I've already posted the prologue (which should obviously be read first), but here are a few more pages of it in case you're interested.
Two weeks he’d walked in this weather and drank up every humid moment, unsure if it would last. The ground had finally hardened and cracked in places that used to be muddy mush. Birds had returned to their treetop symphonies and nature’s own maracas, the cicadas, sang him into slumber more nights than not. When the ground became dry enough, he slept outside under stars that had been missing for so long. The bag full of clothing slung over his shoulder doubled as his pillow at night. The rain stopped and he hadn’t bothered to ask why – sleeping beneath a bright lover’s moon was enough for him and he was sleeping better now than he had in months.
A simple cross, small and delicate, hung around his neck, reflecting the sun onto the ground in front of him as he walked. It was the only belonging the people of Forella allowed him to leave with, save for the clothes he wore and the ones thrown over his shoulder. The Good Man had failed them, they said, shouting down his rebuttals. The rain had stolen their homes and their crops and, to some degree, the lives of their elderly and the Good Man still let the rain come. For that, they said, Lazaro had to leave. If the prayers to his gods wouldn’t work, then he couldn’t stay. To prevent him from ever coming back in disguise, they branded him, bubbling up the skin on both arms in symmetrical patterns of intricate and grotesquely beautiful designs whose origins were unknown to him. They were symbols of nothing but blame and fear on the part of the impatient and the unfaithful, as far as he was concerned.
His arms were now wrapped up tight in soiled white swaddling stained from the burns beneath and the dirt from his evening slumbers. The pain was there – a dull ache running from forearm to shoulder, but he was successful in pushing it to the back of his mind now. Pain was temporary but the forgiveness he truly believed in wasn’t coming as easily as he’d hoped.
He looked ahead up the road and spotted a large tree that, still full of branches and heavy leaves, gave off a giant’s shadow on the ground below. It sat perched mere feet away from the slow moving river and looked like a good place to stop for a few hours. He hobbled up the tough road and then felt the tickling of grass blades through his sandals as he sauntered into the cool shade.
Lazaro recognized the huge leaves on the tree. As the river grew, it became dirty and polluted with highland soil and submerged shanties and smaller villages along the river had used these leaves to catch fresh rainwater outside of their homes while the Forever Rains poured. A few leaves hung proudly, but the ones on this side of the mountain were mostly dry. Some dirty, some dusty, but all of them empty and the river was still too murky to drink from.
He sat down on the thick grass and removed the sandals, wiggling his toes as he tossed them on the ground beside him. A breeze picked up and almost stole away his hat, but he grabbed it in time and kept it pressed to his head as he unbuttoned the shirt with his free hand. His fingers moved nimbly though his arms did not – removing the shirt took a great deal more effort. Lord, how he ached to be in the cooling waters quickly!
Pere Lazaro slipped off his trousers and stood naked in the shadow of the tree. With fingers clutched around his necklace, he prayed for safety and for the Good Man to watch over both him and his meager belongings. The calm sound of the river beckoned and he closed his eyes as he gave in to the brief, cooling respite from the heat. He sat on the bank of the new river and felt the grass tickle him. The dry blades rustled against his backside as he dipped his legs into the lazy water. He kicked them against the current as if he were a child and began to unwrap the bandages along his arms.
The gauze stuck and frayed against the scarred skin that ran the length of his arms, but still he pulled, careful to unravel with slow hands. Bits of skin and congealed blood stuck to the sweaty, dirty gauze and again he grimaced, anticipating the pain before he felt it. The bandages came spiraling off his limbs until finally his arms embraced the sun’s light. The scars wouldn’t come for awhile, but others would recognize the intricate branding - a tiny circle at the top of the wrist spread out into a complex webbing of long sloping curves that ran the length of his arm. The first time he redressed the wounds, he almost smiled before wrapping them back up in haste. The pattern was quite extraordinary, he had to admit.
The water put him at ease and he continued to kick his legs over and over, falling into a sundrunk rhythm that made him forget his nakedness. He found himself alone in the aftermath of a drowned world and was strangely content despite finding no water to drink. His lips were cracked and bleeding now. He tried using the river to moisten them, but retched at the taste of the briny fluid and decided to wait until cleaner water appeared.
