Shadowline Drift: A Metaphysical Thriller (2 page)

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Authors: Alexes Razevich

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Metaphysical, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Suspense, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Metaphysical & Visionary, #Science Fiction

BOOK: Shadowline Drift: A Metaphysical Thriller
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Mawgis chuckled under his breath. “By parrot hatching, the water will seem fine to you.”

Water dripped from
the leaves constantly, even now in the dry season. The bugs were huge, many of them poisonous, and they got into everything. Jake didn’t know when parrot hatching might be, and he didn’t want to stay long enough to find out. “Make the deal and get out,” he’d been told. That was fine by him.

They walked
awhile without speaking, Jake following carefully in Mawgis’s footsteps along a narrow path that wound through the dense trees. A small green tree frog croaked angrily, leaped from a branch, and seemed to simply disappear. The idle
translator hummed in Jake’s ear. The monkeys had departed, but the forest rang with the wild cackling of birdcalls.

“
Why have you journeyed all this way to see me?” Mawgis asked over his shoulder, not breaking stride.

It seemed an odd question. The Salesians had set up the meeting, given Mawgis the translator
, and taught him how to use it. They must have told Mawgis why he was coming.

“
I’ve been asked by the chiefs of many countries and businesses—a society of helpers,” Jake said, wondering how else he might describe a humanitarian aid group, “what we call World United, to speak with you about benesha.”

Mawgis stopped and turned back to face him.
“Benesha? Benesha is just rocks.”

Benesha
meant “soft fire,” according to the Tabna-English dictionary. Ashne Simapole, the head of World United, had said the name was fortuitous, being so close to the English
beneficial
and the Portuguese
benéficio
. The similarity put people in the right frame of mind, he’d said.

“
Why do your people want rocks?”

“
You and I are men who’ve been many places and seen many things,” Jake said. “There are places in the world where children are too weak from hunger to brush the flies off their faces or even to cry. Every day children and mothers and fathers die because there is not enough to eat. Our scientists have discovered that if animals eat grain mixed with
benesha, their meat is more nourishing. A bird that would feed only you and me could, with benesha, feed us and eight more.”

Mawgis
’s tar-colored eyebrows shot up. His eyes went wide. “Ten people can eat one small bird and all will have enough? Such great magic. Your wizards must be strong to have found out this thing.”

In truth, it had been mere luck that the
mineral’s protein-enhancing properties had been discovered. The benesha had originally been fed to mice. The mice were fed to dogs. The dogs didn’t get hungry again for a very long time.

“
With benesha,” Jake said, “everyone can have enough to eat. No child need ever go hungry again. You can make that happen.”

“
Humph,” Mawgis said. He made a quick turn and sped down the faint path that nearly disappeared in the choked tangles of roots and thick layers of decaying leaves.

Jake bolted after him, almost running into him when Mawgis came to a sudden stop. They
’d come in a circle. The camp lay a few yards ahead.

“
I will think on this,” Mawgis said, and moved off faster than Jake could follow, leaving him standing alone in the forest among the oppressive trees.

 

 

Jake slept surprising
ly well, considering how loud the forest rang at night. Maybe he was getting
used to it. Or maybe it was relief at having finally met with Mawgis the day before. He sensed that things would proceed quickly with the Tabna chief. Mawgis didn’t strike him as a patient man—more the type who knew what he wanted and wanted it now. It was a matter of digging through the rhetoric. There was always rhetoric and bombast, people trying to seem more noble or concerned or hesitant or even greedy than they were. Just once, Jake thought, he’d like to deal with someone who said it straight out: This is what I want, no more, no less. Give it to me and you can have what you came for.

Near the cooking area, several women and young girls sat cross-legged, chattering low and sharpening digging sticks. Two women wearing short
banana-leaf skirts were mending small woven sacks. The Brits sat by a dying fire, finishing breakfast, tin plates in their laps, blue-speckled enamel mugs in their hands or sitting near them on the ground. Jake glanced around the camp, unease churning in his stomach as he walked toward the film crew. Where were the Tabna men?

“
I fuckin’ hate these fuckin’ bugs,” Kevin said by way of a greeting. He was sitting and Jake standing, which put their heads at the same height.

“
Damn BBC,” Kevin said, warming to his complaints. “‘Wanna take a crew to the Amazon?’ they said. ‘Have a grand adventure, Kevin,’ they said. ‘Be the one to record this unknown, untainted tribe on film.’ Bloody hell.”

His crewmates laughed. All except Ian, who never seemed comfortable when Jake was around.
Jake noticed Ian now, how he looked at the ground or into the trees beyond the camp, anywhere but at him. On the river journey, when they’d settled into the habit of riding with the same people every day, Ian had asked Kevin to switch with him—taking the cameraman out of the canoe Jake rode in.

