Shadow Play (20 page)

"Are you happy?" he sneered. "Are you? Now get the hell away from me and thank your lucky stars that I didn't rob Norman of his right to your goddamned virginity on his wedding night."

He left her and did not look back again until he had entered the dark line of trees crowding the path. Then he sank against the trunk of an acacia and pressed his face so hard into the gnarled bark that blood ran down his cheek, until the pain in his groin had subsided, as well as the desire to storm back into the rain, throw Sarah to the ground, and show her exactly what it meant to need beyond rational thought, to want her so badly you were willing to give up your last fragment of pride just to hold her, however briefly.

Minutes clipped by before he was able to regain control of his mind and body; then, tilting his hat over his eyes, he hunched his shoulders against the deluge and started toward the river. He looked back only once: a mistake. Sarah's small form, a black silhouette against the firelight, stood watching him from the hut's doorway. He almost hesitated, then gritted his teeth and walked on through the darkness.

Sarah watched Morgan disappear amid the wind-whipped trees and the flashes of lightning, while inside she felt a riot of emotions swirling into a lazy eddy of glowing warmth. She couldn't move. She felt her heart beating in her throat and temples and, strangely enough, on the tip of her tongue. Her fingertips tingled.

How could he walk away when her world had turned upside down? Closing her eyes, she touched her swollen lips and wondered if at any time in her life she had felt so gloriously alive, like a shimmering spirit set free from its mortal bonds. Never. She had never felt this way. She knew now that there was something between them; it had danced around them, flashed like white lightning. Perhaps it had been there all along, since that first night Morgan Kane had swept her up in his arms. No, she hadn't imagined it. And she could no longer dismiss her reactions to his presence as anger or irritation or, as ridiculous as it seemed now, an infatuation brought on by an idiotic belief that he was the mythical
boto.

An Indian trundled in and dropped her trunk at her feet, spilling the array of feminine attire in a colorful heap on the earth floor. The young man scrambled to scoop

the clothing up, but she waved him away with a remote smile and fell to her knees to collect it herself. Her diary was lying open, the script staring back at her to remind her that she had no right to be attracted to another man. She was engaged to Norman.

She slammed the diary closed and squeezed her eyes shut. That wonderful sense of euphoria vanished, leaving her with an aching head. Her lips throbbed, as if reminding her that she had just committed the most grievous of sins.

But she hadn't! It wasn't as if she and Norman were already married. And besides, it would probably never happen again. She would make certain it never happened again. She would stay as far away from Morgan as possible, and...

"Who am I kidding?" she asked aloud. "I've been attracted to the man since the night I met him in that hot, horrible little hovel." Attracted was an understatement. Mesmerized. Fascinated. Exhilarated. Intoxicated. Obsessed! Everything she always believed that she should feel about Norman, but hadn't. She'd convinced herself that such emotions existed only deep in the pages of romantic novels—the forbidden sort the girls at school read secretly in the night by candlelight. She'd accepted her feelings of quiet respect for Norman, ignoring her own desires for fireworks and stars and dreamy surrenders, chastising herself for even thinking about them.

A gust of wind whipped through the doorway, spraying her with rain and forcing her thoughts back to a somber reality. What was she thinking? Just because Morgan had kissed her, just because she'd felt the earth move, didn't mean she was in love, any more than it meant that he had somehow fallen for her. Besides, he was used to women swooning in his arms. She'd allowed herself to fall into the same trap as all the others, and now he was no doubt standing out in the rain laughing at her. He must have kissed a thousand women like he'd kissed her. She felt heartsick and foolish and guilty and confused. And she wished he would walk through the door that very minute and kiss her again.

Morgan and Henry and the Indians struck out be- fore sunrise. With rain pounding their shoulders, they steered the canoes up the river at a snail's pace. Occasionally the muted roll of thunder vibrated the air. Now and again the eerie reflection of lightning above the trees shimmered through the drenched sky like static electricity.