Another breeze kicked up and goose-pimpled his spine. He leaned back on his hands and felt the silty water flow between his toes. Water was a beautiful substance, he thought, moving wherever it wanted and could be used for anything: scrubbing clothes, anointing a newborn, sating thirst. This river, however, had done great damage everywhere the Pere had been. He had been curious as to its extent, so when the Forellans kicked him out, he headed towards the highlands to find the beginning of this new Eden-snake through the country. Mayhap answers, or mayhap more questions, sat at the end of the road. He was unsure and in no hurry.
He heard the call of birds on the other side of the river and smiled again. It was nice to hear the Good Man’s creatures living out in the open once more. Several sparrows soared overhead and circled each other before perching on a tree beyond his sight. He kicked his legs in the water again, feeling droplets splash up onto his bare thighs. He rummaged inside his satchel - a few nuts and a some nearly rotten berries were all he could find and he nibbled at them. A little now, a little later. The Good Man provides, but sometimes you have to meet Him half-way.
When he was done eating, the Pere laid there and fell into a lazy slumber for awhile. He was awakened by something brushing against his still submerged legs. He pulled himself up into a sitting position and stared down past his knees. He expected the limb of a tree, but was no less surprised to find the limb of an older woman brushing up against him. Her skin was a bruised and mottled slate grey, but her lips were a dark shade of bluish-purple. He couldn’t tell if her teeth had rotted out before or after her death and he recoiled instinctively, steadying himself quickly.
She got caught up on the reeds that lined the river and the Pere scooted over to them. He removed her leg from the flora and gently pushed her further out into the river with his foot. As she floated away in a soft spiral on the river’s surface, he kissed the cross around his neck and watched as she floated down beyond the bend, beyond his vision.
The bodies had taken some getting used to – seeing several at a time float down with the current had not been unusual, but sightings of them had diminished over the last few days. When the rains first came and travelers still passed through Forella, they spoke of a village of people living on top of the ocean – fishermen. He heard that these fishermen had cast nets across the widening river and, instead of catching fish, caught the bluish-white bodies of the deceased. Both the elderly and the young together, floating towards the ocean and caught up in the tangle of arms and legs of others given to the same fate of a river burial. He wondered how many bodies had been baptized and given their last rites by the same water?
The stories held no credence with him – they were too unbelievable, too grotesque to hold any truth, but the first night away from Forella changed his mind. The first bodies he’d seen had been those of children. Distended bellies reflected the moonlight and curled fingers poked up from the water’s surface. Horrified at the sight, he stood there breathless like a perfect statue before weeping on his knees until daylight. The next day gave way to more bodies floating – men, women, elders. Again he wept over their passing and stood on the shore eulogizing them until he could no longer see the bloodless limbs reaching up for the sky as if asking for grace. Now when a new one passed, he stopped to kiss his necklace and prayed for the safe travel of souls to the Good Man.
He stood up from the embankment and felt a breeze pass over his naked body. He scratched behind his ears as he stood and stretched. It seemed the wind had picked up a bit while he slept and took his hat with it. A nap in the shade had been exactly what he needed, but it was time to move on – time to move further up into the countryside regardless of what it might bring. He re-bandaged his arms carefully, slipped on his clothing, grabbed his satchel and walked. He breathed in the smell of the world around him and moved on from the shade.
Chino hated chores. His older sister, Marisa, hated them even more, but at least she got to leave the house. He was only ten, but Papa had kept him at home and made him do women’s work. ‘Marisa should be cleaning our clothes,’ he thought on more than one occasion, ‘but at least it doesn’t rain anymore.’ It used to be hard to keep the clothing dry after washing it all, but not now.
It seemed all he ever did was chores. He wanted to go into the forest and play with some of the other boys, boys he hadn’t seen in forever, but Papa always said no. ‘But the sun is out,’ he’d whine, hoping that was enough of a reason for his father.
“No, Chino,” his mother said, “like this. Push the clothing down along the smooth side. Don’t pull up against the rough side, you’ll ruin them.”
“If I ruin them, can I go play?” he asked, half serious.
“Silly boy,” she said smiling at him. “Do your father’s shirts and you can sneak off after, okay? I will take care of your sister’s things.”
He grinned, nodding furiously, and went back to work.
He hated the mud. His father’s shirts were covered in dark red spots that seemed to never come out no matter how hard he scrubbed, but Mama always said that was okay. ‘The red clay stains forever, Chino. You could scrub the same shirt every day for a hundred-thousand years and it will never change. The stain is always there.’
