Hammer of Witches (28 page)

“I know. Surprising, isn’t it? But here’s the big secret, Baltasar. Half of the Malleus members are Storytellers. Or former ones, anyway.”

I opened my mouth to call out this statement as another lie. But I stopped myself. What he said had a certain kind of logic.

“When I was a boy, no one liked me,” Rodrigo said, swinging his arms as he walked around in front of me. “I was always knocking something down, making a mess. ‘Rodrigo the Fool,’ they used to call me. The only time I was ever happy was when
the traveling performers would come to court. They’d juggle and mime and throw swords. Best of all was when they’d put on plays. There were tragedies and comedies, religious stories where the actors would dress up as things like Mercy and Gluttony and Wrath. I started thinking about the stories all the time, and eventually I was able to summon the characters from these stories. At first I was excited that I had all these new friends to play with, but then my family found out. My father was furious, of course. He was a high-ranking member the Malleus Maleficarum, and it wouldn’t do to have a witch for a son. So every day he would lock me in my room and tell me how much God hated me and how sinful I was. And it worked. From then on every time I tried to interpret a story, it would always be about my wickedness, and the spells backfired.”

I dug my toes into the dirt. Although I didn’t want to admit it, I knew this story all too well.

Rodrigo continued, “As I got older I realized that constantly trying to figure out on your own how to interpret the stories, interpret the world — it’s a waste of energy, when you come right down to it. I stopped using magic and begged God’s forgiveness, and Father pulled some strings so I could join him and work for the Malleus Maleficarum. And when I joined them I found I wasn’t confused anymore. Suddenly everything was simple again.”

Simple. How I yearned for the days when life was simple. When I could count on Diego for a stupid joke or a story,
stories that were flat and meaningless and fun.

“Life can be simple for you, too, Baltasar. I can help you find Amir al-Katib. Together, we can bring justice to a man who has brought our people nothing but pain and fear. And when it’s done I’ll see to it that you’re initiated into the Malleus Maleficarum the minute we get back.”

I lifted my head off my tree. “Get back? Back to where?”

“To Palos, naturally! To Spain! Don’t you see, Baltasar? All we have to do is kill Amir al-Katib. Then we’ll be heroes, and we can both go home!”

Home. I felt my breathing become more labored. For a moment I thought I could feel the earth of Europe under my feet. I could smell the smells of Palos — the stews, the perfumes, the spices. I could hear Palos’s birds, its insects, its people.

But it was an illusion. “There’s no such thing as home,” I murmured. “My aunt and uncle are dead.”

I pushed past him and hobbled south. Rodrigo raced in front of me to the log he had been sitting on earlier. “Don’t do this, Baltasar,” he said, pointing his dagger at my chest. “If you won’t join me, then I can’t let you leave.”

I backed away from him. I didn’t have the energy to attack him or run. “Rodrigo, don’t,” I said, but he stepped forward with his knife.

“Don’t move! Put down your weapon.”

Catalina Terreros swung her conjured sword Excalibur so its edge touched the side of Rodrigo’s neck. She had sneaked
up behind Rodrigo so she could stand on the log he had been sitting on earlier. “Drop your weapon,” she said, “or I’ll kill you.”

“Catalina, don’t,” I said tiredly. I opened my palm in front of Rodrigo. “Give me the knife, Rodrigo. Please.”

The man gulped and glanced at Catalina. “As you wish,” he said, and he placed his weapon in my hand.

I shoved the dagger into my belt. “Get out of here, Rodrigo. And don’t come back.”

Catalina added, “Mark my words, Señor Sanchez, if I see you again, I shall kill you.”

“I understand,” Rodrigo said. He stumbled over the log and clambered back into the forest.

Catalina sheathed her sword
and hopped off the log she was standing on. Simultaneously we dropped onto it without saying a word.

Catalina was muddy, and she slouched so much that her head was almost against my shoulder. She looked so tired. She turned her head slightly and peered at me out of the corner of her eye.

