She was hefted into the air, dangling beneath of long pole of some sort -- A tree branch? One of the spears? -- with her ankles and wrists fastened securely to either end. She imagined herself being carried by two men, one at either end, and bouncing and swaying as they began their hike through the woods to Manqus Wasi. The bindings burned against her skin, her muscles aching already at the weight they were holding.
Four thousand miles away, Dani's parents might have been sitting down to dinner with her baby sister Michelle. They'd talk about their day, Dani's father offering gruffly about what it had been like down at the garage, her sister Michelle offering the latest goings-on at Cherryfield High. Dani's mother would remark on a phone call she'd received from Dani's middle sister, Valerie, who was studying at Vermont State, or a postcard she'd received from Dani herself, who was off to work on a public health program in Bolivia. She might have said she missed them both, and that whatever they were doing at that very moment, that they were safe, and that they were having fun.
Dani began to cry. Her tears ran into the leather blindfold, however, and her sobs were muffled by the gag between her teeth. Her mouth ached, her lips stretched further apart than was comfortable. She felt her hair drag along the ground every now and then -- though the Huaca men were tall, Dani's hair was long, and it brushed against the trail and the undergrowth along it. Her tits bounced in all directions, the choppy path and the up-and-down motion of her porters causing them to move independently of one another, carried whereever gravity took them. And, though her legs were bound together, Dani could feel how wet and excited she'd become..
And she cried that much harder.
The ride beneath the spit could have been five minutes long or an hour and five minutes long; for Dani, it seemed like an eternity. She had to pee. She wanted to touch herself. She wanted to massage her wrists and ankles. She wanted to massage her pussy. Her head ached, her breasts ached, her crotch ached, her joints ached. The only comfort that she took in being carried into Manqus Wasi, however, was that whatever waited for her there, whatever the Huaca were planning on doing to her, it wouldn't happen until the end of this little hike. And so, despite her aches and pains and longings, Dani hoped the hike would never end.
She listened. She heard the roar of a waterfall somewhere to her right. She heard the crackle of torches being lit. She heard the Huaca talking among themselves. She heard bare feet padding along a dirt path. And she again heard the rush of water, knowing that they were somewhere upstream, somewhere beyond the waterfall.
She was loaded into another canoe, this one shallow and poorly-made. For a few, brief minutes, Dani found relief from being hung upside down underneath the spit, being laid on a damp and roughly-carved wooden bottom. But the trip was short -- thankfully so, given that she could hear the crash and thunder of Qaqaqa Qan somewhere downriver, and feared that the Huaca might be carried over the falls with their prizes. She was hefted back onto her porters' shoulders once they'd reached the shores of Manqus Wasi itself, and even over the roar of the waterfall, Dani could hear the roar of an appreciative village.
She had no way of knowing for sure, but already Dani had the sense that Manqus Wasi would dwarf Aya Pampa. There seemed to be people everywhere, laughing and talking and shouting and screaming out in joy. They seemed to be pressing around her, and she could feel their hot, collective breath upon her skin. There were familiar smells - of dried meat and fish, of carambola juice and chicha qullisara, of human perspiration and human flesh. After having the Rio Rosa to just herself and Benitez the past two days, Dani now felt crowded and claustrophobic.
She was carried through the center of the village, or so she believed, across the little island between the falls that made up Manqus Wasi. The canoe that had taken her across the river was on the far end of the island, and Dani judged just how far she'd come by the increasing volume of the Qaqaqa Qan in front of her. Slowly but surely, the voices of the Huaca crowd were drowned out by the thunderous cacophony of the Rio Rosa spilling over the cliff-face, and the hot, sticky jungle air was replaced by a cooling mist of rising water vapor. As they drew closer to the northern end of Manqus Wasi, Dani began to grow concerned that she'd been brought all this way to be tossed into the churning waterfall below, that she'd be a sacrifice not to Sipusiki, but to Qaqaqa Qan.