His hands were sore and prune-shriveled, yet still he scrubbed, and scrubbed hard. They were sore like when he helped fix the roof all those times with his father. He hadn’t hated the rain until the last few months. Papa would wake him when it was the deepest black outside and he’d have to go outside and help hold tools for Papa while lightning flashed through the forest. The imagination of a ten year old is vast and he couldn’t remember how many pairs of eyes he thought he saw peering out at him those nights. At least five – no more than twelve.
“Mama?”
“Hm?”
“I want to go to the lake. I want to fish again.”
His mother said nothing.
“Mama?”
“I heard you, Chino. I’m thinking.”
“You used to let me go.”
“Mmhm. I did. But you had no chores then. You are becoming a man, so you have responsibilities now.”
“I mean after my chores are done.”
“Maybe. But only with your sister.”
He scowled. “Why does she have to come? She won’t want to fish or catch frogs,” he said. “She’ll just sit there and complain. Can’t I go by myself or with some of the other boys?”
“Keep scrubbing.”
And he did, but he missed the lake. He missed Arturo, too. ‘I bet he gets to go to the lake,’ Chino thought, thinking about the friend he had seen only once since the rain stopped. ‘I bet he’s fishing right now.’
The boys had imagined themselves as great warriors while running through the forest. They hunted imaginary boars with tusks the size of men. They fought over who got to be the Jaguar and who got to be the Rabbit. They had races around the lake and then tried to see who could hold their breath the longest under the water. They collected frogs together and tried to carry all of them home in their shirts-turned-aprons.
They would come home just in time for dinner and sit outside afterwards, hands in their heads and staring up into the sky until their mothers called them in for bedtime. Sometimes they were lucky and their mothers forgot they were sitting outside beneath the star-scattered black, necks aching from looking up for so long. The boys would trade stories in whispers, stories told by their fathers at bedtime, about how the Rabbit and the Jaguar became the Sun and the Moon and how each star was the life of someone long since passed. When the rains finally stopped a few weeks ago, the sky cleared and the dark clouds dissipated. It seemed there were more stars than he remembered.
Chino went back to scrubbing, disheartened. He looked at the pile of dirty shirts next to the washbasin and knew he wasn’t going to get to do anything today.
He finished the laundry just before dinner. Sweat sat and marinated on his brow and he wondered if he’d even be able to hold his food with sore hands. He hung the last of his father’s shirts up on the line and emptied the washbasin, turning it over and releasing the soapy water back to the earth. It bubbled and travelled like liquid lightning down the hillside, eventually dribbling into the river below. Tiny snake-rivers poured down the hillside and he watched with glee. Rainbow tinted bubbles formed and floated up into the afternoon air, popping once they couldn’t fly any higher. This was definitely his favorite part of doing laundry.
“Chino?” he heard his mother ask from behind him.
“Yes, mama?”
“Hurry up with your work. Food’s almost ready and your sister should be back soon.”
“Yes, mama. I’m almost done.” He turned the basin over to let it fully drain and headed inside. The glorious smell of fire and spice wafted through the doorway as he walked inside. He hadn’t eaten since this morning and his stomach growled a reminder. He sat on a blanket near his mother’s cooking area and snuck a piece of bread when she wasn’t looking. He ate in silence while she continued to cook.
The Tinker sat and smoked his pipe, a ratty old brown thing that still held the smell of ancient tobacco within it. He’d chomped the mouthpiece all to hell, but it sat between his lips comfortably. He squinted into the valley and puffed slow. The acrid smoke caught up in wind currents and seemed to blend into the clouds above the far away snow-covered peaks. ‘If this weather keeps up, I might actually get to sell again,’ he thought, turning to look at his cart. He had found a clearing to stop in and unburdened the burrow. The cart was unhitched and propped up on some rocks with the sideboard open. Bottles of every shade filled with liquids and salves and potions lined the mini-shelving. Feathered caps and leatherwork lined the display walls. A sign hung below saying ‘Maik an ofer.’
“Wouldn’t it be nice to get rid of all this junk?” He took a final puff from his pipe and coughed. He turned the pipe upside-down and knocked it against the ground, expelling black ash. He heard the mule bray behind him as he struggled to stand. “Wouldn’t it, Azul? It would certainly lighten your load, no?” The man laughed himself into a coughing fit and made his way over to the cart. He’d have to get clever – the topical cream once sold to cure fevers had gone bad over the last year. Maybe he could tell people it was for getting rid of bruises? That might work. The Possum-Tail Tonic had never sold well, but it never worked. Plenty of toys, trinkets and knick-knacks though. The children always loved his trinkets, broken or not. Hand-carved tops and cloth dollies, some glass marbles with colored swirls inside – the boys had loved those. The tinker told them that each one held the sneeze of a different god and the boys couldn’t buy enough of them.
