Yara squeezed Snow’s hand and shouted into his ear: ‘Once you get back down to the floor, run and get the machete!’
When Jefe reached a height of around twenty feet he launched himself into the air, catching another chain, then whipped himself about, swinging higher, and caught yet another chain and swung again, repeating this process, going higher and higher until all Snow could see of him was a minute figure hurtling through a moving forest of silver chains and against a cinematic backdrop of brassy light and clouds like battle smoke. He descended in like fashion, performing a sequence of loops and somersaults, sudden shifts and reversals of direction that brought him, after several minutes, to within a few feet above them, whereupon he ascended again rapidly, arrowing from chain to chain, crossing spaces of forty feet and more before redirecting his course, throwing in spins and tumbling maneuvers and other elaborate stunts. Yara applauded wildly and shouted her praise, despite having scant hope of being heard. She elbowed Snow, enjoining him to do the same and, though he was not so inclined, he followed suit and was partly sincere in his applause, for he had never witnessed such a display of stamina and strength and coordination. He lost sight of Jefe among the chains and clouds, and inquired of Yara where he had gone – she pointed to a speck superimposed against a spray of golden light, perched on an invisible ledge. And then he was off again, soaring amongst the chains, not appearing to utilize their stability and momentum to alter his course, but scarcely touching them, as if gliding on updrafts, diving and banking, aerials too fluid and graceful to be other than flight.
How long Jefe flew, Snow could not have said. An hour, surely. Long enough so that his motivation for clapping and cheering waned and he stood silent and motionless until Jefe descended to the floor of the shaft and walked over to them, a light sheen of sweat the only register of his exertion. Yara congratulated him, patting his shoulder and smiling, but Snow, incapable of participating in this charade any further, looked off as if distracted, fighting panic, going over the list of things he needed to focus upon. Jefe smirked, stepping to him with a swaggering walk, rolling his shoulders, and gave him a push, moving him toward the wall covered with smoky clouds. Snow scuttled away and Jefe gave him a harder push that sent him reeling backward. As Snow toppled, windmilling his arms, Jefe sprang after him, snagging his belt, and lugged him toward the wall, kicking and twisting like a living satchel. He seized a chain, wrapping it once around his arm, and let it bear them upward.
Watching the floor shrink beneath him, Snow ceased his struggles and shut his eyes, clinging to Jefe’s leg, dizzy and sick with fright. After an interminable time he felt himself lifted. He screamed, convinced that this was the moment he had dreaded, but instead of plummeting downward he found himself pressed back against the wall, held there by Jefe’s hand at his throat and by something solid underfoot. A ledge. He slid his left shoe forward, feeling for the edge, and found it after two or three inches.
‘Don’t worry,’ Jefe said in his ear. ‘I’m not going to harm you.’
Snow squinted at Jefe, who stood beside him, facing the wall, and then glanced down at the floor of the shaft. Their elevation was so great he could not be certain he saw the floor, only a chaos of glittering, slithering chains, bright clouds on the wall opposite, and, as his eyes rolled up, the autumnal blue of the ceiling near to hand. His stomach flip-flopped, his knees buckled, and if Jefe had not tightened his grip, half-throttling him, he would have fallen.
Jefe gave him a gentle shake. ‘Didn’t you hear me?’
Mind trash erupted from a shadowy place in Snow’s consciousness, like a gusher from a vent in the sea bottom, resolving into a silt of childlike prayers and wishes.
‘Calm yourself, my friend! It’s okay!’
If you fell far enough, Snow had heard, you would lose consciousness before the impact.
‘I know you don’t like it up here,’ said Jefe. ‘But I’ve got you, see? Try to relax.’
Jefe’s face was too close to read, only an ear and part of his cheek and neck visible. He had an arid scent, slightly acidic – like the smell of an alkali desert. Snow released breath with a shudder and closed his eyes again. The grinding of the chains gnawed at the outskirts of his reason.
‘Your advice strengthens me,’ said Jefe. ‘I value it greatly. I want you with me. This is a joke. A little joke I’m playing on Yara. Nothing more. Do you understand?’
Snow did not understand.
