Lavie Tidhar - The Apex Book of World SF 2

At that moment, a couple of men from the Trinidad arrived, carrying sacks of provisions. “Your tent is down in the boat. If you want to sleep under cover, I’d suggest you get it. We aren’t coming back up here.”

Grumbling, but relieved to be able to escape from the strange natives for a few moments, Carrizo and De Menes walked down the hill. Herrero, of course, was much too important to be bothered with menial tasks. They joked with the oarsmen as they pulled the poles from the boat. “Magalhaes says we’ll be back tomorrow or the next day. He wants to sail beyond that outcropping—” the man pointed to a peninsula some leagues away “—to see whether we can replenish our water.”

De Menes’ heart sank. They would be alone, without even the comforting sight of the flotilla to keep him sane, on a small spit of land at the edge of the world. But he would not give the tyrant the satisfaction of begging to be allowed back on board. He gestured Carrizo to pick up his half of the burden and set off towards the campsite.

The wind, already a desolate howl, had picked up even more as they began to pitch the tent. By De Menes’ reckoning, it was about three in the afternoon, and there were still hours and hours of late spring sunlight remaining. And yet the sunlight seemed weak, thin, as if its force was being drained by invisible fog. De Menes shivered.

The girl, Teuhuech, realised he was back almost immediately, and joined them just as Joao attempted to position the final tent pole. He watched her walk in their direction, unable to ignore the fact that there was a young and supple body beneath the red paint.

She playfully took hold of the tent pole, her surprisingly strong grip resisting his efforts to tear it from her grasp, and his attempts to twist the pole without making contact with her skin only made the native girl laugh.

Finally, she relented, allowing De Menes and Carrizo to finish erecting their tent, a medium-sized piece of canvas suitable for three men. When it was done, she smiled and crawled inside. De Menes tried to look away, but Carrizo had no such qualms. He stared at the indecently exposed flesh and then turned to his companion and winked lewdly. “I would go in after her, my friend, but I don’t think that would make her happy. You, on the other hand, should hurry before she changes her mind.”

De Menes gave him a dark look. While he wasn’t a saint, by any means, and certainly wasn’t averse to the occasional dalliance with a native girl, this one’s single-minded determination made him nervous. It was impossible to shake the feeling that there was something deep and disturbing lurking just behind those smiles. Maybe it was just his dread at having been abandoned by his ship at the edge of the world with nightfall approaching fast. But he felt his soul and his immortal existence were at the mercy of forces no mortal could ever hope to control.

He shook his head and returned to the circle where Herrero was still holding court. The Spaniard complemented his limited—yet still impressive, considering how little time he’d taken to create it—vocabulary with wild gestures and vocal sound effects. His audience sat in rapt attention.

“I’m telling them the story of our Atlantic crossing,” he explained. “Although they seem to believe that we’re sorcerers from the sky, because they saw the sails of our ship, and think it looks like a bird.”

De Menes nodded and sat on the cool ground, squeezing between two of the local men who’d arrived in their absence. The red paint did little to cover them, either, but it was still less distracting than having Tehuech beside him. As the story went on, more men arrived, none aggressive, all painted red. The girl, disappointment evident on her face as she saw his new seating arrangements, sat straight ahead of him.

The long afternoon’s anaemic light soon gave way to an eternal twilight, and the men began to drift to the nearby fire pits. Soon, the demonic eyes once more lit the hills, but this time De Menes sat amongst them. He wondered what else walked the night, connecting the dots between the warmth and light.

The sailors were left to their own devices as night came down and the last vestiges of the day’s warmth and cheer were swept away before the howling wind. De Menes had difficulty believing that the savages could bear the chill without clothes, and found himself wondering whether they insisted in that same lunacy during the winters, which he imagined must be merciless in those latitudes.

Their own fire was an unimpressive affair, built close to the tent and casting a small ring of light from which De Menes refused to venture even to relieve himself. He could feel the demon lords watching them from the darkness, present in every shadow and trying to find the doorway that led from their own grey and boundless kingdom into the world of the living.

Knowing sleep would be beyond him, he’d offered to stand guard. So he sat with his eyes open long after Carrizo and Herrero had drifted into snoring slumber. He cringed at each sound, ready to defend himself but, when the demon crawled into his tent and took his hand, he could do nothing but follow it out.

It led him endlessly across the stiff grass to the embers of another of the bonfires. By its light, De Menes saw that no demon held his hand, but that Tehuech had brought him there. He knew exactly why. She was still naked, but she’d also scraped off the paint.

He pulled his hand away, trying to remember the way back to his own fire and the security of the tent, but fear had made him an unthinking being, a sheep led to slaughter. He turned back to the girl, and a movement above her breasts told him that she wasn’t completely bare. A necklace of stone and shells and driftwood danced above her breasts.

Seeing where his gaze lay, she smiled. “Joao,” she said. She removed the necklace and held it towards him with both hands, saying something incomprehensible, and then “Joao,” again.

He shrugged and bowed, allowing her to pass the offering over his head. It caught on one ear, but was soon in place around his neck.

“Thank you,” he said, and she smiled back, understanding the meaning, if not the words.

Joao felt more relaxed. Having accepted her gift, he felt that it would be all right to return to his camp. He turned away from the fire, the afterimage of the embers dancing in his eyes. He waited for them to subside, for his night vision to return.

But, instead of disappearing, the moving lights came into sharper focus, resolving themselves into points of light just beyond the ember’s illumination. Eyes that stared unblinkingly back at him, seemingly an arm’s-length away. De Menes recoiled from those eyes, his steps taking him straight into Tehuech’s waiting embrace.

He knew the fire was all that kept them away, and that the girl was all that kept the fire alive, and that the creatures of the netherworld were not there to interfere, but to bear witness to a consummation.

The following day dawned bright and clear; memories of the previous night burnt away, but De Menes was still surprised to wake inside the tent. He had no recollection of having returned, and his memory of the rest was blurred as if veiled in grey fog. But it had not been a dream: the clicking of his new necklace as he crawled out of the tent assured him of it.

“Come on, sleepyhead,” Carrizo chided. “The sun’s been up for an hour, and Magalhaes is back. He found some more savages a little further west, and they seem a bit more advanced than these. We have to pull up the tent and return to shore.”

The manual labour allowed De Menes to temporarily forget about midnight rendezvous and ghostly eyes and, as he approached the sea and its waiting boat, he felt an enormous weight lifting from him. Each step felt lighter than the last.