Itzel couldn't believe her luck. By this time of year, her mother at her age would have been lucky to have caught a baby tapir. But for the third time, Itzel's snare had been triggered. She couldn't see what she'd caught yet, but it was something big. The tree that supported the snare was bent low by the weight.
She saw the rope. She saw a thick, meaty animal's leg caught fast in the loop. The animal's foot twitched, and she saw... toes?
She saw toes, five on each foot. She saw two muscular, hairless legs, a heavy, male human body and a sharp, rocky face with a curtain of obsidian hair hanging down in the breeze. His tight, sun-darkened arms hung limp.
His stillness was eerie. He looked strong enough to wrestle a tree and limber enough to climb one, but from his parted lips to his closed eyes and open fingers, not a muscle on him was tense.
Maybe he belonged to the stone-men to the north; she had always heard they fainted in the jungle heat. But then again, she had also heard they were short, and this man with at least a hand-width taller than her. He looked like a runner, but he could not be a desert messenger, because desert men were wrinkled; they never had soft, flush faces like his. Certainly, he wasn't an imperial. Those never traveled alone, and even then, only when armed to the teeth. An imperial would have cut himself loose.
For a moment, Itzel laughed at the thought that it might be the husband of one of her sister-huntresses, having blundered into her trap. But it wasn't likely. During hunting season, the sisters only sent messages if something terrible had happened, and it would have been an insult to send a male to deliver such an important message. Besides, Itzel noticed an axolotl-skin cord tied around his ankle, a symbol of manhood worn only in the northwestern regions. This man could only be a stranger.
Itzel was twenty paces away when he stirred. It was a relief; she had begun to worry he was dead.
He clenched his fists and sucked in a heavy breath, swelling his chest. Quick as a tree snake, he curled his body up and picked at the snare with his arms. He attacked the knot, then gripped the rope frantically, terrified he would fall, but then got over himself and went after the knot again. Itzel stopped and watched him struggle. Flex. Grunt. Pull. Mangle. Gasp. Fall limp. Try again.
Itzel laughed.
The man gave up. He hung as loose as a tassel, eyeing her with helpless fear.
"Look at this," said Itzel, in the imperial dialect. "A strip of smoked meat, hung to dry just for me."
His upside-down face brightened. "You... you know the common language?"
"Of course. Traders from the empire come this way every dry season." Many of the tribe's husbands had once been traders.
"Why... why did you set this trap for me? I mean you no harm, I swear it!"
"For you?" Itzel giggled and pushed on his hip, setting him spinning. "I didn't set this snare to catch a man, silly. I wanted game. I wanted meat." She stopped him with a gripping hand on his butt. She sank her fingers into his butt cheek, feeling the sinews. "In one sense, I got what I wanted."
"What are you..." his voice got a little higher, a little tighter as her fingers kneaded his flesh. She could see the bulge growing under his loincloth. "What are you going to do to me?"
She struck a thoughtful pose and held it mockingly. "A beautiful man in my snare, unable to stop me from doing what I want with his body? I cannot imagine what I would do with that." She slapped him on his shoulder, causing him to spin again. She stopped him with his back to her, grabbed his wrists and tied them together behind him. "Tell me your name, pretty boy."
"Shmucánay. I'm named for the grandfather of the gods."
"A grandfather? You?" She spun him to face her again and squeezed his thighs. The ripples in his flesh stayed firm under her hand. "Still hale after two generations!" She half-expected him to correct her and explain it to her as if she were just a simple barbarian, but he seemed to know that she was being sarcastic. So, on top of being pretty, he knew a joke when he heard one—a good start. "I am called Itzel," she said.
After she tied a lasso around his neck, one that wouldn't tighten and choke him, she knelt by the knot that held him suspended. She tried to let him down gently, but for such a limber-looking man, he was not light.
He thudded to the ground, neck and shoulders first. "Ouch!" he complained.
Itzel skipped up to him. "I didn't mean to hurt you!" she said quickly. She squatted by his head, found the spot where he had skinned the top of his head on a stick. She spat on her hand and rubbed it gently into the scrape, cleaning away the dirt. His breath caught as he felt the sting, but he did not complain. He knew she was doing him good.
"Now," she said, "stand up." With careful effort, she stood him on his feet, took up the lasso and said, "follow me."
He was silent all the way back to camp. So silent that Itzel was certain he was plotting ways to kill her, escape or both. He would have been stupid to try, of course—her hearing was sharp enough to sense a bird on a windy day—but she did not put it past him to try; the gods had not made men for their intelligence.
