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.
December 1983
The shag carpet’s thick fibers curled against the edges of a hand-drawn map. George barely noticed, his brow creased in concentration.
On the paper, the jungle heat rose to meet his face before breaking away to the Caribbean blue of the Atlantic. There, on that side of the map, the air felt cooler, an ocean breeze misting his skin as he tilted his pencil to add more detail.
The entirety of the Yucatán peninsula, nearly half his body length drawn on paper, arced upward like a defiant fist—Guatemala and Belize forming the wrist, Cancún’s knuckles raised high before curving back down toward Campeche. Slartibartfast himself would be proud, this was a world shaped in pencil and ink, a coastline mapped as if seen from space.
Inland, the details faded—just wild scribbles of terrain, broken only by notes for Calakmul, Copan, Tabasqueno, and Tulum. But along the coastline, where small islands lay scattered like pebbles, his strokes grew sharper, more deliberate. A few islands were drawn in darker pencil or ink. Others had been erased and redrawn, shifting positions, as he searched for their true place on the map.
George leaned back, his pencil hovering, undecided where to go next. Something still felt off as he looked at the empty spaces along the coast, between the islands already on the map and the one he knows should be there.
With one hand on his father’s journal, George leans away from the map to scan the text. He looks carefully at the journal, his father’s handwriting nearly impenetrable:
“…the place we’re looking for is not on the mainland but his Yucatec is hard to understand. He only speaks of the shape of the island…”
In the journal, the words k’uh nah witz stood out—his father’s rough translation scrawled beside them: montaña del templo.
George scanned the scattered xeroxed copies spread around the edges of his map. Nothing. He picked up the Spanish-to-English dictionary, its pages soft from use, flipping to a dog-eared section.
“Montaña…” he whispered, looking for the word with his finger. “Mountain. Yes, the island has a mountain. But I already know that.”
His pencil tapped absently against the paper. North, near Cancún? Or farther down the coast? His eyes drifted past the map, focusing somewhere beyond the room.
Outside, the streetlights spilled their dull orange glow through the bay window, outlining Kathryn in silhouette—tea in hand, book balanced in her lap. A light rain tapped against the glass, falling into rhythm with the stereo, where Leonard Cohen’s voice murmured low and steady, a whisper from somewhere else. George looked at the clock on the wall—ten minutes after eight—his father would be home soon and could help him decipher the clues, if George didn’t have to go to bed first. He could delay that a bit but only if his father was here. They’d both plead with Kathryn to let him stay up. He decided to busy himself, laying flat on his stomach, the map inches from his nose. If he was quiet, if he blended into the carpet, maybe time would stretch a little longer. Maybe his father would be home before Kathryn noticed the clock.
George pulled a torn map of the Yucatán from the journal, its jagged edges frayed from time. His father had circled a stretch of coastline, the markings rough, the pen strokes covering a few hundred miles. Next to it, two words: pez doblado.
“Bent fish?” George muttered. His eyes dropped back to his own map, scanning the blank spaces between the coast.
The record flips. The needle hisses. George doesn’t look up. The baritone voice again filled the room, low and deliberate. The cover of Various Positions leaned against a speaker, as if Cohen himself were watching all this through a spectral window, past the sticker that reads “For Radio Station Use Only.”
But you don't really care for music, do you?
Flipping the pages of an encyclopedia, George looks at the inset drawing of a map of the same coastline. His finger points to the islands drawn there, then at his own. One-by-one his eyes are checking them off his list. Then, he sees something, just under where his finger has been. On the page of the encyclopedia it looks like a smudge of ink, a stray comma, thrown haphazardly onto the map.
He looks again, closer. Scratches at it with his nail. His pulse quickens. Could it be? He flips through the xerox copies, searching. There—another map. His fingers tremble as he lays it beside the encyclopedia, tracing over the same mark. A smudge? No—
“Bent fish!” George says, nearly laughing. “The island is shaped like a bent fish!”
Leonard Cohen’s voice on the stereo echoes:
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Yes, hallelujah! George holds up the paper to the light, the street lights outside casting their orange light through the paper then changing color as a car pulls up outside, headlights shining through the window.
He leans over to his map, holding the sheet of paper next to it. This is the piece of the puzzle he’s been trying to figure out. The atlas and encyclopedia made no mention of the island. Maybe it was too small for anyone to care about? His pencil carefully sketches a light shape on the map, an exaggerated comma out in the water.
George pulls the journal close looking at the description his father has added…
“...long, coastal inlet and dense jungle. A rocky leeward coastline opposed by a wave-swept windward side. And a southern mountain, small peaks that lead to a nearly volcanic cone before it slopes down three sides and vanishes into the water.”
A sturdy knock at the door barely registers with George as he sketches the last curve of the coastline. His father was home. He didn’t look up, not yet—just a few more details, just a little longer. Kathryn stood, set her book aside, and opened the door.
His smile and eyes wide, George is scribbling trying to get the details in place. He can feel the warm wind blowing again as he sculps the edges, the inlet, the mountain at one end sloping into the ocean.
The doorway yawns open. A draft of cool air slips inside. Two uniformed police officers stand at the threshold. Kathryn doesn’t move.
Kathryn: “What—?”
And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of song
“Mom?!” George says, his daze clearing as he stands.
George hears his mother whisper something, sees her body slackening as she drops to the floor, her knees buckling.
The officers stepped inside, grabbing at her shoulders. Her body is a bag of bones, a loose slump as George hears, “...I’m sorry. He passed before we arrived.”
A set of keys hit the floor. George knows them immediately—the rabbit’s foot, the Triumph key.
For a moment, they were just keys. Then the room itself exhaled, a first cry, the beginning or the end. Cohen’s voice rose—
With nothing on my tongue except
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
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Music
Hallelujah – Leonard Cohen
Gripping! And cinematic with the music woven through at key moments.
Now the island shaped like a pez doblado will be forever linked to the death of George's father. This bit of description is exceptional: "The entirety of the Yucatán peninsula, nearly half his body length drawn on paper, arced upward like a defiant fist—Guatemala and Belize forming the wrist, Cancún’s knuckles raised high before curving back down toward Campeche."