The Fifth Harmonic (24 page)

Now
I was afraid. And I knew if I stood here much longer I might change my mind. So I clenched my teeth, tightened my grip on the handholds, leaned forward, and leaped off the edge.

I screamed in terror at the initial seconds of freefall, then the vertical hurricane of the updraft caught my wings and I thought my arms would dislocate from my shoulders. But I held on. The descent slowed, then stopped as I wheeled in a wide slow circle.

Good lord, I was flying!

I began to laugh and shout and whoop, and might have sounded like some rodeo cowboy if I'd had a voice that worked. I was giddy, I was wild, I was crazy and goddammit I was really
flying!

I couldn't see Maya and Ambrosio above me on the rim, but I could hear Ambrosio calling to me about my right leg, so I hooked my trailing right foot over my left ankle and tried to gain some control over my flight. I was gliding in a slow clockwise circle. I pulled down on my right handle, dipping my right wing. This brought me closer to the center where the updraft seemed stronger. I began to rise.

Now I could see Maya and Ambrosio on the rim—Ambrosio held onto the rope with one hand and waved with the other, but Maya seemed to have the fingers of both hands crammed into her mouth. I remembered what Ambrosio had said about the crosswinds and didn't allow myself to rise too high. I pulled down on my left wing handle and widened my gyre, moving outward toward the wall where the ledge waited. But as the wall raced toward me I realized almost too late that I'd pulled down too far. Just in time I let up on the left and pulled hard on the right and barely avoided splatting myself on the lava like a bug on a windshield.

I wheeled around again and gained altitude, then took it slow, easing myself toward the periphery. The ledge hove into view like a landing field. Luckily it was large enough to forgive the many errors in my ungainly approach. I unhooked my right foot and stuck it out, looking to make a one-point landing. I thought I was going to bring it off until my boot caught on a chunk of lava and I wound up skidding to a halt on my knees.

But I'd made it! I was here!

I stayed on my knees and sagged with relief. I let my pounding heart slow as I realized that I was nowhere near as cavalier as I'd seemed. I wanted to live more than I'd thought. That I'd just done something completely insane struck home with full force.

Finally I struggled to my feet and turned. I gave Maya and Ambrosio a thumbs up, then turned to the wall. I hobbled along the ledge, following it into a recess where I found another giant geode set into the rear wall. Four blue-hued tines nestled in its core. I plucked one free and put it in my pocket where it clinked against the other two. That was the easy part.

Now all I had to do was get back.

I found myself quaking at the thought. What had changed? I'd already done it. I knew now beyond a doubt that Ambrosio's wingkite contraption worked, and that I could handle it. I'd done it once, I could do it again . . . couldn't I?

Not that I had a choice. Take another great leap or stay here and rot.

And then I noticed the wind-tossed rope trailing from my waist to Maya and Ambrosio on the other side. What if . . . ?

I visualized them tying their end to the Jeep, myself finding a place to secure my end over here, and then crossing the chasm hand over hand along the rope.

Who was I kidding? My failing muscles wouldn't carry me ten feet before giving out and sending me down the Devil's Whistle right into his gullet.

But I also knew if I stepped up to the edge and looked down again, I'd have one hell of a time taking that giant step. So I ran for the edge—ran as best I could with one leg tethered to the wing assembly—and took a flying leap into the void.

Again that initial sensation of freefall, and then being buoyed by the wind. I headed directly across. Circling seemed dangerous now, what with the possibility of slamming into the sides. The central updraft seemed stronger, or perhaps I hadn't been in the core of it before. It caught me full blast when I was halfway across and lifted me to rim level, then higher. I dipped a wing to take me out of the blast but I seemed to be caught. I was looking down on Maya and
Ambrosio and saw them hauling on the rope, reeling me in. Yes. Do that. Reel me in like a kite. Get me back to solid ground. Now.
Please!

It was working. They were pulling me out of the gale, and I was losing altitude—but losing too much altitude too fast. The rope was slack now and I was in a dive toward Maya and Ambrosio. I let out a hoarse, cracked, anguished cry of terror as I swooped toward them. I pulled madly on the handles in a clumsy attempt to flap my wings, trying anything to slow my descent.

