start their vine arching back and forth, but the idea of doing—well, that—with her legs wrapped around Adam’s midsection was worse than a whole case of bootleg Jamaican rum.

  Adam adjusted his grip on the vine and swallowed thickly. He didn’t look good. She glanced down at the drop that awaited them. She could feel the strain in his shoulders, the muscles taut like cords.

  There was no time to think of another option. Ellie swallowed the remaining shreds of her propriety.

  “Please don’t take this personally,” she said.

  “Take what—Oh, dear God.”

  She shifted her hips from one side to the other, furiously ignoring the fire of sensation the action aroused in her. Their vine began to arc farther out over the sinkhole, then fly back toward the safety of the ledge. She moved in complement to the rhythm, adding her weight to it and increasing the length of their swing.

  They moved faster. The wind whipped through her hair, and she wondered vaguely just how well anchored the vine was from above.

  Her stomach lurched, and they flew back toward the ledge, their trajectory turning just over the top of it.

  “Next time, we let go,” she called to Adam. His eyes were shut again, beads of sweat dotting his forehead. She wasn’t entirely sure he could hear her.

  The vine swung back along its course, and when it reached the outer limit, she felt Adam release his hold. She followed suit, tumbling with him into a stand of massive ferns.

  Ellie remained still, wondering whether she was really still alive.

  “You all right?” he croaked.

  Ellie realized that she lay sprawled across Adam’s body. She rolled off of him abruptly and stumbled to her feet.

  Adam followed more slowly, then, frowning, moved toward her. Ellie had the distinct and unsettling impression he meant to check for himself whether she had survived the adventure whole.

  “I’m fine,” she quickly assured him, dancing back. She narrowly avoided twisting her ankle on a fallen limb.

  “Can you walk?”

  “Certainly. Absolutely.” She paused. “Why?”

  “We have to keep moving. Get out of that herd’s territory,” he said. He sounded almost as tired as she felt. She suppressed a groan.

  “How are your straps?” he asked, coming to check them. She darted away. She was beginning to fear her own reaction to him, which was growing increasingly intense every minute.

  “They’re fine. Honest. Let’s just get moving, right?” She stepped forward, ready to trek.

  “This way,” he said, nodding in the opposite direction. He unsheathed the machete and led them back into the wilderness.

  11

  HOW MUCH TERRITORY DO these pigs have?” Ellie called ahead to Adam. He was swinging the machete unrelentingly, trudging steadily forward as the midday sun turned even the shaded air under the canopy to a sweltering blanket.

  “They’re like hunting dogs.” He severed a palm frond. “I want to get past where they’d care to follow our scent.”

  Ellie was exhausted. Her pack, which had seemed absurdly light when they left camp that morning, had grown exponentially in weight until it felt as though someone had stuffed it full of rocks. Her body was pouring sweat, her shirt and trousers soaked with it, and the day seemed to be getting nothing but hotter.

  She had long ago ceased to notice the rich color and strange beauty of the world they moved through, her entire awareness instead taken up with the effort of putting one foot in front of the other. When there was any extra energy to spare, she used it to think of creative ways to murder her slave-driver companion.

  Not that she ever asked him to stop or slow down, of course. That would have meant admitting weakness, and she’d be damned if she did that in front of Adam Bates.

  She was so absorbed in their march, she failed to notice when it halted. It took physically bumping into Adam’s back for her to realize he wasn’t moving anymore. He caught her as she stumbled back.

  He looked her over. “You’re beat,” he concluded.

  “I can keep going,” she insisted dully.

  “Well, you won’t have to. Take a look at this.”

  He stepped aside. Before them, the jungle broke open into a wide expanse of field. Ellie recognized the dark stubble of recently harvested corn.

  “It’s a milpa—a Mayan farm. Which means there’s probably a village nearby. Let’s see if we can’t find ourselves some decent grub and a good night’s sleep.”

  The prospect noticeably lightened Ellie’s step as she followed him out into the open space of the clearing.

