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.
A ripple of light fell across the water at their legs.
Kathryn’s boots were soaked and heavy, but that didn’t matter. She’d suffer the ankle-deep slop they’d been trudging through for hours if it meant finding George—and getting away from this mumbling buffoon. Whatever interior compass he’d been following was off–way off. But she didn’t have any better sense of direction in here.
“Ahead,” Roberto’s voice echoed. His hands padded along the walls, his footfalls slow and labored. The small kerosene lamp in his hand cast a soft glow in front of him but failed to reach farther than an arm’s length.
Out of the tunnel he blinked—like a mole feeling light for the first time. Kathryn followed, heaving George’s backpack higher on her shoulders, both of them grimy, painted in muck.
The space could have held a few dozen people. Perhaps less a room than a central rotunda—several tunnels feeding into it, the walls in the dim light looked like little more than dirt and roots. In the center, the roof had caved in, dropping a massive tree inside, angled, taking up most of the space, not upright but not on its side either.
The light Roberto had seen came from above, through the open sky left when the earth crumbled and the tree sank to its new resting place.
Roberto raised the lantern to look more closely.
“The old calabash,” he said quietly. He looked away to Kathryn, as if she might remember, “We used to climb it for fruit when we were kids.” He stared a moment longer, voice trailing off as the ground shook again. “All this time it was standing right over this place.”
Giving the trembling branches a wide berth, Kathryn looked up: stars—brighter than she remembered them as a girl. And a comet, rippling across the sky in a slow arc, sending its light down into the room. After all the stench and darkness of the tunnels, seeing it there felt like finding a jewel.
But something about it—a comet. She tried to place it. In the blur of a declining relationship, working extra hours for money to move her and George—had she missed it? No, it had been there.
That little TV beside—what was his name’s?—espresso machine. Yes, she remembered.
The morning news had shown it: a cartoonish graphic, a voiceover promising its once-in-a-lifetime return. She’d half-listened, then filed it away with everything else that didn’t matter just then.
Halley’s Comet. Yes, that was it.
Trying to see the comet in the city would have been impossible, the sky was always drowned behind city lights or covered in winter clouds. But here, in this open hollow of dirt and ruin, the view was clear. It felt like the world had remembered how to show itself.
Roberto sloshed around the fallen tree in the opposite direction, peering into each tunnel. He stopped a few feet inside one, letting out an exhausted sigh, then a short laugh as he looked around. “It’s nothing but another set of passages.”
They both froze as the ground trembled. For a long moment the walls around them shook. Dirt sifted down from the open ceiling. Water splashed from the tunnel where they had come. Both Kathryn and Roberto turned to look, but no other sound followed. Roberto shrugged.
Her eyes drifted as she circled the tree. It filled nearly the entire room, leaving only a narrow path around its edge. The comet’s glow, reflected off the water in bright ribbons of light, gave her just enough to see.
She rolled her neck, then looked at the passages Roberto had found. East, west, north—who knew which way?
Then, faintly at first, a howl carried down one of the tunnels. Another answered from across the rotunda, then another—until they were surrounded on three sides.
A gust of air surged through, creating waves on the pooled water. In the next breath, light flared from one of the tunnels, moving and alive, halting her steps.
From deep inside came a rapid rhythm of splashes, closing fast.
Roberto looked to the only passage without a sound, the one they’d just come through. His heart raced.
“There is no archive here,” Roberto hissed, waving her back across the space, “vamos!”
But Kathryn didn’t follow, she only backed away, circling the tree, away from the light in the passage.
Listening to the sounds, it wasn’t one thing but a whole group—an army of feet cascading down the tunnel.
Whatever was coming was moving closer.
Watching the tunnel, Roberto looked around–they would never outrun whatever it was but maybe he could hide?
The shapes got closer and closer until the light was blinding as it entered the room.
Nicte slid into the space, followed by George, his torch flickering wildly.
The tree at the center startled them both, the path looked blocked. Unsure where to go, both quickly moved around the edges of the tree until they were face to face with Kathryn.
