The door swung open. Not the same door. A door that was metal, a dull pewter color, and opened onto a long, narrow building with stacked cages filled with rabbits of various colors against one long wall and cages full of white chickens against the wall opposite. The scratching and clucking of the chickens and the noisy, wheezing whir of the air system filled the room. The smell of fur and feathers and excrement, of animals packed together too tightly, made him gag. Each cage held two bowls—one filled with water and one filled with small brown pellets and green dust.
Rabbits and chickens. Maybe the scientists were still puzzling out which was best. Maybe no people had actually eaten benesha-fed animals yet, or only a few. There was no one else in the barn. He walked down the wide dirt path between the cages toward a scarred wood door at the back.
Beyond the door lay a dirt road in a small village. He knew this place. He’d been here before—working out a truce between Congolese warlords. His heart sank. Ramshackle buildings, broken-down carts, their wheels canted to the side. Emaciated dogs, every rib visible beneath their fur, grouped in the dismal shade of a nearly leafless tree. No people, but loud voices around a corner—not arguing, but shouting, insistent, wanting. It was hot in Congo, but cold sweat trickled down the center of his chest. He followed the road, and saw what he feared most.
The air was sour with shouts and cries from the people—a language Jake didn’t understand, but the meaning was clear. Skinny brown men and women were clamoring for the paper-wrapped packages that well-fed brown men wearing yellow shirts bearing the blue logo of World United were handing out from the back of a rickety old truck. There were more people than packages. Many more. Loosely strung men shoved each other to get close to the truck, shouldering their neighbors out of the way, kicking those who fell, bare feet to bare ribs, eyes that never looked down to see who the victim was.
Two women near where he stood fought over one paper-wrapped parcel, pulling and tugging back and forth, their voices loud and mean, until one pulled harder, yanking the package from the other’s hand. The winner clutched the package to her bony chest, her thin shoulders hunched, building a wall around her prize. Jake half expected her to throw back her head and howl her victory. The loser sat where she’d fallen, her long skirt hiked up over her knees, stick legs splayed out, headwrap knocked askew.
Naked or half-dressed children with distended bellies ran everywhere, excited—thinking about the meal promised, maybe, or just wound up by the adults, by the desperate brutality.
He wanted to step in, to warn them, to sweep up the naked child sitting alone and crying. But he was a phantom here, no more a solid presence than he’d been in President Delacort’s bedroom—as useless as dust.
Mawgis tapped his shoulder. “Now you know. Now you must decide.”
Fourteen
Jake swiped his hand hard across his forehead. Flecks of dried mud fell to the ground, green shards against the reddish soil. He bent forward to wipe his forehead again, wanting all of it gone, wanting none of the flakes to fall on his shoulders or chest, even to touch him. Wanting the sights in the village gone, the view of what benesha would do—not just poison the body, but poison the soul.
A dull ache spread in the center of his chest, a burn behind his eyes. When people started dying, panic would set in. Scientists and humanitarians would scramble, searching for a way to stop it. Maybe they’d figure out the cause. Maybe find a cure. Maybe not. And if not—then what? Nonchalance from those who weren’t affected? As long as it wasn’t them, or their family, or their friends, would the non-hungry agree with Mawgis that the world was better off? Would he, in some dark and honest hole in his heart, agree?
“The antidote,” he said, leaning toward Mawgis on the stump they shared. Frogs croaked from the trees beyond their view. Flies buzzed and flitted through the small clearing. Sweat beaded on Jake’s forehead and slid almost imperceptibly down his face. He straightened his spine and made his voice matter of fact. “When I see it works, I’ll help you.”
“Too late for that, too.” Mawgis shrugged. “Shadowlines drift among worlds like the phases of the moon. Very long phases. It’s been here awhile, but that wretched shaman kept you drugged and asleep through this tail end of its stay. If I miss this chance, we will both be dead before the opportunity comes again. It must be now.” His lips bent in a small smile. “I tease you, Jake, but I have never lied to you. If I tell you the antidote, it will be true.”
