HE’D NEVER BEEN happier. He should have been dead.
Those two thoughts battled in his mind constantly, always pushing their way to the forefront of Simón’s thoughts. He was bathing in a creek with Shako, the cool water flowing over both their naked bodies, until he could not hold back any longer, and he took her in his arms as she laughed and smiled at him—and then he remembered, he should have been dead.
Or he would sit, brooding, in front of the fire they made each night, at the end of their foraging and hunting. His belly was full, but his thoughts were troubled, as he wondered what had happened to Narváez’s expedition, to the other soldiers, to his friends—and despite all that, Shako would look at him and a grin would break across his face.
She gave him a knife.
It was a small thing but a huge gesture of trust. She had found the broken point of his sword, sharpened it against a stone, and then mounted it in a bone handle for him.
He could finally help with the hunting and the cleaning and dressing of the game. He could defend himself if one of the panthers or bobcats came too close.
And he could slit her throat while she slept.
But she trusted him with it anyway.
It was the first gift he’d ever received that did not feel somehow paid for, either by humiliation or fealty or obligation. His father had given him bruises as a child, and repeated lessons in never trusting a drunk. His mother had died behind her eyes, and had nothing to give him. He had bought his first armor and weaponry himself when he went to war against the Moors, and everything he received since then he’d paid for with an oath to Narváez.
It was the most unselfish thing he had ever seen.
She did not seem to understand why he became so still, so reverent, when she handed it to him. But she looked into his eyes, and seemed to see something there.
They kissed for the first time.
He had been with a woman before. A whore in a brothel the night before his first battle. The older men in his company had taken him, and it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. They did not want to follow a beardless virgin into battle. He wanted to convince them he was a man. It didn’t hurt that he was also very drunk.
Fortunately, it didn’t last long. She lifted her skirts and he pumped and was done in what seemed like seconds. He felt soiled and angry with himself as he paid her.
The next day he killed for the first time. That didn’t make him feel like any more of a man, either, but it felt more honest.
With Shako, it was different.
He’d had nothing but wanton thoughts from the moment he saw her, naked and free in the open air. Guilt kicked at him over and over as he tried to remember his vows as a knight in the king’s service and as a saved child of Christ.
It didn’t help much.
When they finally fell into each other’s arms, he thought he would shatter from how much he wanted her.
But he held back, forced himself to be gentle. There was no hurry. They had nothing but time and each other.
She put him on his back in the soft grass and straddled him. He ran his hands up and down her naked body, unable to look away. She smiled at him and took one hand and guided it, gently, down, helping him find the right place, and moving his fingers for him.
He held on, somehow, as she rocked back and forth, her skin closer and then farther, swaying over him. Then they locked eyes again, he saw her losing herself, and he could not take it anymore, he exploded, arms and legs shaking violently, spasming like a drowning man.
He was gone, far gone, from all the familiar landmarks and signs, lost in an unknown country, and his entire being was filled with happiness.
SIMÓN HAD KNOWN PRECIOUS little happiness in his life so far. He had a noble’s name, but a peasant’s upbringing.
His family had been given lands in southern Spain by a long-dead king that were overrun and abandoned when the Moors conquered most of the country. By the time Simón came along, the Oliveras were little more than a forgotten coat of arms and a few people living as impoverished guests on the land of another lord in the north.
Perhaps it was this constant reminder of their lack of wealth that made Simón’s father a drunk. Or perhaps it had been beaten into him by Simón’s grandfather, by all accounts a cruel man. But when Simón came of age, he found there was nothing to his inheritance but debts and empty wine barrels.
All that was left was the name, and whatever talent he possessed.
His talent, fortunately, was in war. He joined King Charles’s forces against the rebel Moors still living in Spain after the Reconquista, the long struggle to return the land to Catholic rule. His gift for strategy and an innate charisma inspired men to follow him and trust his judgment, despite his youth.
When the fighting was done, like thousands of other soldiers, Simón wanted to seek his fortune. He wanted to go to the New World, where explorers like Columbus and Cortés reported that gold lay on the ground for anyone to see, and the natives were docile enough to pick it up when ordered.
