Flesh: Sacrifice Ch. 01

Summer had come down to Bolivia years earlier to study to study a particular amphibian hormone found only here in the Valle de los Reyes. She'd been sent by Ambrosia Pharmaceuticals - which had since been acquired by Connecticut Pharmaceuticals - along with two other colleagues and a translator they'd picked up in La Paz. One of the other researchers had had some sort of accident while off exploring some little Huaca village called Hanan Pacha, and the only way that the chief would let Summer's other colleague take the village's truck and drive the wounded man to the hospital was if Summer herself agreed to stay in the village as collateral. So Summer had stayed.

But the Huaca took everything from her. Shoes, clothes, everything. They staked her to the ground like she was some sort of livestock. They treated her well, otherwise -- they kept her well-fed, they talked to her, they taught her some quick vocabulary. She got to know them as human beings, got to understand their lives, got to really feel for them. For three days, Summer had been a part of the village, had witnessed the rhythm of daily Huaca life. And it slowly began to dawn on her that there weren't any children -- one or two, maybe, but no more than that.

There was a curse, the Huaca had explained. The goddess Sipusiki had put a curse on the people, and it had torn apart the Huaca way of life. Young people weren't getting married. They weren't sleeping together. They weren't having children. It had become self-fulfilling: the Huaca believed they weren't capable of reproducing, so they stopped trying. An entire people was on the verge of being wiped out of existence because of a closely-held superstition.

But that's where Summer came in. She was to be offered to Sipusiki as a flesh sacrifice. There was a ceremony -- t'ojsiy -- typically performed on animals during the spring blossom festival. Simulating the union of the sun, Taytaku, with the Earth, Sipusiki, and the resulting birth of the first Huaca man, the elders of Hanan Pacha had performed the rite on Summer. And they'd done so with her permission. Naked and bound on an altar over the village, Summer had been "entered" by a sacred dildo and fucked to orgasm. Her release signaled the end of the curse upon Hanan Pacha. Curse or no, superstition or not, Summer's act of sacrifice allowed the Huaca peace of mind enough to begin sleeping with one another once more, and children followed.

But Summer's good deed for the people of Hanan Pacha hadn't gone unnoticed by other Huaca villages throughout the Valle de los Reyes. Supplicants from Uca Pacha, Sumaq Wasi, Yapamantataq, and other Huaca communities began showing up at Summer's camp, begging that she come help them lift the curse, as well. And while Summer may not have believed in the curse itself, she believed in the heartache that these people were suffering, and she reluctantly began to submit herself to their rites and rituals. Instead of returning home with her company, she stayed on in Bolivia, and was invited back into the same villages the following year. She became a part of the Huaca cosmology, offering herself to Sipusiki again and again, from village to village, year after year after year. She was no longer some sort of sacrificial livestock -- she had transcended into some sort of fertility goddess.

Dani gritted her teeth in bed, remembering how Summer had lit up as she told the story. She was horrified by what the biologist had done, taking advantage of these people to declare herself a deity. It was almost as disgusting as what the Huaca were doing to Summer themselves.

But there were more villages in the Valle de los Reyes than Summer had time for each season. And, at some point over the years, the Huaca had decided that sacrificing one of their own simply wasn't going to do. There were communities that Summer was skipping over year after year, far-off villages that she simply couldn't make it to. She founded La Iniciativa with the hope of recruiting help, but interest in playing the part of sacrifice in an Indian sex ritual was as weak as one might have expected. She'd been turned down by a dozen different girls over the past few years, and the one graduate student at the Universidad de La Paz who'd accepted had gone native in one of the villages over the border in Brazil after a single season.

Summer knew that the likelihood was that Dani, too, would turn her down. This had become Summer's burden to bear. But she, and Taksa Kuchu, and Gabriel Benitez Serrano, had hoped that Dani might come with them just once, that she might be willing to at least witness the work that Summer was doing, witness that hope that she was instilling in these people. And that's all that Summer was asking her at that time, all that Summer wanted of her for now -- to come with her to Aya Pampa, to meet the Huaca Indians there, to see the t'ojsiy and decide for herself.

