The Mapmaker's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

copied bible verses and pages of scientific and philosophical treatises—were those my offerings to my father, to soften his disappointment?
    He reads my mind. “It was never that way. I wanted a boy who would live—who doesn’t?—but I never wanted you to be anybody else. And look at all you became.”
    Perhaps if I hadn’t believed I needed to atone for his disappointment, I might have settled for less from myself. But my mother was right. The Holy One had a plan, and in trying all those years to be something I wasn’t, I became the person I am.

3
    SEVILLA 1434
    The news from the court of Henry the Navigator in Portugal is so astonishing that my father is making the trip to my grandparents’ farm to share the news. I am eight, and in my years of weekly visits, I can remember only a few times when he has been sitting beside us in the cart as we leave Sevilla.
    “Tell me again about Cape Bojador, Papa.”
    Annoyance flickers in his eyes. He wants to be left alone, and I have been pestering him since he came home yesterday with word that Gil Eanes had finally rounded Cape Bojador on the west coast of Africa.
    My mother intervenes to keep the peace. “Why don’t you tell Luisa and me what you remember? Papa will tell you if you forget anything important.” I sigh loudly, but this is so exciting, I don’t mind telling the story myself.
    The first of Luisa’s teeth is coming loose now that she is nearly six, and she wiggles it solemnly. “Tell me!” she says in a voice muffled by the finger in her mouth. I could make up crazy details just to watch her eyes widen, but this story is so fantastic I can’t think of a way to embellish it.
    “Everyone said Cape Bojador was the end of the world,” I tell her, “that a boat that sailed past it would never return.”
    “The end of the world.” Luisa nods. “We would fall off.”
    “We will not fall off,” I growl. “People thought the sea was boiling there like the mouth of Hell, but it turns out—”
    “No one wants to go to Hell,” Luisa interrupts. “If I were on that ship, I would turn around.” She looks at Mama and Papa for approval, but they are both looking away.
    “Well, if it really were the mouth of Hell, Gil Eanes wouldn’t have been able to come back, would he?” I retort. “The devil would have sucked him right in.” Luisa is starting to annoy me as much as Susana does, but she’s just a little girl and there’s no pleasure in baiting her.
    “Sucked him right in,” Luisa repeats.
    “But it turns out the ocean south of there is like everywhere else. He saw places where the people were black as night and they have piles of gold and treasure.”
    “Jesus is the treasure.”
    I sense my mother’s weight shift. She is only pretending not to listen, and she doesn’t like what she hears. I am so mad at Luisa I turn my back to her and cross my arms. “I was going to say more about the boiling water,” I sniff, and with a jolt, I recognize Susana’s tone in my voice. But I’m nothing like her. She’s always glowering about something, but it isn’t every day that a man sails beyond the end of the known world and comes back to tell the tale.
    “Look, Mama!” Luisa holds aloft a little white pearl. Blood smears her fingertips, and she makes a smacking noise to keep the pink saliva in her mouth. Mama takes out a handkerchief and dabs the blood away. Luisa’s astonishment quickly gives way to fear. “I have a hole in my mouth,” she whimpers. “We have to bury my tooth right now!”
    “We’ll do it at Grandmother’s.” Papa has been brought back from his thoughts by the commotion.
    “No!” Luisa says. “I can’t grow another until it’s buried!”
    “Look!” Mama takes Luisa’s finger and shows her that the stub of her new tooth is already protruding.
    “No! Now!”
    “We’ll be there soon,” Papa tells her, “and a few minutes won’t make any difference.”
    “It won’t make any difference if we get there a few