The sights of the benesha travel played in his mind, turning up the heat on his skin, heat he kept from showing in his eyes or tone. “You’ve lied to me more than once. You told me it was no longer true that I stopped growing when I was five, and you told me that my new height is an illusion. You can’t say one thing and then another and have it all be true.”
“As to your height,” Mawgis said, “both are true. There are an infinite number of planes, dimensions, and worlds, and on some of them right now, Jake and Mawgis sit having this same conversation. On some of them, Tall Jake has undone what he did as a child. On others, Small Jake believes he has grown, but it’s a trick.”
Jake smiled thinly. “In this world, Mawgis. This world, right here, right now—which is true?”
The older man shrugged again.
Frustration blew through Jake like broken glass. All his life, he’d succeeded through wits and brains, his innate understanding of what others really wanted—not what they said they wanted, but the desires of their secret hearts. Mawgis, though—he had no idea if Mawgis wanted what he said, or something else, or simply liked the game so much that playing it was a part of him, as automatic as a heartbeat.
“The antidote to benesha—is that only true in some worlds but not in others?”
“The cure is the cure everywhere,” Mawgis said. “Help me get home and I will give it to you.”
Training—it was training and years of experience that kept Jake from pummeling Mawgis, kept his face calm, his hands from shaking while Mawgis jabbered on, dangling his tales and bits of promises. All the while, the sights of Congo played behind his eyes.
“Tell me first.”
“Oh, no. I tell you now and you’ll leave me here.”
“That’s you you’re talking about, Mawgis. You’d do that. I keep my word.”
A pair of toucans swooped through the trees, their orange beaks and black-and-white bodies a sudden splash of color against the oppressive wall of green.
“You would help, Jake, yes, but not with the same enthusiasm. You need to be driven. If you were more willing, I would not have needed to bring the Salesians to me, or to whisper in certain ears about the mineral’s special abilities.”
Jake’s breath caught in his throat. It wasn’t an accident, then, that scientists had discovered benesha’s protein-enhancing abilities—it was Mawgis’s doing. Or Mawgis had just followed him around with his benesha travel and learned of the discovery that way. God, he was getting tired of this.
“Even now,” Mawgis was saying, “the only reason you’ll help me is to save the people—people you don’t know, who mean nothing to you. You never would have turned your great will toward the shadowline just for me.”
Jake stared at the man who wasn’t a man—the other. All of this, the possible death of thousands, maybe millions, for what? So he would help Mawgis return to whatever place he’d come from? It was insane.
“Give me the antidote,” he said.
“I’ll tell you as soon as you bring the shadowline to me. Use your will, that amazing will that stopped your growth when you were five years old. If I don’t tell you, all you need do is let it go and I’ll be stuck here, a place I do not wish to be.”
Jake focused his sight on a big leafy tree he didn’t know the name of, staring hard at a patch of sun falling on a clump of fat, lobed leaves, and thought. His head ached. His pulse throbbed at his temples. There was only one answer. He nodded, his eyes still on the sunlit leaves, then turned back to Mawgis.
Mawgis grinned. “The sh
adowline is close now. Can you see it?”
Trees and fallen leaves, small clods of mud, and the skittering of something—a lizard maybe—through the debris. Jake saw nothing else. His hands clenched.
“You’ll never see it by looking,” Mawgis said. “Relax. Catch it from the tail of your eye. See it, there to your left.” He tilted his head. “Beyond the trees, just out of sight?”
Jake palmed his watch and blew out a breath. He’d let his emotions get riled. He knew better. In any trade, it was nearly always the man who stayed calm who won the better deal. He glanced in the direction Mawgis had indicated, but didn’t focus on any one thing, letting his view be lazy.
And saw it, just out of reach, near the trees, a shimmery silver trace, a hint of blue at the edges.
Not curtains wafting in a gentle breeze, but a glowing line. Sparks flew from the line—red, green, silver, blue, gold, bouncing away in all directions, frightening him. A thin electrical hum buzzed in his ears. A dim but sharp smell, slightly metallic, hurt his nose.
