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.
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January 1986
Kathryn made Roberto unplug the jukebox with only a slow blink in its direction. The rain at the window was noise enough.
She needed quiet—to collect, to shuffle, to organize the thoughts in her head.
Her focused eyes scanned as if George or the shore itself might become visible through the fast-moving storm. But there was nothing. Just wind and rain.
Behind her, Roberto tapped a soft rhythm on the counter with the stubs of his fingers—a beat, nearly as steady as a heartbeat, as he searched the floor. The sound—low, steady—brought her back, just for a moment.
Two beautiful plates of fish sat untouched on the table. Roberto’s and George’s. The third plate was empty, several small bones piled neatly at the edge.
They’d walked the paseo earlier, scanning alleys and storefronts, hoping to spot the boy with his sketchbook. But as their eyes drifted from one place to another—under a sky that had quickly gone dark—it was the shoreline they kept watching. She knew where George had gone. They both did. But Roberto’s boat wouldn’t make the trek until the storm let up.
Eventually, hunger caught up with Kathryn, and she sat down to eat the cooled fish. Roberto’s wine selection turned her nose, but it was better than consuming the local water. She wiped the glass clear of lip marks, out of habit.
Habit. Practicality. Order. That’s what turned the world right-side up.
Like the kitchen. It had only taken a few minutes to set it straight.
She started with the knives. Dull blades broke her rhythm. A sharp edge was worth the effort.
After she’d cleaned and sliced the fish into pristine fillets, she cleared the shelf of handwritten tickets to set her mise en place. She pulled ingredients—mostly salt, pepper, and a clove of garlic—from the shelves and baskets she found. What the kitchen lacked in refinement, it made up for with fresh produce. She flicked stalks of celery with a fork, turning them into rustic beds for the fish. Achiote was crushed and bloomed in hot oil before being folded into the pulp of an overripe mango. No sides, but a main with a spicy salsa was enough. Simple.
All the while, she listened.
Roberto spoke low, beneath the spatter of the fish, but George’s voice came through clearly. Still a boy’s voice. It had started to break every so often but stayed mostly in a higher register. She wondered when it would change for good.
She heard the long silence in the other room before George pulled out his sketchbook. She wondered if he felt what she sometimes saw—a shift of gravity around him when words failed and everything listed toward a page and pencil.
George was more visual than his father, but no less passionate when the moment struck. Both of them—boy and father—moved toward the same ends, taking different paths around obstacles. His father led by words. George with images. Both needed music. But that was too much noise for her.
Was she so different?
More reserved, maybe. But it was the details she needed. Wasn’t her version just a third path toward understanding the shape of the world?
Kathryn searched through the rain again to somewhere beyond the pane of glass. The fear of where this was heading began to click into place. Like the cogs in a clock, holding tension in the mainspring—click-click-click.
She needed things to fit neatly into her palm—a place that George no longer seemed to fit. Had she missed when he had outgrown what she had to offer?
“Which sketch did he show you?” she asked, not looking at Roberto.
The old man’s head lifted from studying the floor. “A symbol I’ve seen before.”
Kathryn considered this. “On the island?”
The stubs of Roberto’s fingers drifted to his breast pocket, moving before he even realized it. Inside, he felt for the edge of the paper.
Pulling it free, he unfolded it on the counter, flattening it with his palm.
It was more brittle than he remembered. After all these years, what had he expected? The salt of the ocean, the dust of time, and life. Maybe, Roberto considered, he was the thing that had gone brittle.
More than his brother—that pilluelo only talked about love—Roberto had been the one who listened to the old stories. Kings and goddesses. Magic in the land. They kept him rapt, thinking all night under the stars about his place in it all. He could feel history beneath him, humming in his skin. Calling him to explore.
That’s what boys did here. Girls too, he supposed. Explore. Wander. Every child on the island, up and down the coast, wrestled themselves from the nest, wings still soft, not ready to fly. They tumbled and got scars. Found and lost love. Maybe they were surrounded by friends as they tried—but ultimately, they did it alone.
Her boy was no different.
Roberto wondered if she understood that her protection couldn’t stop the boy from becoming whatever came next. Her child was in the middle space between. Maybe not a man yet. But boyhood, Roberto saw, was already loosening its grip.
Maybe that was the reason he hadn’t stopped him, hadn’t waved him off from the island. He couldn’t. Whatever happened wasn’t his to stop.
What Roberto saw in George’s eyes was the same fire he once had—a pull that burned hotter than warning or reason. Her boy would have found a way to get there no matter what some old pinche said.
But the boy didn’t yet see the sadness that might follow.
And down he’d go, into the caves.
Roberto held his breath for a moment. Even now, all these years later, he could still hear the voice.
U jool náah ku páayaj
Kathryn was still waiting.
“Sí,” he nodded slowly. “Under the island.”
Looking at the paper on the counter—the glyph—his hand tightened. Rubbing his fingers together, he could still feel the texture of the stone, just a few inches above the water. This was the place his mamita had whispered about, where their ancestors had hidden the past. To keep it safe.
Kathryn walked the distance from the window, leaning over to see the picture. It was a rubbing—yellowed and faint—but one she knew. George’s father, Arturo, had sketched a similar one from memory—a painting in the cave where the beasts had been gathered.
“This is the sketch?”
Clearing his throat, Roberto said, “No. I found this. Your boy’s was identical.” His finger traced the edge of the drawing. “With cracks in the stone and a missing edge.”
Kathryn studied the image for a moment but realized she was only looking past the paper, into the wood grain of the table. Eyes fixed, she studied the shapes—not really seeing them, but constructing her own game of memory. Flipping over pieces. Looking for a match.
This image, beneath those stumpy fingers, was just one piece of a puzzle. She turned over the others she remembered: the cave, the symbols of the turtle, the woman with the star, the beasts.
Somewhere just beyond reach, she could feel more pieces—present but unmovable, like dark tiles at the edge of her mind.
The feeling was frustrating. Like those kitchen knives—she’d spent too long dulled by life, unsharpened by the men she’d surrounded herself with.
Then, something caught her eye—just at the periphery, under a table: a piece of paper, folded haphazardly.
As she reached down, she already knew what it was: George’s map.
Unfolding it, she saw the shapes drawn by a small boy—his purposeful hand guided by a connection that would be severed before it could fully take shape. And still, this piece of paper had lived with him. George had studied it for years, memorized every detail, adding more and more—always hoping to bridge the gap between death and life, between father and son.
Her eyes followed the contour lines from the city of Cancún, down the coast, its azure waters rendered in strokes of colored pencil and swirls of ink. To the hooked shape of the island. To the tight contour lines of a mountain. To a scribbled arrow and a question mark—where he thought the cave entrance might be.
And then, off to the side: a smudge of red ink.
A shape she knew. Everyone knew.
A skull and crossbones.
Gently, Kathryn laid a firm hand on the man’s shoulder and looked at him until he turned. In the few minutes since he’d pulled out the rubbing and placed it on the counter, he looked older.
“The island… is cursed?” she asked.
Roberto didn’t respond right away. He held her gaze for a moment, then looked down, studying the creases of his hand. His thumb slowly rolled over the edge of his missing index finger, like it was chasing a thought. The nub was calloused and dark, like the pads of his other fingers—working hands that hadn’t seen an easy or restful time.
“Are we—” she stopped, the question collapsing midair. “Is George in danger?” she asked, quieter now.
“I don’t know,” Roberto said. “But the island knows why he came—and it will decide what that means.”
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“But the island knows why he came—and it will decide what that means.” Perfect way to end this chapter. J. I hope you recover from the covid soon.