His record and reputation were enough to win him a command position under Pánfilo de Narváez, who had been granted the right to declare himself adelantado of all of the new land of Florida, to govern and collect tribute in the name of the king.
It seemed like destiny to Simón.
Destiny didn’t seem to agree, however. Narváez, a rigid, one-eyed man with a strong notion of his own importance, had not met with much success on his first trip to the Americas. He had been sent to rein in Hernán Cortés, who had overthrown the native Aztecs. The crown feared Cortés was setting himself up as a rebel lord half a world away from Spain.
Cortés defeated and humiliated Narváez, meeting him at the shore and forcing his surrender. He kept him prisoner for two years. Cortés then made his own peace with Spain—helped considerably by the vast amounts of Aztec gold he was now shipping back to the king—and was never punished for his treason. Narváez was eventually sent back to Spain in disgrace.
The expedition to Florida, and the wealth that was supposed to be there, was his reward for his suffering and his loyalty.
Things went wrong from the beginning of the journey, however. The king did not offer to pay for the expedition, and Narváez had to call in debts and spend his own fortune. They set sail with eight hundred men in four ships.
A storm in Trinidad sank two of the ships as they stopped for supplies. They were delayed again in Cuba as Narváez was forced to raise money to purchase two more. While trapped in port, the remaining soldiers and sailors ate their way through all of the expedition’s food before roughly half of them deserted the expedition entirely. Narváez was in a constantly foul mood, spitting about treachery and lack of honor.
Since his family came from Cuba, Narváez prevailed on old friends to extend him credit for his adventure. He was able to find two more ships, as well as a pilot named Miruelo, who claimed to know of a harbor almost as big as a sea on the east coast of Florida. Perhaps thinking he’d finally gotten some luck, Narváez made Miruelo the captain of a ship and the expedition’s navigator.
They sailed from Havana nearly a year after they’d left Spain, now down to four hundred men.
They were within sight of the Florida coast when a hurricane swept them up, seemingly out of nowhere.
Those few hours were the most terrifying of Simón’s life. The winds tossed the ships around like a toddler playing in a puddle. Horses and men screamed below the decks as Miruelo blindly turned up and down the coast, looking for the safe harbor he’d promised.
By the time he finally found it, three of the ships were floating wreckage. Men leaped from the decks with their armor and horses, and swam to shore in the pelting rain. Many never made the sand.
When the storm blew over, Narváez’s expedition was down to one barely seaworthy ship, a few provisions, and three hundred hungry and angry men.
They made camp on the beach, where Narváez read a proclamation on parchment paper, signed by the king himself. Simón wondered how it had managed to stay dry through everything.
He read that these lands were claimed in the name of King Carlos of Spain, and that by the right of God and the king, everything and everyone within it were under his dominion.
He promised mercy to those who would convert to the one, true, and Catholic church, and protection and justice.
“But if you do not do this,” Narváez intoned, “then by God, we shall enter your country and make war against you in every way we can. We will take you and your women and your children and make you our slaves. We will take all your property, keep what we can use and what we desire, and destroy and burn the rest. If you refuse to obey us, we will show you no mercy, and any deaths that result are your fault, not our own, for we have given you fair warning, here in the sight of God.”
Narváez looked around, as if anyone would challenge him.
Most of the soldiers were still dripping wet in the sand. No one said a word.
THE NEXT DAY, HE and his captains—including Simón—began to make their plans to conquer America.
Miruelo was ordered to repair the one remaining ship from the wreckage now floating in the bay and return to Cuba as fast as possible, to get more supplies and men.
Narváez would begin exploring the interior of the coast, sending men into the jungle to find the treasure they all knew was there.
Simón was given command of a squadron and a mostly blank map, with the order to march inland.
While his friends were still making camp on the shore, he set out with more than one hundred conquistadors, servants, and horses behind him. The trail into the jungle was easy and open, the weather clear and brilliant.
They walked a full day out of sight of the harbor without being assaulted by anything more than the insects that constantly buzzed around their exposed skin.
Then the savages came boiling out from between the trees, dozens of them, hundreds.
