by Isaac Stone
“You may,” she responded.
“Why do you wear only ash?”
“We come into the world without clothes and we shall leave it the same way. We own nothing, not even rags to cover us, unless it is for protection. Kali provides for us and that is all we need.”
“But what about the men who might be tempted by what they see?”
“We seldom leave this place. Any man who ventures up here doesn’t come back.”
So I knew the reason the Dimmur avoided the area around the lost city. The yogini nuns became dangerous spirits after a number of men had tried to get to close to a colony of women.
“So what becomes of me?” I asked her.
I listened to the fire crackle in the background as she walked close to me. “Would you like to stay with us, Captain? We do have a need for men from time to time. I’m afraid I’d have to cut the offending part of you off if you wanted to do that. I can’t have any men up here who don’t know their place.” She produced a very sharp knife and let me see it. My imagination did the rest.
“I don’t think you would like to feel this, Captain,” she told me. “The last man didn’t and he wanted to stay here so badly.”
“No,” I told her. “I don’t think I would.”
“I’ve seen you. You may go back. Perhaps I will have need of you later.”
She turned to the women who’d brought me up the hill and said something in a language I couldn’t understand. Not all languages could be understood by my character.
“Can you find your own way back down the hills?” she asked me. “Most of my women don’t want to go back to where they found you. They say the place smells of man too much.”
“I could find my way,” I told her, “but it would be better for someone to escort me. Can I please have my gun returned?”
Chamistra yelled an order and a woman jumped up from one of the rock with my service revolver.
I took it from her when it was handed to me. I kept my eyes level with them all the time I was in their convent. The women didn’t like it that a man wondered around, I could tell. If I starred too long at them, it would not go well.
It almost reminded me of a story a friend told me about visiting a nudist beach in New Jersey years ago. He told me it wasn’t hard to get used to walking around without clothes in public. What was hard to get used to was the old men on the perimeter who sat there and leered with binoculars. Worse was the power boats that came close to the shore and so the occupants could gawk.
“I couldn’t understand why the beach owners did tell those assholes to fuck off,” he told me. “Guess they didn’t own all the shoreline.”
“I’ll send someone to escort you back,” she told me. “It wouldn’t do to give your government a reason to occupy this area because they’d lost one of their own.” She gave another order and my hands were untied.
A second order produced another woman with a spear by her side. She stood next to me with a look of disgust on her face.
“This is Ashoka,” she told me. “She’ll take you back to your camp. Don’t try anything funny with her. Her former husband beat her very bad before she came to us. There is still a warrant on her for what she did to him when he slept. I’m sure Ashoka would like to try it again with a sharper knife, but I won’t let her.”
The torch was returned to me and we continued down the hills back to the first camp. Several times, she stopped the trek and made me be silent with one hand. There were sounds and movements out there that she understood, but didn’t mean a thing to me, though it did feel as if hungry things stalked the night and I was keenly aware of how tasty I probably was. I spent the remainder of the evening following her ashen form across the forest to the original camp.
At one point, I stopped her and had to ask a question. “Why haven’t you said a word to me?” I asked the small, dark woman. She had to be from the Tamil areas by her deep color and features.
Ashoka opened her mouth and pointed inside it. She lacked a tongue. Now I understood the horror inflicted on her.
She took me as far as the cart and the dead water buffalo. She never made a sound on the trip. I didn’t even know we were near the cart until she pushed back some brush with one hand and revealed it to me. I stepped out of the foliage and almost bumped into it. The smell, which I could’ve done without, from the dead water buffalo, was over powering.
“Thank you very much, Ashoka,” I said to her in English. I didn’t think she could understand me, but the woman, covered in the white ash, nodded and disappeared back into the jungle.
The next object I ran into was Grom. Or I should say he ran into me. I marched down the hill in the direction of the fire when I felt a body slam and send me flying down the incline. I rolled to the bottom after I made contact with several trees on the way down.
I was up with my revolver in seconds and had it pointed at the form of the big sergeant. His hands were up by then, much to my ease. I lowered my gun when we recognized each other.
“Sorry about that, sir,” he told me. “I was afraid you were one of the Jerries come to kill the rest of us.”
“I suppose gratitude is in order that you didn’t shoot me,” I told him.
“We thought the Nazi dogs took you,” he said. “Tommy and your friend have spent the better part of the evening searching through the jungle. We couldn’t go too deep into it, but we planned to wait until morning for you. If we couldn’t find you, I planned to take everyone back. Where were you, sir, if I may ask?”
“I was taken to convent run by some very strange nuns,” I told him. “It seems their abbess wanted to have a look at me.”
“I’m glad you’re safe, sir. Please don’t go off like that again.”
By now, we were in sight of the second encampment. Tommy and Howard came out to meet us. I could see the relief on their faces, so I told them the same story I told Grom about where I’d been.
“Don’t sound like any nuns I ever heard about,” Howard spoke to me. “But I’m glad you’re safe. You still want to head up river in the morning?” He had his carbine in one arm.
