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.
George shivered, tucking his fists under his arms to stay warm.
His clothes were still damp from falling into the cenote, and the underground cool of the cave made no effort to change that. He imagined leaving his shirt or pants on a rock and finding them years later still clammy, a permanent mildew stink baked in.
That was the smell here: stale, wet laundry. With an egg-fart edge that curled into his nose hairs every so often. Ugh.
Maybe it was frying his brain. Not like kids at school huffing paint in the art closet until they staggered into a corner, glassy-eyed—but close, and slower.
But no—that wasn’t what made his head swim. It was the past few days pressing in, stacking up until he could barely hold them all: sharks, turtles, a jaguar. An owl. Those freakish dolls. Choking, then nearly drowning. And that blackout, echoing place they’d just come from, whatever it was.
He blinked hard, breath catching on the eggy air, his mind stumbling over the list.
Was that everything?
No—there was more.
The stars, brighter than he’d ever seen.
The comet.
And the girl.
She stood a few paces behind him, one hand gripping her wrist. The glow wasn’t visible like earlier but now and then she winced, checking the back of her hand. When she paused to look around, the shape of her face told George this place wasn’t on any map she knew.
George searched as far as his eyes could see, but there didn’t seem to be any other way in. He clapped, the sharp sound cracking off the stone and repeating—like it should have back in that other place.
“That’s more like it,” he whispered, not entirely sure but glad it wasn’t another trick room.
The space was big enough that he could almost count a full second before the echo returned. Less than a football field, maybe, or just about as high. Hard to say. Still possible his father had come in from some other direction.
Speckles of light shimmered in the pools of water, churning at the edges. It was a river, of sorts—not how he’d pictured it from his father’s story, but it flowed somewhere.
Again the throaty moan echoed. The girl turned toward it first, then George.
The sound was like a breeze threading through rocks at the ocean. Maybe not las voces his father had heard. More like puckered lips over a pop bottle—a steady, hollow note.
In his head it blurred into that strange whistle from Games Without Frontiers, a tune he didn’t even like but that came back anyway, thin and haunting. For a second it almost felt like the cave itself was humming it back at him.
“Wind!” he whispered to her. “If there’s wind, there’s a way out.”
In a second George was on his feet, moving over crag of stones that made up the walkway, keeping his eyes on the water. The little sprites circled, flashing as the current bumped and carried them.
Were they animals or some kind of… island magic?
Squinting, he followed their glowing trail. Until now he hadn’t let himself believe it—that the island held something beyond explanation. But it did. It had to. Those things he saw weren’t just in his head.
George paused, waiting for his eyes to adjust, then nodded once, as if to settle it with himself. Whatever this place was, it wasn’t only strange. It was alive.
It was faint but there. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the chamber narrow, the walkway rising but couldn’t see further.
As he started forward, the girl’s hand closed on his shoulder. The touch jolted him. He hadn’t expected it. And maybe… no, definitely—because a girl touched him.
She looked him in the eye and, in a whisper, dipped her eyes and said, “Nib óolal.”
He didn’t understand the words but somehow knew their meaning. “De nada,” he said, matching her tone, holding her gaze for a minute longer. Then added, “Maybe I don’t know what it means, but I think I get it. We’re in this together… I hope.”
She watched him speaking, trying to decipher. Then touched her chest. “Nicte.”
George blinked, the sound of it settling in his head. He pressed a hand to his own chest. “George,” he said, then tried again, softening it. “Jorge.”
Her mouth shaped it once—“Jorge”—softly, as if testing the sound of it.
It felt oddly comforting, maybe the first real friend he’d met here and not like at school.
George had tried before to talk to girls at school, arranging “chance” meetings at the pencil sharpener. Every time, his words unraveled into nonsense, met with the same slow blink. Like the teacher in those Charlie Brown holiday specials, his voice came out as a flat wonk wonk, not usually a real language at all. But she—Nicte—had spoken to him.
But, they were both trapped down here, weren’t they? In that there was, if not safety, at least solidarity. Their own Breakfast Club for two. The geek and the island girl?
