Shadowline Drift: A Metaphysical Thriller Read Online Free Page A

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.
    “ Would you enjoy some travel?” he asked. “Benesha can take us many places.”
    Father Canas, the Salesian who had helped prep Jake for this job, had said the Tabna used trance-inducing drugs.
    “ The Salesians,” Mawgis said, as if hearing his thoughts. “Very nice people, but narrow in their minds.”
    Jake shifted his position where he sat, thinking, once was an incident; twice was coincidence; three times was something he’d have to think about. Later. He focused on what Mawgis had said about benesha.
    The mice that had eaten the mineral hadn’t gotten stoned, Jake consoled himself. If the Tabna believed benesha induced trance, their belief could make the mineral perform for them—if not for him.
    Jake tapped his translator as a sign Mawgis should put his in again so they could talk. Mawgis shrugged. Evidently their conversations were going to be one-way for a while.
    Jake shrugged too, opened his mouth, and pointed, mutely asking if he should eat the benesha. It seemed likely the worst that could happen was that he’d get sick. If benesha were hallucinogenic, then he’d be stoned. In Mexico, he’d done some peyote and found the drug experience pleasant once the nausea had stopped.
    Mawgis ’s face wrinkled in disgust. “Like an animal? No.” He pushed Jake’s head back and spread a thin coat of watered