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

with frost and their breath blew in flumes of white from their beaks. They flew up against Hualpa and in their silken touch he could feel his father dying. He knew this as surely as he could see the outline of his father’s face in the mountain cliffs.
    But even as he wept for his father, his legs became warmer, his breath quicker. He could sense the old Emperor’s spirit all around him: in the birds’ hot wing strokes against the cold; the eyes that reflected intelligence beyond the animal; the honey with which they sustained him; the iridescent arrow they formed in the sky, leading him through the Gorge of Cusac and into southern exile.
    VII
    It is said that Tupac Amaru survived the torture at Gaspar de Sotelo’s hands long enough to return to Cuzco and be burnt at the stake.
    At no time did Tupac Amaru seem aware of the jeering crowds or of the priest who begged him to embrace the European God. He did not blink as his wife was torn apart by four white horses.
    His eyes, like glass, reflected nothing, and there was nothing behind them. The flames hovered over his body, those same eyes cracking, then melting. Soon after, the hollow frame tottered, fell, the spirit having long since left it.

THE COMPASS OF HIS BONES

    In the summer of 1615, Captain Gaspar de Sotelo, arm of the Viceroyalty in Peru, watches as the last Incan Emperor, Tupac Amaru, burns to death after first accepting Christ and renouncing all land claims. The Emperor burns slowly and his blood turns black as it catches fire and seeps out beneath the branches heaped around him. The Emperor does not scream as once he screamed while being tortured in a tower high above Vilcapampa. Instead, silent, the Emperor stares at Gaspar with a hollow gaze. Gaspar cannot look away. The Emperor takes a long time to die. Gaspar burns as if he were back in the rainforests waiting for the insects to devour him.
    Later, after the body has faded to ash and smoke, gray plumes rising into the Cuzco sky, Gaspar finds himself in the courtyard where the execution took place. At his side stands a shadow wrapped in a cloak: Manuel de las Vegas, the Dominican priest who has, since the storming of Vilcapampa, become his companion in all things. Beyond them both stand squat stone houses, mantles covered in honeysuckle, the thick sweet of it as disturbing as the smell of corpses. Through the archway to the street, Quichua Indians pass, bearing fruit and vegetables on their backs, leading llamas to market. Ladies of the Viceroyalty pass less often, looking exotic on scented divans borne by native youths. Beneath their feet, the alleys suffer under layers of dirt, garbage, and excrement.
    Manuel hands Gaspar the still-warm skull of his enemy. The skull — the freedom of its eye sockets, gaping mouth, hollow nasal cavity — gives Gaspar no answers. As he stares at the skull, he imagines it talks to him. It says, “Nothing is left that can betray my will. Not eyes. Not hands. Not arms. Not legs. Nothing.” Gaspar gives a little laugh. It is hard to concentrate through the layer of sweat that always coats him; never a cool breeze in Cuzco now.
    “We’re a long way from Madrid,” Gaspar says as he stares at the skull. “I wonder if the Church knows how far?”
    “The Church is not your enemy,” Manuel says. For the Dominican, the laconic has become both law and religion.
    “It is not my friend.”
    Manuel’s shadow falls upon him. It is a long shadow and sometimes it seems to rustle, as if the darkness of it were composed of a thousand black moths.
    “What,” says Manuel, “is your desire?”
    A sly smile plays across Gaspar’s lips. What is his desire? To tell the present from the past. To slake his thirst. To distinguish night from day.
    “Simply this,” he replies. “Take this skull and have it smoothed and cured and oils applied to it. Fashion it into a compass and candle both, so that it may guide and light our way through this miserable land. Place the skull atop a