But Dani, instead, was laid upon a cool, hard, volcanic rock just above the falls, the clamor of Qaqaqa Qan reverberating right through her very being. She was given instructions, in Huaca, as the bindings on her wrists and ankles were loosened, but as she had little understanding of the language beyond saying "hello" and introducing herself -- neither of which the Huaca seemed all that concerned with at the moment -- she simply went limp, and numbly allowed herself to be pushed around and positioned by her captors. Her arms were raised over her head and stretched apart, and her legs kicked outward like she was performing some sort of grotesque, nude jumping jack. Her wrists and ankles were bound once more, though this time not to each other. Instead, she was held in place by rough, scratchy rope, her body splayed apart like an X. And, once the Huaca had established that she was securely fashioned in place, her gag and her blindfold were removed, and she was no longer in the dark.
A small sliver of a waning moon hung overhead, and Dani knew that tomorrow would be pitch black. Tonight, at least, the village of Manqus Wasi was lit with starlight, torchlight, and at least some remaining moonlight. And for the first time, Dani saw the people whom she'd intended on sacrificing herself for.
There were, indeed, more Indians here than there had been in Aya Pampa, but the setting was no less cramped and crowded. Manqus Wasi was not a bucolic little village in the way that Summer had described Hanan Pacha on her first experience with the Huaca. Nor was it the quirky ravine town that Aya Pampa had been. No, Manqus Wasi was nothing short of a city. Huts and houses were scattered everywhere, almost literally right on top of one another. There were trees and bushes still standing on the island, but they were fenced in and surrounded by Huaca homes. All were built from rocks and mud and sticks and leaves, but despite the impermanence of them all, some were clearly newer than others -- green leaves instead of brown, freshly cut tree branch walls instead of faded, weathered exteriors.
And people. People for as far as the eye could see. Jam-packed so closely together that all Dani could think of was Grand Central during morning rush hour, the Huaca stood shoulder to shoulder, looking up at the brunette girl bound before them. They were young and they were old, and they were all dressed in mostly traditional Huaca garb, aside from the fact that the only exposed breasts that Dani could see were her own. Men and women both wore loincloths long and short, but Dani was hard-pressed to find a woman not wearing a skin-wrap around her chest, or some type of native bikini top, or something similar. Dani was quite alone in her nudity.
But not completely alone. To her left, Gabriel Benitez Serrano had been similarly stripped, bound, blindfolded, and secured by his arms and legs to a pair of trees that stood defiantly at the edge of Manqus Wasi. Dani's left wrist and left ankle had been roped to the same tree as Benitez's right wrist and right ankle. And, had there been a third member of their party, that individual would have been arranged between two trees to Dani's right -- four trees and three gaps, enough to display three prisoners to the village -- city? -- of Manqus Wasi. Their buttocks faced off the cliff, and Dani could feel the sensation of mist from Qaqaqa Qan cooling her lower body. Their fronts, completely exposed, faced Manqus Wasi and the crowds that had gathered to stare up at them.
Perhaps it was a treatment reserved for women, or perhaps Benitez's lack of consciousness had made it unnecessary, but the doctor hadn't been gagged. He moaned, and then coughed, the gentle spray of Qaqaqa Qan seeming to bring him back to life. Dani looked to him for guidance, looked to him for explanation, and looked to him to see if he was all right. But even held captive like she was, even as scared and horrified about what would befall her that night, Dani couldn't help but glance at the doctor's body.
He was well-built -- that much Dani had been sure of even before she'd seen him undressed. Slender, but not necessarily skinny, Benitez had a build like some sort of professional South American soccer player. He was muscular, with biceps, triceps, and pectorals accentuated by the way he'd been hung between the two trees, and possessed a set of six-pack abs that would later have Dani wondering where he got his work-outs in way out here in the Oriente. But it was Benitez's cock that Dani had fantasized about for most of that day, a lifetime ago in the canoe on the Rio Rosa, and it was Benitez's cock that now held Dani transfixed. It was big. Even flaccid, Dani could see that Benitez was well-hung. More than the Australian backpacker, or her Cherryfield schoolmate, or the Peace Corps volunteer from Texas she'd fucked during training, Benitez had a gift. And maybe, just maybe, it was Benitez's "talent" that had attracted Summer Monroe to him in the first place. Maybe, just maybe, there was more to the relationship between Benitez and Summer than the pair had let on.