“Mom!?” George said.
Searching for the words, Kathryn was interrupted a second later.
At the tunnel entrance, a disparate group of animals appeared led by a boar standing chest-deep in the water. One by one the other entrances were blocked by more animals, their glowing eyes searched the room, then followed the faces they saw there.
Nicte swung around, taking in the space, the comet overhead, the strangers, the tree.
She knew this tree.
She pressed her hand to a split in the trunk, where the bark had cracked, and sap oozed out—thick and sweet-smelling. With a quick move she wiped the sap across her cheek, then George’s neck. Seeing the other woman standing there, she scooped another handful and drew it across Kathryn’s arm like a mark.
Then pushed them both back.
Nicte leaned to face the beasts, as she had countless times with the island’s alux.
She lowered her voice, growling, “Ma’a beeta’al,” — don’t do it.
Around the room, the animals stopped their forward movement. The air stilled, every muscle tensed, waiting.
As Nicte looked closer, these beats were different, not the alux she’d encountered before. Their bodies were decayed and haunted. In their blank eyes Nicte saw no recognition of the special barrier as they leaned forward, daring her, taunting. But they didn’t strike out. Like they were waiting for something.
Roberto edged backward toward the passage they’d entered from. He slipped slowly into shadow until he stopped—blocked. A chill of terror flashed across his face as his mind caught up to what might be there.
He turned sharply, squinting into the darkness. His stumped-fingered hand opened, the lantern slipping free—until it was caught mid-fall by another hand. The figure stepped forward, raising the light, pushing him back into the room.
For an instant the face echoed Roberto’s own. Recognition flickered between them as the light reflected across the mirrored sunglasses tucked into the man’s front pocket.
“Esteban…” Roberto whispered, “Tú aquí, hermano?”
Even in shadow George recognized the man from the beach and the alley. Pilluelo. And from the old picture in Roberto’s restaurant. His brother.
But also that name… hermano?
“No debiste volver,” Esteban said quietly. “The island …doesn’t need you,”
The animals leaned in, their noses inching into the room.
A monkey, grabbing at roots, pulling itself high onto the tunnel wall, sniffed. Then again, its nose turning up toward the hole in the ceiling.
All eyes lifted, human and animal, to the shape appearing there.
Slowly, revealing itself, the yellow eyes of a jaguar opened, reflecting the torchlight. It turned, the decay of its massive head visible, taking in the group below as it let out a long, low growl.
Roberto flinched, wiping the sweat of his brow with his handkerchief.
Kathryn gasped, stepping slowly back.
Across the room, George watched Esteban raise the lantern, eyes fixed on the jaguar.
The light caught his face—scarred, hollowed, the skin drawn tight where a nose and brows should have more shape. But as Esteban lifted the lantern closer to his chest, catching George and then Nicte’s eyes, the lines softened; the ruin became human again.
And sad, George thought. A sadness that ran deep enough to curve his spine.
The same light twisted Roberto’s features, the shadows cutting deep until his terror looked carved in.
“K’aak’,” Esteban said with almost a purr—then, softly, “Fuego.”
It dawned on George: fuego. Yes, fire. That might drive back the animals. If only for a minute. It would give them some room to figure out what to do next.
Nicte reached, her hand landing on George’s, on the torch. Cautiously, she pulled, positioning the flame between them. Their eyes met. Hers flicked toward the fallen tree, then back to the jaguar crouched at the rim above them.
Nicte’s eyes stayed on the monstrous cat, now leaning at the edge—a single leap away from the tree, maybe a second one to the floor. George gulped at the image in his head: one swipe from its horrible claws and their skin would open like fruit. Then the others—the monkeys, dogs, the boar—would follow in a frenzy.
The torch’s flame drifted slowly toward the tree. Every eye was transfixed—predator and prey alike.
Nicte steadied her aim, shoulders shifting. Ever. So. Slowly.
A hiss came from the jaguar. The other animals flinched.
Everyone froze in place.
