The smell of decaying leaves rose from the forest floor as the air grew warmer. A haze of gnats twisted past his eyes, a tiny universe of dark stars whirling by.
“You can’t get back,” Jake said, understanding bursting in his mind like a tiny bomb.
“No. Not on my own. I need your help to get home.”
Thirteen
That was it, then—the future plans Mawgis had for him, the thing Mawgis needed him to do.
Leverage.
Jake shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Mawgis’s eyes widened. “It’s true. I do need your help.”
“I know you do,” he said. “But I’m not going to give it to you. You might as well get on your way.”
“Jake,” Mawgis said, drawing the word out, Jaaake, disbelief in the extra vowels, the same way his father used to say his name when he’d dared defy him.
Jake turned and walked toward the compound, teeth clenched, nervousness zinging through his stomach again. But he held his head high, his back straight, crossing the cane field almost to its border with the courtyard, dirt clods collapsing beneath his feet, him wondering if he’d made the right move. He heard Mawgis running—Mawgis, who’d moved so silently through the forest—the older man’s boots thumping against the dirt, coming closer, getting right up behind him. Rough hands on his shoulders, spinning Jake around.
Mawgis’s face was distorted, every muscle tensed, his eyes so wide Jake thought they might fall out of their sockets. If Mawgis had drawn back his fist and hit him, he wouldn’t have been surprised. Wouldn’t have minded the excuse to hit him back.
But Mawgis needed him—Jake saw the realization flood into the older man’s eyes, felt the other man’s hold on his shoulders loosen, and after a moment heard him exhale a held breath. His mind spun, wondering what Mawgis would do, what he’d say, how to use the other man’s desire. The smile on Mawgis’s face was thin and tight. His eyes narrowed and shining.
Jake felt his jaw clench, nervous about what thoughts Mawgis might be growing behind those dark eyes. He forced his jaw to relax and bent his lips in a cold smile.
Mawgis’s smile fell away. He leaned to the side of Jake’s head and said, “I know what you want.”
The words were breathy in his ear, as warm as steam. Jake drew up his shoulders and waited.
“I can make everyone see you as six feet tall for the rest of your life, Jake. Or taller. Any height you want to be. Just help me with this one small thing.”
Jake thought of Pilar, of what he hoped for them.
“It’s not the same as being tall, is it?” he said, his own voice low, not so breathy as Mawgis’s had been, but hushed. “I’d always know.”
“You’d adjust,” Mawgis said—normal tone, straightening up. “And then you’d forget. And then it would be just the same as true.”
He couldn’t let himself think about that, dream it—want it.
“Tell me the truth about benesha. Is it poison?”
Mawgis flicked his hand. “We went to the village. You know what benesha is.”
He saw the village again in his memory—the staring dead eyes, or black holes where eyes had been pecked away by vultures, and the swollen bodies in the river. The stillness broken only by the buzz of flies. He wanted to turn his eyes away, but it would do no good. The vision would play whichever way he looked.
“Has it been distributed?”
“Everything has happened exactly the way I told you it would that day by the river.”
“You have to stop it.”
Mawgis lifted his chin and opened his mouth—an oval like a singer might make—and let loose a wild sound, half grunt, half mad cackle. Jake staggered back as the sound seemed to fill up the forest, echoing off the trees. He caught himself on the second step and bent his back knee for balance, digging in his toes, making himself step forward again. Forcing himself to act like nothing had happened even while his ears rang and his heart thudded fast in his chest.
It seemed to go on for days, that sound, until Mawgis snapped his mouth shut and a sudden silence fell, as though every bird, beast, and insect, even the leaves and the wind were cowed by Mawgis’s voice.
“Is that why you came here?” Jake asked, his words loud in the silent forest. “To poison half the population?”
The noise around them rose again—a loud chattering of monkeys, heard before they could be seen. Jake, wondering if it was the same troop they’d seen earlier, kept his gaze locked on Mawgis this time.
The older man shifted his eyes, seeming to track the animals through the trees, then moved his focus back to Jake and said, “No, mostly. I fell through and couldn’t get back. The benesha. The deaths. That’s because of you, dear friend. All because of you.”
