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Oblivious to the muttering and head-shaking in his wake, Shandy sprinted across the sand, broad-jumped over the cold cooking pit and pounded away toward the inlet where, half a year ago, he'd helped refit the Carmichael; and he paused to grin and catch his breath when he saw old Sawney crouched in front of the sailcloth tent he lived in these days, alternately taking swigs from, and peering intently into, a half-full bottle of rum.
The old man was wearing baggy, bright yellow trousers and an embroidered silk jacket, and if he had on any sort of neck-cloth it was concealed under his tangled beard, which was the color of old bleached bones.
Shandy plodded down the slope and sat down near him. "I'd like to talk to you, governor."
"Ah?" Sawney squinted at him. "Not fevered again, are you? Stay away from them chickens."
"No, governor. I want to know ... about bocors, magicians. Especially ones that have been to the ... the Fountain of Youth."
Sawney had another gulp from, and peek into, his bottle. "Plenty of bocors about. I ain't one."
"But you know what I mean by the Fountain of Youth? The ... geyser?"
The old man's only response was to spin the liquor around in the bottle and sing, in a high, cracked voice,
Mas molera si Dios quisiere - Cuenta y pasa, que buen viaje faza.
Shandy did a rough translation of this in his head - More will flow if God wills - count and let it happen, and the voyage will pass more quickly - and decided it was no help. "Very well," he said, controlling his impatience, "let's start somewhere else. Do you remember the Carib Indians?"
"Aye, cannibals. We wiped 'em out. Killed 'em all in the Cordoba expedition in '17 amd '18, killed 'em or took 'em to be slaves in Cuba, which meant the same thing. They had all the magic; they kept pens of Arawak Indians, the way you'd keep cattle. To eat, sure - but you know what was more important than that? Hah? The blood, fresh blood. The Caribs kept those Arawaks alive like you'd keep gunpower dry."
"Did they know about the place in the rain forest in Florida? The Fountain in the place where it feels like the ground is ... too solid?"
"Ah, Dios ... si," Sawney whispered, darting a glance at the sunlit harbor as if something in the sea might overhear. "It wasn't so dark there, I've heard, before they came ... damned hole into hell ... "
Shandy leaned forward a little and spoke quietly. "When did you go there?"
"1521," said Sawney clearly. He took an enormous gulp of rum. "I knew by then where it had to be - I could read the signs, in spite of the padres with their holy water and prayers ... I went in, and kept the gnat-clouds of ghosts away until I found it; vinegar will drive lice away from your body, but you need the black tobacco weed to drive away ghosts ... and I shed blood there, by the Fountain ... sprouted that plant. Did it just in time, too - as soon as I got out of that swamp there was a skirmish with the Indians, and I caught an arrow, and the wound festered ... I made sure some of my blood got into the sea. Blood and sea water, and I'll live forever, over and over again, while that plant's still there ... "
Shandy suddenly remembered the dead, dried shrub he'd seen in Erebus, and he realized that this would probably be the last of Sawney's lifetimes. "How does it happen," he asked gently, "that one powerful enough to plant blood there, and use the blood and sea water magic here to buy many lives, can deteriorate? Can lose the big magics, can become ... simple?"
Sawney smiled and raised one white eyebrow. "Like me, you mean, eh? Iron."
Though embarrassed that the old man had understood him so clearly, Shandy pressed on. "Iron? What do you mean?"
"You must have smelt it. The magic smell, you know? Like a pan left on a hot fire. Wide-awake iron. And fresh blood smells that way too, and magic needs fresh blood, so obviously there's iron in it. Ever hear the story that the gods came here out of the sky as splashes of red-hot iron? No? Why, the very oldest writers claimed that the souls of stars were in the stuff, because it was the last thing a star exhaled before it started to die."
Shandy was afraid the old man had lost his lucidity again, for obviously there was no iron in blood or stars, but he decided to invest one more question in this tangent. "So how does it diminish magicians?"
"Hm?" Sawney blew across the mouth of the bottle, producing a low hooting. "Oh, it doesn't."
Shandy thumped his fist into the sand. "Damn it, governor, I need to know - "
"It's cold iron that messes 'em up - solid iron. It's finished, you see, you can't do magic around it because all the magic is finished too, before you even start. You ever make wine?"
Shandy rolled his eyes. "No, but I know about vinegar and lice, thanks. I - "
"You know vino de Jerez? Sherry, the English call it. Or port?"
"Sure, governor," said Shandy tiredly, wondering if the old man was going to ask him to fetch him a bottle.
"Well, you know how they're made? You know why some of 'em are so sweet?"
"Uh ... they're fortified. They mix brandy into the wine and it stops the fermentation, so some sugar can remain in it and not all turn to alcohol."
"Good boy. Yes, the brandy stops the fermentation. And so you still have sugar, yes, but for it to change to alcohol now is not possible. And what is this stuff, this brandy, that stops everything so?"
"Well," said Shandy, mystified, "it's distilled wine."
