And, far, far above the squalid city, I was present in the clouds, looking out upon a night sky full of glittering diamonds, keenly aware of every point of light. The sky shimmered with distant suns and unseen planets, and I could hear the murmur of countless voices, the indecipherable echoes of life on worlds too numerous to number. What was left of my mind shrugged and surrendered, unable to absorb the infinite majesty of a creation in which my life had been of no consequence at all.
It was into this vastness that I would disappear. The final spark of my consciousness calmly dissipated. Like a stream of stinking urine spreading into the ocean, I was absorbed once more into the Great Incomprehensible All.
Then, blood pulsed within my non-existent heart.
There was another pulse, then another, and I began to feel as if I once more had veins and arteries, as if I once more had lungs. The atoms of my awareness raced back from the ocean, from the forest, from the sky, coalescing into a specter above my still very dead corpse. Where I’d been only a formless mass of thought, I could now look down at ghostly fingers, wraith-like toes, and a phantom wang. I was hanging naked above the shell of my body. I reached down to touch it, but my ghost hands found no purchase in the dead flesh. Yet, I was definitely me again. Something had halted the dispersal of my soul.
Around my body, the ground was wet with blood. Far more blood, I knew, than had ever pumped through my heart. I quickly spotted the severed limbs and mangled torsos of half a dozen pygmies. I felt a shiver of guilt that I’d brought this fate upon them. I spun around, searching for Infidel.
She looked as if she’d been doused with buckets of tomato juice. She had a pygmy dangling in her grasp, a chief judging from his feathered head-dress. She had my bone-handled knife pressed against his throat.
“Call them off!” she growled, as more pygmies emerged from the trees. “Just leave us alone and no one else gets hurt!”
The chief responded by spitting in her eye. Two seconds later, his head was separated from his shoulders.
As his blood flowed across the bone-handled knife, life flowed back into me. I inhaled, my ghost lungs filling, and shouted, “Infidel!”
She didn’t react. She was too lost in her anger to hear me as she charged the newest round of warriors, a dozen spearmen clustered in a frightened clump at the edge of the clearing.
I grabbed at her arm as she raced past me. My fingers passed right through her skin.
“Infidel!” I screamed again.
She didn’t even blink as she crashed into the wall of spears, splintering them. The wide-eyed pygmies turned in unison to flee. She gave chase for only a yard or so, then, either in frustration or as a warning, she punched the nearest tree, splintering the trunk.
The tree groaned, then toppled, as Infidel lowered into a half crouch and scanned the area, her eyes as intense as a cat searching a bush for a bird.
Infidel remained alert for several minutes as her panting breath returned to normal. At last, she relaxed, straightening up. The pygmies had taken the hint. She twisted her head in a slow arc, her bones popping as the tension in her neck and shoulders slackened. Her lips parted slightly as she took a deep breath. Looking at my body, her shoulders sagged.
She walked toward my corpse, her arms limp at her sides, my bone-handled knife barely dangling in her grasp. When she reached my remains, she stared down, breathing slowly. The music of frogs and insects began to hum and strum as the violence of the moment before was swept away by the unceasing flow of time.
She shoved my knife into her broad leather belt and knelt before my body. Placing her arms beneath my knees and shoulders, she lifted me. I twisted my ghostly form to occupy the space of my corpse, trying to feel her hands upon my dead flesh, to no avail. I could no more grasp my body than I could grasp the wind.
She carried my cadaver into the calm end of the pool, walking ever deeper until I was submerged. She ducked her whole body beneath the water. I didn’t know what she was doing. I was mystified, unable to read the blank mask of her face and eyes. She bobbed back above water to breathe. The blood from the battle washed from her face. As the water carried off the gore that caked my grandfather’s knife, my ghostly body faded from my sight. I was no longer dispersing into nothingness, or allness, but was instead simply invisible, intangible, a memory of a man haunting the woman he once loved, his soul somehow bound to the blade that had killed him.