They had argued. Dani had cried. Benitez had taken his turn in trying to convince the American girl. As ineffectual as she had been in Honduras, the Kwirku had never asked her to give this much of herself. The town generators went out at eleven, and Dani continued to yell and cry by candlelight. Summer could see that Dani wouldn't be pushed into accompanying them into the jungle, and given that they all had to be up early the following morning, suggested they just get some sleep. They could part ways tomorrow.

And so Dani had curled into a ball on her mattress, still fully dressed in her jeans and tank-top. But she hadn't been able to sleep.

It had taken four days for her to get here. Four days. For this? The whole trip had been an unbelievable waste of time. Just like her stint in the Peace Corps, she was leaving without accomplishing anything of substance, disgusted with La Iniciativa and kicking herself for not pushing for more details in her correspondence with Summer Monroe. Four days. Four days! The whole thing had been a waste.

Dani wiped a tear from her eye. She'd be leaving in the morning. San Eduardo to Rurrenabaque. Rurrenabaque to La Paz. La Paz to New York. New York to Vermont. It was all probably for the best, she told herself. She hadn't seen her mother since Christmas. And it was probably time to get on with her life, to get a real job, to settle down somewhere. When she'd gotten out of school, she'd wanted to change to world, she'd wanted to make a difference. But it simply wasn't to be.

She thought back to what Benitez had told her in the bar room downstairs. He, like her, had come to Bolivia with dreams of doing good, of helping the Huaca. He had teased her about it, but he might well have been teasing himself. And yet, he had found a way to help. The Huaca had never let him into their villages, not until he'd partnered up with Summer. He was testing drinking water. He was delivering babies. He was administering vaccines. He was making an impact.

Maybe, Dani told herself. Maybe Benitez might need her help. Maybe an opportunity could still come out of this. Maybe she didn't have to go home just yet.

Could she do what Summer was asking of her? No. No, of course not. But she could accompany the threesome to Aya Pampa. She could meet the Huaca. She could see their way of life. It seemed a waste to have come this far, and not at least do that. There was no rush to get back to Vermont, no rush to return home.

"I'll come," she offered softly to the darkened room. "I'll come with you. But that's it."

Dani hadn't been sure that either of the other women was still awake, that either of them would hear her decision. But, from the bed, in English, Summer answered.

"Good."

***

There was a catch, however.

"No," Dani said emphatically, shaking her head. "No. No, no, no, no, no."

She'd emerged from the shower out behind the bar, wrapped in one of the well-worn grey towels Summer had provided her with. There was no bathroom upstairs in the Oveja itself, and what little running water there was in the bar was limited to the barroom. Out back, there was a pair of outhouses, as well as an outdoor shower screened off by a series of overlapping fences. Though there were two showerheads on opposite ends of the stall, Taksa Kuchu and Summer had thankfully given the girl her privacy, a privacy that Summer quickly undermined by how she was asking Dani to dress.

Dani was standing in the center of the girls' room, upstairs in the Oveja, still dressed in nothing more than the towel. She'd pulled a long, ankle-length skirt from her backpack, fully intending to wear it on the trip out to Aya Pampa. Summer, apparently, had other ideas.

"You're not going to be the only one," Summer insisted. "Taksa Kuchu. Me. About half the other women in the village. You'll be fine."

"No," Dani repeated. "I said I'd come with you. I'm coming. But I can't go like that."

As part of the t'ojsiy ritual, Summer fully intended to walk into Aya Pampa completely naked. It was her part to play -- from the moment she arrived to the moment she left, she'd be completely nude. Taksa Kuchu wouldn't be much more dressed. As a priestess of Sipusiki, and a representative of the temple in Yapamantataq, she'd be wearing the habit of her sisterhood. Unfortunately, this consisted of nothing more than an ankle-length loincloth, reminiscent, in Dani's mind, of the lower half of Princess Leia's golden bikini from "Return of the Jedi." She'd be topless, which was exactly how Summer wanted Dani to present herself to the village of Aya Pampa.

There was a gentle rapping at the door, but Benitez pushed his way in without bothering to wait for permission. "Everything okay?"

Dani clutched her towel closer to her body. Nodding towards Summer, she complained, "She wants me to wear my underwear out to that village."

Benitez's expression was blank. He asked, "Do you have a bathing suit or something?"

He was missing the point. Dani, exasperated, clutched her forehead with her right hand as she clung to the towel with her left. "I'm not going like that. I'm not going if that's how it has to be."

