Shadow Play (25 page)

But the years had passed.

Then there had been the miserable dawns spent aboard pitching ships among snoring sailors. When the wind howled so mightily around the mizzenmast and whined through the foreshrouds, he would fix his eyes upon the bunk above him and weep like the sixteen-year-old fool that he was for running away to sea. Once, when they'd rounded Cape Horn during a storm, he refused to go below when the captain ordered him. Belligerently he stood his ground, feet planted apart, hands clenched at his sides as he prepared himself to be swept overboard by the raging waves. Any- thing was better than living on rank meat, foul water, and biscuits baked so hard even the weevils couldn't penetrate them.
     

He hadn't died. When the storm subsided, the captain had ordered him strung from the mainmast by his wrists and whipped for his disobedience. Thirty lashes. The first of many before he sneaked ashore in Kowloon and lost himself among the thousands of people milling along the waterfront of houseboats and squatter shacks. There had been a woman, briefly. Her slanted eyes had fascinated him. Her heavy hair, blacker than his own, had enthralled him. She taught him everything he wanted to know about love- making. Then, just when he'd allowed himself to grow fond of her, she disappeared into the night and he never saw her again.

And the years had passed.

He had come to Brazil. The hew Eden. Paradise found. He met a young, handsome, richly dressed man who took his hand in friendship, smiled into his eyes, and promised him heaven... if he was willing to work for it. One year was all his new friend had asked. He'd flashed Morgan that mesmerizing grin when he'd asked
the patrao
what he would have to do to earn such rewards.

"Why, Morgan, my fabulously handsome young friend, that will be up to you, of course. Trust me."

Morgan closed his eyes at the memory. Standing, he moved toward the darkness, swiping up his rifle as he went. The undergrowth snapped underfoot, splintering the quiet and causing a rustle in the leaves above his head. He cast a cautious glance back at Sarah, then at Henry before carrying on, stopping far enough from the clearing so as to be out of sight should they awaken and discover him gone. Leaning against a tree, he dug in his pocket for a cigarette and thought of his mother.

Upon escaping the orphanage, he'd ventured to the shanties near the Mississippi. He'd stood outside the shack for an hour before he got up the courage to knock. The door had opened to reveal a short woman with black, graying hair and a face wasted by illness, hunger, and fatigue. Her gray eyes had stared up at him as if she had just looked death in the face.

"Margaret Kane?" he'd asked her. Then his eyes had been drawn down to her leg where a boy with a dirty face and runny nose hung on her skirt and gazed up at him with eyes like his own. Behind her a young girl appeared with the same black hair, her age no more than ten years. Angry, Morgan looked at the woman. "Margaret Kane?" he'd demanded in a rising, desperate voice.

"No," she'd said, her eyes belying the words. "You must have the wrong house."

"No, I don't."

"Margaret is dead. Go away and leave us alone."

She'd slammed the door in his face.

He might have forgiven his mother for anything.

Anything but that.

Dawn light filtered through the leaves, and the shadows took on less menacing shapes until they diminished completely. There was movement back at the camp. He could hear Henry and Kan arguing, and to his left, one of the Indians stepped away from the clearing to relieve himself. Morgan pushed away from the tree, glad to put another night behind him. That was when he came face-to-face with the corpse.

The Indian hung upside down from the tree limb, swinging forward and back as a breeze rustled the leaves overhead. His mouth was frozen in a soundless scream. His eyes were bulging in terror. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. All his blood had drained from his body and lay pooled on the ground.

Cold sweat rising to his forehead, Morgan stared into the man's dull eyes and gaping mouth before he whirled away and vomited on the ground. He stumbled back to camp. Sarah was sitting on a tree stump, rubbing her eyes. Henry and Kan were stoking the fire. They glanced up as he approached, their look of expectancy melting into alarm at the sight of his unsettled state.

Henry and Kan joined him. By now many of the others were becoming alarmed as they noted that their comrades were missing.

"Morgan, what's happened?" Henry asked.

"One of the guards has been murdered. There could be more."

Kan spoke sharply to the skittish natives, who rushed for their rifles. A voice called out, first to their right, then to their left. Four Indians had been slaughtered in a similar way.

