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each other because the swells are growing.
    One of the crew hands the Norseman a steaming drink. Columbus looks at him carefully. He’s a big man. So big that he looks down on both Hardy and Columbus. Light-brown stringy hair. Eyes far apart and with the color of fair weather in them—an azure color they have not witnessed for a week.
    “So you’re saying your people have already been to the new lands across this sea?”
    The Norseman grins. His smile is generous and kind. There is almost pity hidden in this man’s face. “It’s a harsh land filled with demons. Horrible rocks and twisted trees. Twenty-five ships set out and only fourteen arrived. Many of our people were killed. We will not try to make a home there again.”
    Columbus tries to focus. Breathe, he tells himself. Breathe and think of something to say. Go slow. “Why not go back? I mean to these new lands.”
    “These lands are not new. Our sagas date back five times a hundred years. There is nothing new about these lands.” The Norseman stands.
    The ship rolls to the port side and the sailors adjust their stance. They recognize the danger in that sudden shift and begin to move to the upper deck.
    The Norseman waits for the right moment and then jumps to his ship where three of his fellow sailors stop his momentum. He disappears belowdecks. His crewmen unfasten mooring lines and the two ships begin to drift apart.
    The vessels are thirty feet apart when the Norseman reappears from below. He tosses a leather bundle across the gap and the Briton catches it.
    They wave to each other.
“Watch out for the Skraelings!”
the Norseman shouts.
    “What did he say? Sky rings?” Columbus looks to Hardy but Hardy only shrugs.
    In the cabin, Columbus opens the bundle. Inside are three stones.
    “What the hell?” he says.
    “Rocks,” Hardy says. “Worthless rocks.”
    “This I can see.” Columbus spreads the leather wrapping flat on the table. Burned into the other side of this piece of leather is a very basic chart: Britain, Iceland, Greenland, and then jagged inlets and a large, triangular landmass on the other side of the ocean with the name Vinilanda Insula across it.
    The sound of the ocean, water lapping the ship, creaking sounds. In the corner, chickens scratch at the wooden decking, looking for something left behind.
    “Does this look like Japan to you?” Columbus looks up from the map and finds Hardy’s eyes. “I think this looks like Japan.”
    Hardy glares at him. “How the fuck would I know? You’re not going to trust a Viking, are you? Are you daft, man? They’re a bunch of godless, filthy buggers. You’ll be sailing to your death if you give any weight to that chart. They kill and eat their own children is what I heard.”
    Columbus just smiles and nods. “How is it that you were able to speak his language?”
    “I’ve always had a gift with the languages,” Hardy says. “All I’ve got to do is hear it spoken. It doesn’t take much before I start to understand.”

    “There were days when I could not bear humanity. Days when I was disgusted. Days when I’d seen too much death, too much cruelty, violence,and despair,” he says. “All this, added to the search for funding and support for my voyage across the Western Sea, was a heavy load.”
    “I can’t imagine,” Consuela says, encouraging.
    Columbus takes a bite of his ham sandwich, followed by gulping half a glass of milk. Then another bite of his sandwich. “We all need sanctuaries, Consuela—places where we can feel safe.”

    When Columbus needed to escape his own mind and heart, he would go to Salvos’s bar, a hidden enclave two blocks off the river in Valdepeñas. Few people knew about it. It was widely rumored to exist. One would only wind up at this bar if somebody on the inside brought you. It’s an exclusive, unknown, run-down haven.
    Salvos is a pig of a man. He’s fat like a stuffed sausage and leers at most women, but he serves decent food and cheap