Immortal Water

by Norman Brian Van

  She wants to end the interview, he can tell. She rises from her desk and walks toward the doorway. He has little choice but to follow.

  “If you want to look into the fountain of youth, I suggest you take a drive just around the bay. It’ll give you some idea of what I mean. Now I’m rather busy this afternoon ...”

  “Yes. Thank you for your time.”

  “No trouble at all. You have a nice day now.”

  And with that he is out on the street, the afternoon sun beating down on the cobbles, the heat eddies rising in the parking lot where he retrieves his car. He adjusts the air conditioning to full. As he drives frigid air inundates the interior. But it is no help. The burning is inside him: the embarrassment, the insult, the rage; especially the rage.

  Cynical bitch. Conjecture? What does she know? She is a drone in history’s hive. I doubt she has had an original thought. Like me, Juan Ponce would have hidden his purpose, concealed it beneath the mundane: a new colony, a search for silver or slaves. He could never reveal his true intention.

  That was my mistake.

  Ross has driven around the bay. There is a Catholic Mission there with a cross that stands on a point looking out at the ocean. Past the Mission’s entrance he sees the first signs of what is to come, clamped to light posts:

  FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH FAMOUS FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH NEXT RIGHT

  He turns right.

  Off the main road is Magnolia Avenue, a narrow street which ends at a patched parking lot. Beyond it there is a walled compound. The walls are mottled stone; at their centre is an entrance gate. The entrance is a terra cottacoloured hut with a Spanish conquistador, made of plaster, which stands beside a large sign showing two ships and Juan Ponce de Leon himself on a beach with the overhead title: FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. The entrance explains the interior grounds hold an archaeological dig of what once was a native village along with some Spanish artefacts, mostly ballast and a few cannonballs. Multi-coloured pennants garland the walls. He cannot resist. He buys a ticket.

  Pathways wind through floral displays and groves of trees. Several beautiful peacocks spread their tails for the few tourists there. At strategic intersections are the promised cannonballs and ballast pots and even an occasional rusted gun barrel. A path leads him out along a peninsula to a place where stands, greened bronze on a limestone block base, a statue of Juan Ponce de Leon and a plaque beneath stating that at this spot, precisely, in 1513 A.D. the great man had landed. A noble figure. Classical. Sword and flag in hand. There is pigeon shit on his nose and shoulders. His blank eyes stare blindly back up the path.

  Ross studies the statue awhile, thinking of history and historical fiction, then returns to a group of buildings, old peppered walls and a bright sign saying:

  TASTE THE WATERS OF THE FAMOUS FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH!

  He cannot help himself. He enters beneath another archway through timbered doors into a dimly lit grotto. Stone steps, carefully worn in the middle to seem more ancient, lead him down into an alcove and a spotlighted diorama. And there with open, welcoming, plastic arms is a native, deftly and modestly clothed in breechclout and beaded bands. He points with one hand to a dark pool of gelatinous water; with the other he beckons what Ross takes to be Juan Ponce de Leon in a silver morion and breastplate, a hot orange striped jacket and grey suede boots. The Spaniard wears a white ruffed collar and stares down into that plastic puddle which sits so conveniently just off the beach where three more Spaniards, holding their flag, dressed in bumblebee yellow, stand before a painted backdrop of cloudy blue with a ship in the background. Paper wavelets move from side to side to side to side back and forth like a carnival ride for fish.

  Majestic music by synthesizer.

  And down the antediluvian steps he wanders to the well. A middle-aged woman stands at the wellspring. She smiles at Ross. She dips a small pail on a pole down into a cavity in the stone floor. She pulls it back up, filled with water. She takes a paper cup, fills it from the little bucket, and offers the water to Ross.

  Ross drinks.

  “How long have you been working here,” he says clumsily, needing something to pass the moment of communion.

  Her smile broadens.

  “I’ve been working hear for two hundred an’ twelve years now. Hope y’all enjoy your water. Don’t forget the gift shop. They got little bottles up there y’all can take home for your friends and relations.”