He
’d been around plenty of Ians in his life—people who didn’t know what to make of his stature, people uncomfortable with his small size, the seeming wrongness of it, as though it were a malady that might be catching. It stung him every time, though he’d gotten very good at not letting it show.

But here in this world, the Brits were the freaks, giants in a place where he and the Tabna were the norm. Even Joaquin, who wasn’t more than five foot six, was oversize. It felt good to Jake, being right-sized and comfortable in this world. He wasn’t surprised by how much he liked it, or by the twinge in his stomach—knowing that this wouldn’t last, that he’d soon return to the regular world.

“Kevin figured the Tabna were goona be his Ishi,” Derek, the only Scotsman of the crew, was saying. “Goona make him fooking famous. Goona get him a cushy lecture job at some fooking university.”

“
Might do at that.” Jake ran his hands over his head, wiping salty sweat over hair already stiff with it. He’d been lured by the promise of a grand
adventure too, of traveling where few white men had gone. Lured by the challenge of negotiating with a tribe that didn’t conduct trade.

But
most of all, he’d been lured by what he’d be negotiating for, the benesha, and the promise of an end to severe hunger.

A woman ambled out of a hut and joined the
sack menders. A little girl toddled behind. Still no men.

Jake looked around the camp.
“Have you seen Mawgis this morning?”

Kevin shrugged and pulled himself to his feet. He wasn
’t a tall man, but he towered over Jake. “Don’t know. They were gone when we got up this morning. We ate breakfast with the ladies.”

“
Where’s Joaquin?” Jake asked.

“
Gone off to some emergency upriver. Left right after dawn. Took his translator and the only working satellite phone with him, too. How’re we supposed to talk to the Tabna without a translator? Whole day likely gone to rot.” Kevin spat. “Bureaucrats.”

Jake reached into his pocket and pulled out his translator. He
’d brought two—one for himself, one for Joaquin. Mawgis already had one the Salesians had left. When negotiations were finished, Jake would return them all to World United.

He walked toward the young woman he
’d admired yesterday, the tiny machine visible in his flattened palm. She shook her head and turned her back to him. With a beseeching look in his eyes, he
approached the women mending the sacks. One of them shook her head, but another stood up and came over, smiling nervously. Jake gently fitted the translator in her ear—a simple thing to do, since she was his height. He found himself smiling back at her, an easy, comfortable smile, enjoying the pleasure of being among people his own size, even as he worried and asked her where Mawgis and the other men were.

She spoke. He tapped his own ear and then touched
hers, in sign that he needed the translator back. She giggled slightly, then removed the machine and handed it over.

“
Gone hunting,” the translator voiced, turning her words into English.

He took the
machine from his ear and held it out for her. She gingerly set it in place again.

“
For how long?” he asked, and immediately regretted the unanswerable question.

The woman gave him a blank look, handed back the translator
, and turned away. She resettled herself and went back to her sack mending. The other women and girls looked at her with curiosity, but she only bent her head and concentrated on her task.

Jake blew out a breath. Mawgis might indeed be hunting, but it wasn
’t only meat for the pot he was after. His absence was about power, about making him wait. Jake knew it, and he was sure Mawgis knew that he knew.

Two

 

“
Jake. Jake. Jake. Jake.”

He woke
exhausted and confused, his brain foggy from too little sleep in a restless night mostly spent worrying about the success of the mission. Mawgis held the tent door aside with one shoulder, leaning in, grinning at him. The pale yellow light of early dawn framed the Tabna chief like an aura. The opened door let in the wet heat already ratcheting up for the day. Mawgis motioned with a softly fisted hand for Jake to follow him. Jake didn’t move.

He knew more about the Tabna now, about Mawgis. The women had told him some useful things while he
’d busied himself translating for the film crew—the little machine whispering in his ear hour after hour while he kept half an eye on the trees around the camp, watching for Mawgis’s return. He’d learned about the Tabna tradition of one-upmanship—a game devised by the first ancestors when they’d arrived in the forest, to trick knowledge from ignorant natives. These days the Tabna played the game among themselves, and with youngsters stolen from other tribes—to find the cleverest among them, as potential mates. Jake had
wondered what happened to the less clever. Were they sent back? Abandoned when the nomadic tribe moved on, or left to fend for themselves? He hadn’t asked, since it would have meant trading the translator again. The Tabna liked to talk, but moving the translator back and forth seemed to weary them. They lost interest if he asked them to switch too often.

The Tabna believed that playing the game with anyone who wasn
’t of their tribe was a gift—a way to teach an “other” about life, and to make the other a better person. Sauleen, the woman most willing to wear the translator and talk, had said the depth of the game Mawgis played with Jake was an honor. He could have done without the favor.