He thought of the black chamber, the two of them bound together somehow—his breath and hers. His Adams apple dipped and stuck there for a moment. For not the first time since being here this wasn’t something he could wrap a song lyric to explain. There was no passage in the journal he could remember that went along with this.
It was just… foreign. Otherworldly foreign.
Standing in front of him, she winced again. George looked down at her hands—one hand clasping the wrist of the other, the one with the shape on it. She saw him looking and held it up. It was still glowing, though not as brightly in this cave with more light. And it was pulsing. Each time it did, she nearly closed her eyes, as if shockwaves of pain rippled through her arm.
Gently, George held her palm and lifted the hand for a closer look. The back of it looked branded, fresh and raw, with a subtle curve. He stared at it for a moment. There was something about it that was familiar.
“Budzil ek’,” she said, looking skyward. George didn’t follow. So she raised a finger, tracing the shape of it across an imagined sky, then back to her hand.
George watched, thinking about the curve. “The comet?” he finally said, mimicking her gesture. Then, almost without thinking, he added a soft whooshhh as his finger arced through the air.
Nicte smiled at the sound and nodded, still unsure but satisfied he understood. Her face drew down, pained, as she clutched her wrist. A glow pushed through the wound—then flashed, nearly dropping her to her knees. George caught her shoulders, steadying her.
Again it flashed. He felt the shudder course through her body, saw her lips press tight. And this time he wasn’t sure—was the shape answering them somehow, aware they were talking about it? Or were the pulses simply coming faster?
George gently pulled on her other wrist and said, “Follow me.”
He continued, following the glow from the water. As they did the howling sound of wind grew closer. Up and over a rise of stones. When the glow wasn’t enough, they held close to the rocks, nearly crawling through the cave, the temperature warming as they moved further.
Ahead, they felt a draft of hot air that started to make George’s eyes water.
“…like stepping too close to an open furnace.” George heard his father’s voice.
George didn’t know how they’d ended up here, but it couldn’t be a mistake. At least, he didn’t think so. Every step felt drawn forward, like the cave itself was pulling them in—but maybe that was just in his head. He couldn’t see what waited, but he thought he knew. The weight of it pressed at his chest, the way nightmares do before you even open your eyes. For a flicker of a moment he was eight again, hiding under the covers, heart pounding as the shapes of animals stretched their claws toward him.
He turned to the girl—Nicte, he had to remind himself—stopping their forward movement. The howl of the wind was getting louder but, unlike his father’s story, there was no light ahead, only the faint glow of water reflecting in their eyes. George lifted a finger to his lips, then pointed into the dark. His hand shook more than he wanted it to. Nicte caught the tremor but only nodded, her jaw firm. Her eyes stayed steady, determined, even as the pulse in her hand flared again and bent her forward in pain.
As they moved, they had to feel the edges of stones, first just at their feet then he felt the walls ascend above him.
Wasn’t this where the creatures were in his father’s story? The terrible shapes and glowing torches?
George stood, feeling the sides of a doorway. He slid his feet a few inches inside the room, the heat rising and pushing against them in waves.
With a flash—
The room exploded in light, blinding them both.
When their eyes adjusted, in front of them was a circle: tall figures cloaked in long robes.
George gasped as a rush of hot air slapped his face.
In the circle of figures he saw the beginning of the nightmare. He didn’t want them to turn, to face him like they had in his dreams.
Torches burned along the walls with a strange, steady glow. At the center stood a stone plinth, its surface painted with swirling designs that rippled in the firelight. The figures neither moved nor spoke, but shifted—alive and real.
Just like his father had said. The torches, the circle, the terrible shapes. George’s stomach turned. He hated that it was true—hated that his father’s story had been more than a story. Because if his father was right, and it wasn’t a dream, then George was inside it now, with no way to wake up.
He stumbled back, arms flailing, colliding with Nicte. His heel skidded on a loose stone, sending it clattering across the chamber.
A shape turned: the jaguar. It screamed—arms flung wide, a raw, tearing sound that rattled through the cavern, more beast than human.
Without a beat George screamed back.
