A Scar on the Map

When Garcia’s heart finally stopped pounding, it was because he already knew how he was supposed to die. Being killed by a jaguar wasn’t it.

There wasn’t much blood. Vasquez had died quickly, like the translator: fangs puncturing his neck and skull. The jaguar hadn’t bothered to feed. Vasquez’s wheellock pistol lay only a couple yards away, unloaded. The jaguar wasn’t in sight.

Garcia’s gaze darted between trees in search of the predator before turning to Saywa, crouched on the forest floor. Dark hair cascaded onto the shoulders of her scarlet Inca dress, bound with large silver pins.

“Just us two, now,” he said.

The young woman’s gaze met his, her look revealing how much she hated him. She’d been helping track the Inca thief for three days now. Before starting out, Vasquez had requested one of the expedition’s war dogs instead of Saywa. They all knew the dogs could track. But the conquistador in command had said no: if they lost a war dog, there was no replacement, not until a new litter. Natives could be replaced easily. In fact, the Inca emperor seemed anxious to be rid of Saywa.

The translator — dead yesterday — said Saywa had been to the land of the dead and back. Garcia had spent too many years in the Church to believe that. And as a cartographer, he knew there was no map for that.

Usually, you bury a corpse. Sometimes you don’t. Garcia had never liked Vasquez; it had been mutual. And he didn’t want to linger so close to the jaguar’s kill.

But they’d buried the translator, so it felt wrong to just leave Vasquez’ body. What did Saywa think? She probably preferred all the Spaniards torn apart and left to rot. They’d buried the translator in such a shallow grave that even a jaguar could have dug him out. No point.

Now Garcia had Vasquez’s pistol, a much finer firearm than the translator’s musket. The complicated pistol was worth a bale of silk from China. He couldn’t carry both firearms and his drawing tools, and maps were his life. He laid the musket next to Vasquez’s corpse.

“In case he wakes when the jaguar paws at him,” he explained to Saywa. She wouldn’t understand the jest. He took the powder horn and balls for Vasquez’s pistol.

The balls were cast from one of the priest’s silver crucifixes, not lead. The crucifix was something Garcia believed in, and the silver balls were worth something, too — if he made it back alive.

He transferred most of the man’s water into his own jug. After considering everything he had to carry, he tucked the translator’s musket balls and powder under Vasquez’s corpse.

“If there’s war in Hell, Vasquez, you can thank me when I join you.”

Saywa muttered something in her own language. She acted like she was following maps better than his. That irritated him.

“You think I’m a crazy Spaniard. But I’m the only one left alive, so maybe not so crazy.”

He put the pistol in the leather bag with his drawing tools and parchment, then swung it over his shoulder. “We go now.” And then for good measure, he spoke the native word he’d heard the translator use to command her.

Saywa bared her teeth at him, and he wondered if he’d said it wrong. She swung the pack with their food across her narrow shoulders and led him deeper into the forest. A cloud of butterflies rainbowed into the sky. Birds and monkeys protested.

Saywa could track better than any war dog. She led the way deeper and deeper into Inca territory, occasionally pointing out a footprint in mud or a trail through brush.

The thief must know they were following him. One man with a head start should have easily outdistanced three Spaniards with chainmail and firearms. Except this Inca had been fool enough to steal from the priest when the priest was nearby: a man of God who was also a swordsman.

So the thief had escaped with the treasure and his life, but just barely. Saywa found blood on the ferns where he’d bedded down at night.

“Wounded like that, why doesn’t a jaguar take him?” the translator had asked her.

She’d given him a long answer, raking the air with fingers curved like claws, her words interspersed with snarls and bared teeth. But when Vasquez asked him what she’d said, the translator muttered, “The bitch doesn’t know.”

Saywa knew something, but either the translator didn’t believe or didn’t understand.

Three days later, the translator and Vasquez were dead, killed by jaguars. The thief was still alive, leading the chase. And Garcia was alive because he’d been forewarned of how he would die.