And now here was Mawgis, motioning again with his fist that Jake should come with him.
Jake lay on the sleeping bag, his eyes locked on those of the older man.

Mawgis opened his curled fingers like
a hammy actor, displaying the translator in his palm. He made a great show of installing it, first holding up the tiny piece of hardware between his thumb and forefinger, then twisting his wrist and setting the translator in his ear with a flourish.

Jake watched but didn
’t move. Mawgis grinned and started talking, the words coming fast, rolling into almost a single long sound. His hands gyrated in sweeping arcs. Jake closed his eyes and rolled over, as if to go back to sleep.

Mawgis laughed—graciously conceding defeat, Jake thought.
Mawgis ambled over, chattering in Tabna as he walked. He knelt down, and clasped Jake’s shoulder as though Jake were his good friend whom he had missed terribly while he’d been away. Jake rolled back over and slowly opened his eyes. He sighed deeply and reached into the pocket of the cutoff jeans he’d slept in, pulled out the translator, and set it in his ear.

“
Come with me,” Mawgis said. “We will talk about the things your chiefs want to know.”

T
wo fat, black-and-white-speckled worms fell out of Jake’s boots when he upended and shook the leather shoes. Yesterday it had been a large frightened cricket. The day before that, a Brazilian wandering spider, making Jake jump. The wandering spider was one of the few in the forest with venom that could kill a man. He’d smashed it with the heel of his boot.

He pulled on a dusty
T-shirt, tugged on socks and the boots, and checked that he had his watch. Mawgis kept his eyes on the procedure, grinning. Jake followed him out.

A low campfire burned, bathing the ground in a soft glow. They walked across the hard-tramped soil toward
Mawgis’s hut, the two of them the only people in the usually busy common area. The rest were still asleep, Jake assumed—Kevin and Joaquin in their shared tent, the remainder of the film crew in another, the Tabna in their huts. An early-rising woodpecker hammered loudly on a nearby tree.
Jake winced at the irritating rat-a-tat. A dull ache had settled into the left side of his head, behind the temple. He would have given a lot for a cup of strong coffee.

Or better, a big mug of wicked, caffeine-exploding yerba maté, sweetened with four teaspoons of sugar. Something to kick his brain into high gear. Instead he sucked in deep gulps of air, oxygenating his blood. By the time they reached Mawgis’s hut, he felt fully awake, the ache in his head gone. Capable.

The hut had been empty of
everything but sitting mats and a pile of gravel the last time Jake had been there. Now, along with the two mats, it contained an incongruous tall silver teapot resting on a metal frame, a small candle burning beneath it. On the ground next to the teapot sat a box of long kitchen matches, two clay cups with heavy blue and red glazes, and another small, neat hill of tiny stones.

“
Maté?” Mawgis asked, offering the drink Jake had lusted for on the walk over.

Jake shrugged away the sudden unease that tensed his muscles.
Yerba maté was a common drink in Brazil. It wasn’t at all odd that it should be offered, and only a coincidence that he had just been thinking of it.

“
Yes. Thank you.”

Mawgis poured
maté for Jake and a cup for himself. The fresh, loamy scent of the tea filled Jake’s nostrils. The brew was warm and strong, and
already heavily sugared exactly the way he liked it. He told himself again that the coincidence was just that.

From the corner of his eye, he watched Mawgis sip his drink. The cups weren
’t large, but both men needed two hands to hold theirs—Mawgis the distorted mirror image of himself.

This
was how he must look to normal-sized people, struggling with things they took for granted—two hands to hold the small mug, the trembling in the arms, like a child. Overwhelmed by knives and forks too big for his hands. Climbing on a step stool to brush his teeth and rinse his mouth. Using that damn grabber to get a glass from the cupboard, as if he were already an old man, infirm.

Jake
focused on the ground, to push the images away. He had work to do.

They sat quietly and sipped their drinks, both
men pretending it was companionable. Bits of dried palm frond came loose from the roof and floated down. Flies buzzed past their ears. Jake’s mind whirled ahead, planning, considering, choosing words. He was sure Mawgis was doing the same.

“
Do you enjoy your work?” Mawgis asked, breaking the silence.

“
I do,” Jake said. “I like helping two sides find an agreement that benefits them both. I believe my work brings good to everyone involved.”

Mawgis set down his cup.
“We’ll now talk about benesha.”

Jake
started to rise. “I’ll get Joaquin.” He wanted the FUNAI representative there to witness the terms he and Mawgis agreed on. To ensure that the Tabna got what was promised to them. He’d seen too many promises broken, too many people cheated out of what was theirs.

“
We
will talk,” Mawgis said, the sudden scowl on his face enough to stop Jake from pressing further.