It burst out of him unplanned, high and breaking, the sound of a boy too small for the moment. Any other time he would have hated it. Here the chamber seized it, stretching it wide, sending it back at him enormous and strange—his own fear made bigger than he was.
Nicte stepped forward, pushing George aside. Without pause, she lifted her arm—a motion she knew well from facing down the Alux when their mischief pushed too far.
The glow from the burn on her hand caught, a dull ember at first, then brighter, pulsing. The light radiated outward, painting the chamber in red, alive and reaching across the distance.
For a breath, everything seemed to lean toward it. The circle of cloaked shapes, the heat of the chamber, even George—drawn closer, as though the whole room had narrowed to that single hand.
The shapes recoiled for a moment, wavering, their howls rising in a single pitch that shook the stone beneath them. Still they pressed forward, torches flaring, screams tearing through the chamber.
Nicte pressed farther into the circle, her hand lifted high, the mark blazing.
The chamber shuddered. A massive stone door slammed shut behind them, driving George forward into Nicte. Across the circle, another door ground closed, the echo sealing them inside.
The animal screams lingered a moment before the room fell silent, the air still in the enclosed space.
Nicte looked high into the ceiling where the shapes had disappeared.
George stepped toward the plinth, holding his breath, his eyes on the shape he could only imagine.
For a moment the outer surface of stone in the center of the room shimmered, painted swirls around the central glyphs highlighted: A turtle shell, a star burned across the palm of an outstretched hand.
His chest caught—he knew these shapes. At last, he thought, just as his father had said. His eyes began to fill with water as he moved closer.
George reached out, fingers stretching to touch the stone he’d dreamt about so many times. As his fingers land, the designs scattered into ribbons of light. Brilliantly they writhe down the sides of the stone face, crossing the floor in slim threads before moving up the walls.
The plinth went dull, blank. Around them the torches flickered as if choking for air.
George yanked his hand back from the now empty stone. “No—wait. I saw it. It was there.”
The strands of light, once on the plinth, now crept across the carved walls. Nicte and George watched as the lights curved, then hid, into the thousands of carved glyphs that lined the walls.
Without thinking, George lunged toward one. “It’s this one—I can fix it—” He pressed the carving.
The chamber groaned. A hot wind surged from nowhere, knocking him back. Above, the funnel of stone roared like a beast inhaling. The walls shivered—the carvings rippled like water, swelling from the surface in some places, sinking away in others, as if the stone itself were breathing until it finally settled.
The torches sputtered. With a grinding sound, the plinth sank lower into the floor by a fraction.
Nicte muffled a cry as the wound on her hand pulsed, the glow quickening, faster and faster.
George froze, his stomach dropping. He looked between the plinth and Nicte. Then at the walls, they were now unrecognizable from what they had been. He had no idea where the light that had just disappeared up the walls had gone.
His choice wasn’t just wrong—it had cost them something.
It reminded him, stupidly, of Dragon’s Lair at the arcade back home. The line of kids behind him, the glowing screen promising adventure, trying to rescue Princess Daphne—and then dead in ten seconds, fifty cents gone. Game over. He’d sworn it cheated you, swallowing coins faster than anything else. But still you wanted another turn, just to see it light up.
That was what this felt like. A room ready to eat every wrong move until nothing was left.
Nicte groaned at her hand, the glow continuing to pulse.
George circled the chamber, careful not to touch the stone in the center. Shapes stretched across the walls, too many of them—some mirrored, some upside down, some fractured into useless shards. A thousand dead ends.
He yanked a torch from the wall, angling it. Shadows swelled and collapsed, twisting the carvings into new forms. Each time he thought he saw something, it slipped away again. He clenched his jaw, frustration rising.
It couldn’t be random. There had to be some reason, some pattern. Unless there wasn’t. Unless the whole thing was just here to break them.
A thought flickered—maybe it was meant to be solved. Not just shapes, but a puzzle. The idea stirred something half-buried.
Not X marks the spot. Riddles, rumors, memory songs. His father’s voice slipped in, but none of it told him what to do now.