Jake’s stomach rocked. Leaves rattled in a tree off to his left, on the far side of the cane field, but he wouldn’t look. He pushed the queasiness down. Nothing was his fault. This was just one more game Mawgis was running, one more try at getting up on him. He saw the other man’s eyes flick to the side, but he wasn’t falling for that, either. Mawgis’s eyes widened and his jaw tensed. If the other man was faking it, he was better at this game than Jake had credited him. Jake turned his gaze toward the trees.
The leaves rattled again, harder. A cluster of small hard, brown fruits thudded to the ground.
“Jaguar,” Mawgis said, low.
Jake strained his eyes but couldn’t be sure what he saw—a flash of yellow and brown among the green.
“Run,” Mawgis said, and grabbed him above the wrist, pulling him into the forest.
Jake yanked and twisted his arm to wrest it free, but Mawgis held tight. Jake ran as fast as he could, bumping against rough-barked trunks, slipping on half-decayed leaves, afraid that if he didn’t keep up, Mawgis would drag him behind. Twigs snapped under their feet. It was crazy, Jake thought. Running would only make them look more like prey. Mawgis should have known that.
“Is the cat another of your illusions?” he called, stumbling, breaking a small branch alongside the trail. Remembering that Pilar had said the jaguar was Naheyo’s familiar, and thinking maybe she was chasing them. He shook off the thought. Naheyo couldn’t turn into a jaguar. But Mawgis could change size, or make Jake think he had, and if Mawgis could do that, why couldn’t he make it seem as though a big cat was chasing them? The truths of this world were crazy—or not true at all—and they’d make him crazy too, if he thought about them too much.
Was the jaguar following them? How would they know? He reached up and tore the leaves off a curling fern as they ran together, their legs pumping in matched rhythm, then slowing bit by bit, until finally Mawgis quit running a mile or more from the compound and Jake, not expecting the stop, kept on a few steps until Mawgis’s grip on his wrist pulled him short. He looked around wildly for any sign of the jaguar, but saw nothing.
The older man grinned. “And here we are. No jaguar. No worries.”
Jake didn’t know why Mawgis had chosen this place. It wasn’t much of a clearing, just a break in the forest, and it wasn’t any better cover than a hundred places they’d passed—moss-covered trees, thick and green, the thin posts of saplings jutting up into the dim sunlight, tall ferns, and thick-leaved bushes where predators could hide. He felt Mawgis’s hand come off his wrist like cuffs being unlocked. The older man stepped away and sat on a wide stump, one leg crossed over the other, not even breathing hard. Jake leaned forward, his hands on his knees, his breath coming in hard gasps.
“You won’t figure it out,” Mawgis said. “You could think and think for a thousand years and be no closer to the truth than a speck of dirt is close to the sun. Sit down and I’ll tell you more. It’s the only way you’ll learn anything.”
Jake straightened up by inches, still sucking in deep drafts of air. He was tired of the game, weary and worn out—and terrified of what would happen if he stopped playing.
“You’re such a do-gooder,” Mawgis said. “Working so hard to save the poor
starving masses. Did you never think that benesha might be the better savior for your world? All those billions and billions of people. Why not let benesha do its work, cull the herd a bit? Everyone left gets more. What’s wrong with that?”
Jake made himself breathe deeply until his heart slowed and he could no longer feel it banging in his chest.
“We don’t do things that way,” he said, his voice calm, but his mind dull as a butter knife, words coming automatically—words he believed without thinking.
Mawgis laughed. “You don’t do things that way. But ask that annoying shaman—she’d tell you different. You think the world is like you, all the same ethics and morals, but you’re wrong.” His eyes flickered over Jake. “No. You understand that others have different ways of seeing, but you think only your way is right. Naheyo would have killed you if I hadn’t saved you at the exorcism. She would have done what was best for her people. Why will you do less than that, Jake? Why leave the hungry to suffer? Why are you so cruel?”