‘She deserves it, don’t you think? You were right about her.’
There were voices in the grinding noise, like those you hear in the humming of tires while resting your head against the window glass of a fast-moving car – hypnotic, hyper-resonant, trebly voices eerily reminiscent of Alvin and the Chipmunks, voices at once sinister and cheerful that sang a simple song advising him go with the flow, go with the flow, go with . . .
‘Look at me!’ said Jefe.
He pulled back, permitting Snow to see his entire face, a face composed so as to illustrate the quality of assurance, and then came close again. ‘Everything’s going to be fine. You’ve won.’
Snow couldn’t think of anything to say – he essayed a grin, but wasn’t sure he had pulled it off.
‘We haven’t had much chance to talk,’ said Jefe. ‘That’s my fault. I apologize. When I found you in the village I assumed you were a spy. I very nearly killed you the first night. But over the past days I’ve come to appreciate your insights into my situation. Others might say fate brought you to me, but someone like myself shapes his own fate. I must have sensed you and called you to my side, so you could give voice to what I know in my heart.’
He removed his hand from Snow’s throat and patted his cheek. Snow felt the pull of the gulf below and tried to sink into the wall.
‘I’m an intuitive sort,’ Jefe said. ‘I know you can help me access the portion of my life that’s closed off. I think I knew that the instant I first saw you, but I understand now that you were afraid. That’s why you refused me. You needed time to adjust, to acclimate to my presence. I tend to forget the effect I have on people. I can’t always be expected to notice it. Obviously I don’t have the same effect on myself.’
Snow would have preferred to tune him out and concentrate on his footing, but Jefe kept on bellowing nonsense into his ear, inducing him to listen. He had the cogent, albeit somewhat hysterical thought that he might have been onto something when he berated Yara after Enrique Bazan’s visit – maybe when translated into human form dragons were reduced to prattling twits with superhuman powers, yet once returned to their natural state they expanded into their bodies and became the mysterious cosmic beasts of legend. Or not. Maybe they were assholes, whatever their shape.
Jefe gave him a hug and kissed him on the cheek, a move that made Snow cringe. ‘We’ve been up here long enough,’ he said. ‘We can talk more later. Let’s go down, shall we? Let’s finish the joke. Yara will be surprised to learn she has lost. We’ll show the bitch, won’t we?’
Snow had a presentiment of what was about to occur, but the idea that he might be carried down from the wall swept all else aside.
Jefe winked broadly at him, grabbed his belt and, before Snow could react, he leapt for a nearby chain, Snow hanging from his left hand. There was a split-second when he thought Jefe had lied and the joke was on him, but he felt a severe jolt that stopped his fall, the belt buckle digging into his gut with such force, he couldn’t breathe. Once he recovered he saw that they were descending at a rapid clip, the floor growing larger and larger. This time he didn’t shut his eyes – he yearned for the floor, he wanted the floor above all things, he willed it to rise to meet him, and when Jefe deposited him on the concrete, when the rough surface abraded his cheek, he almost wept with relief and lay there soaking up its beautiful wideness and firmness. He remembered Yara and looked for her. Spied her thirty feet above on a ledge, on the wall that portrayed clouds at dusk. She stared at him – he couldn’t make out her expression, but a bolt of terror shot through him, as if she had beamed it into his heart. Jefe flew in swoops and ascensions high above, sticking close to the wall, and then went higher yet, out into the center of the shaft. Something was different about his flying. It was less dervish, less spectacular than earlier, having a languorous air that reminded Snow of a trapeze artist doing lazy somersaults, relaxing, gathering momentum for his next show-stopping trick. Panicked, realizing what that trick must be, he sprinted to the panel and started to enter the code, but blanked on it. Her birthday. Seven . . . seven something, he thought. Fuck! He racked his brain. Seven thirteen ninety-one. He put in the numbers and his forefinger hovered over the keypad as he tried to locate Jefe among the chains. Spotted him descending from the heights, from the wall across from Yara, tumbling and twisting, a mad Olympic diver committed to a suicidal plunge, already halfway to her, more than halfway . . . Snow jabbed the Enter key, knowing he was too late.