  She has done this before.

  Perhaps it only feels like two hundred years.

  Dr. Bush’s little joke.

  Ross departs the place quickly, drives his car to the hotel, packs, and leaves the city going far too fast. He hardly notices the time so furious is he with embarrassment. Near Orlando he stops for the night, exhausted from the drive and his emotions. Then the dreaded dream catches up with him.

  There is the road the car the trees the path and the almost unbearable heat. He wears again his ridiculous suit and again there is someone with him. He twists his head around to catch a glimpse but she is always concealed by a bend in the pathway. He calls to her. He calls the name Emily though he knows Emily is dead. No answer; just those half seen faces within the foliage tittering now, like the sound of birds, chuckling and cackling and mocking. The faces are painted. Dark, devil faces spattered with daubs of herbaceous colour. Their tongues are like flowers blooming then receding and the tongues speak words which have no meaning.

  “Who are you?” he asks, his voice quavering.

  When he addresses them, they disappear. He tries to chase after them. But as he steps off the path his wing-tipped foot sinks deep to his knee in the oily muck. His heart jumps to his throat as he hauls himself out. He feels a burning in his throat. It moves down his oesophagus into his chest scorching, clenching his ribs like a vice. Sweat pours from of his body. Every limb aches. Each part of him has its own agony.

  He reaches for a branch to steady himself, put himself back on the path and at least have firm purchase as he challenges the flower tongues. But the branch breaks off and falls, smashing into a thousand glittering pieces. And the pain subsides, leaving numbness.

  He is on the floor by his bed. A lamp lies beside him, broken, its shards reflecting the morning sunlight which pours through the window. Pieces of glass surround him like shrapnel. His legs are tied in a knot of bed sheets. The sheets are soaked from his sweat. His body feels heavy as lead. His right arm is numb.

  He lies helpless on a hotel room floor.

  Too exhausted to rise; he sobs.

  And eventually sleeps, dreamlessly.

  23

  Who shall tempt with wandring feet The dark unbottom’d infinite Abyss And through the palpable obscure find out His uncouth way ...

  —MILTON

  Spring — The Past

  They had waited for the tide to rise and give them access through the passage. They had sailed slowly, sounding with the lead, carefully feeling their way forward. For the tides and time would have shifted the bottom over the years. Nothing about the sea stays the same. It is always transforming, always surprising; ever new in its antiquity. And as they passed between two points of land a cheer went up from each ship. The sight of landfall holds a special place in the heart of every mariner.

  Juan Ponce de Leon stood on the aft-castle guiding Sotil. Spread before him was a lambskin chart unpacked from his sea chest, useful again after nine long years. It offered solution to the seemingly impenetrable mangrove facing them. It pointed the way to the island where anchorage would be safe and sound.

  The old man could hardly contain his excitement. His grey eyes sparkled and his burnished skin glowed like the day. Overhead clouds piled one upon the other in towering pillars that seemed to support the sky. And below them wheeled flocks of gulls, circling the ships in a cacophony of screeching welcome as they swooped through the masts or skimmed the surface of the bay then soared up again like the old man’s spirit. He peered out across the big bay, awed by its beauty, and found what he was looking for: a gleaming white be
ach on a point backed by pine trees, a shadowy forest which covered the island behind.

  “There!” he shouted. “That is the place!”

  Sotil grinned, nodded his head, and swung the caravel to larboard, the ship ploughing through the calm waters. Miruello followed. Just off the point they heaved to, their anchors splashing into the brink, their chains snaking down and quickly, very quickly in these shallows, becoming slack. Sailors belayed the anchors tightly so the ships would not drift. Sails dropped simultaneously and were quickly furled and bound to their spars. Shouted orders drifted across the decks as men busied themselves with the work of making safe harbour.