Five years ago in Seville, he’d paid a woman to foretell his death. Not a beggar woman, not a charlatan, but a seer that royalty consulted. She’d painted blood from a dove on his hands, arranged her carved bones around them, and whispered to her gods. When she was done whispering, she’d turned to him, uttered a single word, and told him not to tell a soul. The word wasn’t jaguar.

By midday, with the forest hot and humid, Garcia told Saywa to stop. In a sunlit clearing, he set up his small easel, unrolled the parchment, and used his inkpot and quill to fill in more of the blank space on the map. He lacked a ship’s compass, but the sun told east in the morning, west in late afternoon. Garcia had an infallible sense of direction and distance, and maps were his passion. He sketched streams and hills, drawing back the veil that cloaked the land. He would add illuminations later, back in the Inca city of pyramids. The letters R and V marked where his two comrades had died. The priest would want to know. Not that praying would help them now.

“You think the world is flat like this parchment,” said Garcia.

Saywa’s dark eyes turned to him warily.

He thought of telling her the world was like an avocado pit, and explaining maps and compasses and sextants. That Spain ruled the world. But she wouldn’t understand, and the ominous depths in those eyes stilled his tongue.

When he was done with the map, he made her set out again, tracking the thief. Garcia kept looking along both sides of their trail. He was afraid the thief would bury what he’d stolen. The priest had been angry, claiming the thief had stolen tools of God. But the only thing he described was a gold amulet in the shape of a jaguar. What tool of God was that? Tribute paid by the emperor to the Church?

By sunset, they reached a river. Saywa spoke words he didn’t understand and stepped into the water.

Apprehensive, Garcia stayed on shore. “How deep is it? How do you know he crossed? There’s no trail in the water.”

She couldn’t understand him. She lifted the bag with their food above her head, showing she meant to keep it dry. Then she turned and waded out to the middle, struggling to hold her place against the current. The water swirled around her dress up to her breasts, so he knew it would be above his waist. Higher in spots. She gestured for him to follow. The sun had sunk below the trees to the west, and the river reflected the blood-red sky.

Saywa continued across. Climbing onto the other bank beneath low-hanging branches, she pointed at something he couldn’t make out.

Then the thief stepped out of the forest near Saywa. She spoke, and he answered.

Garcia yanked open his leather bag, took out the wheellock pistol and feverishly poured gunpowder into the barrel, ramming a crucifix-ball after it. Then he turned the wheellock shaft and primed the pan.

When he raised the pistol, the thief turned and ran. Saywa crouched down as Garcia aimed. He pulled the trigger.

The powder in the pan flashed. The hand cannon kicked with a boom, and a cloud of smoke spread across the water.

There was no accompanying scream. The thief had already vanished into the trees.

Saywa got to her feet, looking into the forest, then back at Garcia.

He opened his mouth to speak but clenched his jaw. He dropped the hot pistol in the bag, picked the bag up, and waded into the river, careful to cross exactly where Saywa had. The chill of the water was a relief. The riverbed was uneven, and he felt with each step as the current pulled at him. Water soaked through his clothing and chainmail vest. He held the leather bag over his head.

Low branches brushed him as he waded out on the other side. “Can’t hit a man at that range,” he explained, “even with the best musket.”

She couldn’t understand him. He knew it was fear that made him talk. He was afraid of this land and afraid of the river. Saywa wrung water from her dress.

She trailed the thief for a couple more hours, and then they made camp by a stream. Garcia worked on his map while Saywa cooked their meal. He drew the river crossing and marked its width. He noted where he’d fired at the thief. One crucifix-ball wasted.

They ate together, sitting upwind of the cooking fire.

“What did you say to the thief?” he asked, trying to convey his meaning by gestures.

She said something, but he didn’t know if it was her answer or not.

“I wish the translator was still alive,” he muttered. “To tell me what you say, what you think.” He hurled a stick at the fire. “Can’t say the same for Vasquez. I should’ve saved the powder and musket balls I gave him.”

There were noises in the dark around them. Shrieking animals unlike those in Spain. This was a new world.

