Black Flies

Renaissance, I thought. Yesterday’s rain had brought a new smell to the air. Renaissance. That was the word that Ambrosio would use. And mine arrived at his hand. We walked along the shore, hand-in-hand, between a thicket of bright green palms and the dark water. His palm sweat, or maybe mine; he had always been better at handling the humidity than me.

I understand. I hated myself for doubting. In my mind’s eye, I saw us in the ocean again, felt the last bead of the rosary tugged free from my fingers. Watched as Ambrosio released it to the water below. Because he felt it, this peace. The world around us was at peace, and I had delivered it.

Of course he’d understood. But I had been afraid.

We hardly spoke as we walked, as we burned the flies on the edge of a grotto. Ambrosio threw down a busily-patterned blanket that had once been a rich gold with inflections of blue and red and green.

“My grandmother gave this to me when I left,” he said. We sat on the blanket, leaning into one another, a can of oranges between us. “I never saw her again after that.”

“You’ve never told me that.”

“What?” A gust of wind looped through the shallow cave, clearing the hair from his eyes before I had a chance to do so.

“Your past.”

He stared ahead for a few minutes. The storm had briefly cut through the fog, and now the sea looked limitless. Our island could have been the only island on a world of ocean.

Then he sighed, like he’d reached some sort of decision. “Their accents were musical when they spoke. Lilting, almost. I’ve never heard anything like it. It must’ve been the way the native languages merged with the Spanish…the rain forests were—were beautiful, almost mystic, but not primal…” He trailed off, lost again.

I touched his hand and his eyes snapped back into focus. I felt like I was engaged in a tug-of-war with his past, with those depths that he always retreated to. I didn’t save you for this. The only way to save someone who’s permanently astray is to guide them in another direction and hope for the best. And I did.

And when we fell, we fell together, the cross disappearing into the abyss.