Read Written in Blood for Free Online

and laughs again. “And I too have learned how to ask a question. Would you like some tortillas and beans and coffee?”
    â€œI would,” I say, feeling myself smile despite everything. “Thank you.”
    â€œDo not thank me. I have given you nothing yet, nada . Now, young man, joven , get out of that cactus, pick up your things and follow me.” The old man turns and strides off.
    I grab my blanket and box and scramble out of the gully just in time to see the old man vanish around the hillside. Ignoring my aches, I hurry behind him.
    After a considerable time struggling along a goat path that leads up the hillside—amazed at how fast the old man can move—I begin to wonder if I am being lured into a trap. But I’ve come too far to turn back now. Eventually we arrive at a spot where the path widens onto a ledge in front of the low entrance to a cave. The old man is already squatting by a pile of wood, striking a flint. He has taken his helmet off and placed it on the ground beside him.
    â€œGo into the cave and meet my compadre , Perdido,” he says. “He gave me my helmet, mi casco .”
    I put down my blanket but hesitate. What if it’s a trap? I place my hand on the handle of my revolver.
    The old man chuckles.
    â€œYou will not need your pistola . Perdido is harmless, I assure you.”
    Flames are already licking at the smaller branches by the time I pluck up the courage to bend down at the cave entrance. The entrance is small, but inside the cave opens out to the size of a small room. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. The first thing I see is the old man’s bed, a long pile of brushwood with a blanket on top. There’s an unstrung bow, a quiver of arrows, an ax and a collection of various-sized clay pots around it.
    I look to my left where I can just make out a lance and an ancient musket leaning against the wall. Unexpectedly, there is also a thick book, which I assume to be a bible until my eyes adjust enough to read the title, Moby Dick . It’s not a volume I have read, but I know the name very well. My father used to tell me a story of a white whale of that name and the obsession of a man called Ahab who searched the oceans for it. It’s strangely unsettling to see the whale’s name on a book here in this primitive setting.
    Preoccupied, I let my gaze wander back around the cave. From my right, a grinning skull stares back at me.
    I almost scream in fear but control it to a loud gasp. I hear the old man outside chuckle. The skeleton is sitting on the floor, leaning against the cave wall. One arm has fallen off and lies beside it, but the rest is held together by dark brown stringy tendons. Perdido is wearing sandals woven from grass, the remnants of a pair of leather pants and a rusted, short-sleeved chain-mail shirt. There’s a narrow sword lying on his lap and a plain cross hanging from a chain around his neck. Perdido has obviously been a soldier, but for whom and from when, I have no idea. I make my way back out into the sunshine.
    â€œWho is he?” I ask the old man, who is now squatting by the fire, placing a flat iron sheet between two rocks over the flames.
    â€œHe is Perdido. I told you.”
    â€œBut where is he from? What happened to him? What is his story?” I move over and crouch beside the fire.
    â€œAh. So now you want stories, historias . That is the difficulty with you white people: you always want more.” He reaches over and places a battered tin pot filled with beans on a flat rock in the fire.
    â€œDo you know how valuable stories are?”
    â€œYes,” I say, not certain that I do.
    â€œHuh,” the old man snorts dismissively. “I do not think so. The world exists in two places. Here, aquí .” He sweeps a scrawny arm wide to encompass the world. “Now, ahora , this moment of pain, and hunger, and sunshine, and darkness, and death, muerte . And here.”