That’s where Simón knew he should have died.
There was no way around it. He had checked the skin where the arrow had pierced his thigh over and over, and there was not so much as a scar.
That wasn’t all. When he woke from his fever to find Shako tending him, he felt a lack of the aches and pains he’d previously thought were a constant part of life. A recurrent toothache that had plagued him for months on the journey across the ocean had disappeared. He’d been skin-and-bones thin when he went into the jungle. He had pains in his legs and a slight tremor in one arm where a Moorish arrow had punched through his armor back in Spain.
All of those old injuries and hurts were gone. He was fit and glowing with life.
And he was stronger. Faster. Better. He could bend the steel plate of his armor with his bare hands, leap a dozen feet from a standing start, and keep pace with the deer that ran through the swamp. He seemed to see and even think more clearly.
Shako would not explain. When he asked Shako about it, she would say only that she gave him medicine. In his limited understanding of the Uzita vocabulary, that could have meant anything from native herbs to sorcery.
She refused to say anything more. If he pressed the issue, it led to the only fights they would ever have. He would shout the only words he knew in her language, over and over. She would answer in monosyllables, in Spanish, which only infuriated him more, as if she was mocking him and his inability to make her obey, or even understand. Then she would simply walk away from him, sometimes for hours. At those times, he felt abandoned and lost in the wilderness.
Only once did she ever reply with more than a simple “No.” She said to him, “Isn’t it enough that you are alive?”
It should have been. She was right about that. But he wondered if it was true. At times he thought he was actually dead and this was Paradise, but it was nothing like the nuns and priests had described. It felt too real, and the pleasures were all pleasures of the flesh.
Somehow Shako had saved him. Remade him, better than ever.
And the happiness and the guilt were threatening to tear him apart from the inside out.
He had to know what she had done.
SIMÓN SCREAMED, AND SHAKO came running.
When she found him, a short distance away from their camp, he’d already tied a strip of his tattered shirt around his leg.
He didn’t have to explain. She sucked in a deep breath when she saw the rock nearby, and the tail of the snake poking out from underneath, the diamond-shaped pattern of its scales running up and down its back.
He looked up at her, a mute pleading in his eyes.
The rattlesnakes in the swamps were huge and fat and entirely deadly. Simón could delay the poison racing toward his heart by binding the wound—Shako had taught him that—but he could not stop it. They both knew he was in for an agonizing death. It might take days, or even weeks, but there was no undoing this.
Not by natural means.
Shako bent to one knee and kissed him hard on the mouth. In their pidgin of Spanish and Uzita, she told him not to move, not to fear. She would save him again.
“I know you will,” he said, and kissed her back.
She stood and went racing off into the jungle.
For a moment, Simón admired the way she moved, the muscles under her smooth flesh, her incredible grace as she disappeared behind the trees.
He had to get going if he didn’t want to lose her.
He dropped the cloth on the ground. The skin underneath was unmarked. The rattlesnake was real, and dead enough, but it had never come close to him. He’d searched for hours before he found the fat snake sleeping in the sun, and smashed its head with the rock.
Then he’d arranged the scene for Shako, and screamed at the top of his lungs.
He followed her into the jungle.
SIMÓN DIDN’T HAVE TO worry about losing her trail.
Shako ran in a panic, breaking branches and leaving footprints everywhere. He’d never seen her so careless.
She must have been terrified. For him. He shoved down the guilt that came with the thought. He had to know how he was alive. He had to know the secret.
Despite the distance from their camp, things began to look familiar to him. There was a kind of fever-dream quality to his memories. He heard the sound of water, echoing. He knew that sound. He had been here before.
He saw the cave, and it came rushing back. The pain, the confusion, and the surrender to the inevitable. Then the appearance of an angel, who took all the pain and fear away with one drink of water.
He saw her footprints in the soft, damp earth and followed them into the cave.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom after the Florida sun, but the trail inside was worn and marked. He followed it, and a different kind of light began to emerge: a blue glow that grew stronger as he made his way deeper.