Ambrosio leaped and somehow got hold of me. He did his best to break my fall, but as we both tumbled to the ground I landed half on him and half on a rocky protrusion. Pain lanced through my left chest wall as I heard the dull
crack
of a breaking rib.

Maya rushed over. “Are you all right?”

I couldn't speak. The fall had knocked the wind out of me and a knife stabbed my chest every time I tried to take a deep breath. Finally the spasms eased and I managed a few shallow breaths.

“No,” I wheezed, clutching my side. “I'm not. I've got a broken rib.”

“But you are alive,” she said, kneeling beside me and taking my face between her hands. “That is what is most important. And you have your air tine. Now all you need is the water tine to complete your set.”

I hated to kill the bright light of hope in Maya's eyes, but she'd find out sooner or later.

“You don't understand,” I said. “If I couldn't hold enough air to reach the tines before, I'll never do it with a broken rib. It's over. I'm finished.”

When I saw her crushed expression, I didn't know who I felt sorrier for: me or her.

An agonizing trip back to the coast. Every bump shot pain through my chest wall.

Night was falling when we reached the village. By the time we finished dinner—if sweetened milk from various plants and animals can be called dinner—the pain in my ribs had eased, but try as I might I could not draw a full breath.

Which meant my initial assessment had been on the money: the odds of my making a dive to thirty feet tomorrow had been slim without a broken rib; now they'd moved into the million-to-one neighborhood.

So I sat inside the door of my hut feeling miserable as I watched moonshadows migrate across the sand. Then a shadow stopped in my doorway.

Maya. She stood silhouetted in the moonlight. She wore a simple cotton shift and carried what looked like a large jar.

“I have something for you,” she said, holding it up.

“Does it allow you to breathe underwater?”

“It is a healing unguent,” she said, her voice soft as she came toward me. “An old Mayan formula.”

“‘Unguent.’ There's a word you don't hear much these days. But no salve can heal a broken bone.”

“One never knows. Take off your shirt and lie back on that blanket.”

I did as I was told and she knelt beside me.

“Show me where it hurts.”

I laid my hand across the bruised, tender swelling of my left sixth rib. “Right here.”

Maya moved my hand away and began gently applying the unguent. It had a warm, creamy feel, slightly oily, redolent of rich soil and growing things. The inside of the hut began to smell like the jungle. Her fingers moved in slow circles, sliding over my ribs, leaving to dip into the jar, then returning to spread the unguent over a wider and wider area.

She hovered over me and brought her other hand into play. Now she was massaging my pectorals and shoulders, then my abdomen. Tiny electric shocks ran from her fingertips down to my groin. I felt myself becoming aroused.

“Turn over,” she said, her voice husky.

I winced with the jab of pain from my rib as I rolled onto my belly, but it subsided quickly as her hands ran over my back, kneading the shrinking, wasting muscles and massaging the unguent into my skin.

When her fingers reached my belt line she whispered, “Loosen your belt.”

More pain as I complied, but I didn't care. I was afloat, enveloped in a warm wet haze. Maya's hands slipped immediately under the waistband to massage my buttocks. Then she was tugging on the pants themselves. I lifted my hips to let her slide them off. And then I was naked and she was coating the backs of my thighs, behind my knees, then down to my ankles, an ancient priestess anointing a corpse for burial.

“Onto your back again,” she said.

I hesitated—I was fully erect against the blanket beneath me—
but then I figured she had to be expecting that. So I turned over and felt myself become even harder as I jutted into the air.

Maya began working her way up from my shins, to my knees, up my thighs. Then her hands trailed away and I wanted to cry out, to beg her to touch me, please, just once. I didn't have to. She returned and gripped me with both unguent-laden hands, coating my aching erection.

I moaned, a low, almost pained sound bursting from the deepest part of me. I couldn't help it. It had been so long and her hands felt so good.