Esteban whispered, “Óox,” —three.
A monkey bellowed.
Nicte tensed. The jaguar’s eyes narrowed on George.
“Ka’a.”—two.
The flame lowered a fraction further. Water splashed as the boar shook its head.
“Jun.”—one.
Esteban flung the lantern.
It spun once before striking the trunk and bursting—not in fire, but fuel. Kerosene slicked down the bark in gleaming threads. A thunder erupted from the jaguar as Nicte’s torch whipped across the gap.
Sparks leapt as the flame struck the spill. For a heartbeat it sputtered—then roared to life.
In the tunnels, the animal screams rose as the ground trembled again.
Incredibly, like a furnace overfilled with oil, the sap in the scar caught fire. Underneath the skin it bubbled, fire raging along the tilted trunk until every bug hole, pore, and broken branch spat flame.
George closed his eyes, stepping back, feeling the otherworldly heat on his skin. It sparkled in a way no fire he’d ever seen.
Above, the jaguar reared back losing its footing trying to scrabble for higher ground. The edge gave way. Toward the fire it fell, limbs pawing at the air as it twisted in retreat. It landed, tangled in the fire and boughs of the tree—thrashing.
Instantly, from every tunnel they came—monkeys clambering along the walls, dogs splashing low through the water, the boar plowing ahead with a guttural snort. In a single wave they met, crashing together at the calabash—teeth and claws and panic tangling in one heap.
Heat from the tree rolled over them. Through the gap in the ceiling a pillar of flame shot upward. Screams and writhing from around the tree pitched higher as sparks lifted into the updraft like a thousand burning insects. The flames reached up to join the comet’s light, gold folding into white.
The air detonated—a concussive crack that sent a wall of heat skimming across the water. The blast threw them back as the tree burst apart—bark, sap, and splinters ripping through the air in a storm of sound, striking the walls and vanishing into the dark like a volley of stones.
Kathryn hit the ground first, the shock slamming the air from her lungs. Roberto crashed down beside her. Esteban twisted. George and Nicte struck last, one tangled with the other.
A second gust of air tore outward in a single breath, a force that stripped the walls bare. It was more than sound—it was the island’s own voice, a bellowing howl from its heart.
For an instant George thought it was calling his name—or maybe everyone’s at once.
That howl–George had heard before or thought he had. Standing on the rooftop looking out at the stars. A call of both pain and release. Except it wasn’t in his head, it was here, beneath him. It vibrated through his bones as his own mouth opened, calling back to it as if to say, “I hear you.”
After came the silence, a deep, ringing stillness that swallowed everything.
When his eyes opened George saw clumps of mud and dirt fall from the walls around branches that were embedded from the blast. The whole roof had been blown away. In the center, where the tree had laid was empty with no sign of the jaguar or the other animals.
Nicte was the first to stand, her wound bright red but no longer pulsing, slowly turning, the chamber wheeling around her.
George crawled to Kathryn, gasping as she caught her breath. She patted his chest: I’m okay, just a minute.
“Mira,” Roberto rasped from the ground.
George followed his gaze as he got to his feet. The blast had stripped the walls bare: what had been dirt and roots was now stone, encircled by carved faces and squared arches. Each tunnel mouth was framed in precise masonry, the surfaces alive with glyphs that moments ago had been buried in mud. He wanted to touch the carvings—to feel the age of them, the weight of what he’d only ever seen in pictures or through the window of a cab.
But his hand froze an inch away. He remembered the room and the shapes that vanished at his touch. It felt like he’d been tricked before.
Roberto was up, studying the glyphs that lined the walls. His eyes tracked a stelae at one doorway, then another, muttering under his breath, “Once… catorce… cero-cero-cero.”
Kathryn looked to George, who returned a shrug.
“They all say the same thing,” Roberto said, turning to Esteban, who was still trying to lift himself from the ground. “Just a date.”
George’s lips cracked as he whispered, “Is this… it?”
Brushing dirt from the carvings, Roberto thumped at them. “No. Just a room.”
