Welcome to Tiny Worlds!
We’re shifting our focus to explore Mexico's eastern coast with twelve-year-old George Perez in the serialized novel: ISLA.
For longer fiction visit Stories, and for flash fiction go to Sketchbook.
What the F-U-D-G-E just happened?
George felt the sketchbook at his side, gritty from the sand, his blood still buzzing.
Wasn’t that club going to drive the old man into the ground like a tent stake until George stepped in? But the Lion hadn’t thanked him. Hadn’t said much of anything. All he got for his trouble was a mumble.
A sucker punch of regret sat heavy in his stomach.
Now he really felt like an outsider. Ugh. That same not-belonging feeling was back, thick as the fog around him. So far, this whole adventure was about as satisfying as one of those computer games where you type “go north”… and the game replies: You can’t go that way. George kicked the sand, stuck, looking at an imagined blinking cursor with no idea what to do next.
But those games meant for you to keep trying all the possibilities until you found the right one, didn’t they? Read the journal. Get on the plane.
So George typed: Follow the Lion.
He kept his distance but never took his eyes off the man. Like the cabbie who’d brought them here, the man moved instinctively—steady along the paseo, then winding through smaller streets.
The sound of waves faded. In their place: the click of a shop door unlocking, the high-pitched hiss of a hose washing the concrete. Now, those small movements felt like insects stirring, a hive of subtle activity. The town was waking up.
Had he noticed any of this yesterday when they arrived, when he’d wandered alone? Of course not. Yesterday he had one focus: find the island. Everything else was just wrapping paper.
But the town still looked faded. Not ruined, exactly, like he’d thought yesterday, but worn thin, the color drained from it. Maybe it was the fog, that dimmed the sun. George thought of black-and-white spy films. He didn’t have a trench coat, just a backpack. Still, wasn’t he tailing someone through the mist? A spy in his own movie?
The Lion turned down a narrow alley that looked like a dumping ground—crates, boxes, and discarded junk lining both sides. It wasn’t far from the building where he and Kathryn had slept, just a block or so away.
George ducked behind a stack of boxes, then peeked.
Ahead, the Lion stopped, watching. The man with the mirrored glasses was talking to someone in a doorway. For a moment, everything went quiet. Like the beginning of a gunfight in a western, right before the music begins. Waiting. Sounds from the waking town hushed as George listened, too.
The man with the bag motioned, opened it to show its contents. From inside the doorway, a woman stepped forward. She was older, her long hair braided. Her dress caught George’s eye—a burst of color in the gray morning.
Crouching down, George clutched his backpack and sketchpad. A low, throaty growl made him freeze. He glanced around—nothing.
Then he spotted it: across the alley, stacked cages wobbled on a pile of boxes—each stuffed with fat, speckled hens glaring down like feathered judges.
“Shhhh,” George whispered, trying to ignore them, straining to catch what the sunglasses man and the woman were saying. The woman turned and vanished inside.
One bird growled again, feathers puffed.
“Amigo,” the Lion said. Just one word that broke through the fog. The man in the straw hat turned. Something shifted—his posture, his face. George caught it in a flash: they knew each other.
Another low growl from the crates. George hushed at the bird again, leaning further to listen.
George didn’t know what would happen if he was seen. He wasn’t hiding out of fear. But some moments only made sense from the outside. Get too close, and they vanished. Better to keep quiet and just observe.
The hen shuffled. The whole stack wobbled. One of the hens growled again.
Then—George watched a small hand reach up from behind the cage. Just a hand. No body. It pried open the door on the back and padded through the straw, blindly, like it was searching for something lost.
The chicken let out a grumble, feathers twitching.
Then a second hand joined the first. George stared.
Suddenly, a third hand reached up, just fingers—pointing, gesturing wildly toward a different crate, another chicken. It was ridiculous. George nearly yelped. These were the hands of a kid, maybe someone his own size. But, three of them?
A muffled giggle followed—sharp, conspiratorial.
The first two hands found what they wanted—an egg—and passed it off to the third where it disappeared behind the stack of crates.
“What the…”
At the doorway, the Lion stepped closer. The man with the glasses stood stiff, chin up, defiant. The woman reappeared.
“How much?” the Lion asked, nodding at the bag. She said something—George couldn’t hear—but held out a few pesos.
More giggling. The hands were back, now poking into the next crate. The hen inside gave a low, irritated cluck.
The stack swayed again. Teetering. George held his breath.
The Lion lifted the strap from the man’s shoulder and opened the bag. For a long moment he looked inside. To George, the man with the mirrored glasses looked like he was shrinking as the moments passed.
