Lavie Tidhar - The Apex Book of World SF 2

Every few moments, one of the lights would blink. It was for only an instant and almost unnoticeable because of their sheer number, but Joao De Menes was watching intently, defying the devil-eyes to come closer. If they did, he would show them the power of a Portuguese right arm.

Magalhaes had laughed at him, simply saying, “If you fear the Indians’ camp-fires on the coast so much, perhaps you should take all the watches tonight,” and had then ordered the anchor dropped.

The captain might be an arrogant fool, but Joao knew the truth: those eyes were watching and weighing, the eyes of hundreds upon hundreds of hungry demons, waiting for the foolish Europeans to sail their ship beyond the edge of the world.

He didn’t know what lay beyond the end of the world. Some men told of a magic mist that you wandered around in forever, with no exit and no heaven, while demons feasted on your spirit. Others simply said you dropped off the edge of the planet, straight into the fires of hell. Still others spoke of eternal blackness, impossible torment.

Whichever was true, there were demons, and those demons possessed eyes that stared down at the ship malevolently from the cliffs that marked the edge of the world.

And every once in a while, one of them would blink.

Dawn broke lightless and drizzling, but Magalhaes was adamant: a boat was lowered and a fearful crew selected. It was impossible to fault the captain’s courage—he was the first to nominate himself—but easy enough to resent his cruelty. Of the ten men selected, five were the strongest on the Trinidad , while the other five were the most superstitious. Magalhaes was convinced that they could be cured of their foolishness by force, and exposure to the fact that what they believed to be demons were, in fact, just natural phenomena.

Predictably, De Menes was amongst them. He hadn’t even bothered to go to sleep following his watch because it was obvious that he would be on the boat. He boarded sullenly, ignoring the wind-driven spray. That wasn’t what was bothering him; his concern lay in the fact that he had no inkling as to what devils might await them on the barren patch of rocky land ahead.

The place looked innocuous enough: an empty brown and grey shore with low cliffs broken by periodic inlets. But De Menes knew that daytime often found malignant forces dormant, waiting. They were still there, of course, but they wouldn’t show themselves, just feel out the sailors and take them in the night when their power went unchallenged.

They landed without incident and Magalhaes led them a short distance inland and halted in front of a fire pit surrounded by the bones of a small animal. He pointed at it, looked straight into De Menes’ eyes, and laughed. “Here are your demons Joao. Hungry savages, from the look of it.” Turning to the rest of the men, he said, “Be wary, they can’t have gone far. This fire was burning an hour before dawn—I marked it especially.”

The men shifted uncomfortably. All were well aware that being harpooned by seal-hunters who’d never seen a European before would only destroy the body, as opposed to the eternal ravages that falling into the clutches of a demon supposed, but it made no difference to them. Death was what they feared, and they would worry about their immortal eternities at a later time. They stood straighter, attentive to the approach of any savages.

The natives they’d encountered along the interminable coast they’d sailed down to get that far hadn’t been particularly aggressive, but it was never advisable to let down the guard. Everyone who’d ever boarded a ship bound for spice or glory had heard the tales of fearsome ceremonies, strange rituals in pitch-coloured jungles and unholy banquets in which Europeans had been served as the main course.

They need not have worried, however. An hour after sunrise, a small group of natives approached them from behind an outcropping of rock. They walked slowly, their skin just slightly darker than the pale brown grass that their passage seemingly did nothing to disturb.

As they came nearer, the sailors could discern that every member of the group, composed of three women and two men, was as bare as the day they’d been born, their skin covered with some kind of thick grease or paste, a bright red colour. Presumably, this must have kept out the winds that, this far south, were cruel even in the spring—and would be deadly in winter.

The three women walked boldly to the group of Spanish and Portuguese mariners and spoke in their own language, a tongue that sounded harsh and hollow to De Menes, as desolate as the moaning of the ever-present wind. There was no threat in their gestures. The men were unarmed, and the spokeswomen seemed unsurprised to see them.

Magalhaes turned to Herrero, a Spaniard who could understand any tongue, no matter how uncivilised. Rumours, given strength by his dusky skin and quick temper, told that the interpreter’s affinity for the tongues of the savages was due to him being half-savage himself. Others said it was a gift from the devil. However he’d come about it, though, the ability had proven both useful and profitable on the journey so far. “Stay ashore and learn their tongue. I will have the ship send you a boatload of supplies. De Menes and Carrizo will stay with you.” Herrero nodded.

De Menes said nothing. He should have felt fury at the captain for belittling his beliefs once again, but there was no anger within his soul. He’d known what was coming, felt as though he was walking a predetermined path with an already decided ending, albeit one he could not see. All he saw when he thought about it was the greyness of impenetrable fog, an indeterminate future.

He simply walked behind Herrero as the linguist selected a campsite. This was not hard to do: the whole hillside was dotted with pits, each of which held the remains of a discarded campfire.

The rest of the morning passed peacefully. Herrero had wandered off and was seated in the centre of a group of natives, gesturing, laughing, offering gifts of beads and other trinkets which seemed to go down very well with the natives. Soon, they were gesturing for Carrizo and De Menes to join them.

The two sailors did as they were told. De Menes sat down gingerly between a greying old man and a woman who could not have been more than twenty, with jet-black hair. He tried to keep his eyes away from the exposed anatomy of the locals, but the circular seating arrangement made that difficult. Carrizo stared openly, but none of the women seemed to mind.

Herrero was already making progress with the language. Interspersed with the gesturing, there was now a word here, another word there, which seemed to please their hosts, who tried to correct his pronunciation and laughed at his efforts.

One woman, however, was paying no attention to Herrero. The girl De Menes had sat beside seemed to have eyes only for him and stared the entire time. At first, he thought it must simply have been the close-up view of his light skin and strange clothes, but he soon realised that the girl had not even glanced at the equally exotic figures of Carrizo and Herrero.

He smiled at her and placed one hand on his chest. “Joao,” he whispered. Her dark eyes invited him to speculate about the rest of her, and he tried desperately to keep his own gaze locked on them while she spoke.

“Teuhuech,” she replied, placing his hand on her own chest. He pulled it back quickly as she said something else, a rapid-fire string of words in her own language, delivered in a husky monotone. The man on De Menes’ opposite side chuckled.