“Of course,” I told them. “The whole reason for this mission is to find that box and the contents of it. We’ve gone this far, no reason to let the threat of a snip snip get in our way.”
We bedded down for what was left of the evening. We broke camp the next day.
As I expected, the game designers managed to place snakes in the jungle. I assumed they would be there and large predators as well. As we traveled next to the river, I had to stop the team many times to let large serpents slither past us. The large constrictors didn’t worry me so much as the smaller cobras did. There was a reason cobras were venerated in the Indian subcontinent, they could kill with one bite. It was hoped that by paying homage to the reptiles they would leave you alone.
Our progress was slow since we didn’t know the terrain. I couldn’t walk more than three feet without the need to cut a vine or shrub out of the way with my bush knife. We managed to cut our way a few miles by the afternoon. The map inside the logbook I had with me showed our progress, but we still had a long way to go.
Chamistra appeared next to me as we broke for lunch.
We sat on the ground, after all of us were sure there were no snakes around, and chewed on some dried beef while the heat soaked through our clothes. Grom passed his canteen around since he carried the spare. Soon we would need to find a source of food and water. Water shouldn’t be hard to find and I could send Howard out later to find something for dinner. He was still one of the best marksmen I’d ever witnessed.
“Be very quiet,” Howard said to me suddenly. He was sitting next to me on a log.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him. I did my best to speak in a low voice and not moved too quickly.
“Directly in front of us,” he told me. “The way we came. I didn’t see her there before.”
I looked up in the direction he’d mentioned. There, in front of me, in her ashen glory, was th
e woman who claimed to be the abbess of the Shakti convent. She was still covered in grey ash, but there was a red muslin wrap that clung to her body. She still had the staff in one hand with the wooden skulls strung around her neck. She wore no shoes, which accounted for the lack of any sound when she approached.
“Why did you leave you convent?” I asked her. By now, the other men noticed her and reached for their guns.
“I need to come with you,” she told me. “And you can leave those guns alone. I am by myself, but none of you will ever leave this place intact if I am harmed. My sisters will hunt you down. This is their territory. You weren’t even welcomed into this land.”
I could see they were surprised she knew how to speak English. “This is Mother Chamistra,” I told my companions. “She is head of the convent in the hills. We met last night.”
“I know you are looking for the white man who vanished into the old city months ago,” she told us. “I do not know where he is, but I do know he was last seen walking into the place alone. There are many dangers inside the City of the She Wolves, so you will need me to guide you through it.” I noted with interest that she’d used a translation of the Sanskrit title of the lost city.
“I’m sure we can do with someone to guide us through it,” Howard spoke. “If Vince says she’s alright, I have no objections.” He rubbed his head and stared at her. I didn’t have to ask why.
Chamistra stayed ahead of us for the rest of the trip that day. She seemed to know the better ways to reach our destination and avoided the worst parts of the forest. With her help, I didn’t need to cut as many thorny branches out of the way or slice through vines that clung to anything they came in contact with that day.
“Didn’t you say this woman was the one who had you captured last night?” Private Tommy asked me when he felt she was out of hearing range.
“That’s right,” I told him. “They had me tied and hauled up the hills to see her in the night at spear point.
“Do they all…look this way?” he asked him. “I mean, if they are all of the same religious order, I would expect some harmony in the dress.”
“Oh, no,” I told him. “None of them wore anything other than ash last night. It was quite a thing to see.”
Tommy was behind me when I told that to him and I feared he would fall over.
“She looks like someone we both know,” Howard said to me. “I think you know what I’m talking about.” He had the carbine crooked under his arm and never took his eyes off Chamistra.
“Even her name isn’t that different,” he added. “What did happen to that little wolf girl you married on the mountain? Don’t tell me she has a twin all the way out here.” He glanced again at the form of the abbess in front of us.
There was no way I could tell him I’d abandoned Chamita when I left the game. None of this was real and would vanish the moment anyone cut the power supply. It was all an illusion and I was in reality sitting in a chair that jacked my brain into a created reality inside a computer system. But I still felt guilt over abandoning Chamita. Was this woman, who could be her double, a way for the VR team to test my reactions to her?
“She’s still on the mountain,” I told him. “I’ll get back to her as soon as I’ve finished here.” It was the only answer I could give him and still maintain the story narrative.
We entered the city of Virkya hour later.
It was clean and free of any excess tree growth. As we approached it from the perimeter, I could see the stone towers of the temples inside it. This “City of the She Wolves” was older than most cities in Europe, yet we were one of the few people from outside this place to enter it. We stopped at the perimeter and admired the construction of the buildings and temples that were part of the complex before us.
“Nothing grows a hundred yards from the temples!” Howard exclaimed as we walked up to the bare soil, which ringed the buildings and temples.
“I’ve heard of this place,” Grom spoke up to me. “It’s supposed to be disgraceful inside.” He looked at the ground.