Simón was well below ground when he found the pool. Its eerie blue light glowed off the roof of the cave, casting weird shadows in the rock and along the walls. There was nothing but the sound of the small spring, which flowed up from the cracks in the earth, filling the pool.
Shako kneeled before the pool at a well-worn indentation. She said something in words that sounded nothing like the Uzita she’d already taught him. She took a bowl from a stack. It was richly decorated and covered in gold leaf—the only gold he’d seen in Florida so far.
She filled the bowl, muttered some more, and then stood and turned.
That’s when she saw him.
The bowl dropped from her hands.
The shock and betrayal on her face were so sharp he felt them like new arrows into his flesh.
With one part of his mind, he knew he had violated her and fouled the peace they had managed to create together, possibly destroying it forever.
But that barely mattered, as the rest of his mind understood what he had found.
“Mother of God,” he whispered. “Bimini.”
EVERY CONQUISTADOR KNEW THE legends, ever since the stories Ponce de León brought back with him from Columbus’s second voyage. The stories told of a spring that gave water that could cure any illness, heal any wound, and possibly deliver life everlasting.
The waters were supposed to be located in Bimini, a place that ranked second only to El Dorado in its elusiveness. De León had named an island in the Bahamas after the legend, but no one seriously believed the waters actually existed, especially since de León died like any other man a few years later.
But the legend persisted. Even the hardened veterans on Simón’s expedition, like Narváez, still spoke with a wistful desire of the Bimini waters.
Simón never believed the stories. He thought fresh, clean water was rare enough. He didn’t need to believe in a magic elixir of life.
But he could not deny the evidence of his own eyes, and his own body.
This was the Fountain of Youth. Simón had discovered the greatest treasure the world would ever know.
All it took was betraying the only woman he’d ever loved.
SHE WOULD NOT TOUCH SIMÓN.
There was a new distance between them after they returned from the cave and the Fountain. They spoke. They still hunted and ate and lived side by side, but she never allowed him to get too close again.
He recognized, once more, how limited their vocabulary was, in both number and meaning. So much of what Simón and Shako had was encoded in touch, in a physical language of proximity and feeling. Without that closeness, he now felt as if he was trying to reach a faraway island by throwing stones at it, hurling one empty word after another.
She had explained, slowly, several times, until he finally understood. Her family was the Water Clan. They had been guardians of what he called Bimini as long as they had been here, generation after generation. While other chiefs of the Uzita were known for their strength, or their skill at war, or hunting, or fishing, the Water Clan was always the protector of the secret. They held the tribe’s knowledge, and they kept the legend safe.
The Water was a gift, to be used only sparingly, only on certain occasions. To use it too often, to violate the natural order of birth and life and death, was—she used the Spanish words here—the greatest possible sin known to man.
He could not imagine how that could be, and he could not get her to understand his bewilderment. This was a miracle, not a sin, he told her. He used the Spanish as well, since Uzita didn’t have either word.
She shook her head, and he felt the distance between them grow, even though she didn’t move. The Water was never supposed to be used selfishly. It gave too much, she said. Those who drank it and lived past their natural lives became corrupt, their souls rotting long before their bodies died. Corpses on the inside, wrapped in fresh skin and flawless beauty.
Simón pitied Shako then. Despite her greater-than-average intelligence, despite her obvious gift with languages, she was still a savage, mired in folklore and superstition. He tried to explain it to her as he would a child. The Water could preserve life, could end suffering and illness. It could be used by the right men, honorable men, to ensure that peace and justice reigned for everyone. A good king would not have to pass his empire on to a wayward or selfish son. Without the fear of death, wars would no longer need to be fought to protect territories and property. The best men could take this gift and use it to forge a new and better world. Surely she had to see that. Surely that was better than letting the Water stew in some forgotten cave next to a primitive swamp.
She did not see that. “You do not know,” she told him. “You have never seen it.” There were Uzita who’d fallen prey to the same vanity Simón was preaching. Even one of her ancestors, a great chief of the Water Clan, had not been able to resist the temptation. He lived for years past his natural lifespan. He did not grow wiser, even though he was stronger than any of the men and women who came after him. He didn’t make the clans any safer, even though he accumulated great wealth and power. He grew only more distant as the sons and daughters he’d had aged and died ahead of him. He severed himself from everything that made him who he was. Death became little more than a joke to him, and he spent the lives of the Uzita on foolish wars against other tribes and clans. Finally, he was exiled. He became a sinister figure, forever lurking near the tribe but no longer of it.
