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Larra was not in a particularly good
mood. Her expedition had been
fighting its way through increasingly dense rainforest for several days
now. At times it had taken her
expedition an entire day to move only one or two
miles. Somewhere near here her
guide had told her that there was a well-marked trail that would take her
quickly in the direction that she wished to
go. The only problem was that
the well-marked trail was impossible to
find. Larra was beginning to
suspect more and more that her so-called guide was more interested in leading
her all over
She pulled out an oilskin packet and opened
it carefully. Before her was
an ancient Chinese map. It
was a rather crude chart, lacking any geographical details, but it was covered
in Mandarin characters. These
were the key to her search as they gave enough information about the map
to make it a useful document. So
far it had turned out to be quite
accurate. She had been able to
deduce that the great mountain spoken of in the map was
Stoically, she trudged up the heavily forested
slope. Ahead of her four members
of her safari slashed away the vegetation so that the rest of the expedition
could pass. Sweat dripped down
her beautiful face. Her entire
body was bathed in perspiration and she was extremely
uncomfortable. Beneath her damp
blouse her Victorian style corset chafed at her
skin. “Who would have invented
such an undergarment?” she wondered?
Probably some man, because whoever had designed the corset, it was
certain that he or she was no friend of
womankind. What kind of Hell
would be appropriate for the inventor of such a torturous
device? She often wished that
she could take it off and throw it away, but that would not be very ladylike,
and her perfect but heavy breasts required some sort of
support.
Just ahead of her a clearing seemed to be
opening up. That was certainly
unusual. She stooped and looked
around, then shouted a command in
Swahili. “We stop here
today.”
Immediately her gunbearers and porters put
down their loads and began to set up camp. The only other woman in the
expedition, her black maidservant came running forward awaiting her instructions.
Larra ignored her for the
moment. “Strange,”
she thought, “that a clearing should appear in the midst of so dense
a forest.” It might give
her a chance to observe the movement of the sun and give her some idea as
to whether or not she was moving in the right
direction. She was about to call
up her guide when an object near the center of the clearing caught her
eye. She moved toward it
for a better look.
“Interesting,” she
thought. It appeared to be a
large monolithic stone object rising out of the
ground. Although a natural formation,
some fluke of nature had shaped it like a
phallus.
“Perhaps,” she mused,
“This is what I have been looking
for.” She realized the joke
in her musings instantly and smiled.
“The artifact,” she corrected herself mentally, “not
the giant phallus.”
Could it be that by dumb luck she
had stumbled upon the object of her
search? She was now within six
feet of the stone phallus, which, rising from a rugged stone base, towered
over her head to a good ten feet in
height. The lower portion of
the stone appeared to have been crudely shaped by human hands into something
resembling an altar. A chill
went down Larra’s spine. The
altar was clearly bloodstained.
Apparently some sort of sacrifice had been made here, and judging
by the extent of the stains it had been going on for a long
time.
“At
last!” Larra
thought.
She felt like screaming, but knew
that it was important that she retain her
dignity. The members of her
expedition expected it. Still,
she could not help smiling broadly.
She thought back to the ridicule that had been heaped upon her by
the snobbish British community in
“Ridiculous!” snorted Lord
Braemar, the senior British official at the colonial office in
As for Larra’s intention to
lead the expedition herself, Lord Braemar had been even more
blunt.
“These blacks won’t take
orders from a woman, my dear.
Especially one as young and attractive as
you. You won’t make it halfway
there before they desert you and leave you
stranded. At least have the common
sense to hire an experienced guide to make sure that your boys are kept in
line.”
By
guide
Larra knew that Lord Braemar was referring to one of the numerous White hunters
that seemed to frequent the bars and nightclubs of
And now, two months later, here she
was, having followed an ancient Chinese map for hundreds of miles into central
By this time her porters and gun
bearers had also noticed the stone
formation. Their reaction was
entirely different from Larra’s.
She was elated, but they were
terrified. Her guide ran up to
her.
“Missy Larra,” he pleaded,
“We must get away from here.
This be very bad place. Not
safe for you, not safe for me!”
Larra turned to her
guide. “I am not worried,
Tipu,” she said, smiling. “This is what I came
for.”
“No
Missy,” he
implored. “We must
leave. Must leave
fast. Must leave
now!”
Her porters took in the dialogue
between her guide and Larra.
Several of them were already edging back toward the edge of the clearing,
toward the path that had brought them
there. Larra
frowned. This was getting serious,
if the porters ran off she would be stuck with all her gear, but with no
way to transport it.
“Alfred!” she shouted to her head
porter. “Come
here!” But Alfred was already
at the beginning of the trail that the party had slashed on its way through
the rainforest. Suddenly, he
took to his heels, and the rest of the porters fled with
him. “God dammit,”
Larra shouted, “Come back
here!” She whirled about.
“Tipu, stop them,” she
implored. But her faithful guide
was already well on his way down the path, her maidservant dashing after
him, punctuating her departure with shrill, frightened screams. Larra found
herself alone in the dark, silent forest.
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