“My best friend died when I was 12 years old. From what I recall, even less understand, he had been ill in the months leading up. They had gone to Brasil over the summer, and his condition worsened. I was a world away, returning from holiday with my family. I'm not sure if my mother & father had withheld the information up until that point, but one evening they sat us down in the cabin and explained. This black-haired boy born two weeks apart from me was caged in a third world ICU. My twin dynamo had been made still, trapped within his own body, leeched by IVs and drip vines. It was a terrifying frame: the ceramic rainforest rank with rubbing alcohol and bleach. Blue coats scurrying like masked Myrmidons, running a clockwork room quota. And before that, stuck to the latrine, voiding his bowels without days of eating. Weeping for a clear breath in the owl hours, merciless concrete humidity pounding on his discolored chest. We didn't know, they didn't know. You were so young.

 

Oh, my darling boy, the sky cannot hear you.”

 

---

 

Centipedes sounded in perfect rhythm beneath the tropical dense. The deeper one sunk into the island’s undergrowth, the louder the insects became, a pandeiro prelude of darker greens & custodian bugs. Everything turned sentinel as they neared the colossus, each leaf bearing an eye or ear on standby for eventual surrender to the forest. The two travelers did not fear the thick, nor did they care for any prideful beasts that stalked them. The Labirinto was close, and it was waiting.

 

Arriving on the island was not difficult. The Ilha Aguaraçu lied a breath away from the northeast coast of the ‘Bay of All Saints’, enveloped by a heavy curtain of sea smoke. This unnatural boundary worked well to dissuade most visitors, feeding alley ramble & night stories with intrigue of her inhabitants: the uncontacted tribes, the lost animals, and the maze at its heart. Tigressa and The Magician found motive in that superstition, landing their outriggers off the beachhead on the same morning. Coincidence had no weight in a place like this, and even these strangers could measure an entangled calculus that led them there. Tigressa became more certain of this as they marched through the selva.

 

“God is strange sometimes. He is the Great Geometer. His directive is not to make sense. He displays the theorem. And from the divine abstract, we build the proof.”

 

The Magician enjoyed her company. He’d been impressed by her speed when dueling tribes emerged from the bush as they docked their canoes. She pulled him by his collar through a swarm of slings and arrows, throwing them both into tall weeds to evade the attention of the scrimmage. The native clans were in clash, and battle spared little time for foreign interlopers. The Magician had learned much of the island in the days leading up to his voyage, and the indigenous were particularly interesting.

 

“At one point all those men belonged to the same tribe before this bizarre civil war. Each faction has painted themselves with the colors of the nemesis, no one knows who is who.”

 

“Why do they war?”

 

“The schism was built not on some ethnic conflict or misunderstanding. It was designed. They kill each other because the God they worship told them to.”

 

It wasn’t until they crossed the grove that the howling began. There were wolves on this island. The Lobo Guará. They hunted in fractal pattern, non-linear arrangements of entropic movement. Chaos governed the intuition of these predators, and many believed that the Labirinto belonged to them. Tigressa drew a German pistol from her sash, already primed. She could tell that her partner was unarmed by the way his hands were eased. It mattered little, she held plenty silver on her person for any wolf brave enough to gamble.

 

“You don’t carry any weapons. What is it that sits in your satchel?”

 

The Magician revealed the contents: a tamborim, a handful of cruzeiros, a pack of Tarot cards, and a bundle of straw. He handed her the bundle.

 

“This is the key after the final door. What do you know about the center of the crossroads?”

 

“One of the ferrymen was eager enough to tell me. There is a Black Ram that lives in the breast of the maze. The Bay locals say this whole place is earthbound purgatory. A cage for the Devil and his golden crown, built by God. Some believe it’s the other way around. The only consistent legend is that reward comes with taming the Ram.”

 

“It’s not a Ram. It’s a miracle machine. A wishing well. A djinn trapped in a magic lamp.”

 

Tigressa pocketed her pistol as they continued into the green.

 

---

​

FROM THE BLIND MAN’S ‘CYCLOPAEDIA RECURSIVO’

 

“The ‘Labirinto’ was a massive sphere sitting at the center of the Ilha Aguaraçu. A design adhering to the concepts of Elliptic Geometry, the Labirinto’s path followed the shape of the structure’s periphery. It distorts the perspective of those that enter, constantly spitting one out to rooms both previous and unknown. Direction is fallacy in the Labirinto. There is no left, no right, because its nature is to defy Euclidean spatial intuition. A straight path leads one back to the first room, the exit now obscured. There is a thick fog above the walls of the maze, preventing one from viewing the other paths along the structure, as well as the center of the Labirinto. Many paths appear identical, yet lead to completely different rooms, of which there are an unknown number. The Labirinto is slowly rotating at a constant speed, meaning that the first room after entering would be different than before. There are no edges, no ends to the maze. There is always another corridor, another room. Finding the center depends on understanding the structure more than any kind of point or path. There is only one individual known to have emerged from the Labirinto.”