“One of the wonders of the ancient world!” Tommy shouted. “I’ve dreamed of finding someplace like this all my life. We’ll be the first civilized men inside it!”
“If you watch your mouths,” Chamistra said to them, “you may be the first Europeans who leave alive.”
“Is that a threat, miss?” Grom snapped at her. I didn’t like the direction this was headed.
“No it wasn’t,” she told him. “Few people have ever been allowed into this city since the king left here a thousand years ago. Show some respect and you may be allowed to leave with your body parts.”
“And who should threaten us?” Grom snapped at her. I could tell he didn’t like taking orders from a woman.
“I don’t know English man,” she responded. “All I know is what I’ve been told. You note the grass or anything else doesn’t grow around the city. Note that very few trees grown inside the grounds. Don’t you find that a little bit strange for a city that has not had a population in over a thousand years?”
The men said nothing and we crossed the perimeter to walk up the steps to the first of the many temples that lined the main street down the center of the ancient city. I could hear our boots stomp out as they echoed off the buildings, followed by the pad of Chamita’s unshod feet. The sun was hot and I wondered how she could take the temperature of the stones, so I lowered my hands to feel the pavement of the city.
Every paver stone was cool to the touch. Somehow, the stones had a way to siphon off the excess heat of the sun or the ancient builders of the city knew how to design them to reflect it back. Or the game designers had forgot that the stones should heat up in the sun, although I doubted they would be so sloppy.
“Why don’t you go on ahead and meet me in the square,” I told the crew. “I need to check something out in this building. There was a report of a message left by Major Buttersnipe before he filed his last post from a building that resembled this one.”
“If you wish, sir,” Grom said to me, after he gave me a funny look. “I’ll come and get you if we don’t hear anything in five minutes.” They walked away, in admiration of the city architect.
In fact, another plot cache container appeared on my logbook map the moment I looked at it. Here was something else to find and I hoped it would assist me in the location of the courier box and get out of here. With Chamita’s twin floating around and a city that should be weed-covered, I could not figure where the game writers wanted to go with this scenario. The cache should be a few yards away and I hoped it was something I could use.
I ducked into the temple where it was supposed to be located and found the box shoved under an altar in a small alcove in one side of the room. It came out easy and I opened the box gently to see what it contained.
It was a collection of palm leaves lashed together to make a book. Consistent with an ancient manuscript collection from this area, but I couldn’t see how it would do me any good. The tie came lose and I looked at the writing on the cover. It was out of the language ability of my character and shrugged. What was their motive in giving me a book I couldn’t read?
I lifted the first page and found out.
Every other page was illustrated with tenth century images of men and women in the act of love. On the couch. In the street. On the balcony. Just about every place imaginable. Quite easy on the eyes, but I couldn’t understand why they’d sent me here to find this. How did it help me locate the missing courier box of Major Buttersnipe?
“Do you like it?” a voice said behind me. I spun around to find the lithe form of Chamistra.
Her wrap fell to the floor and she only wore the ashes. And not much ash at all, as I could see. It was smeared over most of her body, but not on her breasts, face, or between the legs. She smiled at me and ran one ashen hand down the carvings on the temple walls.
This is when I noticed what was carved on the temple walls.
The figures were in congress every way
imaginable. I stared at limestone carvings of a group of dancers bent over in front of a prince who had no issue as his entire court watched him perform. As half of the court was busy in the same line of work, I couldn’t see how they would complain. It was a complete blast of erotic imagery. Nothing I’d ever seen online could match what I looked at this moment. Did Heath Mint hire a porno company to handle this part of the game design?
“Pick whatever position you would like,” she told me. “I can see that you will have it.”
Then she picked up her wrap and stretched it over her body. “But not right now, captain,” Chamistra, told me. “I think we have other business to attend.” She slid out the entrance to the temple. Chamistra was gone in seconds.
I had my revolver out and the communicator handle activated by the time she was gone. Rhonda’s face filled the screen and she yawned. I couldn’t see anyone behind her this time like I did while in Wolf Mountain, but I had the sensation that something was out of control on her end. She glanced from one side to the next while I talked to her.
“Would you please tell me what the hell is going on with this game?” I demanded. “First you give me a duplicate of the wolf girl who married me when I was in the other company’s game. How did they find out about her? Don’t expect me to believe this was a coincidence. I just saw her naked in the daylight and she matched Chamita down to the mark on her thigh.”
“Can’t help you there, sport,” Rhonda informed me. “This crew is keeping it all wrapped up. They don’t tell me a thing. Is there anything you want to report?” She didn’t look good.
“Just that we’ve entered the lost city and it doesn’t appear to be very lost. I don’t see any trees or vines covering it. There is a perimeter around it where nothing grows. I’m guessing this is part of the game plan, because it makes no sense otherwise. Did they give you any information for me?” I still had the original edition of the Joy of Jungle Love next to me.
“Not yet,” she responded from the handle screen. “Is that some serious reading you have there? Trying to bone up for a later meetup?”