“A story told to children to get them to behave,” Simón said.
Her eyes grew cold. She stopped talking to him and went away to find someplace else to sleep. That was the last time they discussed it.
Simón considered begging for her forgiveness several times, but he didn’t believe he’d actually broken her faith. She could have told him about the Bimini waters. She didn’t have to keep it a secret from him. And he still believed he could convince her to let him use the Water for the greater good. She could lead him back to the expedition, and with the help of the other men, they could collect and bottle this marvelous resource and make a better world with it.
He didn’t want to leave her, however. Even if he lived a thousand years, Simón couldn’t imagine living it without her.
He would have to make her see the truth. It would take time. But that was not a problem.
They had nothing but time.
Until, one day, their time ran out.
SIMÓN WAS HUNTING A raccoon—they made a surprisingly filling meal—when he heard a crashing in the brush. He hid behind a tree.
Shako had told him what to do if he ever saw another one of the Uzita, or any other Indian, without her: run.
He put his ego aside and listened, for once. Simón had never been a coward, but he remembered how swiftly his men were destroyed by the Uzita. He remembered almost dying. He didn’t want to repeat the experience. He had no armor and no weapon, save the makeshift knife Shako had given him. He could not expect to win if discovered by the Uzita warriors, and there was no guarantee Shako would use the Water to save him.
It wasn’t in him to run from a fight, however. So he watched from behind the tree, silently waiting.
Maximillian came stumbling out of the jungle, face red with exertion, boiling in his armor like a shrimp tossed into a pot.
For a moment, Simón was shocked. Did I ever look that sick, that pale? His skin was a deep brown now, tanned by the constant sun. He wore nothing but a breechcloth and sometimes his old tunic. His stomach was always full these days. And he hadn’t been sick since Shako gave him the Water.
Maximillian stood there, gasping and squinting at the sun, desperately trying to get his bearings.
For an instant, Simón considered letting Max go crashing and stumbling on his way, his armor rattling with every step. He was happy here. He could die here, and no one would ever know.
Something about that stuck in his throat, however. No one would ever know. He had traveled across the globe and it would not make a bit of difference. He might as well have died on his family’s bankrupt estate or at the hands of some Moor. The world would not be changed one bit by his passing. For some reason, he could not live with that.
Simón stepped from behind the tree. He almost laughed as Maximillian’s eyes went wide with shock and he fumbled to pull his sword from its sheath again.
“Max,” Simón said. “Don’t be afraid. It’s me.”
Recognition dawned slowly on Max’s face. His jaw dropped. And then Simón saw sheer joy overcome his stupor.
“Simón,” he said. “Mother of God. Look at you. I can’t believe it. We found you. We found you!”
He began yelling, and the others came crashing through the grass a few moments later. They grabbed him and embraced him, their armor hot and sharp against his bare skin, clapped him on the back, and laughed with joy.
His friends. They had never given up on him. They’d finally found him.
MAX. FRANCISCO. PEDRO. SEBASTIAN. Antonio. Carlos. Even Juan Aznar, the shy little priest that they had befriended on the long ocean journey from Spain. They all came for him.
They’d gone to war against the Moors, as Simón had, and like him, they were too late to have acquired lands or titles from it. They were young and hungry for glory, and they became inseparable after they joined Narváez.
Until Narváez separated them. Simón had wanted to bring all of them along on his initial foray. Narváez had refused the request, saying that he needed experienced men to lead the fresh recruits. They had all seen battle before, even Aznar, who had served as a priest ministering to soldiers. Narváez would not risk them all on a single errand. In hindsight, Simón had to agree. If they’d come with him, they’d likely be as dead as every other man he’d led.
“We decided it was time to come looking for you,” Max said that night, as they sat around the campfire, eating the deer that Shako had killed earlier to feed them.