 

---

​

The jeering of wolves had ceased. They arrived at the goliath just as the sun declined into the trees. It was too titan for the architecture of man, only God could fashion something this mammoth. The Labirinto stood sentry in the Atlantic night, its porcelain mouth hanging open.

 

“Why did you come here?”

 

Tigressa stared at the straw bundle in her hands as she crafted her reply for The Magician.

 

“The Ram rewards. I have an empty space in my chest that needs to be gone. About a year ago, I lost my sister to herself. We had spent a month chartering Asia Minor when she decided on a lone hike up Mount Aratat. They found her body three days later at the base of the summit. I only wish to know the malady that drove her to jump.”

 

The pair stood silent for a while before Tigressa decided to speak again.

 

“And you? What great ordeal charts one towards the final door?”

 

“I came to South America looking for answers. I’ve worn many lives under this sky; a cobbler, a politician, a gunman, a vagabond, a priest, a whore, a poet. Now I play at the esoterica. I become a Magician, chasing smoke behind the mirror. My next trick is hiding within a dream that has haunted me for weeks. What I desire is revelation to end the sleepless nights.”

 

The concept of epiphany was alien to Ilha Aguaraçu, yet these strangers rebelled without hesitation. This brief closeness was enough to carry them into the maw.

 

The stomach of the behemoth was a frightening beauty. Milk-white hallways and paths of pale sand laying in the shadow of the internal smog, clouds interlocked as an inkblot partition above. There was no use in laying thread, marking walls, or drawing maps. Even staring too long into the corridor corners induced vertigo. These things they knew from the start. All that could be done was to yield to the impossibility of the architecture.

 

There were trials and tests throughout the Labirinto. There was a room where the challenge was to reach the exit on the opposing side using only one leg. Another room had them make soup from the stones and gravel that decorated the floor, then drink. One room was designed so that the exit door could be opened only by playing an original piece of music, which The Magician composed with his tamborim.

 

They spent what seemed like hours indulging in the riddles of the maze: playing elaborate memory games with bone-dice, building houses of cards, even catching flies with their eyes closed. The strangest task required them to sit and meditate for hours, and only by reaching a trance state would the door open. In that room, The Magician’s dream visited him again.

 

“Magician. What peers at you from the darkness?”

 

“The dream. I’m not sure if it even belongs to me.”

 

He could not feel Tigressa sitting next to him anymore.

 

“The moon is at zenith. I’m swimming in a river. The water is raven-hued, alive, rippling and cool. At the river-bottom lie skeletons painted in different colors, perfectly intact, and they are all holding hands. Saffron hangs in the air and I want to weep for the sweetness, but my tears are not worthy of this bliss. There’s a boy here with his sister. They are playing in the indigo. He calls me to shore. He tells me something.”

 

The Magician opened his eyes to find himself outside of the Labirinto, the dream-child standing before him. The boy cupped his hand around The Magician’s ear, presenting an enigma. Only this time, it wasn’t obscured.

 

“Gold is meaningless in the land of whispers. A ruse of light. A mirage in the narrative. Fiction is everything on the stage. You look for the cat inside the box regardless. I am here. I am not. Music is a word written to remember. Eleven letters. Repeating vowels. I speak. You listen.”

 

The exit was revealed. It was the final door. Tigressa and The Magician emerged from the trance state. She turned to see that he had refused to stand.

 

“I do not know if I wish to continue, nor if I can.”

 

“The center has presented itself. We must take our tribulations before the face of judgement.”

 

“I’ve come to feel that shamanic intent is an anvil. Wearing this visage has stretched my comprehension of infinity, my resolve with the unknown. It seems the misdirection of stars works against the drive of knowledge, iron chains in the gulag.”

 

Tigressa approached him. He met her gaze. In her eyes he could see that the words she would say were chosen long ago.

 

“We are mathematicians, all of us, seeking the mapped plane and sculpted axiom. Seeking the defiance of time. The last sound is unveiled by confronting the topology of humanity. The hour roars and the boulevard is long, but understand that the size of infinity has already been determined. There is no other option than to look, and we must do so unfaltering.”

 

The Magician bowed his head to clear his eyes.

 

“Dear Tigressa, the turn of your wand is a truth I cannot deny. I relent to your algebra.”