Their eyes drifted over the intricate columns that form the room’s boundaries.
Roberto paced between the tunnels. “No door to open.”
“Maybe there’s something else here—directions,” Kathryn said, wiping off her pants and pointing down one of the dark passages. “Like ‘go that way.’”
“No, no. I’ll know it when I see it,” Roberto said—then, quieter, almost to himself—“I’ve seen it before.”
He rubbed at the rounded skin where his fingertips had once been, the nerves still alive beneath the scar. The memory flickered there—those eyes, violent and celestial, staring back at him as the doors closed. In that instant they had taken something from him, severing more than flesh, leaving a piece of himself behind. But, couldn’t he still feel them—those missing fingers—as if they were here, reaching through the stone, divining a way back to what he’d lost?
He laid a hand on Esteban’s shoulder. “We have to find it.”
Roberto turned back to the carvings, his breath sharp in the close air. “But it’s wrong. All of it. The pattern repeats, like it’s mocking us.” He pressed his palm flat against the wall, then drew it back as if it had burned him. “It’s down here somewhere. I can feel it… but it’s hiding from me.”
“Hermano…” Esteban said, reaching for his elbow as he passed by.
Roberto’s voice thinned, almost trembling with certainty. “It always does.” He scanned the walls, the air around him alive with some invisible pulse. “The island—hiding it again.” The words came out between breaths, half curse, half confession.
“Wait,” George said. He leaned down, grabbing his backpack from Kathryn. Pulling out the leather journal, he flipped it open, muttering as he turned the pages. “Seeing… eyes…”
George pushes the book in front of Kathryn, “This.” He points to a passage, “I can make out a part of it but, mom, his—”
“Yeah, his handwriting is like a doctor” Kathryn finishes the sentence.
Nicte watches, unsure what’s happening. She sees Esteban trying to lift himself from the water and rushes to him.
Reading aloud, George said, “Communion requires willing eyes. Like—”
“Children playing, listening—” Kathryn read, deciphering.
Esteban moved to his knees; Nicte holding him upright. Black specks glittered across his chest and face—shards from the blast embedded in his skin, sparkling like glass in the comet’s light.
George’s voice softened. “Children playing, listening to the wind, watching for falling stars on a summer night—not expecting to see one, only watching with open hands, ready to receive whatever the sky gives.”
Roberto listened but George’s words came through jagged and warped through the chamber as something else: I alone can open it.
The echoes in Roberto’s ears lingered long after George’s mouth had stopped moving. “What did you—?” Roberto started, but his own voice sounded foreign.
George frowned at the page. “I don’t know what this says…”
Esteban coughed, blood streaking his lips.
George tried again, carefully sounding out each syllable. “Ken je’ek… abta’ak…”
Esteban’s voice came low, translating between breaths. “When one heart opens…”
George traced the next line. “Jump’éel puksi’ik’al… ichil k’áak’…”
Nicte leaned closer, listening as if to a prayer half-remembered.
“…others will follow,” Esteban said, his voice fading to a whisper.
George looked back at him. “There’s more,” he said, pointing lower on the page.
He squinted, sounding it out, halting and unsure. “Táan u máan… u yéetel k’iin… tu’ux aj k’u hunp’éel…”
Esteban’s eyes fluttered, the translation surfacing as if from memory. “A proud man digs for light,” he murmured, “and buries himself instead.”
George echoed him softly, fitting the pieces together. “When one heart opens, others will follow. A proud man digs for light and buries himself instead.”
The words seemed to hang in the air, the comet’s light pulsing faintly against the walls, as if the chamber itself had been listening.
To Roberto, the echoes twisted backward, each syllable dragging like stone: This is not for you, old man. Go rot.
“K’ux… le máako’ loobilta’an,” Nicte said, pulling a shard from Esteban’s chest. Blood welled instantly, slicing her fingers like razors. She gasped.
A cold pulse ran through Roberto’s skull. George was no longer reading—only smiling at him. No, laughing. The sound ricocheted around the chamber, bright and cruel, until it was everywhere at once.