They buried the men without ceremony. There wasn't time for anything more, and besides, what good would it have done them? There was no Christ, or God, or Virgin Mother in the Amazon, This was hell's paradise, and some- where close by Satan was waiting, laughing at what fools they were for so blithely knocking on his door and expecting to enter without sacrifice.

Morgan ordered the Indians to break camp as quickly and quietly as possible. Most obliged. Others moved more slowly, their hesitancy obvious as they discussed the matter among themselves.

' 'Do you think they were murdered by Yanoamo?'' Henry asked.

"The Yanoamo are cannibals." Morgan replied so as not to be overhead by the frightened Indians. "They prefer to capture their victims alive."

"Then who do you imagine could have done it?"

Frowning, Morgan stared out into the forest, the image of the murdered man's face looming up in his mind's eye like a grizzly ghost from his past.

"Morgan?" Henry touched his sleeve. "Morgan?" he repeated.

He shook his head. "I don't know," he said, then turned away and left Henry staring after him.

Sarah said nothing. Her face had paled when she heard the horrible news, but she had acted with haste, doing what she could to secure their belongings. She stood by, hands gripped at her sides as Morgan checked the bundles, then nodded toward the Indians, who hurried to hoist them onto their shoulders.

He handed Sarah a rifle. "Stay close to me," he told her, and she nodded with frightened eyes. "Are you all right?'' he asked.

"I think so."

"Do you know how to use that gun?"

She turned it in her hands. "I aim it and pull the trigger.''

"That's the gist of it. Just make certain you know where you're aiming before you shoot.'' He smiled, but her expression was serious. "It holds fifteen rounds. Never use more than fourteen. If we're attacked, you'll want to save the last one for yourself."

Her mouth dropped open.

"Believe me,
chere,
you don't want to be taken by the Yanoamd. I'll kill you myself before I let that happen."

They struck out through the forest, the whoosh of machetes and the crack of wood the only sounds to mark their passage through the floresta. Sarah looked back the way they had come, only to discover that for all their chopping they had done little to change the forest. She could under- stand those stories of people wandering lost in the floresta when civilization lay only a mile away.

Little by little the jungle came alive with shrieks and squawks and whistles, and like the silence that had seemed a precursor of doom before, this cacophony was like a brief amnesty from damnation. Whatever death threat had followed them from the Barcelos mission, it was gone, for the time being.

Three weeks passed and they appeared to be no closer to locating King's plantation than they had been when they left the Rio Negro. Neither Morgan's nor Henry's calculations about when they would arrive in Japura had proved to be correct. Time and again Sarah found them with their heads together, arguing over what course to take next. Tempers grew short. They were hot and so tired they could hardly roll out of their hammocks each morning. Their sup- ply of water had run out, and now they were forced to cut the
cipo de aqua
from the trees in order to get water to drink. Each time Morgan sliced the vine and held it up to Sarah's mouth, she drank thirstily. But too soon he would take it away, warning her of the dangers of drinking too much too fast.

They had used the last of their food rations long ago were now relying totally on the floresta for sustenance. Repeatedly they were forced to eat the starchy meat of the manioc root. Occasionally there was fruit, but more often than not it grew too high in the trees to be reached.

At night they had little energy left to stand, much less speak. So with the onset of dusk they rolled into their ham- mocks and did their best to pull their tattered clothes around them before sleeping. Bats came during the night, many of them vampires drawn by the smell of fresh blood and warm flesh. They would find their way under the bedding and feast until bloated on the sleepers' blood. Once, while Sarah slept, Morgan had awakened to discover a bat drinking from a puncture on her neck. He'd grabbed it off her, thrown it to the ground, and shot it with his rifle.

There were ants, of course. One evening Sarah laid out her chemise to dry. The next morning mere were only threads left; the sauba ants had chewed the material into tiny scraps and hauled them away. Termites feasted on leather satchels and shoes. And, as always, there were snakes, slithering through the vegetation at their feet, coiling around the limbs overhead, camouflaged by leaves so one was never aware of them until they reared their heads and hissed. One man had died of a bite from a fer-de-lance. Another was weakening due to some parasite that had buried itself under his skin and was slowly rotting it from the inside out.

They had little thought for their ultimate goal. It was enough to endure each moment as it came. Depression pressed in on them, a hopelessness that not one of them would admit aloud. But to themselves, as they sat alone at night, staring into the darkness, they all considered what it would mean to die here and never be heard from again.