It was a word trap, and Jake knew it. There was no answer he could give that Mawgis wouldn’t turn to his advantage.
“Because life is precious, Mawgis. Your life. My life. Each one of us.”
The other man waggled his fingers dismissively. “Such a tender heart you have. So follow that heart—help me get my precious life home.”
Slowly Jake walked to the stump and sat as far from Mawgis as possible. Another time he might have laughed at himself, a different situation—he’d taken the bait so easily. At least it’d snapped his mind back into clarity, that fall—a little late, but better than nothing.
“Why me, Mawgis? Why not someone local, or Father Canas, or another of the Salesians? You could’ve been gone long ago.”
Mawgis bent his arms at the elbows and turned his palms up. “I wouldn’t have worked so hard to bring you to me if just anyone would do,” he said. “Benesha is not only a poison. It truly is a travel facilitator, as you know. I’ve been here awhile. Long enough to have looked all over for a suitable helper. When I spotted you, I saw you were more than a little man who’d done well with his life. I could smell your resolve. When you told me the story of why you were small, I knew I was right to have brought you.”
The wording threw him. Mawgis hadn’t brought him; he’d been sent.
Mawgis leaned toward him. “You think you were chosen to negotiate because you are small, as I am. But the truth is, once I’d found you, I made myself look small so that you, and none other, would be sent.” He grinned. “I’m good at illusion, and it helped to pass the time.”
The cold frizz shot through Jake again. He’d gotten it all backward. The people who’d died from benesha, all who would die, it was on him, as Mawgis had said—a scheme cooked up because he was a negotiator, the deaths to make him desperate, to make him keep going until he came to the compound—to be near where the shadowline was. The threat of more deaths to make him desperate enough to help Mawgis, whatever it took. Because Mawgis was desperate, too—why had he not seen that before? Desperate to get out of this world and back to his own.
If Mawgis was telling the truth. Was he even capable of that? Were Mawgis’s truth and his the same? Jake didn’t know.
“My waking up in the compound twice after I’d left it. Was that your doing, too?”
Mawgis looked disappointed. “Really, Jake. Is there no room for mystery in you at all? For you, it’s all facts or fantasy. Black or white. Right or wrong. Why not leave it at magic? Very dull your way.” He shrugged. “Of course it was me. I need you here.” He arced his arm, indicating the tiny clearing. “You kept leaving. We were at cross-purposes. I could have left the woman in the woods last night, you know. I brought her back for you. So you wouldn’t worry. You seem fond of each other.”
Jake raked his fingers through his hair. Mawgis expected his gratitude. He was grateful Mawgis hadn’t left Pilar in the forest. But that was the point—to make him more willing to do whatever Mawgis wanted.
“How could you bring us back and I didn’t know it?”
“You disappoint me, Jake. Can’t you reason it out? I can disrupt a person’s time sense. I can be any size or shape I choose. I picked you up and carried you back. Simple.”
“Because you need me here.”
“Yes,” Mawgis said. “Every bit of it was to get you to this spot.”
Too much was being tossed his way at once. Jake wanted time to think, to find an advantage. “So many talents, Mawgis. Seems like you wouldn’t need help for anything.”
Mawgis rolled his shoulders. “Yes. Annoying, but there is this one thing.”
Jake’s ears pricked up. Here was something. “What is it—this one thing you can’t do?”
He hadn’t noticed how tense Mawgis’s shoulders were, drawn up close to his ears. He saw now how they relaxed. That worried Jake. Why would that question ease Mawgis’s tension?
“You need to know that the shadowline is like a door,” Mawgis said. “Like the door in your house, it is simple to open in one direction, but difficult to push in the other. You must force it.”
“Maybe break the hinges?”
“Opening the portal won’t destroy your world, if that is your worry. It is a matter of will. Nothing to it, really.”
Nothing to it. Probably all sorts of things to it, Jake thought.
“If it’s simple, why do you need my help?”
“As I said, I fell over. Accident. Never should have happened. Think what it would be like if my kind could come and go as we pleased, slipping back and forth between our world and yours. You know the things I can do—we are gods to your kind. You would be at our mercy, and Jake, not all are as nice as I.
