The Compass of His Bones and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF

meager fee, put them in a pouch, and gave them to me.
    Pizarro was eager to leave in all haste and thus we left the ruins almost immediately, although I felt a reluctance to do so. We soon found our way back to the dead Spaniard and lower still by dusk.
    That night, I fell asleep to the clink-clink of gold against gold as Pizarro played with his treasure.
    But, come morning, I heard a curse and woke to the sight of Pizarro rummaging through his packs. “It has vanished! It is gone!” His cheeks were drawn and he seemed once more an old man. “Where has it gone? The gold has vanished from my hands, into dust.”
    I could not tell him. I had no clue. If he had not seen it disappear himself, he might have blamed me, but I was blameless.
    We went back to the city and searched its streets for two days. We found nothing. Pizarro would have stayed there forever, but our food had begun to run out and I pleaded with him to return to Cuzco. With winter closing in, I thought it dangerous to stay.
    We started down again and Pizarro seemed in better spirits, if withdrawn. But, on the fifth day, we camped by a small, deep lake and when I woke in the morning, he was gone. His nag stood by the lakeside, drinking from the dark waters. His clothes were missing.  Only the map remained, black ink on orange parchment, and his sword, stuck awkwardly into the hard ground. I searched for him, but it was obvious to me that the Spaniard had been broken when the treasure turned to dust, and had drowned himself in the lake.
    I continued the rest of the way down, leading the nag but not riding her, for I did not know how. I knew only that my gold had not faded. It still lay within the pouch, and it was with that gold that I would later buy my way to America.
    Soon I came upon the ghost dancers again, but I did not stay long, though I wished to, for the man who resembled Pizarro stood in the highest part of the tower and for some reason he troubled me. I believe I thought it was Pizarro, gazing down on me.
    Thus, rich beyond measure and fortunate to be alive, I hurried past the tower and down into the lowlands and the fields to rejoin my family.
    V
    The reporter doesn’t know what to say at first, so she doesn’t say anything. Ignore the parts that aren’t possible, she tells herself. He’s an old man. He’s just mixing fact and fiction on you. But it’s not the impossible parts that bother her.
    Manco stares at the wall, as if reliving the experience, and she says, “Did you ever discover who the Conquistador was?” She could really use a smoke, but she doesn’t dare light up in front of a dying asthmatic.
    His gaze turns toward the darkened window, toward the movement outside that window. His eyes seem unbearably sad, though a slight smile creases his lips.
    “Among his personal effects were letters written to his family and when I returned to Cuzco, the mestizo he had bought the horse from filled in the gaps. It is quite ironic, you see — ” and he stares directly at her, as if daring her to disbelieve “ — he was an immigrant, a destitute carpenter whose father had herded sheep across the Spanish plains. Had he attended the military academy in Barcelona? I do not know. But during the time of land grants, his forefathers had settled in Peru, only to come to misfortune at the hands of other fortune hunters, the survivors limping back to Spain. No doubt he had read the accounts of these pathetic men and hoped, long after it was possible or politic, to acquire his own land grant. Practically speaking, though, he chose the best route: to steal treasure.”
    “But where did the map come from?”
    Manco shrugs, so that his shoulders bow inward, the bones stark against brown skin.
    Silence, again, the reporter trying to think of what to ask next. It frustrates her that she is reduced to reacting. Her mind alights upon the woman dancing around the fire. An adolescent wet dream. Believable? Perhaps not in the setting he had described, but