Free The Ruins by Scott Smith Page A

she'd long ago stopped bothering to swat them. But then,
abruptly, just after she crossed the stream, they weren't
there anymore. It seemed to happen in an instant: they were all around
her, humming and hovering, and then, magically, they were gone. Without
them, even the heat felt easier to bear, even the implacable greenness,
the smell of shit coming from her feet, and for a short stretch it was
almost pleasant, walking one after another through the whispering
trees. Her head cleared a bit, and she found words for the rustling
leaves.
     Take
me with you , one of the trees seemed to say.
     And then: Do you know who I am?
     The
trail rounded a curve, and suddenly there was another clearing ahead of
them, a circle of sunlight a hundred feet down the path, the heat
giving a throbbing, watery quality to the view.
     A
tree on her left seemed to call her name. Stacy , it whispered, so clearly that she actually turned her head, a
goose-bump feeling running up and down her back. Behind her came
another rustling voice: Are you lost? And then she was stepping with the others into
sunlight.
     This
clearing wasn't a field. It looked like a road, but it
wasn't that, either. It was as if a gang of men had planned
to build a road, had chopped away the jungle and flattened the earth,
but then abruptly changed their minds. It was twenty yards wide and
stretched in either direction, left and right, for as far as Stacy
could see, finally curving out of sight. On the far side of it rose a
small hill. The hill was rocky, oddly treeless, and covered with some
sort of vinelike growth—a vivid green, with hand-shaped leaves and tiny
flowers. The plant spread across the entire hill, clinging so tightly
to the earth that it almost seemed to be squeezing it in its grasp. The
flowers looked like poppies, the same size and color: a brilliant
stained-glass red.
     They
all stood there, staring, shading their eyes against the sunlight. It
was a beautiful sight: a hill shaped like a giant breast, covered in
red flowers. Amy took out her camera, started snapping pictures.
     The
cleared ground was a different color than the fields they'd
crossed earlier. The fields had been a reddish brown, almost orange in
spots, while this was a deep black, flecked with white, like frost
rime. Beyond it, the path resumed, winding its way up the hillside. It
had grown strangely quiet, Stacy suddenly realized; the birds had
fallen silent. Even the locusts had stopped their steady thrumming. A
peaceful spot. She took a deep breath, feeling sleepy, and sat down.
Eric did, too, then Pablo, the three of them in a row. Mathias was
passing his water bottle around again. Amy kept taking
pictures—of the hill, the pretty flowers, then of each of
them, one after another. She told Mathias to smile, but he was peering
up the hillside.
     "Is
that a tent?" he asked.
     They
turned to look. There was an orange square of fabric just visible, at
the very top of the hill. It was billowing, sail-like, in the breeze.
From this distance, with the rise of the hill partly blocking their
view, it was hard to tell what it was. Stacy thought it looked like a
kite, trapped in the flowering vines, but of course a tent made more
sense. Before anyone could speak, while they were still peering up the
hill, squinting against the sun, there came an odd noise from the
jungle. They all heard it at the same time, while it was still
relatively faint, and they turned, almost in unison, heads cocked,
listening. It was a familiar sound, but for a few seconds none of them
could identify it.
     Jeff
was the one who finally put a name to it. "A
horse," he said.
     And
then Stacy could hear it, too: hoofbeats ,
approaching at a gallop down the narrow trail at their back.
       
    A my still had her camera out.
Through her viewfinder, she watched the horse arrive; she took its
picture as it burst into the clearing: a big brown horse, rearing to a
stop before them. On its back was the Mayan man who'd
approached