A ball of sparks flew toward them. Jake yelled, pulled in on himself, and rolled off the stump. He huddled in the leafy mud, throwing his arms up to protect his head and face, peeking out to see if anything was falling toward him. Sparks glittered overhead, holding in a ball shape, like shimmering snow compacted by human hands.
“Don’t be frightened,” Mawgis said, and Jake felt the man’s hand clamp his shoulder. “It won’t hurt you. Can’t, really. Too much my world and not enough yours to even affect you.”
The spark-ball had flown by, into the trees, disappeared. Maybe gone, maybe on some boomerang track. Jake stood, his heart still thudding. “I’d believe that more if I didn’t already know you for a liar.”
Mawgis sighed. “Jake. Fun is fun, and that’s all my little falsehoods to you have ever been—a bit of fun. This is serious. Do I seem fool enough to trick you now, when I need you?”
He didn’t know the answer to that. He did know he wanted the antidote and would do what it took to get it. Whatever it took.
“See if you can find the shadowline again,” Mawgis said. “Just relax. Almost like letting it come to you. Don’t make any sudden moves or you’ll frighten it. It wouldn’t have sparked if you hadn’t scared it.”
Jake pushed his hair away from his forehead. He’d been in this spot before, nervous and unsure, and he knew how to shove the feelings into a tiny room in his mind and lock them up so they didn’t get in his way. He let his focus go slack. The sparking seemed to be dying down; he didn’t see the colored cinders flying around anymore. He stood breathing slowly, letting his mind drift, letting thoughts wander in and wander out without paying them close attention. At the edge of his view, the silvery trace undulated slowly.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “Now what?”
“Draw it to you,” Mawgis said softly, the voice one he might use to coax a shy animal.
A haze of gnats buzzed near Jake’s eyes. He didn’t dare bat at them, for fear of spooking the shadowline again. He laughed silently at himself. Mawgis had gotten him to think of it as a living thing—poor, frightened shadowline, needing to be willed into the clearing and captured. Maybe he should whistle to it, or cluck his tongue. He pictured the slow drift of the line toward them. He couldn’t see movement, but sensed its motion, the way one feels a gentle swell moving under a small boat. It was coming closer.
How could he hold it once it reached him? Did he need to hold it open like a door? Did he just need to draw it close enough for Mawgis grab it or jump through?
“How does this work?” He felt the trace move away as he worried, and saw how he might use that. He forced his mind back to calmness.
“Bring it closer.” Mawgis kept his voice gentle. “The line will grow wider the nearer it comes. When it is wide enough for me to step in, I’ll tell you the cure for benesha, and then I’ll be gone.”
“Why not tell me now? I’ll focus better if I’m not splitting my thoughts—wondering what the cure is. Wondering if you’ll tell me or trick me again.”
He let his thoughts wander then, and felt the shadowline float away. He shot a quick glance at Mawgis and was glad to see worry in the older man’s eyes.
“Bring it back,” Mawgis said sharply, all gentleness lost in the snap of a moment.
A small tremor rippled across his shoulders—a worry of his own, that he was making a mistake, that he trusted himself too much. Worry tasted like ash in his mouth.
In for a penny; in for a pound. Something Jake’s mother used to say. She thought he could do anything he set his mind and heart to. And he could. He’d proved it his whole life.
“Can’t,” Jake said. “I’m too worried you’ll cheat me. It hurts my head. I’m going to have to let it go.” He felt the shadowline drifting, a swell receding from the shore.
“No need for that,” Mawgis said. “You want your antidote, you shall have it.”
Jake let the line float further away, and worried he wouldn’t be able to bring it back. And thought, if he had the antidote, the shadowline didn’t matter. Except that it did—he wanted Mawgis out of his world.
He watched the man reach into the backpack and pull out a thick black pen and a small pad of paper. Mawgis wrote something down, ripped off the top page, and jammed it into Jake’s hand.