  Across the bay, far off in the distance, too small to be seen from the ships, a native stood in his dugout canoe. He was nut brown and nearly naked but for a moss breechclout. His long silver grey hair was pulled into a topknot. He was an old man. The solitude of his fishing had been disturbed by the screech of the gulls. Looking up he decried what he thought at first were moving islands with strange clouds which billowed above them, harnessed from their natural flight by trees and vines. He watched this wonder carefully. He studied the vision more closely. Human shouts echoed across the water and the clouds fell in on themselves and men, at that distance the size of ants, climbed through the vine laden trees and the islands stopped off the big pine point and he heard the men cheer. For a moment he was confused. And then he recalled a memory of those other islands; not islands but huge canoes. Canoes possessing clouds and thunder and men with stone skins and barking sticks who stole everything they laid hands on and killed everyone who came near.

  He gathered his net in quickly and propelled his dugout up a tidal canal. As he paddled, his face was grim.

  The ships bustled with activity, their decks swarming with colonists. The sailors continued securing the ships. Soldiers armoured themselves. Some people simply stood by the rails and stared at their new land so alien now and dreamed of what they would make it. Ships’ boats were launched and soon filled with troops; the soldiers wearing their steelgrey morions and breastplates. Sotomayor led them to the shore where they landed and fanned out quickly in defensive positions: a wall of steel bristling with twenty foot pikes, with crossbowmen and arquebusiers just behind. Their flags fluttered brightly above them contrasting the dark of the forest they faced.

  Then came engineers and with them four small cannon, quickly embanked on the beach, their muzzles pointing toward the forest. And after that horses, panicked and unaccustomed to open air struggling against their stays, swimming hard as the boats ran them in. On reaching the beach they bucked and whinnied and one broke loose; a grey, galloping off down the wide white strand its hooves kicking up fragments of shell. It ran half a league and then, tired and unused to activity, stopped and meandered to the trees’ edge where it foraged uncertainly on sea oats.

  Under Alvarez’ command a huge ditch was excavated. Already he was beginning his fortifications. With parties of vigilant soldiers, he sent axmen into the forest to begin cutting trees. Cook fires were set near the shore and soon supplies came in from the ships. Tents rose on the beach inside the sandy embankment and a few men constructed open-walled huts with leaf roofs. Everyone went about his business with efficiency and not a little trepidation at the warning sight of those nine-year-old graves down the beach.

  On board his ship Juan Ponce de Leon supervised the landing. There would be no mistakes this time, no underestimations, no surprises. The experience of years culminated now in this landing. Cavalry patrols were posted down the beach and boats guarded the sea approaches. The colonists worked quickly and by afternoon had erected the genesis of a palisade. Despite his desire to place foot on soil, their captain-general deferred, remaining aboard the caravel from which he could oversee the preparations.

  He was not alone in his observance. Below him on the main deck, singular amid the bustle of offloading and launching, perched on a pile of casks and bundles as if she too would soon be shipped landward, was the witch. He caught sight of her momentarily and in that instant, even from a distance, noticed her triumphant smile. She was transformed somehow, different from ever before. She seemed to sniff the offshore breeze like an animal, recalling olfactory memories which came on the wind like messengers. He watched her raise her face to the whispering zephyrs crossing the water from the mainland. And he knew then, watching her like that, that she was indeed a sorceress and would lead him to the secret water just as she had promised. Then she happened to look up at him and her face reverted once again into that mask to which he was so accustomed; but she raised her arm and pointed her finger toward the land and held it there for him to see, and nodded her head solemnly.

  She knew.

  She knew where to take him.

  Mayaimi could smell her home; sense its presence not only in its sights and sounds, but in the feeling which filled her with joy. There was triumph too as she realized that against such colossal odds she had finally schemed her way back. She was not free yet, she knew all too well, as she sat upon stinking Spanish possessions awaiting their transport to shore. For a moment she considered stripping off her clothes and diving into the welcoming waters and swimming her way to her home. But that would not be Calos’ way. Especially now she was his agent against these alien fools. She had waited years, grown old as time passed, plotting and planning for this very moment. Yet not this moment but rather the one to come when she would take the big Spaniard — she turned and saw him and pointed the way to entice him — take him into the depths and through water and end him as she would kill a roach.