He stumbled forward, heat rising under his skin. The boy will steal it from you.
Yes. It’s not his. He hadn’t lost everything to get here.
Roberto plunged his hand into the water. His fingers closed around a stone—smooth, heavy, slick with silt.
“Jorge,” Nicte said, her voice testing the word, urgent.
Roberto lunged.
George barely saw it coming as he turned toward her—
—but Esteban moved first, catching Roberto’s leg and dragging him down.
Roberto’s teeth gnashed. He saw only defiance. The archive was his—his and no one else’s.
He tore free and brought the stone down. A crack of bone split the air. Esteban’s head snapped forward.
Before the blood reached his brow, Roberto swung again—
—but Nicte was there.
Her hand rose to block, and when the stone struck, light burst from her wound—pure, blinding.
The flare ripped outward, then folded back in on itself, light reversing through the air. The water at their feet turned to glass, every ripple a mirror, every reflection showing not the chamber but another sky, another moment.
For a heartbeat…
Esteban saw Marisol—her arm raised, waving from the fields.
Roberto saw himself as a boy, tanned, pulling his net from the water, empty.
George saw his father’s face, winking at him through the rearview mirror of the Triumph.
Kathryn saw George, sketching his self-portrait at the kitchen table, the face older, more like Arturo’s.
Nicte saw her own hand, unmarked, stroking the back of a tortuga.
The visions trembled, flickering between surfaces as if unsure which world to hold. The glassy water hummed—a single note, pure and rising. Then, one by one, the reflections collapsed back into Nicte’s wound, the light drawing inward until only a faint pulse remained beneath her skin and the scar…
Nicte turned, dazed, her eyes wide. She looked at George, holding her hand up.
The scar was gone.
A moaning sound from somewhere deep in the island fluttered through the tunnels.
Carved faces along the walls began to weep molten lines of gold. Every tunnel mouth glowed, veins of fire threading toward the center. Along the floor, under the pool of water it flowed until they were all standing on a surface made of light, shining the comet’s brilliance back.
Kathryn, “Wha—Should we run?”
George looked at her, his shoulders raised: I don’t know. Then pointed at the comet closing its arc overhead.
Roberto, doubled over, hair falling around, kneeling in the water.
Esteban whispers, “Le islao’ ku ka’a ch’a’ik u yiik’” – the island is breathing again
Feeling the floor tremble beneath his feet, George didn’t feel scared. It was the first time, really, the only time here on the island since he landed where he didn’t feel the need to look over his shoulder. He couldn’t put his thoughts together in any rational way but felt calm. Like he belonged here. Like he was meant to be here at this moment.
But something in it felt like a needle switching tracks, the explosive first track now over and onto the deeper ones, the ones you really bought the album to hear. And in that he knew he’d played a role but what kind?
From deep beneath the ground they felt a vibration that rippled up the walls. A grumble above them became louder as the plants and trees shed their midnight dew from high on the mountain.
A trickle at first, then a torrent.
George watched the water moving down as is spilled over the broken rim above and poured down into the chamber, circling them in a widening ring.
All those drops coming together, mixing, forming a whole that had more power than a single drop. And he knew what role he played here. The words came splashing out of the water, his father’s voice:
“You know, it’s Watson who keeps Holmes tethered to the world, and Samwise who hauls Frodo through the last shadows of Mordor. The hero may bear the weight of the world and have his name written in gold—but stories outlive glory, and it’s the sidekicks who keep the fire lit.”
Waves slapped against their legs, rising higher.
George gasped at the shock of coolness—the first he’d felt in what seemed like days. The walls began to give way, roots and stones tumbling loose as a new sound filled the air: sparse chords in the wavering water.
And a different voice, rolling, becoming thunder—
Lord, here comes the flood
We’ll say goodbye to flesh and blood
Water surged outward from the chamber and down the mountainside.
The ground split—earth and water folding together, peeling away the years.
