Free Shadowline Drift: A Metaphysical Thriller by Alexes Razevich Page B

light as a panther’s.
    The thudding of his heart marked the long minutes until he trusted that she wouldn ’t return. His gaze darted from the stick to the door and back again. He expected her to appear again any second—maybe with more women, maybe with a knife. When his pulse finally calmed, he realized what Naheyo had brought—not a club to bash in his skull, but a cane.
    A gift.
    He slid off the bed, picked up the stick, and gingerly tried it out, hobbling around the room hesitantly, afraid to put any weight on his injured foot. Bit by bit, he tried more weight on the ankle, and found that he needn’t hobble like an old man, only take his steps slowly and let the cane support the burden of his hurt leg. He let out a deep sigh. Liberated.
    He stood near the doorway and looked across the room at the place he slept—a standard cot at standard bed height, about twenty inches high. He hobbled back over and stood next to it, his heart pounding. A month ago the top edge would have hit above his waist. Now it touched at least a foot lower than that. And the spoon that Pilar had brought had fit his hand. Maybe not a child’s spoon after all. The bowl hadn’t seemed huge, the way plates and bowls usually did, and clothes that looked too large fit him fine. He leaned on the cane, afraid to breathe, afraid to believe what seemed to be true—that he was growing.
    But it was impossible. Flesh and bone and organs and nerves and blood vessels and muscles and the rest of the human body couldn’t stretch what he guessed was about two feet in two weeks. Not without him feeling it. The stress on his body would have been incredible. There would have been pain. He’d felt some stiffness in his joints, some tenderness all over, the leg cramps of that morning, but nothing like what he imagined that sudden sort of growing would cause his body to feel.
    He ’d been asleep, though, most of six full days in the compound.
    A twisted ankle, even a broken one, couldn ’t explain needing that much sleep. The five-day trek in the forest shouldn’t have knocked him flat for more than a day and night, maybe two, once he’d stopped. He stared at the place where the cot touched his legs, just below his knees. Was it over? Was this his new height or would he keep growing? If he kept growing—
    Pilar ’s voice startled him from his thoughts. “You’re standing.”
    He whipped around, almost losing his balance in the effort. Pilar leaned in the doorway, one hand propped against the dried-mud jamb, a camera in the other. She’d tied her long hair up in a ponytail high on her head.
    “ Standing and thinking pretty seriously about something, to judge by the look on your face,” she said.
    “ Getting to a phone,” he said, struck again at how the sight of her made his breath catch in his throat. He pushed the thought away. Women weren’t interested in him that way. Except—he was taller now. Normal. Short for an American, but normal.
    “ Why?” She took one step into the room and stopped, her eyes on his face.
    She stood shorter than him now—not by much, but she was—and that threw him. Her question threw him. He had known she would ask. He should have had an answer ready. All he could do now was skip over it and plow ahead, hoping she wouldn’t press him.
    “ Do you have a boat I could use, or could you arrange for one to get me to Catalous?”
    Something flickered in her eyes—amusement? Interest?
    Pilar shook her head. “We’re strictly female at the compound, and Lalunta women don’t go out on the water without a man. There’s a village with men about a day’s walk from here. They have canoes. Someone would probably be willing to take you to Catalous.”
    She wanted to ask why getting to a phone was so important—she wanted to ask about a lot of things, Jake could see it in her eyes and the set of her mouth—but she didn’t.
    “ I’d appreciate it if you could make the arrangements,” he said.
    Pilar laughed softly.