The river rose. Where once the shallow bends had been easily navigated, now the shoals were frothing with water. Eating into the tenuous sandbanks, the flood swept trees and bushes into the swirling melee, forming floating islands similar to the one the
Santos
had encountered, forcing the travelers to midstream in order to avoid them. Yet even there they found little respite from the dangers, for whirl- pools came close to capsizing their boats on several occasions.

Finally, after battling the impossible tempest, Morgan ordered the expedition ashore, a seemingly impossible maneuver as the water roared against the banks, cutting sharply over jutting tree roots that raked at the hulls of their canoes like knives. He was forced to grab onto a low-lying branch with his bare hands. Briars bit into them, yet

gritting his teeth against the pain, he hung tight until Henry could scramble ashore and secure the canoe with a rope. They dragged the vessel up the incline then slipped and slid back down to the water to help the others.

Many of the men had managed to reach safety. Yet farther downriver two overturned canoes attested to the treachery of the rapids. With rain battering his shoulders, Morgan headed back to his own craft, trudging up the razorback ridge, stumbling over fallen trees and buttressed tree roots rising out of die mud.

Damn Sarah St. James! Damn her to hell for turning him into a coward who would rather run than face up to the fact that he was falling for her. At last he had finally accepted his destiny to confront King and die. Then in Sarah had walked, the embodiment of everything gentle and beautiful and innocent that he had ever imagined loving—mat he had ever imagined loving him. But she loved another man. "Damn." He beat the ground. "Damn."

They managed to construct a shelter of palm and fern leaves which they crawled beneath before falling into an exhausted sleep. Eventually the storm subsided, yet the rain continued to fall in a slow drizzle throughout the rest of the day and night. Sometime before dawn the spattering of rain ceased and a wave of humid heat washed over them. Little by little the jungle came to life. Steam rose from the floresta floor in clouds of condensation that felt as wet as the rain had earlier.

Perhaps it was the snap of a twig that first brought Morgan around, or maybe it was the heat that made his muddied skin itch and the wounds on his hands burn as if with fever. Gradually he became aware of movement around him, the hum of muted voices. Tired and sleepy, he tried to remember if he had had too much to drink before turning in. Then he tried to recall where he was. He rolled his head and groaned. His entire body ached. His mouth was dry as dust. He needed a drink and a cigarette—badly.

Someone nudged him none too gently in the ribs with a foot. Squinting at the daylight, he opened his eyes and stared up the barrel of a rifle at Sarah.

"Surprise," she stated blandly.

Focusing harder, he looked beyond her to find Kan and Henry at his side. They all regarded Morgan as if he were a leech.

Garbed at last in breeches tucked into high boots, and a shirt that fit her loosely, the sleeves rolled up to expose her narrow wrists, Sarah glared down at him with a look of fury. "You snake," she said. "You swine. Did you think I'd let you get away with it? Did you honestly believe I'd allow you to go to Japura* without me?"

Lowering his aching head to the ground, he closed his eyes. The gladness he felt at seeing her left him weak. But there came as quickly the nagging reality of their circum- stances and the responsibility he must assume for her safety. "Look," he managed, "let's be reasonable."

"Reasonable!"

He winced.

"There is nothing reasonable about you. This is my expedition, yet you seem intent on losing me along the way. I'd like to know why."

"My apologies for caring whether you live or die." He opened his eyes. Sarah's face appeared drained of color and drawn by fatigue. She looked very young, and despite the haughtiness of her uplifted chin, extremely frightened and wary, and strangely hurt. Glancing at the rifle barrel still aimed at his nose, he said, "Sarah, Japura is no place for a woman."

"I've managed nicely up until now."

"I don't know how you made it upriver in that storm, but that'll look like a pleasure outing compared to what comes next. Compared to an overland journey through Japura, hell is a holiday, and if you don't believe me, ask Henry." Frowning toward the pygmy, he stressed, "Tell her, Longfellow. What are you waiting for?"

"He's right," Henry replied. "We shouldn't have al- lowed you to come, Sarah. We should have forced you to remain in Santarem—in Georgetown, for that matter. We were selfish swines; there's simply no other excuse—except that we enjoyed your company too much. We wanted you around as long as possible, at a risk to your life. For that we apologize."