‘Red for the sneeze from fever, blue for the sneeze from chills,’ he’d told them.
‘Green is from a sneeze in spring and gold for the sneeze from daffodils.’
‘Purple for the sneeze at night, orange for the sneeze at sun’s dawning.’
‘Gray for the sneeze from a rainy day, and black for the sneeze of mourning.’
The girls were harder to convince than the boys, however. They were smarter, but they were also very shy, hiding behind the legs of parents or scampering away when he’d smile and wave them closer. Even at their mother or father’s insistence, the girls would stay out of his reach. The mother was the key there, he’d realized, and sold the item to them while trying to sell the idea to the child.
‘Hello there, would your daughter like a doll of finest cloth?’
‘Oh, of course! If she gets too dirty she can easily be washed.’
‘Or would she like a bouncy ball? An apron like her ma?’
‘Perhaps a better choice would be this shiny necklace on the wall?’
“Bah!” he muttered, swatting his hand at the stuff. “Too much work, eh Azul?” he said as he sidled up to the burro - several spots along the mule’s back were near perfect squares of clotting and scabbing. The game in the forest had thinned out and the burro had been his last resort, but she had gotten used to it for the last few months. No more kicking or snorting from her while he dug the knife into the hide. He cut out a matching square as she stomped a hoof and shook her long snout. He ran his hand along her spine, along her neck and then beneath her mouth, kissing her on the broadside of her nose. “I am genuinely sorry, Azul,” he whispered to her. “I will do my best to make it up to you, this I swear.” Her ear flickered and she stomped a hoof again, nodding like she understood. The tinker knew the idea was silly, but still. He kissed her snout again and gave her a handful of oats. She ate greedily, nearly taking one of his fingers. The tinker laughed. “T’would be fair play, no?”
He hobbled to the fire pit from the night before and struck another fire with his flint. The feel of the mule’s skin in his hand always felt strange like he was devouring a family member. ‘Food is scarce,’ he told her the first time he dug his knife into her rump. ‘I have something that will make it better, dear Azul. I promise.”
After every meal, he would prepare a paste from a small stockpile of herbs and aloe plants and he would slather it on the missing parts of her hide. The old spots had almost grown back completely, but the skin remained hairless. Her hide was pockmarked and looked like a hideous chessboard of sinew and skin. The paste he made smelled terrible, like the smell of a decaying body. He was taken aback at how well it had worked, though he could smell the burro from a good distance now. He tried to find more of the ingredients as he travelled, but as quickly as the rain stopped, the land dried up and the plants had started to wither. It wasn’t even muggy anymore, just hot and dry enough to give one cottonmouth.
The Tinker started a tiny fire and skinned the small piece of hide, careful to remove every bit of hair. He was clumsy the first time and nearly choked on a few strands he had missed in his haste to eat. That particular dinner had come back up quickly. With his left hand, he held the fleshy meat while sliding his knife between the muscle tissue and the hide. He separated them quickly and effortlessly, leaving a beautiful square of red flesh to toss in the skillet. He sprinkled chili powder and sea salt onto the meat as it sizzled over the fire. He waved his hands toward him, deeply inhaling the aroma as he smiled. Azul was gamey and tough to chew on, but delicious when seasoned just right. It had taken the Tinker several times to find the right combination of spices to make Azul’s sacrifice of skin worth eating, but the chili and salt had been a perfect blend – a bit like tougher, spicier rabbit.
While the meat cooked, the Tinker rummaged in the back of the cart. He plucked a small and ornate box from inside and took it back to the fire. He had acquired the box from an old man in some village further up the coast, a fishing village of some sort. They lived in homes built on stilts, which the Tinker had laughed at before the Forever Rain had drowned the valley. He hadn’t been back to visit them since buying the box.
