The Black Orchid

by Sawyer Caine

  He was moaning and saying words in Warao that I couldn’t understand, but it mattered not. I knew he was mine, and I knew what he was trying to say to me. He reached back with one hand, clutching at my hip and trying to pull me tighter against him, his head falling back against my shoulder. I trailed light kisses along the column of his neck, nipping at the soft skin, feeling the scratch of stubble along his jaw line as I moved my lips over him.

  He clutched harder at me, and I could feel his body tighten around me. He was getting close, and I knew it. I slowed the movements of my hand, running my thumb over the sensitive head and he cried out, letting go of me and bracing his hands against the rocks. I watched his trembling body as he surrendered to it, gave himself over to it, the pleasure, the erotic bliss of it. I wanted to go on and on but I knew there was no reason to deny myself further. He was now mine, forever mine. I let go and flew with him, holding our bodies together.

  *

  Lazy days passed with no recollection. I adjusted to life in the village, and the people seemed to be accepting of me, this stranger who had come to live with their shaman. I taught Jose to speak English. It was Nekai’s wish that he do so. The boy had decided that I was someone he could trust around his father, but he was oblivious to what we did together when the lights were extinguished.

  We had to, Nekai and I, be so very careful. Though he was shaman, the Warao people would not be accepting of our relationship if they suspected anything was happening other than just friendship. Nekana knew, of course, but if she had shared that information with her mate, Felipo, I did not know of it. She told me that she had tried many times to teach Jose, but he was a wayward boy and Nekai had been somewhat lax with him, letting the boy run free in the jungle. She said that their father had been much the same with Nekai when he was that young.

  And so the years flew by without much accounting for time. I used my ample funds to help the village obtain needed medical supplies and two flat-bottomed, motor boats so travel between the village and Tucupita would be easier. From time to time, I would make that journey, taking Jose with me. We would spend the night at the monastery, and I would call Fritz and speak with him about the family. Life with the Warao was good. I had finally found my place in the world, after so much wandering and so much self-doubt. I had my jungle prince and the memories of my angel Frederick, both of them men that I did not deserve but that no longer mattered.

  I lay in his arms each night and we loved. Always it was slow, gentle, and easy but when we were able to slip away to the falls, our loving had a more primal feel to it. Sometimes I led and sometimes it was him, but always we shared equally. I had never imagined that I could ever feel so complete. The only thing that would have made it better, and I felt damned for thinking it, was if I could have Frederick here with me, with us. But he had gone beyond my grasp.

  I knew such feelings were purely selfish, and I was a very selfish man, but I couldn’t help but feel that if I had just stayed in the jungle with Frederick all those long years ago, so much pain might have been avoided. We could have all lived and loved together. Yes, a pipe dream imagined by a man whose life is hurtling toward the golden years. I was not a carefree youth. Neither was my lover, but it was wondrous. And it was enough.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  August 3rd, 1965. I am an old man now. Time has been good to me. Time has been my friend, was my friend always. But not the friend of those I love. Nekai died this morning. He was forty-eight years old. He caught a fever and could not recover from it. Nekana tried and tried to save him. Jose went to Tucupita for medicines, the women prayed over him. I begged God to leave him and take me. I pleaded in the silence of the night as he gasped his final breathes. “Oh, God, not again, do not do this to me again!” But God kills indiscriminately. Everything I touch is taken from me.

  I stood with Jose, beautiful, strong, the shaman of the tribe, and I watched as the man I loved was covered with blankets, his pyre set afire and his mortal remains turned to ash. There is nothing left, nothing for me. When he had burned away to nothing but bones, they gathered the bones and buried them beside his wife. Nothing, nothing left of him but a carved stone. I am alone again.

  *

  I have been seeing Frederick. For weeks now, as soon as Nekai fell ill, I glimpsed him in the jungle, in the sparkle of the falls. I have been hearing his voice calling to us, both to Nekai and myself. He came for Nekai, but he is here still waiting for me. I must go now to him. I know there is nothing to stop me. I am fifty-nine now. I have lived a measure of life that has been an adventure, but they are waiting for me.

  I have left the remainder of my fortune to Jose. He can use it to better the living conditions of the tribe. I am sitting now beside the falls, the water flowing out and away, down to the mighty Orinoco River. I watch as it goes, away, away from me. I have been here, in this jungle with him, my Nekai, all these years, all this time. Life will go on. It will move on, and we will be forgotten. In ten years, twenty perhaps, no one will remember our names.

  When I look up, I see him, my Frederick, my angel, standing on the far shore of the pool, smiling at me in the sunlight. The light is too bright, so bright it blinds me and makes me shield my eyes. He calls to me. I can feel him, smell him, and he is here. I listen, and I can hear them speaking together. When I look again, they stand side by side and they are so young. Nekai, his hair long, his face boyish, his smile… and Frederick, vibrant, strong, beautiful, so alive… like he was that night so long ago on top of the pyramid when he found his strength. Frederick, my Frederick and Nekai, my sweet boy, they call for me. I must go to them. I will close this journal with these words. Love has shaped me, molded me, made me who I am, a man risen from the ashes of my childhood failures, upward through the years of doubt and indecision to the man I am today.

  I am better for having loved and been loved. I will say this to whomever may find this. If you take nothing more from this, my life’s story, I hope that you can see that love, even if it is contrary to what others, your world, your family, your church and your society tell you is normal, is worth every hurt, every pain, every mountain you must climb to reach it. Never stop hoping and never give up on the one, or ones you love.

  Postscript:

  August 6th, 1965 Telegram to Lord Fritz Heathwood

  Dear, Lord Heathwood,

  I regret to inform you of some terrible news. Word of your brother, Lord Alfred Heathwood’s death, was brought downriver to this monastery from the Warao village last evening. It seems that he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. His journal was discovered washed up on the shore of the river by one of the young men of the tribe, and I am sending it back to London for you. I am dearly sorry, Lord Heathwood, for your loss. Your brother was known to us here. We believe that he took his life over the death of his best friend and the shaman of the tribe, Nekai. They were very close and it seems that he could not continue living without the company of his friend. The shaman’s son buried your brother beside his father’s remains in their family plot.

  Again, I am dreadfully sorry to have to be the one to tell you this sad news. If there is anything we can do to help you in this time of loss, please do not hesitate to contact us.

  Sincerely,

  Father Dawes

  Fritz Heathwood sat in a cast-iron chair on the balcony of the master suite at Heathwood. He had known all those years ago that he would never lay eyes on his brother again and yet, he had always hoped that he might be mistaken. He folded the letter, running his hands over the creases of it, then reached for the water damaged remains of Alfred’s journal. He put his spectacles on and carefully opened it. The writing was still clear on the crumpled pages. He had read the sometimes rambling tale of his brother’s wild adventures and amorous love life in the pages of that journal twice now, and it was still a story most fascinating to him.

  He looked out over the gardens at his grandchildren running and playing among the roses and sighed, mumbling to himself.


  “Yes, Alfred. To love is a good thing and this life, it is a good life, a life worth living.”

  The End

  About the Author

  Sawyer Caine is an author of paranormal, mystery, erotic romance, and mainstream fiction. She lives in the Midwest with her spouse and children and enjoys travel. She has a medical background and often borrows from it extensively in her writing. She lives in a haunted house, describes herself as a “self-styled Goth” and enjoys books about vampires and ghosts.

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