Ник Картер - War from the Clouds

When I entered her, she was ready. She climaxed almost instantly and I thought it was over. She took a few seconds of respite and then the passion grew in her to a newer and higher level. She swallowed me up, rising and falling, plunging and withdrawing. She climaxed three more times before it finally happened to me. I had been holding back, savoring it, wanting it to go on forever — or, at least, for the next two hours. But nothing lasts forever. She responded by climaxing again, for the fifth time. I have always envied women that capacity, but I wouldn’t have traded that one gigantic climax for all the little ones in the world.

Spent, sated, we lay sweating on the pallet. Elicia’s arm lay across my now naked chest. She was silent for such a long time that I thought she was asleep. She wasn’t.

“You will think me strange,” she finally said, “but I did this as a gesture of farewell.”

“Farewell?”

“Yes. In two weeks, I will marry Purano and join his tribe. I told him about you, about how I feel, about how I will always feel about you. He knows that I am with you now.”

“He knows? And he agreed to this?”

“Yes, otherwise, he would know that I would always wonder what it would have been like. You see, Nick, I know nothing of love. I mean, this kind of love. What happened to me with those Marines was a world apart from what happened here today. I knew it would be so. Purano understands. Unless I could prove to myself that this beautiful act could be truly beautiful, I would not be a fit bride. Do you understand that?”

I have been all over this globe and have met and been exposed to the cultures of hundreds of peoples. I have understood much. I had to admit, though, that I didn’t fully understand this weird triangle between me, Purano and Elicia, or why he would agree to have her come to me when they had just become betrothed. It was equally difficult to comprehend when I knew that Purano had remained single because there were so few suitable maidens in the tribe. There were so few maidens because thirty years ago the surviving females had been “spoiled” by Ancio and his gang. I understood a part of it, then. Spoiled had different meanings. Ancio had taken the maidens against their will, therefore spoiling them. Elicia and I had engaged in an activity of mutual agreement, as, I’m sure, Purano and Elicia would do before their marriage. But that was cutting the culture pretty thin and I didn’t understand it at all.

“I understand,” I lied.

“Good. It is important for me and Purano that you do.”

We slept then, but only for fifteen or twenty minutes. I awoke first and was trying to understand more fully why this girl felt she had to give herself to me before her marriage to Purano, to make it a farewell gesture even though she confessed that she loved me every bit as much as she loved Purano. I couldn’t understand. What happened next was even more difficult to understand.

Elicia awoke, came to me and we made love again. This second time, she said, would prepare her for a lifetime of joy in the man she had chosen to marry. I didn’t try to understand that one either. I merely enjoyed, even though there was a growing sadness that this would be the last of Elicia for me.

There was shouting out in the square and we quickly dressed. Elicia walked boldly out the front door and I followed, a sheepish grin on my face. If the others in the square knew about our tryst, about Elicia’s strange logic on how to say farewell to the man she was turning down, they gave no hint of it.

The shouting was because a sentry below had spotted Pico, Antonio, Purano and the warriors returning. I checked my watch. They’d been gone just over an hour. We were well within the schedule, if Pico had anything to offer concerning the map and the hidden cave.

He had.

The circles formed again in the square, with Pico and the map at the center. Behind Chief Botussin, I noticed, Elicia had moved up beside Purano and they were conversing in that strange ritual of staring at the ground near each other’s feet. She was probably telling him about our love-making. With a slightly bitter thought, I figured she was telling him that I was a lousy lover, that he had nothing to worry about. But no, I thought again, she would be truthful. The truth was that we both were good lovers. Purano would have to go some to replace my performance in Elicia’s eyes. I wondered, with another ping of jealousy, if she would sing the rose song to him. I knew she would.

“Time was saved,” Pico said, “because I still had a supply of the clear liquid from my last batch. I had to coat the parchment three times, but the third time the images became distinct. As you can see, the cave is near the top of the fifth hollow from the east, or the third hollow from the west. It would have taken several hours to search all the hollows. Worse yet, without the map, we would not have found the cave even if we had gone directly to the fifth hollow.”

He pointed to a faded mark that looked like a child’s rendering of a fly. They were big on flies in this part of the world.

“The fly once was the symbol of fertility among the Nincas,” Pico continued. It still was judging from the size of the flies that were right now munching on me. “This fly is facing due west, indicating that the cave entrance is to the west side of the hollow. Possibly, there’s a ravine there separating hollow five from hollow six. We won’t know until we inspect the premises. But I’ve found a small dot that I don’t understand. Under the magnifying glass, the dot is actually a tiny circle. Whether this was by intent or by accident, I don’t know. If by accident, it means nothing. If by design, it means that the cave entrance is through a well or a deep hole in the ground. Finding a hole up there will be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. I know that I followed Ancio and his friends down some steps in a dark place. The open circle on the map indicates the presence of water, but I recall no water. My memory is of no help to us. And there’s more potential bad news.”

We waited. Pico gazed at the faces, then glanced at the sun that was telling that it was mid-afternoon. I checked my watch. It was 2:26. We were tight on time, but there was enough if we had no further problems.

“When we were returning from my plateau,” Pico said, “we saw a group of red-shirted guerillas moving up toward the area of the hollows. These are the elite corps of Don Carlos, of Ancio. There were perhaps a hundred of them. If we encounter them on the trail, it is all over.”

“Then,” I said as positively as I could, “we’ll just not encounter them. Unless you have anything to add, Pico, I think we ought to leave immediately for the cave entrance.”

After a brief altercation between Elicia and Purano about her going along, it was decided by old Chief Botussin that, if the Ninca tribe was to link up with the Twentieth Century at last, they might as well accept the new role for women. In short, he said, Purano shouldn’t tell the girl what she could or couldn’t do. Elicia went along and, even though Purano had nodded his approval, his face and eyes didn’t seem any too happy about the decision.

I had already been keeping my eyes on Purano since spending that lovely hour alone in the council hut with Elicia. The boy had known that Elicia was in love with me, had been with me on the trail. But it had seemed to me a somewhat extreme test of his love to tell him, as Elicia had, that she was going to give herself to another man before the marriage. The more I thought of it, the more I realized that women in other cultures were similar in that respect. A great number of American women have a final fling with a former lover before entering into marriage. The difference, though, is they keep quiet about it.