The words were gobbledygook. They looked scientific and chemical, but he didn’t know if they were the antidote or simply made up on the spot, one last joke Mawgis was playing. The only term Jake recognized was activated charcoal, which he knew was used in poison remedies. He rubbed his palm over the face of his watch again—thinking, feeling, wondering where the truth lay.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll bring it back.”
Mawgis zipped the backpack shut with a hard pull.
Jake closed his eyes. He drew in a slow breath and let it out. He willed the shadowline toward the center of the tiny clearing, wanting it to come to him, wanting it as much as he’d ever wanted anything—as much as he’d wanted to never grow too big to sit in his mother’s lap. His eyelids opened, but he didn’t focus his sight, seeing only from the corner. The trace came slowly, the movement so incremental he could barely track it, but he felt it, a buildup of air pressure.
“What about me?” Jake asked softly. “Is my height really an illusion? If I can do this, Mawgis, why couldn’t you and I together have made me tall?”
“Tall or small, you are what you are. You’ll see it in the women’s eyes the moment you return to the compound.”
Pilar.
The shadowline wobbled and skittered back toward the trees. Pilar, Naheyo and the Helpers staring at him, a small man again. Stupid of Mawgis to make him think of that.
“Focus,” Mawgis said, his voice sharp and impatient.
The burning smell was gone now, Jake realized, but the hum was still there, low frequency, vibrating in his bones.
He shoved the thought of Pilar out of his mind and willed the line back toward the clearing. He wanted to look at it, to see what he’d brought, to watch it grow wide. Could Mawgis look at it straight-on? It didn’t seem fair somehow if he could—Jake doing all the work and Mawgis getting to see the glory. Jake shifted his gaze and saw the older man’s eyes locked at the spot where Jake felt the trace—saw the need on Mawgis’s face, how he leaned forward.
“You see it,” Jake said. “It’s close now. You can almost touch it, can’t you?”
Mawgis nodded. His voice sounded almost wistful. “It’s magnificent. Silver and blue. That’s what drew me, you know—the cruel trick of its beauty that stranded me here.” His voice hardened. “Open it now, Jake. Open it wide so I can step through.”
The shadowline wavered just outside his sight. Mawgis had said it would widen when it got to them. Not quite the truth, though Jake didn’t know why he’d expected different. Why did this lie, hardly different from any other Mawgis had told, make his face grow hot, his muscles clench, his head feel ready to explode? Because it was no different. Mawg
is lied or told the truth almost without reason. Nothing he said could be believed. Nothing.
“Fuck you,” he said, and let the shadowline go.
Fifteen
“Bring it back.” Mawgis grabbed Jake’s arm, fingers crushing hard into his skin. “Where is your honor? I gave you the antidote. You have what you want. Hold up your end of the bargain.”
Jake felt the shadowline slipping, floating away, drifting into the trees, beyond, to the forest, slow, like a curtain in a breeze now, but connected still, as though he held it by his fingertips. Felt a new awareness, like an acknowledgement—he and the shadowline, partners with and against Mawgis.
“I want something else, too,” Jake said, yanking his arm free from the other’s hold, “before I send you back to wherever you came from. I want my height.”
The older man opened his mouth to speak but Jake shook his head, cutting him off. “Not perception. Not somehow making people see what isn’t true. I want reality, and proof of it.”
Mawgis glared at him, then looked toward the trees where the trace had disappeared. “It’s the woman. You want to be manly for her. You believe she won’t care for you the way you looked when she first saw you. So what does she care for, then? The man you appear to be, or the man you are? Bring the shadowline back and go find out.”
“Do you know why I want this, Mawgis? Not for the reason you think. I need it to prove to myself you’re not always a liar. To believe that the real cure is on that piece of paper you gave me. Make me believe, and I’ll send you home.”
Mawgis pulled his gaze away from the trees and back to Jake. “I told you, I don’t know which is true.”
Shadowline Drift: A Metaphysical Thriller Page 14