And then Maya was lifting her shift and straddling me. She was hot and wet inside, and I was greased like a Channel swimmer. I dove into her and began stroking, clutching the tops of her thighs and arching against her in a mad, frenzied rhythm while she held still, leaning on me with her hands on my upper arms. I was wildly out of control, completely at the mercy of the ecstatic pressure building in my groin and perineum. I erupted within her, my legs kicking and spasming as I released a hot, rapturous, pulsating stream that seemed to flow forever.

It took me a moment to catch my breath. I looked up at her, still astride me. She couldn't have gotten much out of that. Probably next to nothing.

Then she released a sigh, almost like a sob, and gently pounded her fists against the sand on either side of me—twice . . . three times.

I sensed her frustration. “I'm sorry. It's been so long since—”

“It is not that.”

“Then what—?”

She pressed a finger against my lips. “Hush. Never mind. And it is not over yet.”

Maya lifted her shift over her head and tossed it aside. She took my hands and placed them over her breasts. Then she began moving her hips. I was still inside her, but a lot smaller and flabbier than when I'd entered. The feel of her nipples hardening under my fingers, and the almost ceremonial way she was rotating and thrusting her hips began working their magic, however, and I was soon back to full tumescence.

And now it was Maya's turn. She leaned forward and gripped my
shoulders, digging her nails into my flesh and moaning as she rode me. Finally she gasped and stiffened, rising and arching her back. I could hear her breath hissing through her teeth. As she made a highpitched keening sound I thrust further into her and detonated for the second time. We hovered there, not quite on the ground, yet not fully off it, for I don't know how long before collapsing into a sweaty, panting tangle.

I took Maya's face between my hands and kissed her.

“You just fulfilled a condemned man's last request.”

I kissed her again and tasted salt on her cheeks.

“You are not going to die,” she whispered. “I will not allow it.”

I wrapped my arms around her bare back and held her as tightly as I dared without jostling the splintered ends of my fractured rib. I felt rather than heard her sob, and I wanted to cry myself.

Oh, Maya, I thought. I wish you had the power to offer me a reprieve. Because now that I've found you, I don't want to leave you.

Never had I met a woman so antipodal to me and yet so like me. We seemed to disagree on everything, and yet never in my life could I remember feeling more sympatico with another human being, not even Annie.

The tumor itself was unfair, but to find a soulmate who could make life so worth living just when I was riding an express train to death's door was unbearably depressing.

I wanted to say more, but my eyelids were drifting closed, and suddenly I was dropping like a stone into sleep's ocean . . .

. . . dropping like a stone . . .

. . . seeing the stone hit the surface . . . watching a slow-motion splash, seeing the ripples spread as the stone sinks into the clear depths . . .

. . . sinks . . .

. . . like a stone . . .

Air hunger tore me from sleep.

Gasping and hacking, I levered to a sitting position, which should have sent a shock of pain through my chest wall but didn't. When the choking spasms eased, I touched the broken rib. Still tender but not nearly so much as last night. That unguent Maya had applied seemed to have worked. I'd have to find out what was in it and—

Listen to me, I thought. As if I'm ever going to have a chance to put it to use.

My throat was so swollen I could barely swallow my saliva.

I looked around and realized I was alone. I wanted her here, wanted to hold her, to tell her how curing me no longer mattered, that she'd transformed the remainder of my life. But Maya must have left during the night. I felt crushed. I hadn't heard her go. I'd slept like the dead.

But just before I'd dropped off I had an idea . . .

I struggled to my feet and stumbled to the door of my hut. I stared across the beach and the water to the spires of the La Mano Hundiendo. I thought I knew a way to reach the water tines.

But why on earth should I want to? I felt weak and sick, and I knew this was probably the last day I'd be able to swallow anything, so why devote my rapidly shrinking time and energy on such a fool's errand?

I couldn't explain it, but I felt driven to reach that last tine. Maybe it was because this was a task I'd begun and hadn't completed. Maybe I didn't want to leave behind any unfinished business. Maybe Captain Carcinoma was metastasizing through my brain and affecting my critical faculties. But as much as anything else, I wanted to do it for Maya.

I was determined to win my fourth tine before I died.

I spotted Maya standing with Ambrosio and my pulse quickened. Just looking at her gave me new strength. I realized then how completely I'd fallen under her spell.