Shadowline Drift: A Metaphysical Thriller Read Free Page B

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