She shifted her attention back to Morgan. "I might believe that of you, sir, but not of him." She punctuated
him
with a sharp poke of her rifle at Morgan's nose. "This one cannot abide me. He's made that more than obvious these last weeks. Fine," she told Morgan. "Perhaps once I believed your friendship was important to me; now I don't care whether you like me or not. But I will tell you this: I'm going to Japura' with or without your support. That bastard King destroyed my father, and I'm going to rectify the situation if it's the last thing I do."

"It will be. You'll never leave Japura alive."

"Yes, I will, because you'll be there beside me. You went in there once. You made it out. You can do it again. I know you can!"

Covering his face with his sore hands, Morgan groaned. Then he sat up. Surrounded by savages whose expressions ran from anger to suspicion to outright adoration, it was all he could do not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Finally he climbed to his feet, brushed the foliage from his damp breeches, and stomped the mud from his boots. Only then did he address Sarah again.

Shoving the gun barrel aside, he approached her. She quelled, her bright eyes widening, her lips parting. For an instant he was awash with the need to take her face in his hands and make love to her mouth again until she fought him as she had that night on her father's veranda. Instead, he grabbed her and shook her until she whimpered and

stared up at him with a strange sort of pain that made him question the reason for her anger.' 'What happens to you if I'm killed, Sarah?"

"But you won't be. I have faith that you'll see us through this—"

"Faith! Sarah, I'm not God. I can't work miracles, no matter what you've been told."

"My father believed in you, and so do these men."

He turned away in frustration and walked to the outcrop of rock over the river. He gazed down at the falsely serene surface of water before facing her again. She waited in watchful silence, her features hopeful and desperate.

"Please," she said, her voice ragged with emotion. "We can't do this without you, Morgan."

He shook his head. She wanted a hero, and he wasn't it. God, if she only knew.

Sarah approached him. As she placed her hand upon his arm he noted her Angers were as swollen as his. Turning her palms up, he saw they were covered with blisters. "The oars,'' she explained. ' 'I helped Kan paddle.''

He covered her hand with his, rubbed the raw flesh lightly with the pad of his thumb. "You might have drowned," he told her.

"But I didn't."

Turning back toward the river, he watched a great black bird rise up from the shallows and fly to the tree limbs high overhead. He suddenly ached for the sunshine on his face, for a cool drink of something besides rotgut to quench his thirst, for a world of things that he could never get—chiefly among them, the love of a beautiful woman.

"Will you do it?" came her anxious voice.

"Yeah," he replied wearily. "I will."

Before he could react, she had thrown her arms around him and pressed her face into his back. "How can I ever thank you?" she asked.

Remembering the kiss they'd shared two nights before, he smiled wryly to himself. "Oh, I could think of a few ways," he replied in a whisper.

"You're wonderful." She breathed against his skin.

He closed his eyes and swallowed.

"Wonderful..."

Chapter Ten

The river continued to rise due to heavy rains along the slopes of the Serra Tapirapeco mountains, which straddled the Brazil-Venezuela border. Slowly, the land was being swallowed up before the travelers' eyes.

The stillness and gloom had become almost painful. To speak was to shatter the quiet in the most disconcerting way. They found themselves whispering, yet even that seemed to destroy the balance of nature. Eventually they began communicating from boat to boat by hand signals, which was wiser since they had begun noticing signs of Indians along the river. Kan and Henry hotly debated whether the tribes were Txukahameis or Yanoamo.

"The Txukahameis will take us in and treat us like gods. Their women will want to mate with us to show their delight in our visit," Henry explained. "The Yanoamo will boil us alive."

Morgan said, "Then let's hope they're Txukahameis."

Among the patches of green shade and splinters of light, the barrel like trunks of trees rose out of the dark, still water to tower hundreds of feet above them. Their roots were monstrous, rising in an arch to form buttresses as grand and imposing as those of any Gothic cathedral. High overhead, clouds of condensation, trapped against the ceiling of tree limbs and leaves, dripped moisture onto the river, covering the pitch-black surface with ripples that spiraled outward in glistening undulations.