Read Online To the Edge of the World by Michele Torrey - Free Book Online Page A

natives lived together in long houses called
boii,
each housing more than one hundred people. The next day, the old woman yanked me inside and proudly showed me their fire pit while tugging me toward her bed, a netting stretching from one log pole to another. I heard soft giggling and noticed a group of young women watching me. I flushed to the roots of my hair. Wrenching my wrist from her grasp, I backed out of the
boii,
smiling and bowing like an idiot while fending off her pinching, groping hands. Giggles erupted into laughter. Horrified, I fled back to the ship and said nothing to anyone, especially not Rodrigo.
    On the twentieth day of December, the master of the
Victoria
was executed. All ships’ companies assembled. The master stood tall. He looked at no one, said nothing, as Espinosa removed his shackles.
    Once, when I was very young, I had seen a public garroting. I had forgotten the horror. The master was led to a post in the ground. To the post was attached a metal collar, which Espinosa affixed around the condemned man’s neck. Espinosa turned screws on the garrote and the collar slowly tightened.
    The master gazed above our heads, toward the heavens. His eyes began to bulge. His tongue protruded, turning blue. I stood there, admiring his courage.
    It was over. The master was dead.
    The pimply-faced boy was not to be executed. He had appealed the sentence of death, saying the master had forced him. I despised him for his weakness.
    One night, in a secluded clearing between palm trees, I played my guitar around a fire with Rodrigo and some other cabin boys. Because there was much joking and laughing between us, it was some time before we realized we were being watched. When we turned to investigate, the bushes rustled and we heard a chorus of giggles. Immediately my friends sprang to their feet and dashed into the bushes. There followed a great commotion of giggling. Of chases that crashed through the underbrush. Of shrieks and laughter. Then silence.
    I sat alone before the fire. Why, I asked myself, why do I not follow? I knew the answer. I was afraid. Never before had I been with a woman. I grew angry and said to my feet, Take me into the bushes. Find a native woman.
    But my feet would not move.
    Then I heard a noise, quiet as a whisper of wind in the sails. A young woman, younger than I, slipped into the circle of light and sat upon a rock. Her brown eyes stared at me shyly. I stared back. Like the other natives, her skin was bronze-colored. Intricate designs swirled over her body, designs painted beneath her skin. She was tiny, slender. Her long black hair shimmered in the firelight.
    She began to talk, but I could not understand. Then she laughed, a soft laugh like the tinkle of water poured from a jug. The next thing I knew, she was sitting beside me and her hands were upon my face—stroking my cheeks, touching my lips. I caressed her smooth cheeks with trembling fingers. Her lower lip was pierced with three holes threaded with round pebbles. I traced the holes, wondering if it hurt. Then she laughed and I laughed with her.
    Her name, I learned, was Aysó.
    Sitting there that evening, she taught me a few words of her language, and I taught her to say
boy
and
song
and
girl
and
love
. I played my guitar and sang to her. I tried to teach her to play the guitar, my fingers clasped over hers. We laughed at her fumbling attempts. I showed her my sketchbook and then drew a picture of her. After she saw my drawing, she looked at me in amazement. I read her some of my mother’s poems while she caressed the paper, nodding and smiling.
    It was late before I left, the other cabin boys long gone. I dreamed of her that night, dreams soft as her skin and shining as her eyes.
    The next day I rushed back to the same spot. My heart leaped when I saw she had returned. She smiled. “I’m back,” I said happily, knowing she could not understand. We played the guitar and sang and drew pictures in the dirt, each of us