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.
The water on Roberto’s handkerchief seemed to slip away, evaporating before it ever reached the heat of his brow. He dipped it into the ocean a second time, watching his hands shake—the trembling had begun as the island drew near, spreading into his chest, his breath, his sight.
Cautiously, he stepped higher on the shore, over rounded stones and broken coral pushed in by the tide. He watched them tumble over and over, wearing themselves down. Soon they would be indistinguishable from what they once were. Like he was becoming. Maybe already was.
A thought flashed: he could still get back in the boat, push away, and never return. He could feel the bow dip under his weight, the boat slipping quietly off.
Kathryn’s steps were not tentative like his. She paced back and forth, stretching to see over the foliage, searching for a path. She would go on with or without him.
As his eyes drifted to the water’s surface, to the fragments of repeating sky, he knew leaving would be safer—but it would be a mistake. He saw it for what it was: fear. Fear of the unfinished puzzle that lay heavy in his gut, night after night.
And this was his island, wasn’t it? He knew it best.
Overhead, branches rustled though no wind touched his face. Somewhere deeper in the foliage came a hollow knock, like wood against wood—brief, uncertain, then gone. A thought came with them, quiet as breath: find the boy, glimpse the archive one last time.
Roberto dabbed his face again with the handkerchief before knotting it around his neck. As he did, he leveled his brow and squared his shoulders.
Yes. He could put on the mask he had worn so easily in youth, though now it felt brittle. Still, it was a resolve he trusted—if only for a while.
“Ko’ox… adelante,” he huffed, drawing in a lungful of air.
Let’s go.
For all the quiet bravado in Arturo’s journal, Kathryn had never once considered the act of trekking through the Yucatán jungle herself. Yet here she was, pushing through the brush as he once might have, her steps far less certain of the destination than his. But she wasn’t chasing the same story. She was after George.
He had vanished without a word. Kathryn had expected to find him crouched nearby, sketching, headphones clamped to his ears. But he wasn’t. No one along the paseo had seen a boy leaving in a stolen boat.
Tired of his dithering at the restaurant, she shoved Roberto into his own boat. As they motored across the water, Kathryn watched his hands grip the tiller, trying to hold them still. She needed him for what he knew of this place, but she wasn’t about to let him drag her pace. So she stayed ahead, forcing him to stumble through the jungle in her wake.
Neither of them knew where George had gone—coast or inland. Or what he might be eating, where he might have slept. Even the landing spot had been chosen with a half-hearted gesture. Too many questions, not enough facts—and guesses were a luxury she had no patience for.
Now, hacking through the vines, her boots slipping on roots, her feet searching for the faintest sign, Kathryn felt the weight of it: chasing a boy through a jungle that swallowed its own paths, hunting for a leaf in a wilderness of green.
Inward they went.
Kathryn led for a time, but when her direction faltered for a moment Roberto brusquely overtook her, pointing them toward the mountain.
He hadn’t imagined how the land would change—overgrown and untended, with few ways to cross the island. He had put them ashore on the western side for its ease. He had also hoped they might glimpse whatever vessel had brought the boy ashore.
But now he wondered if that had been folly. The eastern side, though rocky without much cover for small boats, would have been nearer the temple—Ixchel’s temple, he reminded himself. There it was again: the reflexive loop of reverence that had started the moment he’d sighted the island. A reminder? A warning? Both, perhaps. The island does not forget, and it knows why you came.
He swiped at the sweat running down his face. The island wasn’t hotter than the mainland—this was his doing. The sickness began in his gut, urging him to turn back. When his bulk refused, his skin broke open with sweat—a silent escape from the man who had loosed the curse.
“It’s for the boy,” he pleaded quietly, trying to convince his body to listen.
The boy was blind to what kind of hell might come. After all, if a man born here—raised on the gods’ stories, raised hating the barbudo—couldn’t hold it back, what chance did an outsider have?
The branches creaked in agreement. Only he could help the kid keep the doors closed—no, open them fully.
He cut the thought short and clenched his jaw. Not now.
For now, it was only the boy. They had to reach him.
Roberto scanned ahead: toward the temple, or veer nearer to the village?
The temple drew at him, insistent, as if the jungle itself leaned that way—to the east road. West was only death, the other was the road of rebirth.
