Email:
Lespion@msn.com
Wallace made no effort to resist as he was
escorted by the dozen or so dark-skinned warriors who had surrounded him
in the forest. He was much taller
than any of them, but they were armed and he
wasn’t. He didn’t want
to chance being on the receiving ends of the wicked-looking spears they
carried. They were pretty much
the way nature had made them, their only adornments being a few strings of
beads, some bone jewellery, and a penis
sheath.
The latter ornament seemed to have very little
utilitarian function other than to give the wearer the appearance of having
a permanent erection, but Wallace did not find it particularly
unusual. He wondered what the
black-skinned warriors thought about him.
His white skin, blue eyes, and unruly blonde hair no doubt made him
seem like a creature from another planet.
He and his escort suddenly left the trees,
emerging into a large clearing.
They had been climbing steadily uphill and the open expanse was on
top of a hill. It appeared to
Wallace that the hilltop had been deliberately cleared and a few minutes
walk proved him right. They passed
through an area of rather haphazard
farms. To the casual observer
it would have appeared that most of them were overgrown with weeds, but Wallace
supposed that there was some sort of logic in their
appearance. However, it
was not the farms that caught his attention but the walled
village.
A wooden palisade surrounded part of
it. The other part of the wall
was made up of an immense hut (if hut was the right word) that extended several
hundred feet along one side of the
village. It served as both a
dwelling place and wall, dominating one side of the enclosed
area. It stood two stories tall,
a long veranda running along the second level providing access to its
inhabitants. Both upper and lower
levels were pierced by numerous doorways and Wallace guessed that each doorway
represented a family. He did
a quick count and estimated that there were probably at least two hundred
families in the village.
As soon as they entered the palisade Wallace
became the centre of attention, with literally hundreds of villagers of all
ages swarming about him. Many
of them came right up to him although few dared to touch him, something that
might have been due to the fact that he loomed over all of
them. He was beginning to feel
like some hulking giant.
He remained calm, not sure of how he should
act. With so many armed warriors
around him he would not last long if they decided to become hostile, but
at the same time it was possible that if he appeared too passive his hosts
might think him weak. He decided
that the best approach was to act as he had been doing and continue to observe
the people around him.
By his standards they were not a particularly
attractive people, although a few of the younger women had excellent
figures. They were too short
and their faces appeared brutish and unintelligent.
In addition, many of the women
had breasts down to their navels and several were actually suckling
pigs. However, he had seen enough
of other cultures to realize that beauty was in the eye of the beholder and
that he no doubt seemed just as ugly to those around him.
It was then that he saw the neat row of
heads.
It went on for almost the entire length of
the huge main dwelling, each head hanging by its hair or in a small
net. There were literally hundreds
of them, perhaps outnumbering the people in the village. Each head appeared
to be perfectly mummified and to his relief Wallace did not note any heads
with pale features.
“That’s something at least,”
he thought. “Maybe they
only preserve the heads of relatives.”
His grand escort pushed through the crowd
and moved toward a hut standing alone in the centre of the
village. It was there that Wallace
saw something he had not expected.
A very ancient member of the tribe was sitting on a crude stool before
the hut. Wallace couldn’t
guess his age, but knew he had to be very
old. His skin was so black and
wrinkled that it resembled a prune; a prune with two glittering
eyes. However, it was not the
old man who caught his attention; it was the slender blonde girl standing
next to him.
Stupidly Wallace stared at her, too surprised
to speak. Perhaps it was the
girl’s sudden appearance in a place that she had no right to be or perhaps
it was the fact that her willowy white body was nude from the waist down
and her loins were shrouded only by a small
loincloth. He swallowed and gulped
out the first thing that came to his
mind. “G’day,”
he stammered.
Judy stared in equally shocked
surprise. The tall, blonde, man
was the last person she had ever expected to see after being rescued from
the jungle by the black-skinned people she had learned were called the
Daygana. Her first impulse was
to cover her nude body, but realized that would merely draw attention to
it so instead she drew herself up and calmly surveyed the new
arrival.
Her clothing had been taken from her shortly
after arriving in the Daygana village.
At first she had been terrified when the women of the village had
pulled at her clothing, fearing that they were stripping her in order to
offer her to the men, but then she realized that such thoughts were
foolish. The men who had found
her in the forest could have raped her any number of times had they wished;
instead they had offered her food and water, and when it became obvious that
her sprained ankle would not let her walk they carried her through the forest
to their village.
It turned out that they did not want her rags
for any other purpose but to wash them.
Unfortunately, the jungle environment plus the rough wear they had
experienced caused most of her clothing to disintegrate and so she had been
reduced to wearing a simple loincloth.
It was considerably more than what the other women in the village
wore, but it still left her 90% nude.
That had not seemed important until the sudden appearance of a fully
clothed white man in the village.
Now she felt herself turning bright red with
embarrassment.
It was the white man’s greeting that
shook her out of her mortification.
The simple phrase, mouthed with a strong Australian accent, broke
her up. She burst out
laughing. The Aussie grinned
back and then bowing awkwardly spoke
again. “Begging your pardon,
miss. I seem to have caught you
at an awkward moment.”
Judy flushed from head to toe, but did not
turn away. Instead she spoke
calmly. “Indeed, sir, I
seem to have left my cocktail dress with at
home. I really have nothing to
wear.”
This time it was Wallace who laughed. Without another word he stripped off his shirt and taking a step forward held it out. As much as the sight of the young blonde’s body interested him, he decided that such a gesture would probably win him more points than continuing to stare at her nude body. Her welcoming smile as she took his shirt showed him that he was right.
PREVIOUS
CHAPTER WIZARD'S
LAIR MAIN PAGE
L'ESPION'S
STORY PAGE
NEXT
CHAPTER