Frowning, the Lion turned to the woman and shook his head. She pursed her lips and pulled a few more pesos from her apron, adding them to the others.
The Lion looked from the money to the man. “That’s a good price.”
When the bag was handed to the woman it opened just enough for George to see the contents—the best of the day’s catch: fish and lobster, jumbled together in a heap.
The woman offered the money to the Lion. It was a light gesture, hesitant. He held up a hand: don’t pay me. Then turned it, motioning toward the man: his money.
George looked closer. The Lion’s hands were calloused, weathered. Two fingers on the right—index and middle—were missing down to the second knuckle.
Then, the crates wobbled again, all of them.
From behind—like a magic trick exposed—two boys stepped out. Or rather, one boy stepped out carrying another on his shoulders, both swaying like a human totem pole.
George couldn’t believe his eyes.
The boy on top clutched three eggs—one in each hand, one under his chin—like sacred treasure. The bottom could barely walk straight, knees buckling, face locked in panicked concentration.
Slung across the bottom boy’s chest was a rough, hand-stitched bag—woven and weather-worn, like it had seen salt and sun. As they moved, the boy above carefully slipped the eggs into it without looking, like they’d done this before.
There was something almost perfect about them—like mischief come to life. Not sneaky. Not mean. Just… impossible.
In unison, the boys turned and spotted him. The top one grinned, white teeth flashing. The bottom grimaced, holding back a laugh at being caught in the act. Their bare, dark-skinned chests were nearly bursting with giggles as George saw the resemblance in their brow, their noses. Definitely brothers. Not identical but close. And nearly his own age.
George glanced toward the Lion—no one else saw the movement.
The boy on top gave George a mock salute with an egg—but the gesture was wild and he bumped the nearest cage. It wobbled, sliding. A hen squawked. George sprang forward, arms out, trying to stop the whole group of crates from going over.
His sketchbook hit the ground, pages fanning across the alley, catching the edge of the cage just in time.
But the cage he grabbed tilted the one beside it. Which bumped the next.
Suddenly, the whole stack trembled, sliding like a tower of cards in a breeze. An egg tumbled out. Then another. With a quick wobble the boy on top caught them both mid-fall, leaning to stash them into the satchel, leaving George to steady the crates.
Another egg bounced from somewhere in the mess—rolled—and landed, improbably, in George’s palm.
He looked down—astonished.
The boys saw, cheeks puffing out, holding in a laugh. One gave him a slow wink.
George gawked at their brazenness, at the contrast of what he’d seen this morning. The man with the mirrored glasses had looked threadbare—like someone trying to get by. These boys stole with the casualness of kids who’d never been caught.
Then, like a closing act, they spun and bolted down the alley, a teetering jumble of limbs, the woven bag bouncing at his side, as they vanished around the corner, laughing.
George didn’t move. Couldn’t—not without setting off a Zeppelin-sized racket and alerting everyone on the block that he was there.
But he didn’t have to make the decision—the crates wobbled again as the hens clucked and shifted, feathers puffing. George tried to steady them, but it was too late. One of the lower boxes slipped free, hit the ground, and exploded in a clatter of wood and squawk.
The Lion turned at the sound—just in time to see George frozen, watching the pieces of a crate tumble across the alley, an egg in his hand.
In the sudden quiet George heard the Lion’s footsteps approaching—steady, deliberate. When he looked up from the mess, the man with the glasses was gone. Now there was just an empty stretch of alley where he’d been, the fog now receding.
Sheepishly, George returned the egg to one of the hens and pushed the remaining crates back into place with a loud thunk. No idea what to say. Nothing would make sense.
George bent to gather his sketchbook from the ground, the Lion stepped closer, looking down at the boy. George gets a better look at him, squarely this time, in the growing sunlight. The Lion’s face is drawn down more than he thought, his eyes deeper. In that moment George wonders if a smile ever stretched across his face. As a boy? A teenager? Ever?
As the shadow of the man fell across him, towering over him, George could feel the coming barrage of dismissive words. They’d probably arrive in Spanish but the tone would be unmistakable: step aside kid and let the adults do their thing.
But nothing came.
Instead, the Lion’s eyes flick silently to the sketchbook, to the page that lay open: the woman with the palm-leaf hair, her hand outstretched, the star lifting from her palm.
The Lion tilted his head slightly, about to speak—and then came the scream.
Sharp. Panicked. Not far, just over the next block: Kathryn.
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Crazy curious about the man in the mirrored glasses, and picking up on how the fog was heavy during his arrival at the boats during the last chapter, and then seems to evaporate with his departure here. 🤔
A well-developed chapter leading to a suspenseful ending, J., with some physical comedy on the side. Looking forward to the next installment.