“When I asked the translator who you are, he answered, ‘Queen of the Dead.’ Maybe we killed so many Incas, there are more of you dead than alive.”

Something flickered in Saywa’s eyes.

“No one to trade watch with tonight. At least Vasquez was good for that. I’ll build up the fire. Maybe it will keep the jaguar away from you. I know it won’t kill me.”

He slept close to the fire.

Hours later, something woke him. He sat up, listening to night sounds. The fire had mostly died, so he built it up, sparks soaring into the dark sky. Saywa slept, alluring in the firelight. Her long dress had ridden up, exposing her legs. He decided he should sleep closer to her; she might appreciate his protection.

Then he saw something slide through shadows on the other side of her: a snake. It was longer than she was, its body as thick as her leg. Trying to keep his hands from shaking, he loaded his pistol, keeping an eye on the snake. Where should he aim? Was there a heart somewhere in that length?

Saywa stirred. Her eyes opened, and she saw Garcia with the gun. She rolled over, against the snake, and went back to sleep.

Garcia shuddered. This land was nothing like Spain. After watching Saywa and the snake for a long time, he lay down farther away.

Dawn woke him from a nightmare of Vasquez and the jaguar. Saywa was already awake. He looked for the snake, but didn’t spot it. She’d fetched water from the stream and rebuilt the fire from coals. The sun filtered through a fence of trees exactly where he’d expected east to be.

Stiff from sleeping on the hard ground, Garcia got to his feet. “The thief is still bleeding. Is that why we caught up to him yesterday? Maybe he’ll drop dead today. Then we’ll go back. My priest gets his amulet and I finish my map. Everybody happy.” Except those who’d died.

When they left camp, he was startled by the sight of fresh jaguar paw prints by the stream. Saywa hadn’t pointed them out, just as she hadn’t mentioned the snake. He longed for the translator’s company.

By mid-morning, Garcia was convinced something new was wrong. He ordered a halt and unrolled his map. Not to draw, but to see where he was.

Since early in the morning, sights had tugged at his memory as if he’d walked this forest before. He could anticipate Saywa’s progress like a Biblical prophet. The parchment showed what he suspected: they were at exactly the spot they’d been yesterday at this time. Somehow, they’d circled back. How could that be? He’d drawn this part of the map only yesterday, obsessive as always about direction and distance. They were marching in daylight, away from the Inca city with the Spaniards.

Garcia called Saywa closer to see the map. He traced his finger along their route, showing they were in filled-in territory, not unmapped void like the parchment beyond. “How?” he shouted. “How?”

Her dark eyes regarded his, and he was certain she understood. He grabbed her hand roughly, forcing her finger to trace where they’d been, where they were going. She didn’t fight him, but she didn’t answer, either.

He didn’t know what he’d expected from her. That she’d reveal the secret of how they’d circled back? Angrily he released her hand. She stepped away from him, lips tight in hatred.

He stared at his map, looking for a mistake, some clue that they’d reversed direction. At the point where their journey began repeating, there was a faint scar-like ridge in the skin, about two inches wide. The V for Vasquez lay on the other side, in the past. The blemish was barely noticeable, not enough to bother him as a cartographer. Apprentices were often given segundos, parchments where a knife had slipped during the skinning process, then stitched together. But this was a healed scar, a wound the animal had received when alive. He scraped it gently with his knife, trying to smooth the ridge. This parchment wasn’t from Spain, but something local, finer than calfskin. What had the Incas killed for him? Later he’d scrape away this entire section of the map and re-draw it, once he discovered how they’d gotten turned around.

She set off the way he knew she would, retracing her steps from the day before. The only difference from yesterday was that he was keenly aware of every landmark and sun shadow.

By sunset, they came to the river again.

Saywa stepped into the water, red with the sky’s reflection.

For a minute, Garcia hung back. He didn’t trust the current or the riverbed. But he’d crossed before, and this would be no different. He waded after her.

She was nearly to the other shore when the thief emerged from the trees. She stopped in the river and called to the man.