“Well, you look a mess,” she said.

“So do you.”

She put her hand on my cheek. “Why are you shivering? Do you have a fever?”

“It’s possible.” The shoulder of my tunic was torn and covered with dried blood.

“You’re lucky that hameh didn’t cut you all that deeply.” Catalina took a breath and said, “Well, go on. Take off your shirt.”

I stared at her.

“By all the saints! I’m going to change your bandages.”

Wincing, I peeled off my tunic, allowing Catalina to unbind the old dressings. She touched my wounds lightly and looked at her fingers. “What a mess.” Although the holes the hameh made had finally stopped bleeding, they were now covered with layers of pink and yellow pus speckled brown with mud. I chewed on some of Arabuko’s leaves as Catalina removed some strips of cloth from her bag and wound them around my arm and back. When she was finished she washed her hands with some of her water, untied a pouch from her belt, and drew out a hunk of melting goat cheese with the tips of her fingers.

“About Rodrigo,” she started.

“Malleus spy,” I answered.

“And where is Jinniyah?”

The word cracked on its way out. “Gone.”

“I see.”

I reached into her pouch to get at my own hunk of goat cheese. I chewed some silently before asking, “Why are you here? What happened?”

“Nothing,” she said, far too quietly.

“You can tell me. I promise, I won’t try to be your protector or your lover or whatever else it was you said. Please. I just want to be your friend.”

The girl looked at me, carefully checking my eyes for honesty. When she found it, she folded her hands between her knees. “I was sleeping. Last night. We were on the beach, and
the men had built a bonfire. And they drank. I should have been frightened of them, the way they carried on. I know what even noblemen are capable of, and these men were far from noble. But I was so tired from building the fortress. I ignored them and went to bed. Then in the middle of the night I woke up to see some of your friends stumbling out of the forest, dragging along five Taíno women. The men were laughing. The way they laugh when —”

Catalina cut herself off and blinked up at the sky. “Go on,” I said, but I felt myself shaking on the inside.

“If you had been there, Infante. If you had seen the way those women looked! There was no question of what your friends had done. And when the women tried to get away, the men laughed. The way they laughed, Infante. You knew they were going to do it again. Right in front of me. They didn’t care. Not one bit.”

I couldn’t believe it. Antonio de Cuellar. Pérez, Bartolome, and Salcedo. On the ship we’d shared dirty jokes, lewd stories about women for fun. No matter what Catalina said, I knew in my heart they were good people. Not —

I couldn’t even think the word. “But how?” I asked. “Where was Colón? He never would have —”

“Colón!” Catalina scoffed. “He was off gallivanting with Vicente Pinzón in Guacanagarís village. He left his men to their own devices.”

I rubbed my face, trying to accept this information. I didn’t
want to believe my friends were capable of such horrors. But Catalina had no reason to lie.

“Then what happened?” I asked her.

“I fought them. I summoned the Erinyes — the great Furies of the ancient texts. Three of them — infernal winged goddesses of vengeance with blood dripping from their eyes. They tore out from under earth as if from Hell itself. And they screamed. A scream the likes of which you’ve never heard and never want to hear. The men fell into the sand, holding their heads in agony. I don’t think the attack killed them — but it was enough to let those women escape.” Catalina shriveled then. “It didn’t make a difference, though. I was too late.”

“What are you talking about?” I exclaimed. “You saved them!”

“Yes. But I wasn’t able to stop what your friends had already done.” The girl seemed unable to look at me. In fact I was sure she was going to cry.

Suddenly I was overcome by an urge to hold her, to protect her, to take her somewhere far away from this place. When we’d first arrived on this island, she’d called it the Garden of Eden. Paradise. She was wrong. In the stories Eden was a place untouched by grief or pain or war. There, no one had to live in worry that their interpretations were right or wrong. There would be nothing to interpret at all, just earth and sun and sky and clouds.