"Carlo's already gone with the minibus," Benitez answered unsympathetically.

"You're not going to be any less dressed than Taksa Kuchu or me," Summer offered.

"So if half the women in the village are going bare-chested, that means that half of them aren't!"

"Yes, but they're Huaca women. They're not trying to ingratiate themselves with the locals. They're not trying to fit in with the old ways."

"I think with everything you're doing for these people, they can make some accommodations on our part." Dani growled. "I don't want to be naked in front of all those people."

"You're not going to be naked," Summer replied.

"Fine, whatever. Topless, then. In front of a whole village of strangers. In front of you, and Taksa Kuchu and Gabriel."

Benitez coughed. "You know that I'm a doctor, right?"

"You're not my doctor!"

"Right, but I've seen women's breasts before."

"You haven't seen mine!"

The old traditions of the Huaca people, to which Summer had referred, were enforced intermittently and without uniform throughout the valley. In the years before Pizarro and the Spanish, it hadn't been uncommon for the Huaca -- men and women -- to live their lives completely in the nude. Loincloths had become fairly standard over the centuries, but bare-breasted women were a fairly regular sight in the villages. The Indians knew that they needed to cover up when coming into town to trade with the Benianos, and a good percentage of Huaca women carried the fashion back to their homes. But everything that Summer was doing was steeped in tradition, and if she were going to sacrifice herself for the Huaca people, the least she expected of Dani was to do no harm, to not damage the relationship she had with the village of Aya Pampa.

Summer and Benitez made eye contact, and Summer knew that she had to soothe the young girl. She'd just dumped a tremendous amount on her, and to her credit, Dani did seem willing to at least come with them to Aya Pampa. That alone was more than she'd gotten out of the previous girl.

"Ssshhh," Summer hushed the brunette. "Okay, okay. Taksa Kuchu and I are going to wear clothes up to the meeting point. So you don't need to worry about Chuy or Beto, or driving out of San Eduardo like that. Once we're there, though, we're going to be hiking up to Aya Pampa with one of the elders, and probably a few of the other villagers, so you are going to need to undress, whether that's down to your underwear or --" she glanced at Benitez, "- or if that's a bathing suit or something like that. I'm okay with you wearing a top, and I'm sure Taksa Kuchu is okay with you wearing a top. But there might be objections from the Huaca."

Dani ground her teeth. "I'm not going to wear my underwear around that village."

Summer looked to Taksa Kuchu, who had laid her loincloth out on the bed. "Would you feel more comfortable in something like that? Something more traditional?"

Dani wanted to cry. Again. She looked at her dress, laying atop her backpack, and thought back to training she'd received in the Peace Corps. They'd been instructed to keep from ruffling too many feathers, too keep from offending any local customs as much as possible. Among the Kwirku, women didn't wear shorts, women didn't wear pants. Toplessness was not unheard of, but the bigger cultural no-no was exposing one's thighs. And so Dani, for more than two years, had gotten up and dressed herself in long, flowing skirts and dresses. She'd ordered them from the States, picked them up in Teguz, or bought them locally, but Dani complied with local customs. And when it came right down to it, was what Summer was asking of her any different?

"Fine," she relented, caving to Summer's wishes for the second time. She looked to Benitez. "I only have a one-piece, though."

Benitez grimaced. "I think the underwear's probably the way to go, then."

Dani considered the loincloth. The habit, such as it was, consisted of no more than a front panel and a back panel hung from a waistband -- nothing in between them. She picked it up, and handled the rough, animal-skin material between her fingertips. Looking to Summer, she asked, "Can I wear something under this?"

The look exchanged between Summer and Benitez evidenced that neither was particularly happy about such an arrangement, but Summer seemed to shrug. "A thong, maybe," she offered Dani. "Nothing too obvious."

Dani nodded. A thong underneath the loincloth. A bra, so long as it could pass muster with Aya Pampa's village elders. Small victories, the girl told herself.

And so the group set off for the swamps to the north of San Eduardo. Benitez and Summer had decided upon Aya Pampa first because it was relatively close by; should Dani have been running any later in getting in from La Paz, Chuy could have watched over her at the Oveja until the principals of La Iniciativa returned. It was a good three hour drive on muddy roads in Benitez's aging Land Cruiser, and then another four or five hours of hiking through the swamps before they'd arrive at Aya Pampa. But among the stops that Summer would be making over the next few weeks, the village was a relative hop, skip, and a jump from San Eduardo.