Stone steps, long buried, poured from the mountain’s side—each tier revealing itself in turn, a great descent unfurling as the hidden temple emerged from the earth, as if the mountain were shedding its disguise.
The glyphs flared as they were scoured clean, blazing like new voices in the stone.
If again the seas are silent, in any still alive
It’ll be those who gave their island to survive
One-by-one the tunnels began to collapse, washed out from the inside, filling, falling, then washing away.
Except one that led directly into the mountain.
George stood wide-eyed as Nicte moved to its center. From within, shapes emerged—men and women, luminous, walking in pairs. Their eyes sparkled with the calm of ancient things, their clothing moved like leaves swayed by an invisible wind. One wore a mask of black glass, its obsidian eyes blinking at the sky, another with wings made of reeds. Each paused to touch the air, to taste it with their senses as though for the first time.
George’s tears fell freely, mingling with the water rushing down the mountain. The gods were returning to their world, and he was part of the tide that carried them home.
Last among them came a tall figure crowned in the flashing of stormlight, his hair moving as if underwater, his skin traced with faint shimmers of blue, like the inside of a wave. He took Nicte’s hand and leaned close, whispering words only she could hear. She bowed her head, eyes lowered, until he passed.
Watching it all, George stood beside Kathryn, their eyes full with the light of these beings.
In the distance, George spotted a strange shape walking across the land toward the temple on top of the hill—a leathery beast on all fours emerging from the west, the color of tarnished gold, speckled along its sides. On the back of the massive crocodile rode a woman. When she stepped from its back, gold dust billowed with each of her steps.
As she approached, she looked down at Roberto, her eyes a dazzling mix of stars and constellations. At once, he seemed to know who she was and withdrew, crawling backward, his face in the mud. George saw him crest the hill, still crawling, and disappear from sight.
Nearer now, with a light touch, she reached out to the slack body of Esteban. He had rolled onto his side, his head on a pillow of dirt and leaves the rushing water had built up like a little dam. The woman said something close to his ear that George couldn’t hear. By the end, his body had relaxed fully—the slight rise and fall of his chest now stilled.
When the woman stood, turning to George and Kathryn, Esteban’s shape was only a shadow behind her. As she came closer, he was gone completely. The woman approached Kathryn and, reaching up, seemed to pluck something out of the open sky. Between her fingers, she set down a jade bead on Kathryn’s open palm and stepped away.
From where George stood, the scene bloomed in his mind: Kathryn—her hand lifted—framed against the dawn. Behind her, the comet burned in the western sky, the morning clouds fanning out like palm leaves as the rising sun caught them in gold.
For a moment, the picture was perfect—the glyph made real.
The sun broke over the horizon, flooding them in gold. The stones at their feet and along the terrace shone, wet with water and bright in the new light. The maize fields stretched almost to the sea, where the waves rolled, flashing before turning blue forever.
George lowered his eyes, the moment heavy. No lyric, no voice but his own as he pieced together the last few days. The years came next—threads drawn across his mind until they lay in a weave. In those lines, so disparate and strange, he saw what he hadn’t before: an improbable inevitability.
A pattern.
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Music
Here Comes The Flood - Peter Gabriel
Floods! Fires! Earthquakes! Storms! Beasts! Winds! Spirits! Demons! Whew! This story has been one hell of a ride. Maybe the wildest I've ever had. I kept forgetting George was only 12! This sentence: "The visions trembled, flickering between surfaces as if unsure which world to hold." Sounds to me like the author has more than a passing acquaintance with lysergic acid diethylamide ... just saying...
Another magical chapter overflowing with supernatural phenomena,J. This sentence is biblical: "Children playing, listening to the wind, watching for falling stars on a summer night—not expecting to see one, only watching with open hands, ready to receive whatever the sky gives.” This explains why Roberto crawled off at the end with nothing. His motives made him unworthy. George was the true seeker, willing to receive what was given. A movie version of this book would blow the Indiana Jones flicks and all of the knock-offs out of the water. Fantastic imaginative writing, J.