When camp came into view, Shmucánay gave a loud sigh of relief.
"What?" said Itzel. "You thought I wanted to eat you? Like a savage?"
"No, I thought your gods would."
Itzel snorted. "Eating flesh to bring the rain and make the sun rise, that's for priests and farmers and warriors. I'm none of those things." She sat him on the ground and sat across from him on a log, looking down at him. She played with her hair, considering his tight, tasty-looking body and his calm but fearful expression. "I won't sell you as a slave either. I don't want the slavers to know we're here. That I'm here. If they take an interest in the jungle, they might come back and try to put a collar on me next. I heard it's a status symbol to have a pretty jungle girl for a slave."
To her delight, he showed no surprise when she called herself pretty. It was true, after all. She and her band didn't have gold earrings or gold hair die or jewel necklaces like the imperial ladies did, but she was full-fleshed and sharp-featured, and bathing in the rivers kept her scent muted—all things that she knew attracted men.
"No one is going to eat you," she said again. "In fact, I'm going to do the opposite." She picked up tapir-skin a bag of beans and dried peppers. She took one from the bag and put it to his mouth. "Open up."
He obeyed, and she fed him the bean. Itzel ate one for herself while he chewed, and when he was done, she gave him another, and the suspicion in his eyes began to melt away. 'Good,' she thought.
"Are you a scout?" she asked with her mouth half-full. "You're not from the jungle, clearly."
"I'm a fisherman from the eastern shore," he said. "I was sent here to..." He stopped.
Itzel could read him like fresh tracks. He was sent to secure some deal with someone important. That was the only reason shoremen ever come through the jungle. That meant he was carrying money, and he must have thought she wanted to steal it. He was wrong—Itzel didn't want dry beans or stone rings or whatever inane things those outsiders used for money—but he had no way of knowing that. So he twisted in the wind, trying to think of a believable lie that did not involve him carrying money.
She threw him a bone. "I'll bet you're carrying a message," she said. "You're one of the runners, aren't you?"
"Yes," he said. The tension lifted from him, and he sighed so hard he seemed to shrink to half his size for a moment. Itzel smiled. That poor man couldn't lie to save his life.
"It must be hot on the wooden boats," she said. "Miserable in the open air."
"No," he said, a little defensively. "It's really quite beautiful. When you look away from the shore, you can see the infinity of the sea. All the world where the gods didn't put anything."
"There must not be a lot of women out there," Itzel tried.
"Actually, there are. Father keeps saying I'm wasting my time, I should pick one and propose to her parents."
Itzel frowned. 'At least he's unmarried,'she thought. "It must be nice to have your feet on dirt, though. Those wooden rafts can't be pleasant."
"They're more than rafts. But, I have to admit, earth is much nicer to the feet."
Finally, he had given some territory. "I don't think the gods wanted humans to go to sea. It seems like they only let it happen grudgingly."
"It's a hard life, no doubt. But It's worth it for the fish."
Itzel smiled. Shmucánay had been snared, bound, led around like a slave and waylaid at some lonely girl's campfire, and still he was chipper. She spoke her mind: "I want to keep you."
"Hm?"
"I want you to be mine. As part of my camp. I want you to build us a tent and protect it and help me butcher and tan and cure the things I bring back from the jungle. I want a tough, pretty man like you to sleep with me."
He turned pale—not with horror, only surprise. His arms twitched a little, as if he had forgotten he was bound. "You want to keep me as a sex slave."
Hearing it in his voice, she almost did want that. In her mind's eye, Itzel could easily imagine tying him to a tree every morning and coming back to spread him on the ground and ride him raw. She imagined him looking her in the eyes and saying, 'I belong to you,' as many times as she ordered him to.
'Owning him would be fun,' she admitted to herself. But it was not her way. "I don't want to keep you against your will. I want you to live with me, and I want you to want it. Here, you'd have all the fruits of the jungle, plenty of meat to eat, the favor of the old gods and a sexy huntress who wants to ravish you as long as you can take it."
He mashed his lips together. He looked at her with a face of inner panic, the face one makes when trying to balance on a log and failing. He wanted to say 'yes.'
"What have you got to lose?" she tried.
"My father," he said. "He gave me life. He first thrust me into my mother's womb. Then he gave me skills, the skills I can't live without. I owe it to him to support him in his age. To marry and give him grandchildren, and to teach his grandsons as he taught me."