It had carved wooden paneling on all 4 sides. An intricate design of thorny vines erupted from an orchid on the back panel. The vines swirled around the flower and then spread out across all the sides, reaching around the entire box before coming to an end at the brass latches on the front. The box had been stained a deep maroon and felt warm in the Tinker’s hands. His body slumped onto the blanket cross-legged and he set the box on the ground in front of him. Nimble fingers unlatched the top and flipped it open – a glass ball lay within, lying comfortably on a bed of dark red satin. He pulled the ball out and began to play with it, rolling it across his fingers and over the top of his hands, letting it move wherever it wished, but constantly keeping it in control. His hands moved like water and the ball floated against his skin easily. This was an old practice his father had taught him years before and served, at this point, only to mesmerize the villagers he sold to.
He could smell the meat and looked down into the pan as his hands continued to move the ball smoothly across his knuckles and up to his arms. It was browning and begging to be eaten. His stomach rumbled again at the scent of the chili powder and he put the ball back in its resting place. He carried the box back to the cart and placed it beneath a set of juggling scarves and women’s serapes before heading back to the fire.
The deep orange and red of the evening’s setting sun filtered through the leaves above, dotting the ground in a fire-like display. The Tinker leaned down to the pan, bobbled the mule-meat in his hand and finally blew on it before tossing the tiny morsel into his mouth. He grinned and groaned as a rivulet of juice escaped his lips. It ran down his chin as he stared out into the approaching night. Not nearly as filling as he would’ve liked, but the land would provide at some point. He wiped his mouth with his shirt sleeve and got up to lead Azul down to the river.
He guided the mule down a treacherous angle before reaching the dirty water. She drank it up greedily as he rinsed his hands and face slowly. He could hear her tongue lapping it up quickly. “You must be thirstier than I thought,” he said, smiling to himself. The mule kept drinking.
The Tinker scrubbed his face and dried himself off with his shirt. He felt refreshed and ready to turn in and grabbed at the mule’s harness. Azul pulled her snout away from him, almost sending him into the river. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked her. “C’mon…it’s time for us to rest.”
The mule brayed and pulled her snout away from him again, this time kicking her hind legs into the dirt hard. The Tinker had never seen her act this way before. He gripped her back strap high up on her back and tried to pull her away from the water, but again she fought back. She brought her snout around, nearly clipping the Tinker in the face before snorting and whinnying her protest.
He ran his hand along her back and up her neck, hoping to calm her. He whispered to her. “Shh. Shh. It’s okay, Azul. It’s just me and you out here. No need to get skittish.” She seemed to be listening and calmed down after several minutes of his petting. He looked down into the water where she had drank and saw a hand. Fingers curled up and out of the surface of the water.
“You should be used to this by now,” he said to her, chuckling. “This is nothing new.”
The Tinker’s eyes followed the fingers to the arm, the arm up to the shoulder and the shoulder up to the face of the girl who floated in the water before them. She wasn’t pale or blue like the others he and Azul had seen. Her skin was warm and dark. The Tinker’s mind searched for a word and settled on ‘fresh,’ but that didn’t feel right either. A line of blood slithered down her forehead and pooled up in the water surrounding her ear.
The Tinker stared at her for a moment longer, confused. Her dark hair spread out in waves along the current as if they slithered on the surface. She was olive-skinned and had lips the color of pomegranate. Her dress clung to every curve and swished around her knees – she reminded him of a dolly he’d sold so many years earlier. The girl wore a single sandal, the other having fallen off during her plummet.
He scrambled around the brush for a stick long enough to reach the girl and bring her to shore. By the time he found one, the girl had gotten stuck along the shoreline and he threw the stick off to the side. The Tinker got down on his knees and began to pull the young girl out of the water, realizing that Azul had known the girl wasn’t the usual floater. He pulled her mostly warm body out of the water and put his fingers to her neck. She still had a pulse, but it was faint.
“No more rest, Azul. We need to find this girl’s family quick as the Rabbit,” he said, half to himself. The girl was no more than fifteen years old and weighed nothing. The Tinker hoisted her up on to the mule’s back, and tied her down so that she wouldn’t fall off. Her legs were on either side of Azul’s back and her torso was strapped to the horse’s neck just for good measure. Her face was turned to the left as if she were nuzzling Azul’s mane.
The Tinker poured dirt on the fire and rushed to cover his wagon in the dark. He ripped full branches down from the trees around the campsite and laid them against the now shuttered contraption. He gathered only the belongings they’d need and led the mule up the path.
“Let’s hope you’re worth something to someone, dear child. I can’t afford to lose my wares,” he muttered into the dark.