Simón’s friends tore into it as if they hadn’t seen meat for weeks. As it turned out, they had not.
The past several months had seen many changes in Narváez’s expedition, none of them good. Food was still scarce. The grueling heat made overland marching a slow, painful chore. The native tribes abandoned their villages before the conquistadors could arrive, and they took their food with them. Worst of all, there was no gold to be found anywhere.
“Narváez was probably glad to see us go,” Francisco said. “Fewer mouths to feed.”
They had not exactly asked permission for their search, either. They had simply left after another long day of fruitless foraging led them to the spot where Simón’s troops had been killed.
“I believe you dropped this,” Max said, holding up his helmet, now badly rusted and dented. “We followed the pieces of armor as far as we could.”
Shako had been watching silently, away from the men and the campfire. She did not share in their laughter, and for the most part, Simón’s friends simply ignored her or ordered her around. It seemed completely natural to them that Simón should have found a willing and obedient savage to cook and care for him.
To all of them except Aznar, anyway. When they returned to Simón and Shako’s camp, his eyes had gone wide with shock when he saw Shako there. He crossed himself repeatedly and hissed to Simón, “Who is that?” He muttered darkly to himself and gave her suspicious glances, sullen eyes darting back to her repeatedly, running up and down her bare legs. Now Shako wore the cloth that covered her breasts for the first time in several months. Aznar still glared.
The others were less obvious about it, but it clearly bothered them, too. Max was the one to finally bring up the question.
“So, Simón. When you come back with us, are you planning on bringing your new little wife?”
Everyone laughed but Aznar. And Shako.
They thought Shako did not understand Spanish. Neither Simón nor Shako had corrected them.
Simón didn’t know what to say. Until that moment, he had not even been sure he would return with the others. But he had to, didn’t he? He swore an oath to serve the crown and Narváez. He’d had a pleasant interlude. But it had to end sometime, didn’t it?
Simón wondered if he could really stay here. If he could send his friends away and spend the rest of his life with Shako. It might be a very long life, with the Water.
But that was insane, if he really thought it through. He couldn’t live here, any more than she could live with him in Spain. They were of two completely different worlds.
Simón looked at her. She was watching him carefully, to see what he’d say.
Before he could answer, Pedro spoke up. “What I want to know is, can she lead us to anything worth having in this godforsaken swamp?”
“What?”
“It’s a good question, Simón,” Max said. “Do her people have treasure? Food? At this point, anything would help.”
“I don’t know,” Simón said.
“You don’t know?” Max was incredulous. “What have you been doing all this time?”
Sebastian laughed. “Oh, I know what he’s been doing,” he said, and leered at Shako. “Perhaps she has sisters waiting for us.”
Shako turned sharply toward him, her sudden anger plain on her face.
Sebastian laughed. “My God, it’s almost as if she understands me. You’ve got her well trained, Simón.”
Pedro reached for Shako’s arm. “Will she do whatever you say? I’ve got a couple tricks I could teach her.”
Shako slapped his hand away. Simón saw her reach for her knife.
He couldn’t let this happen. “Stop,” he said.
But Pedro kept on laughing. He still thought it was a joke. Simón knew that Shako could gut him in an instant and then turn on the others. She might even get Max or Francisco, who were nearest after that, but then, certainly, one of the others would find his pistol. “Stop!” he said again, wondering who he was really trying to protect.
Before anything else could happen, however, the grasses shook and men came leaping forward.
They tackled the Spaniards, knocking them all to the ground and wrestling them down in a matter of moments.
Simón felt his hands yanked up behind his back and felt ropes being tied around him. He was lifted like a child and then kicked in the stomach to take any fight out of him.
He was still watching Shako’s eyes. They were wide with surprise. She had not expected this tonight, either.
But they both knew it had to happen sometime.
The Uzita had found them.
THE BONFIRE AT THE center of the Uzita village was so hot that Simón smelled his own hair burning.