Dani rode in the front seat with Benitez, while Summer and Taksa Kuchu rode in the back. All three women were fully dressed -- Dani in her long, flowing skirt and another simple tank top she'd fished from her backpack. She hadn't packed much, but then, what exactly did she need to bring? She had her camera, but doubted very much that she'd have any interest in showing off pictures of herself frittering about in the Huaca village in nothing more than her bra and a loincloth. On that front, she'd fished through all her things before finding anything she'd want Summer or Benitez or any of the Huaca to see her in, passing over the more well-worn and utilitarian cotton panties in favor of the black lace thong she had on now, and red one that had been stuffed deep into the pack Benitez planned on shouldering for all four of them. Benitez himself had medication, and toothbrushes, and soap, and everything else Dani might have wanted, as well as her passport and visa.

They chatted along the trip, and Dani got to know her traveling companions better that morning than she'd gotten a chance to the night before. Benitez was, indeed, in his early forties, and had been married when he was younger. Jocular and gregarious, there was something about him that put Dani immediately at ease. Summer, meanwhile, was nowhere near the monster that Dani had thought she was the night before, or the bitch she'd been that morning as they'd fought over the dress code. Smart, confident, and entirely at ease with herself, Summer oozed a sort of grown-up sexual allure. And Taksa Kuchu, who had been relatively quiet to that point, revealed herself to be bubbly and talkative, pumping Dani full of questions about growing up in the Green Mountains, about NYU, and about Honduras, all in heavily-accented pidgin Spanish. The girl had grown up here in the Oriente, and had never even been as far west as Rurrenabaque, so she knew little of life beyond the Valle de los Reyes.

Dani had no clue how Benitez knew where he was going. He turned down nondescript dirt road after nondescript dirt road, with no street signs or discernible landmarks that Dani could see. It was, as expected, slow-going at times, including a fifteen-minute-long cloudburst that sent gallons of water cascading down upon them. But, as they moved past the three-hour point, Benitez's speed began to slow, and he began to more actively scan the sides of the road for signs that he was getting closer. And, in the middle of a stretch of jungle no different than the stretches of jungle they'd already passed through, the Land Cruiser came to a stop.

"We're here," he announced.

"How can you tell?" Dani asked.

Benitez grinned. "Because our escort is here waiting for us."

Dani didn't see anyone. She searched the horizon, looking for any sign of life. And only when they began to walk towards the SUV did Dani finally pick them out -- a group of seven Indian men, all but one of them young and muscular-looking. Like Summer herself, the Huaca were not what Dani had expected. In her mind's eye, she had envisioned them as a small, backwards-looking tribe of pygmies, with reeds and bones poking through their noses. Instead, they were tall -- though maybe not as tall as Dani -- with square, angular jaw lines and well-defined Meso-American features. Almost Asian looking. Covered with ritual scarring of vaguely Incan designs, most of the men were, in fact, pierced here, there, and everywhere -- ears, eyebrows, nipples, and lips, among other places.

Holding court among them was a skinny, frail-looking old man, marked with similar body jewelry and scarring as his younger companions. He lit up as Summer stepped from the Land Cruiser, and called out, "Rap-hi! Rap-hi! Rap-hi, Chaqiska!"

"Rap-hi!" Summer called back. "Qaray Puka!"

"Qaray Puka," Benitez explained to Dani as the two of them followed behind. "Aya Pampa's medicine man."

Dani nodded.

Summer and the old man embraced, the woman kissing Qaray Puka on the cheek. Pulling back, she scanned younger men, and pointed out those she remembered. "Qarachupa," she said, identifying one, and the moving on to the next. "Achaku. Rukuku."

The man Summer called Rukuku howled and laughed, saying "Ma-na! Ma-na!" He gestured to another man further down to the line, and pointed him out. "Rukuku," he announced. Gesturing to himself, he said, "Asna Charapa."

"Asna Charapa!" Summer laughed with him. Pointing to the other man, she continued, "Rukuku!"

"Chaqiska! Chaqiska!" they called.

"Verano," Benitez explained to Dani. "'Summer.' In Huaca."