Who would care? Who would grieve? For Morgan, there was no one. Nor for Henry. Norman would experience regret for Sarah, and possibly sadness, but no real sorrow. They had no one but each other; the world outside ceased to exist, and dimmed like a dream. They were lost forever in paradise, it seemed.

They came upon a wide turbulent river which there was no way to cross except by boat. They spent the better part of two days hacking down trees and roping them together to make a raft. Kan volunteered to swim across so a rope could be extended from one side to the other, to which they would hook the raft and drag themselves and their supplies across. Sarah watched nervously as the Indian tied the rope round his waist and waded into the foaming water. Morgan, holding the rope, fed Kan its length as he needed it, carefully keeping it taut in case there was trouble. The whirlpools and eddies sucked Kan under, yet he always resurfaced, his powerful arms and legs driving him toward the distant shore.

Sarah stood on the muddy shoal, her hands gripped together as she prayed for Kan. She might have collapsed when he clawed his way out of the water, but the dread of what she must face left her too numb with fear to feel relief. Soon the rope was secured and the raft was rigged to it, loaded with their belongings and shoved into the water. Morgan turned back for her, extended his hand; she took it, refusing to look him in the eye, knowing he

would recognize her fear. She'd tried to be brave in the face of every danger, but it seemed that the floresta was throwing every hurdle it could into their path. She followed his orders and, boarding the raft, fell to her hands and knees, holding on as tightly as she could while it heaved like a living being beneath her.

As the roar and spray of water rose around her, the men's shouts came to her like whispers. She could not understand the words. She did not want to understand. Her senses were vibrating with feeling, yet numb with a hypnotic lethargy. Closing her eyes, she lay on her stomach and pressed her face into the raft, vaguely aware of splinters biting into her cheeks.
We're going to make it,
she told herself, wanting desperately to believe it.
                                                         
-^

The water surged over the raft, lifted it from beneath, and lunged it aside as if it were a piece of driftwood. The ropes snapped taut with the force, and several men lost their footing and were hurled into the river. Supplies tumbled and skidded from their braces. Sarah looked up to see Morgan trying to right the dangerously tipping vessel with a pole, slamming one end of it against a rock as he attempted to maneuver the raft. The pole snapped, sending Morgan diving toward the raft. Henry spun away. Then the world became a rending of sound, and suddenly the raft was disintegrating beneath her.

"Morgan!" She tried scrambling to her feet, only to be thrown to her knees. The waves crashed upon them, spraying daggers of water into their faces. On his hands and knees, Morgan reached for Sarah, only to be hurled to the raft's edge. Only Henry's quick response kept him from being swept away.

Again Morgan reached out with his hand. Sarah could almost touch him, but it would mean letting go of her hold on the raft—and oh, God, if she let go she would be swept into the water and she couldn't swim and—

"Sarah!" Morgan shouted.

She reached. Their fingertips touched. Then she was spiraling backward and Morgan was stumbling to his feet and becoming more and more distant, and she thought,
Oh God, I’m going to die! I've slipped away! He'll never catch me now!

How keenly she saw their faces, the emotion, the fear as they watched the fragmented raft split asunder, hurling her down the river. And she experienced it all with a sense of detachment, a calmness that she might never have thought possible in the face of her own death.

As Morgan stood and prepared to dive, her only thought was to stop him. She cried out, yet he dove anyway, disappearing under the surface that was thrashing and whirling. Suddenly she, too, was going under, flying like a bullet, the force dragging her along the bottom as helplessly as a child's rag doll, whipping her up again and propelling her out of the water where she gasped for air. Despite her acceptance of death, in that instant she struggled for one last breath before being driven down again.

Then there were hands in her hair, pulling her up. She burst from the water with a scream,

pummeling the arms mat tried to subdue her, clawing at Morgan's face as he attempted to cry out her name. The river rushed on, tumbling them down until there was nothing but speed and thunder, and as their heads broke the surface one last time, it was to witness the arc of a rainbow amid the purple mists, and all around them the inverted blue bowl of the sky, larger than they had ever seen it. Then the realization hit them at once. The thunder. The sky. The great vastoess of space.

"Sarah!" Morgan cried in panic.

Then she was gone, as was he, over the falls with the pounding water, flying, drifting—when would they hit?
What
would they hit?

