Pirate's Treasure

Jack pulled the map out of his pouch. As he unrolled it he noticed immediately that a few places had been smudged somehow.

“Drat!” He spun the pouch around and saw that it was soaked through with sweat.

“Fool!” Frantically, he scanned the map to see if any vital areas had been affected. Lines of moisture ran down the map, but only one had dissolved the ink and it ran down a side of the map, destroying only finely drawn cacti and lizards and windblown dunes.

Breathing a deep sigh, he situated himself as best he could in the shadow of a great cactus, taller than him. It had only just reached that time in the afternoon when he might find the shelter of a cactus shadow. He had seen the cactus from impossibly far off and felt the time drag on without end as it slowly grew on the horizon. In his exhaustion and solitude, he found his mind playing tricks on him. The cactus seemed to sway and move its arms in a gesture of welcome. All about it glistened and seemed so fresh and inviting, as if it were rising up out of an island in a spring. He had to shake himself and remember it was just hot air.

“The old man was right,” he had muttered to himself, voicing his thoughts aloud as he was increasingly wont to do. “Nothing like the desert. Visions’ll get worse, no doubt. If the map is wrong and that spring isn’t where it should be, or if it doesn’t exist at all…or if I simply lose my way—I’m probably a dead man. Brilliant.”

“Nothing easier in the world than to lose myself to death out here,” he had said, shaking his head. “Can’t believe I haven’t yet.”

When he had arrived finally at the cactus, he could only stare at it for a while, basking in its shadow. It was only a cactus after all, but truly a noble one. Towering, and with spines to make even the thirstiest wanderer think twice. He felt safe here, protected, as if all the land in sight was watched over by this lonesome sentinel.

Jack took out his waterskin and allowed himself just the slightest bit to wet his mouth. It was his last one, and only half full.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he said, looking at the waterskin. His life, his past, his future, all were swishing in that last bit of water.

He spread the map out on the sand in the shade of the cactus. It was a sturdy piece of canvas. It looked to have been cut with a knife, perhaps from one the sails out of that shipwreck that lost the old man his leg and eventually led him to stay at the inn, where he stayed until his death. It was a fairly simple map, but made with some artistry. A loving hand had illustrated all the edges with images of the desert and the sea beyond. Directions were given, numerous and precise. An attempt at calligraphy was made, as best as could be mustered, perhaps, on a patch of sail. The language was that of an educated man, one with a flair for riddles. It must have been the old man who penned it, for he had perplexed Jack to no end with his word games. He had never struck Jack as the ordinary sailor he claimed to be, and now, it seemed, he had been at the very least a pirate, and not an idle one.

The path on the map was clearly marked, leading to one after another of landmarks that could only be considered significant to the holder of the map, like the boulder with the three carved lines near its base or the marked stone that lay in a crack in the side of a ledge.

The markers were simple, but the riddles that showed the way to them were not. He forced himself to concentrate on the next one. “Take refuge in the guardian’s shadow,” read the carefully penned words, “and when the shadow proves greater in reach than its master, hasten away from its outstretched hand.”

“Ha!” Jack cried. He smiled and carefully rolled up the map. "That old pirate."