So Long Been Dreaming Read Online Free PDF Page B

bandages made me feel well-prepared. The bug juice smelled like millipedes’ stink glands. Remembering the curled-up ants, I sprayed myself liberally.
    A thrill danced up and down my nerves as I pulled out a plastic map and an electronic compass. No aimless wandering – I had directions. I longed for a mirror to glimpse what I looked like this time. I took off the jacket and pulled on the tee shirt, which was way too big, then cleaned and bandaged my arm and leg. I splashed antiseptics on the rest of my wounds and squirmed at the sharp pains. One bottle of Recharge was all I’d allow myself before looking over the map. No global context, just local frames of reference – this was a map for somebody dealing in secrets. I wanted to find my way out of secrets. The oxbow and the path I stood on were marked in green. An arrow pointed beyond a “circle of death” and a “forest of ancestors” to “the final shore.” I lingered over the map, memorizing its details and imaging the journey before folding it carefully and tucking it into my pants.
    The main compartment’s zipper snagged on threads from the seam, and after a few half-hearted tugs, I almost gave up. For someone hungry for clues, I was procrastinating, because I just knew. . . . One sharp tug ripped it open and revealed thin metal cylinders bundled in groups of twelve, each held together by what I guessed were timing devices.
    A backpack of explosives with fancy detonators.
    I didn’t have to follow this body’s terror story. I could rebel, invent a new scenario or. . . .
    A sound behind me, something splashing in the water, made me spin around, pull the pistol out of my pants, and throw myself to the ground. My raw skin screamed, but I ignored that and the acid sweat dripping into my eyes. In the distance, water sloshed against the swampy oxbow shore, vines swayed against one another, and a breeze in the treetops made spears of sunlight dance through the mist. Shadows played in shadows. The pistol shook in my hands and tears dribbled down my chin. I didn’t want to go back and hunt for spooks. I wanted to move forward, get on with the Mission – mine and hers. Griots were storytellers, whatever the story. The detonators and explosives made my heart race. Now or nothing: experience this life, gather its secrets, or in the chaos of memories, cease to exist. I heaved the pack onto my back and started walking the route outlined in green on the map. If I only had twenty-six hours, I shouldn’t waste time. There were worse things than being a terrorist, and I’d been them all.

    I tried not to think, just walk the trail. No underbrush kept me occupied, no wild animals came out to challenge me. All I had to do was put one foot in front of the other. Maybe it was the heat and swaying vines or the chemical haze that set me adrift, I couldn’t say. My feet were still on the spongy ground, but I was lost in bits of memory – from the Edges.
    I’d dropped into a tree once, somewhere cooler than this jungle. The first Edge was a sapling, shaken, uprooted, and stripped bare, then a canyon of memories too deep to reach, and finally I was a giant tree – nothing between me and the sky. I didn’t have eyes, but I could drink a trillion points of light and stroke out the right vibrations, red and violet vibrations that sent excited electrons dancing with new partners. A gigawatt blast of lightning surged through my body, shattered my woody spine, and set me on fire. Miles of roots smoldered in the dirt. I fell over and burned to death in a rainstorm.
    So many fires and storms.
    I flashed on a hillside battlefield pummeled by balls of hail. A master samurai had run an enemy through with a sword. I dropped in the body, and his death wounds healed before the samurai’s eyes. With hail cracking against my skull, I picked up a curved sword and swung it through the air at no one in particular. The samurai muttered a prayer and chopped off my demon head to make sure I