The wind roared in their ears and the sun kissed their faces. Then they were plunged into a stillness that was bracingly cold and black. Next there was... nothing.

Morgan held Sarah in his arms and watched her face for some sign of life. "Sarah. Oh, my God. Please, don't die. Sarah."

He smoothed her hair back, wincing with pain. The little finger of his right hand was twisted grotesquely, the bone protruding through his flesh just below the knuckle. His nose was dripping blood on Sarah's chest. "Sarah." He shook her, anger overriding his fear as he acknowledged the deathly pallor of her face. Dragging her farther from the water, he flipped her onto her stomach and drove his hand between her shoulder blades. He cried out with the pain, but gritting his teeth, he did it again and again, until he was frightened of hurting her. Then he rolled her over, and out of desperation and not knowing what else to do, he covered her mouth with his and breathed air into her lungs.

Nothing. He tried again. She stirred, and frantically he repeated the procedure until her eyelids fluttered and her body convulsed. Water spewed out her mouth and nose, and she gasped for a breath. Closing his eyes, he rocked in relief. "Sarah. Ah, love, I thought I'd lost you. God, if I'd lost you..."

He kissed her eyes, her nose, her mouth as she lay limply against him. "Morgan?" came the weak response.

"Yeah."

"We're alive?"

"Barely, but we made it."

Her lids flickered open. She gazed at him with red-rimmed eyes before she said, "I dreamed that I had died and you brought me back to life with a kiss."

"I think I read that in a fairy tale once."

She looked disappointed. "You didn't save my life?"

"Well... maybe a little."

Smiling faintly, she said, "My hero."

He wiped his bloody nose with his sleeve and laughed. "I've never been called that by anybody white."

"Your nose."

"I think it's broken."

"And your hand!"

"I
know
it's broken."

Seeing the splintered bone in his finger, she paled even more. "Morgan, you're in pain."

"Pain, my love, was believin' you were dead."

"Morgan, you're a romantic at heart."

"Nan. Water up my nose makes me stupid, is all." He looked toward the falls. "We'll have to wait here. If the others survived they'll be searchin' for us." When Sarah made no response, he looked at her again. She was sleeping.

He held her for a while longer, too exhausted to move, too drained by relief that he had managed to fish her out of the river and drag her to shore. She felt damn good in his arms. The past weeks of denying himself her nearness had been like death. And for what? She had wanted him; he recognized desire when he saw it in a woman's eyes. How easily he could have turned on the charm, taken advantage of her desperation. But it couldn't be that way with Sarah. He couldn't allow himself to be used by a woman he cared for, knowing she would be leaving him for another. He couldn't accept that rejection again. He'd taken it all of his life, since watching his mother spread her legs for men day and night, but always too weary or angry to notice her own son waiting in the background, wanting to be held, com- forted, consoled. He would have done anything to make her love him—lie, cheat, steal. In fact, he had done so on many occasions, only to have her stare at him with emotionless eyes and turn away. She had used his love for her as surely as men had used her body, forcing him to beg for money, promising him a hug or kiss if he collected enough for their supper. He'd learned by example that sex could buy all the kisses and caresses one could ever desire.

Then came Sarah, and suddenly that kind of counterfeit love just wasn't good enough.

He moved her to a tree, where he sank down against it, cradling her in his arms. His body throbbed in a hundred places. He should do something about the finger, but that would mean putting Sarah down and he wasn't about to do that yet. He'd been yearning to hold her for too long.

He stroked her hair and tried not to imagine a future without her. He had gone through that only moments before, and the emptiness had been shattering. The grief had been consuming, like the passion he felt for her in the night. He wanted to kiss her and explain that he had never felt this way for a woman. But what use were all the words? He was tempted to give her what she wanted from him, though it had nothing to do with love. He would show her what sex was like when it was done for lust's sake and nothing more. Let her experience the hollow feeling that was left behind when the fire was quenched. Let her stare unseeing into the night and swallow back the loneliness and the sense of being used, because mat was what she was going to feel living with Norman.

He lay her gently among the leaves and moved to the river, where he stared down at the murky image of himself, his bloodied nose, his broken hand, the wet black hair hanging in his eyes. Then he turned toward Sarah, watched as she slept. Squeezing his eyes shut, he said, "Hurry the hell up, Henry."
Save me from myself.