He glanced over his shoulder. Kathryn was there, closing the gap—but behind her, the brush swayed a moment longer than the wind allowed, as if a figure had just slipped from view.
Roberto felt the prickle at his neck and pushed it away. He waited for whatever might emerge but nothing did.
Standing there, a thought flickered as a single word—reparación.
Could that be the way?
The years, never far enough, surged back: the imagined echoes of children drowning, swept to sea; Esteban weeping over Marisol’s body; the sidelong glances of islanders who had escaped, who knew, yet never spoke of what he had done.
Could that be the way? Would the horrific eyes behind the stones see his arrival as contrition, atonement?
Beneath all of it, though, he still felt owed. Not the contents of the archive—those belonged to his people—but owed the discovery itself. For following the old stories, for believing them, for turning over stones and reading the glyphs. He wanted—
A bird startled in the brush, its call sharp and strange, like a voice finishing his thought: acclaim.
Yes, that’s what he wanted.
He lifted his gaze skyward, savoring for a moment the imagined praise.
From deep in the foliage, a pair of eyes held him in silence.
Yes. The boy was the means.
Kathryn stopped behind Roberto.
Ahead, the vines thinned into a field of corn that stretched in all directions. Subtle as a fork in a stream, she saw the faint trail he had led them to. It seemed to split, each path circling the mountain toward the coast on either side.
Roberto raised his arm toward the slope, farther eastward. “The temple. It’s where he would have gone.”
Kathryn didn’t respond. Something held her back, even as Roberto stepped forward, following his own gesture.
She craned her neck, trying to see past the corn toward the mountain ahead. From her pocket she pulled George’s map. She didn’t have the journal, and this was as close as she would get to a AAA guide. She turned it this way and that, searching for a match. Though it wasn’t to scale—erased and redrawn until the paper had thinned—she knew George had worked through the details, shaping what he could from the journal.
The shape of the island—indecipherable from any vantage point, except maybe space.
The mountain—an oversized cone. It stood in front of her, though not as sharply pointed as George had drawn.
She sighed, her head dropping, eyes fixed on the dirt at her feet. For a full minute she stayed there, staring at the ground as Roberto moved on. Then the stalks around her pulled into focus—maize, she reminded herself. Yes, it was a maze. Go this way or that. What she wanted was a bird’s-eye view. She wanted to find shoe scuffs in the dirt. Something.
They could follow the shift in the corn toward Roberto’s temple. It seemed reasonable enough but not proof enough. It felt wrong. She looked at the map again: the island’s odd shape, the mountain. Then, the mark George had made for a cave entrance. It was further west, nowhere near where Roberto was leading them.
There were no other markings on the map. That’s when the pieces clicked, another tumbler in the lock shifting into place. George only knew what was in the journal. That’s what he put on the map. He didn’t know about the temple. Following Roberto meant chasing hope. And hope was never a plan.
Then, her breath caught. Something off to the side, out of place, away from the direction Roberto was headed. A nub of yellow between the stalks. And pink. Colors that had no business here. The needle in the jungle she’d been looking for.
She stepped over and crouched, keeping her eyes on the detail until the shape resolved: a well-worn No. 2 pencil. The pink eraser was ground down, blackened at the edges, the yellow shaft chewed, the metal band at its end mauled—by a kid.
She laughed quietly, hearing George’s voice: “The best pencil for sketching. The one you always had with you.”
Then, under her breath: “Until it slipped from your pack into the jungle of a strange island.”
She lifted the pencil high, pointing in the opposite direction Roberto had chosen.
“This way!” She shouted and then plunged into the stalks of corn.
The brush beside Roberto snapped sharp. A cold weight slid across his shoulders, heavy as a hand. Someone—or something—was there.
He leaned, putting a hand between the corn, feeling—
Then Kathryn’s voice split the air: “This way!”
Roberto spun, pointing the other direction. “Templo—!”
But she was already gone.
A curse hissed through his teeth as he forced himself after her, stalks tearing at his arms and legs. Every cut burned, as if the island itself were stripping him raw.
He stumbled into a clearing—and stopped.
His village.
A place he had sworn never to see again.
Vines smothered the first shack he saw—the old corner store where children once lingered at the doorway, now its roof caved, its door hanging loose.
The whisper came again, needling at him: we went the wrong way.
Kathryn moved faster through the clearing.
