Read Shadowline Drift: A Metaphysical Thriller for Free Online

camp.
    “ My shoes pinch, if that’s what you mean.” Irritation was in Jake’s voice. He swallowed it back down. Now that Mawgis had dragged him all this way, the Tabna might feel he’d sufficiently won the game and be ready to talk seriously about benesha. Showing anger risked offending him or giving him even more points in this game of one-upmanship they were playing. Jake didn’t want to do either.
    “ You’re growing,” Mawgis said.
    Jake rubbed his sore feet through the thick socks. “I doubt it.”
    Mawgis smiled. “It’s true, though. You paid for the benesha with yourself. It’s no longer true that you stopped growing when you were a child, never to grow again. Soon you will be the height you were meant to be.” The older man folded his arms and looked away downriver.
    Jake ’s face warmed. Mawgis knew just what to say to weaken him, a statement so ludicrous as to be laughable—the one thing Jake longed for.
    “ Can we talk now about benesha?” he asked. “Are you willing to share the mineral and help end hunger?”
    Mawgis swiveled his head with studied slowness. “I have already said. We want the hungry to have our gift.”
    Jake let a few moments pass, the silence between them broken by the hum of insects swirling over the river and a flock of green parakeets flying overhead. He felt Mawgis’s eyes on him, but stared back toward the forest. Mawgis shifted on the rock where they sat.
    Jake turned and looked at him. “Tell me what happens to people who eat meat from a benesha-fed animal.”
    A harlequin beetle made its way up Mawgis’s leg. He flicked it away. “I have told you that, too. They die.”
    A cold numbness crept through Jake. To hear those words in a drugged stat e was one thing. To hear them in normal conversation, quite another.
    “ Why should I believe you?”
    Mawgis shrugged. “Because to not believe me is to risk that I told the truth and you did nothing to stop it.” He leaned close, peering into Jake’s eyes. “You are still under the influence, you know. Perhaps a bit more benesha travel . . .”
    Jake felt his muscles tense at the suggestion, the idea that Mawgis could send him off to God-knew-where again with what? A flick of his hand? Unless Mawgis had wet benesha in the pouch he was wearing.
    Mawgis grinned. Jake drew a deep breath and looked around.
    A half-dozen wood-sided buildings now stood by the river, a different place than where he and Mawgis had first settled onto the rock—the water so wide here that Jake could no longer see to the far shore. Bloated bodies drifted on the greenish-brown water, some facedown, some face up. More bodies lay on the ground outside the buildings, arms flung out or clutched tight to sides, legs twisted oddly, heads turned to the side. Men, women, and children, their faces distorted in looks of surprise or horror. Flies buzzed in the air, thick as lowering clouds. Vultures tore at the flesh. A distance away, chickens pecked at plates of feed—feed that was flecked with tiny bits of green stone.
    Jake slammed his eyes shut to block out the sight.
    Mawgis tapped his shoulder. “You can look now. It’s just the two of us again.”
    Jake opened his eyes and glared at the other man. “Why would you do this?”
    “ Too many people wanting too much. It’s time,” Mawgis said. “The hungry will eat benesha meat and they will die, as they should, and the earth will come back into balance. The world will be better for it.”
    Jake ’s throat went dry. “I won’t be returning to the camp, will I?”
    Mawgis hiked up one shoulder in a shrug. “You wandered off alone sometime last night or early this morning. Who knows why? To think, perhaps, or out of curiosity to see the forest. Your companions will spend a lot of time looking for you before they reluctantly give up and go back without you.” He smiled kindly. “They like you very much, you know. They were impressed with your bravery and clear thinking when the canoe