Beneath the water, she undressed me, peeling away my torn armor, still studded with pygmy darts. She washed the blood and mud and sand from my pale skin, her fingers gently tracing the lines of my face. She calmly worked the tangles from my hair, then let my body drift in the still water as she ducked back beneath and pulled off the shreds of her own clothes, scrubbing her skin, her hair spreading through the water like a halo as she patiently pulled out bits of vines from the numerous knots. Twenty minutes later, she carried my now clean corpse from the water. She was naked save for the thick black belt that sat upon her angular hips. The blade of my knife pressed against the smooth arc that traced where her belly met her hip, the tip resting near the thick blonde curls of her pubic hair.
She laid me gently on the black sand and sat beside me, her legs folded beneath her. I looked as if I was sleeping. The hole from which my life had drained was just a jagged flap an inch or two across, not so fearsome. She folded my arms over my chest, cupping the uppermost hand in her slender fingers. Free of blood, her skin gleamed like marble.
She sat for a long time, her lips twitching. Sometimes, she looked on the verge of tears. In other moments, I was certain she was about to curse, and beat my battered corpse with her fists. In the end, her lips curled upwards, as the faintest hint of a smile managed to claw its way up from beneath grief and guilt and rage.
She shook her head gently as she looked into my face. As the jungle crescendo grew with the approaching daylight, and song birds lent their voices to the drone of bugs and frogs, she swallowed deeply.
“You old fool,” she whispered. “I loved you too.”
CHAPTER TWO
THAT DAMNED MAP
I
NFIDEL BURIED ME
on a high bluff overlooking the sea. She’d carried me here wrapped in a colorful cloth she stole from the lava-pygmy village not far from the base of the falls. She’d met no opposition. It would be a long time before members of that tribe would come anywhere near her. The village emptied out as she walked into it. She could have robbed them blind, except, of course, they didn’t have much to steal. The village was nothing but stick huts with dirt floors, with a few scrawny chickens the only livestock. It brought home the magnitude of my sins.
When the monks who raised me had had taught me about hell, they’d painted vivid pictures of barren landscapes in which the damned are tormented by horned devils. I never feared it. But, if I’d been told that I’d linger on after death, forever confronted by the people I’d hurt the most... maybe I would have tried to be a better person.
After making my shroud, Infidel had fashioned an impromptu sarong from the remaining cloth. The fabric had a crimson base looped through with green lines and yellow circles. The yellow circle motif could be found all through the ruins of the Vanished Kingdom. My grandfather had speculated that the yellow circle represented Glorious, the primal dragon of the sun, who had been worshipped as a god in ancient times. I don’t know if the pygmies gave the same symbolic value to it, or just liked the design. The festive pattern was remarkably inappropriate for wrapping a corpse, but Infidel valued practicality over propriety. Despite its failings as a shroud, I thought the cloth looked good on her. She normally didn’t wear vivid colors; she especially disliked bright greens for some reason.
She’d spent much of the day following the river to the sea. Given the rugged terrain, she made better time with me as a limp corpse across her shoulder than if I’d still been alive. Her endurance matched her strength. Even with my weight, plus the dragon skull, she never stopped to rest or eat.
By the end of the day she’d reached my final resting spot. I don’t know if she’d planned to bury me here. Perhaps she intended to take me all the way to Commonground, to have me outfitted for a proper coffin by one of the city’s numerous undertakers. Unfortunately, after a single day in the jungle heat, I was beginning to spoil. Dark, foul-smelling fluid stained my shroud, and by the time we reached the bluff the fabric would go black with flies faster than Infidel could shoo them away.
Infidel placed me at the foot of a shaggy, wind-blown tree as the sun set behind us. Shadows danced on the waves as she rested. A cool, steady breeze blew up from the sea, drinking up the sweat beaded on her face. Her hair danced around her eyes as she stared out at the darkening sky, watching the stars flicker to life above the water.