“Lucky for you, I only want to go home. What if I wanted to rule your sort? It would be easy. And I’ll tell you something, there are worlds where your kind would be like gods. And worlds with beings who would be like gods to us. So the someone or something that set this all up made it so none of us can control the shadowline ourselves. We need help from a sentient being of that world if we want to get back. Keeps things under control, you see.”
Birdcalls pierced the still air. Jake listened, feeling the size of the forest, the weight of it all. Would he have helped if Mawgis had simply knocked on his door at home, explained himself, and asked? He wanted to think yes, of course, but maybe not.
Mawgis pushed his hair away from his face with both hands. “Shall I tell you something more? Not just any sentient being can move the shadowline. It takes someone with will. Someone a bit stubborn in the face of logic; the kind who will do whatever it takes to get what he wants. The sort of person capable of stopping their own growth, for example.”
Jake crossed his arms over his chest. “Someone like me.”
“Hmmm,” Mawgis noised. “Yes. You would seem the perfect choice. Quite possibly the only choice, not that you should get big-headed about that. A man should keep his humility, don’t you think?”
“What will you give in return for my help?”
“The antidote for benesha. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“I want benesha not to leave the forest.”
“Too late for that. Quite honestly, if not for you, there would be a good chance benesha never would have left the forest. The Tabna and benesha simply would have disappeared, leaving World United and the other do-gooders pining for the vanished dream. But you, Jake, require a different motivation.”
His stomach clenched, but Jake shook his head. “I don’t believe you. For all I know, the Brits and Joaquin Machado were as much an illusion as the other members of the Tabna tribe were, and benesha having left the forest is as much a lie as everything else I’ve heard from you. Maybe it isn’t even poisonous. All of this is nothing but a scheme you cooked up. A crazy bullshit soup designed to get me here to do what you want.”
Mawgis leaned forward and cocked his head. “Is that a chance you’re willing to take?”
Jake stood up. “I think so, yes.” He looked around
to get his bearings—pretty sure he knew in what direction the compound lay. If Mawgis didn’t stop him, didn’t prove somehow that benesha was a poison and was already loose in the world, he’d walk away now a happier man than he’d been in a while.
“I can show you.” Mawgis slipped the backpack off his shoulder and set it on the ground beside the stump.
Jake watched as the older man opened the kit, fished around inside, and pulled out a large stainless steel thermos. Mawgis unscrewed the cap, pulled out the plug, and poured a sludgy green mud into the cap.
“Benesha,” he said. “Already prepared for travel.” He peered at Jake. “Are you ready for a bit of a journey? To see the truth with your own eyes?”
To see with his own eyes—he wasn’t sure he wanted that. Wasn’t sure if he wanted a definite answer. Mawgis would just as soon lie as anything else, but benesha travel, what he saw—that always felt true. He nodded almost imperceptibly.
Mawgis smiled, dipped his finger into the thermos cap, and rubbed a thin line of mud across Jake’s forehead.
“This is really all it takes,” he said. “I overdid it last time in show for you. I do love a bit of theatrics.” He dipped his finger again and rubbed a line across his own forehead.
The familiar light-headedness of benesha travel slipped over Jake, the same lack of concern he’d experienced in Mawgis’s hut. He let his mind wander, wondering about benesha, how it had been transported, where the majority of it was now.
The room was huge—windowless, with unpainted cinder block walls. A large roll-up metal door took up most of one side. Jake guessed that the small wood door on the opposite end led to office space beyond. A yellow payloader sat idle, waiting to scoop up its next batch from a small mountain of ground green stone. He glanced around the building. The signs on the walls—Safety First; Warning: Authorized Entrance Only; Potluck Sign-up Sheet—were all in English, and he thought he might be seeing a place in Ohio, near where a benesha feedlot had been planned. He heard voices from beyond the smaller door, and the creak as the door opened. He didn’t know if the people coming would be able to see him. If they could, how would he explain why he was there? How he’d come to be in the warehouse? He didn’t know how to think or wish himself out of the place.
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