Part 55 (1/2)

She said nothing for a time, but took his hand in hers. She made certain that their fingers twined. Together, they watched the restless clouds, piling up like dirty linen until the yellow sky beyond was entirely obscured. In a moment, there was a dull boom of far-off thunder. But it seemed to go on forever.

”Did it ever frighten you, Jake?”

”What?”

”Ba-mahk.”

”The power?”

”Not so much that. The insight. The intimations,” She put both her hands around his. ”The connection to another world.”

”I only ever saw it as power,” he said.

That's the difference between us, she thought. ”Perhaps,” she said carefully, ”that is why you miss it so.”

He turned to her. ”What do you mean?”

”Ba-mahk, it seems to me, was a great deal more than power.”

Jake disentangled himself from her, held out his hands. ”Look at this,” he said. ”They're shaking. It was ba-mahk that kept me safe. Through it I could determine strategies, I knew instinctively what was the right step to take and where there was danger.”

”And now?”

”Now I have nothing,” Jake said. He ran his hands through his thick hair. ”There is nothing between me and death.”

Bliss was glad that she had not told him what had happened with his father. She had believed, perhaps, so much in s.h.i.+ Zilin that she had convinced herself that the old man somehow knew of Jake's loss of ba-mahk, that his qi merging with hers was meant as an aid to his only remaining son.

In this moment of Jake's agony she saw what it was Jake had to do. And she knew that she could not overtly help him. He was like a child who carries his beloved teddy around with him for years and years, even when it begins to wear out, shred and fall apart.

The teddy bear, the child believed, kept him safe from harm, especially when he ventured out into the frightening world away from home. But eventually the bear was gone and the child had to adjustto believing in his own inner power to keep him psychically safe from harm.

This was the point at which Jake now stood poised. Perhaps, she thought, Fo Saan had not done him a favor by teaching him ba-mahk. One needed a full understanding of such an extension of qi in order to cope with it while it was available and to do the same when it wasgone.

”If you cannot trust in yourself, Jake,” she said, ”how can you expect anyone else to? You are the Zhuan. How much truly rests upon your shoulders I think only you know.”

A young girl with the face of an angel stopped several meters away. Like her elders, she was painted with powdered thanaka bark and her long hair was pinned back from her face with a red clip fas.h.i.+oned into a star-shaped flower.

”I don't think you understand,” Jake said slowly. ”And I suppose I only have myself to blame for that. I feel as if I have lost something more than just ba-mahk, Bliss. I feel as if I have lost a part of myself as well.”

”But wasn't ba-mahk a part of you?”

The girl was staring openly at them. She put a fingertip in her mouth and sucked on it as if it were a stalk of sugar cane.

”There is a void inside me,” he said, ”that is more than ba-mahk.”

”But what?”

She wasn't staring at them, Jake saw now, but at something quite close to them. It was just beyond Bliss's right shoulder, out of his sight. Now the girl began to cry.

”If I knew that,” he said, ”I'd know everything.” But his mind was on the girl and what was making her cry. She took one step backward and on her face Jake could see the desire to flee. But she was caught, somehow, her eyes fascinated.

Fascinated a ”Bliss,” Jake said softly, ”don't move.” He could feel the tension come into her body almost immediately.

”What is it?”

”Just do as I tell you,” he said in her ear. ”All right?”

He could see her face now only at the periphery of his vision.

”Jake, what it is?”

”Don't move, I said!” he hissed. He had to hold her tight because her head had begun that involuntary motion that the body required when it sensed it was in danger.

”Will you do as I tell you?”

”Yes,” He could hear the fear edging close to the surface.

”Good. Now listen to me. In a moment I am going to move. When I do I want you to do nothing. Do you understand? Absolutely nothing. You are not to move. Clear?”

”Yes. Jake?”

”No time,” he said shortly. ”I'm going.”

And leapt over her, kicking out and down hard, his heel smas.h.i.+ng the body of the serpent into the hard cracked earth.

It was this that had attracted and frightened the little girl. Nothing else in the countryside would have engendered such a response in a child of the hill tribes.

The adder whipped around and Jake caught it just behind the head. Still holding it with his heel, he reached down and gripped the body with his other hand. It was a mwe-boai, Burma's deadliest viper. It was so dangerous not only because of its lethal venom but because it was p.r.o.ne to unprovoked attacks on beast and man alike.

He heard Bliss's gasp and knew that she had turned at last. The mwe-boai hissed and Jake tramped heavily on its head. There was the sound of bones breaking as Jake crushed its skull.

The body, perhaps five feet in length, whipped back and forth and Jake let it go. The child, crying in earnest now, was rooted to the spot. Jake left the twitching snake and crouched down beside the girl, He began to talk gently to her and then, as she put her head into the hollow of his shoulder, he picked her up.

Took her over to where the mwe-boai lay now quite still. Jake, still talking quietly to her, took her tiny hand in his own. Together they reached out. She gave a little yelp as she saw them nearing the dead serpent but Jake forced her to touch it so that she could feel for herself that its power to hurt was gone forever.

”Bad thing,” she said in the accent of the hill tribes, and Jake laughed, saying, ”Yes, bad thing.”

He took his hand away and the child kept hers on the snake's back. Her small fingers traced the slick, cool scales. But she kept clear of the mashed head that lay half-driven into the compacted ground.

When, at last, he began to stand, she crawled up him, wrapping her arms around his neck. He lifted her and walked back to the shade of the tree where Bliss was waiting for him.

”I hope you understand,” she said, ”what you possess that keeps you safe from harm.”

Jake watched the child as she lay cradled in his lap. Those bright black eyes stared up at him, unblinking, now unafraid.

”You did not become aware of the snake through ba-mahk. Ba-mahk did not allow you to kill it before it bit me.”

”No,” he said and she could hear the bitterness welling up from the depths of him. ”But my father is dead becausebecause I lost the ability to see ahead. I was lured away from the junk at just the time when the dantai was set to arrive. Ba-mahk would have revealed that to me. Instead” Emotion constricted his throat.

The Burmese girl made a sound in her throat and reached upward. With the tip of her finger she took the tear standing at the corner of Jake's eye, let it roll into her palm. ”Bad thing gone,” she said. ”Bad thing dead.”