Feverishly, Garcia opened his leather bag, bracing against the current. He groped for the wheellock pistol, drew it out, and checked the wheellock shaft.

Saywa stood between him and the thief, but if he waited for her to get clear, he’d never get the shot. He pulled the trigger. There was a pop and a tiny puff of smoke. No flash, no boom.

The thief disappeared into the forest. Garcia cursed. Saywa turned to stare at him.

He studied the pistol. The priming pan had been covered, but over the course of the day, as the pistol jostled in the bag, the powder must have worked its way out. Without enough priming flash, the powder in the barrel hadn’t ignited.

“Why was he here again?” he shouted. “Why are we?”

Saywa turned her back on him, continuing toward shore.

He plowed through the water after her. Reaching shore, he pushed branches aside where the thief had disappeared, then added powder to the priming pan and fired the pistol into the forest. The boom echoed through the trees. Another crucifix-ball wasted, but it restored his faith in Spanish supremacy.

As he loaded the pistol again, he said, “I got a good look this time. I saw the blood on him. That should draw a jaguar. Why hasn’t it? And why hasn’t he bled to death?”

Saywa merely picked up the bag with their food and entered the forest. Garcia swore as he followed her.

After only an hour, he made her stop before they reached the stream where they’d camped the evening before.

“Maybe twilight was when you turned us around. I won’t let it happen this time.”

He lay down for sleep early, but the scream of a jaguar woke him as soon as he dozed off. He kept the pistol close, and each time he awakened, he built up the fire again. There was no snake, but he stayed far from Saywa.

At dawn he awoke groggy from lack of sleep and a nightmare about the map. The dream-parchment had writhed in his hands, tightening around them like ropes. River and streams on the map throbbed like dark veins. Maggots squirmed beneath the scar.

Today he didn’t even plan to take the map out to look at. A lie had wormed its way in.

They set out again, and his sense of déjà vu returned. They’d crossed the scar on the map.

Garcia was sweating, and not just from the heat. His breath came in shallow gasps as they traveled toward the river for the third time.

“There’s no such thing as a land of the dead. I just haven’t figured out the labyrinth.” He wished he had a ship’s compass. Compasses never lied. In a forest of shadows, the sun wasn’t reliable.

Each time they stopped, he checked the pistol’s priming pan. After he killed the thief, he’d turn around, breaking the cycle.

He spied the river through the trees and got the pistol out, primed and ready. When Saywa waded in, he stayed close behind her, eyes watching the shore ahead, pistol raised.

They were almost to the other side when he spotted movement beneath the branches. He shoved Saywa into the water and aimed his pistol at the shadow that emerged. He pulled the trigger.

Powder flashed. The pistol boomed, knocking him off balance. As he struggled for footing against the current, he saw not the thief but a jaguar. It tumbled dead onto the shore.

Garcia floundered in the water, trying to regain his balance and fell backwards. The bag submerged, filling with water, pulling him with the current. He hung on, stumbling, determined to save his map.

“Saywa!” he shouted.

She waded ashore ahead of him, dropped their food bag, and knelt by the dead jaguar.

Garcia lunged for a branch overhanging the river and caught it. He stumbled as the current pulled at him.

Saywa put her hands to the jaguar’s neck. She lifted free a cord and a gold amulet.

As he pulled himself along the branch, the riverbed dropped away beneath him. The word the seer in Seville had spoken was “water.” Fear overcame him. He abandoned the pistol and the bag, but the branch sagged into the river. His chainmail weighed him down, dragging him under. He fought his way along the branch until his head broke the surface. He gasped for breath, coughing.

Saywa put the amulet around her own neck. Beside her, instead of the jaguar, the thief lay dead.

The branch made a cracking sound, sagging lower, and Garcia submerged again. Still holding the branch, pulling his way to the surface, he gasped for air and got a mix of water and air instead. Then the branch broke, and Garcia’s chainmail dragged him beneath the surface.

In his last glimpse of shore, Saywa was gone. There was only the thief’s corpse and a jaguar baring its teeth in a snarl.

No map shows a way out of the land of the dead.