Conquistador

Light falls down from the stars and spills out across the desert. Old light. Tired light. A million journeys ending – entombed by the sands or sipped by night flowers that begrudge the sun their beauty.

The moon slides west like a silver scythe down the jagged spine of the mountains, reaping rock and snow. Dawn is coming.

Across the sands, a figure moves. A man, alone and exhausted. Augustus de Luna - last of a ragged band, his comrades fallen behind him.

They sought the Golden City of legends. The lost city of Cibola. Instead, something found them. Death. It found them in the jungles, as lurking beast or poisoned arrow. It found them In the mountains, as icy waters and brittle rocks on high. And it found them in each other, in the ruins – that place accursed - wearing hell and shedding madness.

De Luna tilts his head to the skies and sees the moon, snagged on a desolate peak.

“You are cruel, O tooth of the mountain,” he whispers through chapped lips, “to feast on my last companion.”

De Luna presses on.

He comes to a great valley, ringed with trees, and hears the cries of geese, calling up the dawn. Water birds.

A lake!

Stepping through a tangle of creosote he comes to an outer marsh, and is greeted not by geese, but a drowning girl. An Indian. The wind shifts suddenly, and the desert holds its breath.

He is running now.

His rusted hauberk and pitted helmet are flung to the ground. He pauses, realizing that he still clutches the grinning idol of gold – his deadly prize.

It too, drops to the ground.

De Luna swims to the woman’s side and pulls her back to the surface. A flame in the east breaks over the mountains, and she opens her eyes, gasping. Beautiful, golden eyes.