His son retreated several steps, his face pale with fright. His sister ignored her father’s outburst. ‘You forgot your lunch,’ she said, proffering a small cloth bag.
‘Never mind my lunch! There are worse things than hunger, don’t you know that?’ The man was sweating, although it was not warm, especially for someone in water up to his knees. ‘It’s dangerous out here!’
I peered between the rushes and out across the lake. Its surface was a flat as a polished copper mirror, with scarcely a ripple except what was made by the occasional duck or heron. Nothing nearby broke it except fishing nets strung between poles. Beyond its far side loomed the mountains that edged the eastern side of the valley, with their foothills dotted with white houses. Among the many towns and villages on those hillsides was lord Maize Ear’s capital, and not far from it, the retreat where Lily and I had found refuge. From where I stood that shoreline was a tantalising sight. It looked so peaceful, and there was not so much as a canoe between it and me.
‘“Dangerous”?’ I echoed, suppressing the wave of nostalgic self-pity that threatened to overwhelm me. ‘Dangerous how?’
He scowled at me. ‘Who are you?’ he asked for a second time.
At that point his son finally nerved himself to speak. ‘I think he’s a drunk,’ he said importantly.
‘No he’s not!’ piped Heart of a Flower. ‘He told us he got lost.’
The fisherman looked at me incredulously. ‘No-one gets lost out here. You only come here if you’re a fisherman or a farmer working on one of the chinampa plots, and we all know this place better than our own courtyards. So what are you really doing here?’
I had to tell him. Apart from anything else I wanted to ask him whether he had seen anything like the monster that had attacked me. As I described the encounter I glanced out of the corner of my eye at the two children. The little girl was gazing at me with wide, awe-struck eyes, while her brother crept closer to his father and shivered.
The man listened to me in grim silence. Then he said: ‘You’d better come with me.’
We did not have far to go, briefly wading through brackish water until we reached a spot where a few broken and flattened stems showed where a small craft had been pushed into the rushes to hide it.
‘Here you are,’ the fisherman said.
‘I don’t get it.’ I looked at him sharply. ‘There was a boat here, I take it. Where is it now? Has it been stolen, is that what you’re showing me?’
‘Father, there’s nothing here.’ Now that his father seemed to have forgotten his anger the boy had become bolder.
‘I’m not in the mood to play games,’ I said, trying to sound menacing and succeeding only in provoking a chuckle, until the man decided he had had enough fun at my expense and pushed his way cautiously into the gap in the rushes.
‘Here,’ he said, stooping, ‘you’ll have to grab the other end.’ I stared at him for a moment. Then I realised that his hands were beneath the surface and tugging at something heavy.
With the children looking on in silence, their father and I hoisted the wreck of a canoe into the air. I held onto my end for just long enough to see what had happened to it – to note the large, jagged hole in its bottom, a hole that must have been made by some tool such as an axe – before dropping it and letting it fall with a loud splash.
It might not have been an axe, of course. The boat had sunk again before I had time to examine its timber for any flakes of obsidian that might have become lodged in it, but I knew it could just as easily have been sunk by a strong man wielding a sword.
‘That,’ the fisherman said, as he led us back to his nets, ‘is why I don’t want you children coming out here. This has been going on for days. It’s not safe. The boat’s only the latest thing to have happened.’
‘But who’d do something like that?’ I muttered, half to myself.
‘You tell me! Not to mention all the other fishermen and bird-catchers – they’d like to know too. Let me tell you, there are men who’ve been making their living off the water all their lives who won’t so much as dip a toe in it now, they’re that frightened. See this?’ He yanked a net out of the water. It held no fish, and the reason was obviously something more than bad luck.
‘Something’s torn it,’ Heart of a Flower observed.
I looked at the net and the gaping holes in it, that made what was left of its mesh hang from its poles like limp rags. ‘Torn?’ I mused aloud, as I waded towards it for a closer look. ‘Torn or…’ I picked a section of it up, peering at ropes where they parted. I looked at two ends, frowned, and held them together, noting the way they matched.
‘You see?’ the fisherman said over my shoulder.
‘This was cut,’ I said, dropping the net. ‘It’s been slashed by something – a knife, something like that.’ I regarded him thoughtfully. ‘It’s not the first time, is it? And it’s not just you.’
‘That’s right.’ He looked about him, fearfully surveying the tranquil scene surrounding us. Nothing stirred, but it was difficult to see between the tall, dense rushes: who could tell what might be hiding among them? ‘Everyone who fishes this stretch of the shore – here, where it borders on Atlixco, and all the way south at least as far as Toltenco – it’s the same story for