He shook his head, lowering the torch. “I don’t know…”
“Ahh—” Nicte’s voice cut through, sharp and low. She lifted a hand, stopping him. Then she pointed, urgent. Her finger tapped her palm, then back to the wall.
George blinked, slowly moving the torch back to where it had been a moment before.
She nodded, eyes fixed. No words he understood, just the intent clear enough: there. Like that.
The carving shifted in the torchlight, its shadow thrown wide.
George eased the flame across the wall, slower now, holding his breath. The scattered fragments bent and stretched in the glow until, at last, they overlapped. First a curve, then another, building into the arc of a comet. Below it, faint, the suggestion of a woman’s palm.
He blinked hard, afraid it might vanish if he looked too long.
For a moment the chamber seemed to hold itself still.
Then a breeze stirred—a cool wind wound past them, slipping over their skin, rushing upward into the dark funnel above. The sound of it whispered against the stone like a sigh of release.
The plinth answered next. With a grinding groan, it lifted from the floor. George and Nicte turned together, eyes caught by its motion.
Light bloomed across its surface—the arc of the comet, bright now, burning into place.
The walls followed, trembling, undulating as if alive, their carvings shuffling into new arrangements, each one sliding against the next in a slow, shuddering wave. The whole chamber seemed to breathe, exhaling stone and shadow.
George turned to Nicte. She was already smiling, fire dancing in her eyes as she snatched another torch from the wall.
With a laugh they moved opposite one another, shadows swelling and collapsing as the light played across the carvings. The walls bloomed with ridges of shapes, towering and falling like shadow highrises.
George swept his torch high, searching. On the other side of the chamber, a turtle shell curved into view before Nicte. She shifted cautiously, drawing the shape out of hiding.
George spun, casting light the other way. There—the other half of the shell.
He lifted his arm higher, filling in the missing piece.
The chamber shuddered.
Both of them froze, eyes snapping toward the stone plinth in the center. It quivered, silent, as if deciding.
Then the rumble deepened. Dust sifted down. A chip of stone broke from the plinth’s edge and tumbled away. Another followed.
The growl became a roar. Shadows shook themselves free of the walls. All around the carved glyphs collapsed into rubble that clattered across the floor.
SNAP—
A jagged crack split the plinth straight down the middle. Inward it crumbled, folding in on itself, dropping into blackness at the center of the chamber.
Nicte staggered first, pushing back toward the wall, her shoulder pressed hard against the carvings. But the vibration tore the stone loose—the glyphs shedding themselves like sand, crumbling beneath her touch.
George dropped flat, choking on the storm of dust. The widening hole pulled at him, a rushing undertow of air and debris. Grit stung his eyes, scraped across his arms and face as he clawed for purchase.
Through the haze he saw Nicte, teetering at the edge, the glow from her hand flashing wild across her face. Panic ripped through him—she could vanish in an instant, lost to the dark, and he couldn’t let that happen.
The stench returned, harsh and impenetrable, as if the chamber itself had exhaled rot—the sulfur reek curling into his lungs, burning his throat.
He lunged toward her. Nicte reached back, her fingers catching his wrist just as the floor split apart. For a heartbeat they clung to each other, the only solid thing in the collapsing world.
Her eyes flicked downward, wide with recognition. Her lips moved, her voice cutting through the din with a single word he almost didn’t catch.
“Xibalba.”
She screamed as the floor gave way, and together they tumbled into the dark below.
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Music
Games Without Frontiers - Peter Gabriel
True hero's journey stuff, adventure meets spirit quest. I find the story of the confrontation/trial/ordeal here quite gripping, very tense and building up to a climax beautifully, only...
...only I think the reference to videogame Dragon's Lair is a tiny bit much. In the parlance of the fiction it 'takes me out of the story'. I'm thinking Jorge wouldn't let this stray thought drift in here, in this critical moment, plus there are already a wealth of pop culture references and this one seems superfluous. [But of course that's just me, take it how you will]
Aiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeee! This kid had no idea what he was getting himself into when he left the city and the cans of Jolt... yeeeps!