Three days passed and still they were alone. Alone and not alone. Two people existing in the same world, but having little to do with each other. Morgan had changed. Remote, surly, restless, he distanced himself from Sarah. He paced. He cursed the forest, and Henry, who he was certain must have died in the torrent or he would have located them by now. Once, when Sarah mentioned that she was hungry, he shifted his wild eyes to hers and snarled, "Get your food yourself. Who the hell do you think I am, one of your friggin' servants?"

Morgan frightened her. Occasionally she found him watching her from a distance, unblinking, craving, crafty. Then he noticed her staring at him and turned away where he sat by the water, his back to her, holding his wounded hand in his lap as if he were cradling a baby. Perhaps it was the pain that had turned him into this angry stranger— for surely the injury must be unbearable.

She had watched him set the splintered bone himself, body sweating, eyes glazed, teeth biting hard on a stick.

His legs had given out from under him when it was done, and he had rolled, groaning, on the ground, whimpering in his throat, making her weep because she wanted to comfort him. But he sent her away with a pain-laced "Get the hell away from me."

He began to have nightmares, awakening her from intermittent sleep. His screams startled him from his dreams and he stumbled to the river and submerged his face in the water until he stopped shaking. Once or twice he tore his shirt off, and her eyes were drawn to the scars on his back, some cut deeply into the flesh, others barely visible thin white marks. The sight had frightened her as much as his mood swings, and the realization that she knew so little of him hit her with force. Merciful God, who had whipped him so horribly? Why? The thought of the pain he must have endured made her cry.

The nights were interminable without firelight. She longed to huddle close to Morgan, and once or twice he let her, only to shove her away after an hour and sit alone in the

darkness. Despairing, she cried, "What have I done? Why are you so angry?"

"Shut up."

"I want to understand. You—you've changed, Morgan.''

"I need a smoke. And a drink," came his shaky voice from the shadows. "Leave me alone if you know what's good for you."

So she did, hour after endless hour until morning crept like a specter through the leaves. She was hungry. They had not eaten in two days. Angrily, she marched to Morgan. "Give me your knife," she told him.

He laughed, an ugly sound. "So you can stab me in the back?"

"A tempting thought, but for now I want only to cut us some fruit if I can find it."

"Let's see you do that." He flung the knife at her feet. "Good luck," he added.

Frowning, she swept up the weapon and turned back to the forest, hesitating as she gazed at the trees. She forced her scraped and bruised limbs toward the floresta, realizing even as she immersed herself within its twisted and tangled vines that she had no idea where to begin searching for food. But she was hungry; for the first time she knew what true starvation felt like. It was a hollowness, not only of the stomach but of the entire body. It was a burning in her blood, a humming in her head.

"Sarah!" Morgan called out behind her.

She slashed at the vegetation, taking nefarious pleasure in rending it into tiny pieces. She stumbled blindly through the undergrowth, forgetting even her hunger in her quest to lash out in anger and frustration. She came to a bend in the river, and there, suspended over the water, she saw a papaya, so large and ripe it bent the limb on which it was growing. It hobbled invitingly, and the sunlight reflecting off the river turned the flesh the color of a sunset.

Her mouth watered as, dropping the knife, she waded into the river, remotely feeling the liquid warmth rise up her shins, her knees. The water stirred around her thighs as she reached for the fruit, closing her fingers around the mellow meat, feeling its tender flesh give beneath the pres- sure of her fingers and pour thick juice over her hand. She plucked it from its stem and, hearing Morgan stagger from the forest behind her, turned and laughed as she lifted the delicacy in her palm. "Morgan, I did it. Behold, a feast fit. for a king... Morgan?"

His eyes dilated in terror, he stared at her. The smile faded from her lips as the paradise on which she balanced seemed to rise up around her in a succession of wildly singing birds that were more like a crashing of cymbals to her ears. The water undulated, closing like a vise around her hips and waist, and as she looked up in stupefaction, the browns and blacks and greens took the shape of a monster that reared out of the murky depths

like a dragon. Its hypnotic eyes were all that she saw before it began to squeeze.

She screamed, only vaguely aware that Morgan was splashing through the water, tripping, throwing himself onto her, his face a mask of rage as he closed" his hands around the constrictor's huge powerful head. He yanked it into the water, where it thrashed her away as if she were no more than Morgan's marmoset.