That place appeared around us. The tangled jungle thinned
into a valley dotted with fruit trees. The drizzly rain melted into the air. The raging frogs and crickets dispersed, leaving only the low hum of the breeze that combed through our hair. The breeze was dry here, no longer humid. Under our feet the mud and rotted fruit gave way to fresh grasses, beds of wildflowers, and the sweet scent of an eternal spring.

I whirled around. Catalina and I were alone.

“Where are we?” the girl asked.

“I don’t . . . I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. You summoned this place. Granted, such a feat deserves some praise. It’s not easy to achieve. You must connect much more deeply with a story to make its setting come to life.” She dismounted the log and drifted toward the nearest grove of trees. “So where are we?”

“Eden,” I mumbled, embarrassed by the admission. Then I took Catalina by the arms. “Wait, don’t you see? No one can find us here! Not Amir al-Katib, not the Malleus Maleficarum. Not the crew. We’re safe!”

Catalina’s face softened with pity. “Infante. We can’t. It’s not . . .”

I thanked God she trailed off then. I couldn’t bear to hear the rest.
It’s not real,
she’d say.
It’s just a story.

Well, so what if it was? Couldn’t she see that this story could provide us some comfort? One day free from strife, where we could be embraced by the sun’s warmth! The reminder of a summer afternoon spent tripping down the cobblestones of Palos toward a game of cards with friends, where stories of women brought nothing more than a few knowing chuckles. How I longed for the scent of stew on a fire, or a kiss from one of the girls in the marketplace. There, the only thing that mattered was the cool sensation of saliva evaporating on our lips. The pressure of her hands against my back. The taste.

I pressed my mouth to Catalina’s. It tasted of Gomeran cheese, salty and familiar.

She stood there, then flinched below my touch and prodded me away. She bit her lip.

“You just wanted to be my friend, I thought you said.”

I turned away from her, my face hot. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. Not now. After what happened.” I stepped toward her and braced my jaw. “Go on. You can hit me if you want to.”

Catalina stepped forward. Raised her hand. Dropped it.

“You’re living in a fantasy, Infante,” she said quietly. She lowered herself to the ground and brought her knees to her chest. “But I can’t say I don’t understand it. I’ve done it before.”

I joined her on the grass. “Really?”

Catalina picked up a bit of cheese that had fallen on the ground and rolled it between her fingers. “I was not a happy child. I read stories to escape. Soon I learned to summon creatures, entire worlds. It wasn’t long before I began spending more time in a false world than in the real one. But it couldn’t last.”

I pulled a clump of grass out of the ground. Of course it couldn’t. “The story you lived in. What was it?” I knew it was a presumptuous question to ask, but I needed to know.

“The story of the sleeping princess, of course.” Catalina pried the hunk of remaining goat cheese apart with her nails, letting bits of it bounce into the grass. “But summoned settings only last for so long. After awhile they fade away of their own accord, unless you keep interpreting the story to keep it going.”

“That didn’t work?”

“If you keep interpreting the same story over and over, you’ll eventually see new things in it that you didn’t see before. I had always found the story of the sleeping princess a comfort. To be able to sleep forever, until your one true love rescued you? What more could a sad little girl want? But as I kept interpreting it, I soon realized the fairy tale I thought was an escape from reality was carrying truths from my own life — truths I’d rather not discover.”

An image of the ghostly princess writhing against flowery bonds rose in my mind. I remembered what Catalina had said that night on the beach. “You figured out that the prince and the witch were the same. They used the princess for her castle and her beauty.”

“And when I realized that, the castle vanished. It appeared I had broken my own spell.”

I thought of the women the crew had kidnapped, felt the kiss I had stolen evaporate on my lips. Felt the thorny vines of
guilt wrap around my chest. But Catalina gave me a soft smile. “Not to worry, Infante. This story has a happy ending. The sleeping princess made me realize I was just as trapped as she was. It was then that I decided to escape my own castle. I sneaked onto the
Santa María
and never looked back. Bad as it can be, living in the real world is always better than spending your life stuck in one story.”