Amazon Adventures

I looked at her, still unable to speak. She approached me, and offered me a hand. After a brief hesitation, I took the hand that was offered to me. She knelt by the jaguar, ignoring me completely. I watched as she produced a knife from a waist sash and began cutting up pieces of the jaguar's flesh. She cut off the ears, and the paws. Neatly. She was frighteningly good with the knife. I watched as she began hacking at it. She did for some time. When she was done, she had separated the jaguar's head from its shoulders and dropped the whole thing into a backpack which she hauled over her shoulders. The girl then gestured for me to follow her, and I did. I followed my savior into the jungle, not knowing where we were going.

After walking for about half an hour, we arrived at a large farm. I took a look around. Yes, this was one of those places I'd read about in those adventure comics I used to get as a kid. Haciendas. Big houses in the middle of the South American jungle. There were chickens around the place, and I saw a couple of cows and goats, too. A man came out of the Hacienda and greeted the girl. I guessed him to be her father. He looked at me with suspicion. The girl embraced the older man, and gestured to me.

"Father," she said. "I found this man in the jungle, the man-eater was about to devour him. He screamed loud enough to wake the dead, that's what attracted my attention."

The dark girl looked at me. "What is your name?" She asked me in heavily accented English. I didn't say anything. I was still staring at her. "Foreigner, what is your name?"

I shook myself out of the daze I had been in since she rescued me from the jaws of death. " I am Bart," I said. " Of the Adams family."

Both the girl and her father laughed at that. I wondered why. Like so many people in the world, they had seen movies about the Addams Family. Oh, well. I wasn't related to that fictitious family. Oh, no. My family was a lot stranger.