  And she would be free. She would be once again in Calos’ arms and those of her mother, should she still be alive. And yet it would, could, never be the same. She’d been tarnished by these foreigners. Her people might thank her for her duty but would they accept what she had become?

  There was still so much to design. Would the Spaniard follow when things became taxing? Would the stinking monk be fooled into letting her go? How could she lure Sotomayor, the worst man she had ever met, to his death? And what if the water had changed and she herself became lost in the labyrinth?

  Her thoughts frightened her.

  Juan Ponce had shifted his gaze to starboard and noted with satisfaction the two pinnaces he had ordered were loaded now and the veterans who would accompany him gathered there to ensure they were fully supplied. They were a tough, fearless lot who would follow orders unquestioningly. In the lean years they had remained with him. He had confidence in their loyalty. Of all men these were unique. Conquistadors, he thought proudly, bold warriors like those of the past. These are the last of them, and they are mine. He turned to Sotil to find the young pilot staring down at the starboard preparations. He looked troubled.

  “We’ll leave before first light in the morning,” Juan Ponce said simply. “That way we’ll not be seen crossing to the mainland.”

  “But how will you find the river’s mouth in the dark?”

  “I know the direction from here. And she,” he said, pointing down at the woman, “will know it as well.”

  “It’s been nearly ten years, captain-general.”

  “I have this chart, Sotil.”

  “But still ...”

  “She will know. She knows now. She lived here.”

  “But do you trust her?”

  “I trust no one. But she is necessary.”

  “Captain-general, I don’t understand why you yourself must do this. Why not simply send Sotomayor?”

  “Because I command, my young friend, and a leader does not send men where he himself fears to go. You need not worry. We are prepared.”

  Sotil leaned back on the chart table and peered out across the bay to the mainland. He remained very still while Juan Ponce directed a messenger to shore with instructions for Alvarez. As Juan Ponce rolled up his charts for the night, the pilot turned again to his master.

  “Don Juan, is there something about this you’re not telling me?”

  “What do you mean?” Jua
n Ponce said guardedly.

  “Did you find something there” — the pilot pointed toward the green scowl of the mainland — “the last time?”

  “As you know from the log, I explored up the coast but didn’t land. Why are you asking this now?”

  “Because I’ve never seen you like this; nor her either. I’ve served you with the knowledge that you would return my service with your trust and generosity. I had faith that this voyage would lead to profit. I still do. But this, you’re leaving us so quickly, even before the defence is established; this is curious.”

  “You need have no fear for your profit,” the older man said. “You will have your full share and more. I go in search of something greater than gold. I cannot tell you just now what it is. You must trust me a little longer, but when I return I will possess something so remarkable that forever you will thank me. I do not use the word lightly, Sotil. You’ll share in this gift as much as I.”

  “I don’t understand, Don Juan.” The pilot looked closely at his master, baffled by his strange turn of phrase.

  “Nor do I; not exactly. But there are things in this world, fabulous things which we yet know nothing of. Before Columbus there were men who thought the world was flat and sea-monsters inhabited its outer reaches. And who could have known, before Balboa and then Vespucci, of a continent here between us and Cathay? And then the stories of El Dorado though instead it was Cortez and his mountain of silver. In each case the reality wasn’t the actual myth. But still, in each, something new and wonderful was revealed. The undiscovered lies before me, and I must go to my destiny.”

  To the west the descending sun bathed the sea in vermilion. As it vanished, campfires winked into existence on shore. In the balmy evening cooks served out their stews to the huddled men finished their work while others, their silhouettes cast by firelight upon the trees, paced heedfully up and down the strand as their eyes searched the depths of the forest darkness. The tension was palpable, and particularly for one man who crouched silently, thoughtfully, at the base of his caravel’s mainmast and wondered at what he had heard this day. Alonzo Sotil searched the darkness for answers as he pondered the nature of men and the darkness within them.