“GEORGE!” she shouted. Birds scattered.
She followed the winding path past a dilapidated shack. Outside, something caught her eye: a corn cob, each kernel stripped clean. She froze, staring.
Then—strips of husk. The outer green, thick and coarse. A few steps on, the softer inner sheaths. And then the silk—the light, airy strands. She trailed them, scattered as if someone had been walking and unwrapping, shucking the corn as they went.
It was like a trail of breadcrumbs. A stray cob pointing forward—but even this wasn’t proof, only suggestion. Proof enough to follow, but not to rest on.
Then the trail ended.
Kathryn traced the stones underfoot, searching for more, but the jungle gave nothing back. When she lifted her eyes, ahead stood a tree ringed with weathered totems. The sight made her heart seize, a pang of grief rising sharp and unbidden, though she couldn’t have said why. Unease crawled through her chest—the figures seemed to watch, their faces worn but not erased. A rough-hewn sign leaned against the trunk, marked only with a date—cryptic, offering no direction.
Roberto would know this place. His village?
She would need a higher vantage.
Her eyes lifted to a small rise above what might once have been a town. She climbed, scrambling over rocks and snarled roots, her eyes fixed on the ground to keep from stumbling. At the top she looked out—then stopped.
Before her, the ground collapsed into a gaping mouth—as if the earth had swallowed itself—its edges left sheer and raw. At the bottom she could see footprints, fresh in the wet soil and moss, circling on themselves in wider and wider arcs.
She followed them with her eyes—and then saw it.
George’s pack, snagged on a thick root, dangling out over the void.
Eyes of the dolls, dead and black, watched Roberto as he circled away from the tree. He recognized the handwriting on the sign—his brother’s hand.
When others hadn’t looked back, Esteban carried on in silence. How could he move on? Roberto’s stomach twisted. He knew the truth: it had been his trespass that brought the ruin, that sent the storm roaring and left Esteban with nothing but loss. His wife and child were buried in this ground, their deaths the scar that never healed.
The gods had tested them both. Roberto had failed, and Esteban’s heart—his family—had been broken in the reckoning.
His brother wore that grief like armor, his silence heavier than any curse. The dolls were like witnesses, watching with unblinking eyes. And to see his hand carved into the wreck of a sign was to feel the accusation laid bare: you did this.
Then, a shift came in the air. One doll twisted, eyes catching a shard of light—like it too bore his brother’s silence, watching, unblinking.
Roberto’s lips moved without thought, words breaking apart in a whisper. Not the catechism of the barbudo, but a cry to the older gods—a plea tangled with guilt, a scrap of atonement even as other thoughts pressed closer.
“Perdónenme… k’áat chi’in wóol… In táankabal k’aasil u yáak’ ten.”
Forgive me… I beg you… I am haunted by my youth…
Roberto stumbled away and up the hill, his mouth and skin gone dry.
Kathryn called out, “He was here!”—pointing at the cenote.
When he reached her, his eyes followed, landing on the pack. The boy had been here. But why had he been drawn this way?
Beyond, he saw what she did not. The earth had collapsed sheer, yes—but on the far side, half-hidden in shadow, a break in the wall led downward. Not a fissure of chance, but a cut of stone, deliberate, spiraling. A road. A way into the bottom of the island.
Then the stench hit him—thick, sulfurous, rot rising from deep below. He gagged, pressing the handkerchief to his mouth.
This wasn’t the temple side. Unless it didn’t matter. Unless every path—west, east, village, mountain—bent toward the same end, feeding back into the dark.
Roads the stories had warned of. The ones that led to Xibalba. Where no welcome fire waited.
He tore his gaze away, but the thought clung like a hook.
Yes. They needed to find the boy. And perhaps, in the finding, something like atonement.
The trade of a good fisherman: one purpose hiding the other.
And if the gods chose to see it that way, there could still be glory in it—for him.
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The tastes, textures, sounds and smells are all present here, a very phenomenological experience if I may be so fancy-pants about it. It does a great job of placing the reader inside this location.
So the marriage of realism and folktake/fable is all handled really well, I reckon.
You know the only thing I think is missing in the story from my own memories of this coast? The mosquitoes, always there, always sticking their bloody proboscis into you, and always buzzing in your ear.
"And if the gods chose to see it that way ...