The Compass of His Bones and Other Stories by Jeff VanderMeer Read Free Book Online

against a new pain. The wood against his wounds felt as if a hundred stars the size of arrowheads had exploded inside his heart. The pain seared his flesh, then dulled, replaced by a tingle, an itch. The itch gave way to a stretching sensation, his flesh expanding and contracting in the same instant. The Spaniards’ voices rose in consternation, drowned out by the pumping rhythm of blood in his ears: the rainforest’s pulse, the opened veins of fire beetle and freshwater porpoise, the rushing capillaries of anaconda and jacaranda; the pulse, too, of rivers and trees, valleys and slow-sighing mountains. The Empire’s pulse, beating beneath his bones, leaching upward through the birch floor. His mutilated fingers began to throb and he awkwardly turned over on his back and raised his hands. Blood bubbled from the severed joints, but upward, as though seeking to replace missing flesh. His entire body began to throb and he moaned, disoriented and afraid.
    Above him, Tupac heard the priest gasp as the blood swayed at his fingertips and scintillated, forming sinuous shapes. The blood danced on his chest and legs as well, tapping out a staccato beat. Pain swept across his body in waves that left numbness behind, his heartbeat swallowed by the pulse of the Amazon.
    “The Devil!” the priest cried. “The Devil!”
    “Do something!” Gaspar ordered, but the soldiers did nothing.
    Tupac looked at his hands. Where the blood ran thickest, it separated from the host finger and floated in the air, where feathers sprouted, then wings, and from above each finger appeared a hummingbird, Inti’s messenger in the world of men. Wherever the torturers’ blades had touched him, feathers sprouted as scarlet as a woman’s menses, followed by the birds, glistening with afterbirth, wing bones clenching and unclenching, the emerald eyes blinking once, twice, three times, as they hovered over the Emperor. Where they rose, the blood soaked into their breasts, his wounds closing puckered lips that left no scar.
    Then a river of hummingbirds poured from his eyes, leaving him blind and cold. Everywhere, he heard their rustling speech, the weight of their departure lifting from him until he felt lighter than a single feather. But cold. In the whispering of the hummingbird wings, he heard the echo of his own voice, praying for his son. He smelled the wild plums his son had plucked from the orchard. He saw his son breaking the lake’s surface, mouth wide with laughter.
    His hands uncurled, bloodless but whole. His pulse beat weakly in his ears. He thought he heard footsteps on the stairs. He thought he heard his son’s voice. How quick to learn, how fleet of foot.
    “The Devil!” the priest screamed. “The Devil! The Devil! The Devil!” until he could scream no more.
    V
    Gaspar de Sotelo stood at the window, the Emperor curled up at his feet, and watched the sun rise in the sky. Against its corona, hummingbirds flew in long, dark lines. Gaspar’s face was impassive as he watched them, his lips quivering only slightly. He thought — he knew — that for a moment, a flicker at the edge of his awareness, he might have — had — seen Him in the birds flying from the Emperor’s wounds. His knuckles whitened as his fingernails bit into his palm.
    He stared through eyes so pure a gold that even the rainforest’s green had been stripped from them. The tears that lined the contours of his face dripped to the floor, mingled with the blood to form a patina of red and gold.
    VI
    In the Gorge of Cusac, many miles east, Hualpa struggled through the snows, clad in a cloak of white alpaca fur. The air in the Gorge was so thin that Hualpa’s heartbeat slowed in his chest and his every movement was sluggish.
    Lost, supplies frozen, he was treading ever closer to despair when the first hummingbird, a splash of red against the whiteness, fluttered before his eyes — and then another and another, until a flock hovered above his head. Their wings were edged