"Everything okay?" Will asked, pulling up behind me.
"Just a loose string," I said. "You go ahead, I'll catch up in a few seconds."
Will peered ahead, noticing our group turning a corner in the dense forest.
"Are you sure you'll just be a moment? We don't want to get too separated from the rest of the group."
"Yes, I'll be fine—I promise." I patted the whistle hanging from the belt loop on my cargo shorts. "Besides, I can always give you a ring if I can't find you, right?"
"Yes," he said. "But it's always best to maintain line-of-sight. The terrain up here is pretty steep and treacherous. We've had people fall and twist an ankle. Just be careful. I'll be walking slowly ahead."
As Will continued up the trail and turned around the corner out of sight, I paused to take in the peaceful sound of the forest. Besides the occasional call of a distant bird, the only sound I could hear was the soft gurgling of the water as it tumbled over the mossy rocks. After I finished tying my lace, I hesitated when I heard an unusual sound emanating from the forest a few hundred feet upstream. I turned my head and strained to listen, then my eyes widened in recognition.
It was the sound of a woman's voice. A sweet, lilting sound, like she was singing. I squinted through the dense thicket of trees, then my eyes grew wider as I recognized the familiar figure. She was standing under a waterfall, stark naked and rubbing her body like she was taking a shower. It was hard to tell how old she was from my distant location, but she had the slender, lithe figure of a young girl. I glanced up the path in the direction Will had headed then back toward the girl.
What the hell, I thought. I'm on vacation. Everyone says the best way to enjoy a different culture is to go native. I can always catch up with the group later. If Will is really worried about me, he'll double back to find me. Worst-case scenario, I'll have to wait for them to return along the same path on their way down, or I return to our cove. But this is some local fauna definitely worth exploring.
I followed the tributary upstream, picking my way carefully over the slippery rocks and boulders. As I got closer to the girl, her voice became louder and I found myself humming softly, mimicking her lilting tune. She was speaking a language I'd never heard before, but the melody was simple and rhythmic. I flashed back to another one of my favorite fairy tales from my youth, when the English explorer John Smith stumbled across Pocahontas by a waterfall in the forest. The closer I got to the girl, the more mesmerized I was by her. I could only catch fleeting glimpses of her through the breaks in the heavy brush, but it was quickly becoming apparent that she had the body of a goddess.
When I reached a clearing about fifty feet away from the waterfall, I stopped next to a tree and gently parted the branches blocking my vision. When I finally saw the girl close-up, I gasped. She couldn't have been much beyond her teens, but she was stunning. With thick, shiny black hair cascading over her shoulders and breasts, her pouty lips and high cheekbones reminded me of a young Halle Berry. Her body had all the same curves and swells of her Catwoman avatar, except in this case, she was completely naked.
As I watched the water splash over her full breasts and hourglass-shaped hips, I couldn't stop gawking at her like some kind of creepy peeping Tom. I didn't even know if she was of legal age, if that even mattered out here in the remote stretches of the Pacific Ocean. But when I saw her hand disappear under the triangle-shaped patch between her legs and she began moaning under the torrent of water, I couldn't help myself. It had been far too long since I'd had any kind of sexual contact, and here was the girl of my dreams putting on the sexiest live show I'd ever seen.
I thrust my hand down the front of my cargo shorts and began circling my slippery pearl, trying to stifle my own moans of pleasure. Within moments, I felt the rising swell of my passion beginning to overtake me and I rested my left arm on the tree trunk to support my quivering legs. Just as I was about to be overtaken by my climax, I felt a strange object slithering up my arm. As I turned my face in shock to see what was crawling on me, I stared directly into the eyes of a long brown tree snake.
I had just a moment to scream and flinch my arm away before the snake lunged forward and
embedded its fangs deep into the flesh of my neck. Within seconds, I began to feel faint and numb as my legs suddenly collapsed beneath me. As I crumpled to the ground beside the tree, the last thing I remembered was the shocked look on the face of the pretty native girl as she watched me lose consciousness on the moss-covered ground.
3
I woke up on the hard floor of a stick-frame hut, peering through bleary eyes at the interwoven leaves covering its thatched roof. An old native woman sat cross-legged beside me, holding a smoky bowl under my nose. The aroma was pungent, and I instinctively flinched my head to the side. The pretty girl I'd seen at the waterfall kneeled by my other side, holding a wet compress against my neck. I felt dizzy and weak, and my head throbbed with pain. When I tried to speak, I realized that the left side of my face was numb.
"Wh—where am I?" I said in a slurred drawl, trying to lift myself up on my elbows.
The girl smiled at me as she removed her hand from the side of my neck. I noticed a green paste on her palm, which she wiped off with a heavy cloth next to a wooden bowl containing what appeared to be a long animal bone.
"You're in our village," she said in a strange accent I'd never heard before. "You're safe now, but you need to rest. You're still weak from the after-effects of the gata bite."
She placed her other hand on my chest and gently pressed me down on top of a scratchy mat.
"Gata?" I said, pinching my eyebrows in confusion. "How did I get here?"
"It's our native snake. Normally, it doesn't cause this much trouble, but it struck you in the neck and the poison traveled quickly to your head. I had to carry you back to our village."
"Carry me?" I said, wondering how her small frame could support my weight. "How far?"
"I guess it would be more accurate to say I dragged you. I built a rough stretcher out of tree branches and vines. It took almost a full day to bring you back to our village."
I paused as I looked at the girl quizzically.
"Where are my travel mates? I came with a dozen other people—"
"If you're referring to the people on the sailboat, they stopped by our bay a few hours before we arrived asking if anyone had seen a yellow-haired European woman. The chief wasn't very happy with their intrusion, and when he said he hadn't seen any other foreigners, they sailed away."
"Away?" I said, shaking my head in dismay that they would abandon me so quickly. "Does that mean I'm alone on this island?"
The girl reached out and clasped my hand in hers as she smiled at me warmly. A group of young naked children suddenly rushed into the hut giggling, and the old lady shooed them away.