At last, she began to dig. She had no tools other than her bare hands and my old knife. The soil was sandy, covered with a layer of scraggly grass. She worked through the night, digging until she had a pit deeper than she was tall. She lowered my body into the ground with a look of utter weariness, then proceeded to cover me with the mounds of damp earth heaped on both sides of the hole. She finished just before dawn, running her hands over the sandy grave as if she was smoothing out the wrinkles on a sheet.
She thrust the bone-handled knife into the soil above my head, where it stood like the world’s smallest tombstone. I felt a flutter of panic. Would she leave the blade there? My spirit was now tied to the knife. For my soul to remain anchored here so close to my body was, I suppose, appropriate. Yet, I no longer felt any connection to the rotting meat six feet below. I wanted to remain with Infidel.
I had no lips with which to speak, so I merely thought the words,
Keep the knife. Keep the knife
. I suddenly understood what the monks had tried to teach me about the fierce urgency of prayer.
Keep the knife. Keep the knife. Keep the knife.
She sat down, resting her hands on her knees as she glanced at the yellowed handle. The humble bone gleamed like precious ivory, polished and oiled by a lifetime spent in my sweaty hands.
Take it
, I prayed.
Take it.
Her face was lined with deep furrows around her lips as she frowned. She looked as if she was about to cry, but, always when she was on the verge, she’d swallow. Her fists would go tight, and the moment would pass. Her eyes turned away from the tiny tombstone. I sensed that my prayers would go unanswered. Still, as long as she still lingered by my grave, there was hope.
At last the sun came up. The water danced with colors to rival the sarong still draped around her shoulders. Gulls wheeled in the air above the cliff, calling out to one another. Clouds drifted leisurely overhead, white as lambs in a distant field. I wanted to tell her that she’d done a good job. My bones had to rest somewhere, and this was a fine choice, a grave any ghost could be proud of. As much as I wished to continue to journey by her side, I knew my time had passed. If I was now a prisoner to eternity, this peaceful, sun-drenched bluff would be an acceptable jail.
By my count, Infidel had been awake for almost forty hours. Her endurance was superhuman, but not infinite. Her head sagged as she watched the endless dance of the waves. At last, she stretched out on the white sand of my grave. She used her arm as a pillow, and her fingers brushed against the handle of the knife. She looked at it again, her eyes bloodshot and bleary. She snatched the knife free of the soil, clutching it to her invulnerable breast like a doll. Then, with a shudder, she gave herself to sleep.
She slept fitfully through the day, undraping the cloth of her sarong and using it as a blanket pulled over her head to block out the light. As someone who’d shared campsites with Infidel, I knew she talked in her sleep. Mumbled, more accurately. Many a night I’ve lain awake and tried to make sense of her slurred half-words. Usually, I can’t interpret them. But, as she turned from one side to the other, three unmistakable syllables escaped her lips: “So sorry.”
She thinks she killed me. She thinks that as we fell toward the river, she was the one who drove the knife into my gut.
Perhaps.
I wish I could tell her that I don’t blame her. She shouldn’t ignore the fact that we were out robbing that temple because I was the one in debt, because I’m the one who needs to buy the company of crowds, because I’m the sucker who can’t resist a good sob story from any down-on-his-luck bum who begs me for a few spare coins and winds up with my entire purse.
Of course, I wouldn’t have been in debt when she got back from the pirate wars if I’d sold the map for even a fraction of what it was worth.
That damned map.
A year ago, Infidel had hunted down a fallen Wanderer by the name of Hurricane. Wanderers have a longstanding pact with Abyss, the primal dragon of the sea, that prevents them from ever drowning as long as they spend their lives without touching dry land. Their behavior is guided by ancient and elaborate laws; transgress these laws, and a Wanderer can find himself put ashore on some distant desert island. Hurricane had suffered that fate, due to acts of piracy against fellow Wanderers. But, he didn’t live out his days on his island prison. He’d built a raft, fled to the Isle of Fire, and resumed his piracy. The Wanderers placed a bounty on his head, a price large enough to catch Infidel’s eye.