“
World United,” Jake said, sitting back down and keeping his voice casual, “is prepared to trade well with your people for benesha.”

Mawgis spread his hands, pa
lms up. “What do you have to offer that might interest me? What could you offer for benesha that is worth its value? What can you pay equal to a full belly for a hungry child?”

Aspirin. Antiseptics. Steel trowels and shovels. Machetes.
Fishhooks. Jake felt foolish. The air was hot and muggy. His shirt clung to his armpits. He worked at looking cool and comfortable, in control.

“
You have only one thing,” Mawgis said. “Yourself.”

Jake tapped at the translator. This was a bad time for the machine to spit out the wrong word.

Mawgis leaned slightly forward. “Tell me a tale from your life and I will judge its value. If it’s good enough, you will have your benesha.”

“
What kind of story?” He’d done enough deals with different sorts of people to be only mildly surprised at anything anyone said or asked for. In
Kazakhstan, a farmer had insisted Jake arrange a marriage for his homely son before he’d agree to placement of a cell phone tower on his land. Telling a story would be easy.

“
A true one. Why are you small? You were not born stunted, I think.”

“
No.” Jake fiddled with his watch. Usually when some fool asked about his size, he answered, “Hormones” and let it go at that. He’d never told anyone the real story. He considered several answers he could give now—and decided on the truth.

“
It happened when I was five, just a few months shy of my sixth birthday, about the same time from the womb as Marl is now,” Jake said, naming a young boy in the camp. “A nervous age, when a child is leaving babyhood behind, looking forward with excitement and fear to finding his place in the grown-up world. I was bright—I’d taught myself to read when I was four. I loved watching baseball and ice hockey and playing violent video games. I thought the sun rose and set on my mother’s smile.”

Mawgis nodded, his eyes closed as if seei
ng Jake then, a skinny kid who, except for softer facial features and a slighter frame, looked the same as Jake did now, doing things Mawgis could not conceive of—reading, video games. Was the machine in his ear crackling with static at the untranslatable words? Jake wiped his sweaty hands against his shorts.

“
It happened in what we call April, the time in my country when the land begins to warm again after the cold season. When I woke that morning, my mother was already up. From my bed, I heard the light rustle of turning pages as she read the newspaper in the living room. My father was away on business. My older brother was still asleep in our room. Half-asleep myself, I stumbled out of bed and down the hall and crawled into my mother’s arms. She kissed the top of my head and said, ‘Such a big boy you’re getting to be, Jake-Jake, but you still fit in my lap.’

“
My heart began to pound. I thought, ‘If I get too big to fit in my mother’s lap, she won’t love me anymore.’ A crazy fear. A child’s fear—real-seeming, narrow in its vision, and all-consuming, the way only a child’s fear can be. With all my being, I wished never to grow any bigger, and I didn’t.”

Jake hadn
’t thought about that moment for a long time—the instant when a five-year-old boy did the impossible and changed his life forever. It was like those stories about terminally ill but determined people whose cancers disappear. On some cellular level people had more control over their bodies than they consciously understood. His parents had hauled him to every specialist on three continents. No one could explain what had happened. No amount of human growth hormone could make him taller.

Mawgis opened his eyes.
“Did you look back later with sorrow?”

“
Many times. And many times I struggled to undo what I’d done that morning. Especially in high school and college, when I became aware of women. Not many wanted to be seen with a man my size, much less consider courtship with someone who looked more like a child than a potential mate. Everything else about my body moved right on schedule. My voice changed at twelve. I started shaving at seventeen. I had all the usual urges.”

Mawgis regarded Jake and seemed to make up his mind about something.
“You are no longer sad.”

“
Reconciled,” Jake said, and shrugged.

But not without forlorn hope. Not without the dream that one morning he would awake and find himself grown. Not without bitterness and anger and bewilderment at what he
’d done—and a vain pride that he’d achieved as much as he had in life, despite his size.

“
A good story,” Mawgis said, resting his hands on his thighs and leaning forward. “Worth something.”

“
Worth letting the hungry have benesha?”

A smile crept across the Tabna
’s mouth. “Worth sharing a secret with you.” He stood up. The hut felt suddenly unbearably hot and stuffy. For no reason Jake could explain, he wanted to flee. He started to stand, but Mawgis motioned with his chin for Jake to stay.

The older man left the hut and almost immediately
returned carrying a wooden bowl about the size of a cereal dish, half-filled with greenish mud.

“
Benesha,” he announced.

“
Mixed with what?” The benesha Jake had seen in New York looked like finely ground jade.

“
Only water.”

“
Our scientists fed it dry to the test animals. Should they have mixed it?”

“
Benesha like this is only for Tabna,” Mawgis said. “And now for you, too.” He slipped the translator from his ear.

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