  A flash of movement caught her eye. A quick brown form dashed across the edge of the field. The figure was that of a boy. He could be no more than fifteen, Ellie judged. He emerged from the bush a hundred yards away and raced soundlessly along the shadowy verge of the field, his feet bare. She clutched Adam’s arm instinctively, startled by the sight of another human being after the long walk through the wilderness.

  “Who is that?”

  “Probably the one who’s been following us,” Adam replied evenly.

  “Following us? For how long?”

  “The last four or five hours. Maybe more.”

  “Why is he running?”

  “I expect he’s preparing our welcoming committee.”

  Ellie felt her nerves jangle.

  “What kind of welcome should we expect?”

  Adam touched her back lightly, pushing her forward.

  “Come on, princess. We’ll be fine.”

  On the far side of the field, they followed the course of a winding footpath that led them up the side of a hill to the village. It sat in a stretch of cleared land: a cluster of palm-leafed houses surrounded by fruit trees and gardens. She heard a rooster crowing a warning as they approached, and a pair of young girls in colorfully embroidered dresses came rushing out of a nearby doorway. They stopped in the path and stared at Adam and Ellie, eyes wide, then turned as one and dashed away.

  By the time they reached the first of the houses, the girls had returned. They brought a small army of children, who gazed in rapt silence as they passed, then promptly formed a noisy gaggle behind them, following as they made their way along the path.

  “They must not get many visitors,” Ellie commented.

  “There aren’t a lot of our type who’d venture this far out in the bush, beyond maybe timber scouts or the odd missionary. Most likely we’re something of a novelty.”

  As they walked, Ellie caught sight of other observers, the faces of women peering from the darkened doorways, whispering to one another. She felt more than a few of their gazes move across her body, taking in the female form under the men’s jacket and trousers. Every one of them was wearing a femininely embroidered shirt and skirt, and sported long, straight locks. Novelty indeed, she thought, aware of her short-cropped hair.

  As they neared the center of the cluster of buildings, Ellie caught her first sight of Adam’s “welcoming committee.” Every man in the village must have been gathered there, a crowd of perhaps sixty. They wore homespun shirts and trous
ers dusty from the fields and were standing in a cluster, engaged in some sort of urgent debate. It silenced abruptly and conspicuously as they approached. Behind her and Adam, their train of young followers also quieted, the children melting into the doorways of nearby houses, from which they continued to watch the action with rapt curiosity.

  Back in the city, several of the guides she interviewed had waxed poetic about Mayan hospitality. But there was nothing friendly about the looks she and Adam were receiving.

  Adam didn’t seem to notice. He paused for only a moment before giving the group of men a wave and addressing them in a language Ellie didn’t recognize, a rich flow of syllables she could tell did not fall completely easily from his tongue.

  The response was silence. The men continued to stare at them, faces darkly suspicious.

  “Maybe they’re Q’eqchi’,” he muttered, and tried what she guessed was another dialect. The faces before them remained stony. She began to wonder nervously what they had just walked into, then heard someone chuckle.

  It was an old man—the oldest there, by far—who sat on a stool at the edge of the clearing between the houses. His build was slight and wiry, and he was entirely bald save for a few tufts of white hair. A long, obviously old scar ran across his forehead, jagged like a lightning bolt. Ellie wondered what accident had put that there. Then again, perhaps it had something to do with the necklace he wore: an oddly gruesome arrangement of jagged, needle-sharp teeth.

  He shook his head as he laughed, then spoke in perfect, if accented, English.

  “Your Q’eqchi’ is almost as bad as your Mopan.”

  She saw the surprise flash across Adam’s features. It was quickly replaced by his usual easy grin.

  “I’m out of practice.”

  “Were you ever in it?”

  “Not particularly,” Adam admitted.

  The old man stood and ambled toward them, the other villagers watching him silently. Adam extended a hand.

  “Adam Bates.”

  “I am Amilcar Kuyoc. You are looking for a place for the night?”

  “We’d be obliged.”

  “You would be welcome as my guests. Please follow me.”