They’d been dumped next to the fire by the Uzita, and the whole tribe gathered around them. It was like being in some portrait of Hell. The Spaniards were stripped down to their underclothes. The Uzita jeered at them and threw stones. Little children rushed forward to poke and prod at their strangely colored flesh. A wooden spit was hefted up and over the fire. More dry logs were thrown into the pit, and the heat grew even more intense. The Spaniards were given a good view of the preparations. The Uzita planned to roast them alive.
Aznar was gibbering to himself in panic. The others winced or occasionally cursed as a stone or a blow landed on their heads. They all looked terrified.
Simón had not seen Shako since they’d been carried from the swamp. He wondered, for a brief, absurd moment, if she was safe.
Then the chief arrived, and the Uzita fell silent.
Hirrihigua. Simón had heard his name from Shako, but now he understood the slight tone of awe she used when she spoke of her father. He was a tall, powerful man, his hair still black, his skin as smooth and dark as old leather. The Uzita all made way for him.
He walked to where they lay on the ground. If he felt the burning heat, he gave no indication. Instead, he peered down at each of them, as if weighing and measuring every man.
He did not appear to like what he saw.
He said a few words in Uzita. The warriors grabbed the Spaniards and hauled them up on their feet.
Hirrihigua walked close to Simón and stared deeply into his face. The chief’s eyes were unreadable. Simón knew that his life had already been decided. He wondered what the chief was looking for.
“You drank the Water,” he said, so quietly that Simón could barely hear him over the roar of the flames.
Simón found he couldn’t lie. “Yes,” he admitted.
Hirrihigua shook his head a fraction of an inch. Simón saw something in his eyes, then. He saw pain.
“Into the fire,” Hirrihigua said, and turned away abruptly.
Simón did not even have time to let that sink in when he heard a shriek of protest from the crowd.
“No,” Shako screamed. She shoved her way through the Uzita and ran to Hirrihigua. He barked at her in Uzita, something so rapid and angry that Simón couldn’t understand. She screamed back at him, slapping her hands against his arms when he tried to push her away.
One of the warriors, a man even taller and thicker than Hirrihigua, tried to pull her back into the crowd. Shako turned and kicked him in the gut, and he went gray and staggered.
She shouted at her father again. She did not plead. She demanded.
He looked shocked, and then furious. He lifted his hand as if to strike her.
“No,” Simón shouted, and somehow found the speed and strength to push past his guards and lunge for Hirrihigua.
He didn’t get far. The butt end of a spear smacked his legs and then cracked him hard on the back of the head. He fell facedown into the dirt.
When he looked up, Shako was beside him. She pulled him up, cradling his body, arms around him as if she would never let him go.
Hirrihigua watched them both. He looked as if he’d tasted something foul.
Shako’s eyes were filled with tears. She said, “Please.”
Hirrihigua sagged. The anger was gone, Simón could see, replaced by a deep and bitter sadness.
“Your knife,” he said to one of the warriors. He took the blade when it was offered. He kneeled down to them.
With a quick slash, he cut Simón’s bonds.
Then he crossed to the others and did the same for them.
He handed the blade back to the warrior and walked away.
The Uzita stood there, confused, uncertain.
Shako was not. She pulled Simón upright and began pushing him away from the fire. The others followed as quickly as they could.
Muttering and grumbling began as soon as Shako hurried them through the crowd. She didn’t stop. She kept moving them past the Uzita’s houses, off into the darkness at the edge of the village.
None of them spoke. She kept hustling them along until they found a trail, barely visible in the dark. They could still see the flames and shadows dancing from the center of the village. The muttering of the Uzita had turned to loud argument now.
Shako shoved Simón. Hard. “Run,” she said. “Keep running along this trail. Follow the flow of the river when you reach it. It will take you back to your people. Now run.”
He clasped her hand and tried to pull her along.
She drew back as if scalded.
“Shako,” he said.
“Run,” she said again, pain in her voice and on her face. “And don’t ever come back.”
The shouts of the Uzita grew closer, and Simón heard some of the men moving into the brush after them.
“Simón, we must go now,” Max said. He and the others were ready to bolt, but they had no idea where they were going.
Simón nodded. He leaned forward and kissed Shako.
Then he turned and ran.