 

She helped The Magician up and they proceeded through the gateway.

 

The breast of the maze was a circular chamber different than the other rooms they’d seen. The walls were made of a bleak basalt, tattooed with a myriad of converging grids in white paint. The floor was not gravel, but a clean cut marble. A small maroon circle outlined in the crossroads held the Black Ram, watching them. Its horns were solid gold, perfectly trimmed, and its eyes were colorless wells. The Magician tracked the patterns that surrounded them.

 

“The lattice on the walls… it’s a map of the maze… inconceivable to charter.”

 

Tigressa did not acknowledge. She couldn’t take her eyes off the Ram.

 

“You have the straw, Tigressa. Go. Feed it and get your answers.”

 

She removed the bundle and handed it back to The Magician.

 

“I don’t need to tame the Ram. I never planned to. The story I told you was a façade, I’ve never had a sister. All I wanted was to see if this was real.”

 

The Magician laughed. He walked towards the Ram and held out the straw. The Ram moved before his hand, muted hooves crossing the edge of the ring. The Ram accepted the offering, taking it up in its mouth and returning to the circle. The Magician could see his reflection in the warp of the golden horns. The message of the dream-child was clear.

 

“Abracadabra.”

 

The Labirinto stopped rotating. Three doors opened from the sides of the chamber. A savage cackling swept the room, followed by a gang of nine wolves. The pack of Lobo Guará was haggard, emaciated, yearning for something to bloody their teeth. The Magician held back Tigressa’s wrist as she reached for her gun, and they silently watched the beasts corral the circle.

 

The Black Ram did not react to the jagged formation of the Lobos, a fanged perimeter set to devour. It chose instead to kneel at the center and fall asleep. In that moment, the appetite of wolves had no taste for mercy, and they carved the Ram into a spill. There was no scream, no stir in the reaving. Slumber had taken our animal into an eternal dream, far away from the Labirinto.

​

Once the pack departed, The Magician and Tigressa examined the flayed remnants. All that was left were the golden horns, untouched. The hanging smog retreated into the walls, the anatomy of the maze unveiled. The two did not raise their heads to see the infinitude of rooms, the tapestry of cloned corridors. The testament of the Black Ram held their eyes in spell. The stillness was broken when The Magician collected the horns from the ground, and he accompanied Tigressa through the wolf doors.

 

There was no gossip among the insects on the way back to the beachhead. What was there to chatter? The Lobos had eaten. The tribes had retreated to opposing sides of the forest, preparing for final combat at dawn where they would destroy each other. The Labirinto was closed. The Ram was dead. The Ilha Aguaraçu was breathing.

 

They paused on the coast, witnessing the waves twist the face of the Atlantic. The Magician held the golden horns for a moment before gifting them to Tigressa.

 

“I understand the flame’s charade. The curtains are static after the cabaret. I leave the magic word with you. Goodbye, Tigressa.”

 

He lifted his canoe into the shallows, slowly streaming towards the mainland. Tigressa sat on the bank and cleaned the horns with saltwater. As she buried them in the sand, she recalled the song he had written with his little instrument back in the Labirinto. Tigressa hummed the melody, watching The Magician drift until he disappeared into the silver curtain.

 

In 100 years, after the tribes have been forgotten, after the island is eaten by the waves, young boys will find the horns on the coast of some foreign land. They will be put on display in a museum. No one will know where they came from, no one will understand for a very long time. The horns will sit in a glass box, waiting. Many will pass by without a glance. Some will stay, take a photograph, maybe even try at the mystery. But there will be few who truly see the horns and think about them after they leave. Those few will remember while they lay in bed before falling asleep.

 

And that memory will be music.

 

---

 

“The night I found out, I cried until the stars turned. I couldn’t fathom how all the running could stop, locked doors and red lights commanding this small age of wonder to simply cease. The reaper spat on our immortality, plucked the teeth from notions of climbing sunsets & cereal toys, of picky eating & water games. I could not trust the kisses from my mother when the thin white face sat in the corner of everything. Death is too old a truth for boys to look in the eye. I will never forget what happened in that sleep until my final twilight. I was standing in the water. And then you came. I don’t know who they were, but they were behind you. You had died. You were happy. I was not afraid. You were here with me. I asked where you went. I asked if you were okay. You promised me there was nothing to worry about. All is peace. All is good. Everyone is smiling. Then, they told you to come back. I understood. I remembered. Our time still lives. We are little boys chasing each other in the grass. Sharing the same bed. Playing the same games. Singing the same songs.

 

I can hear my brother. Everything is going to be okay.”

 

 

~ Dedicated to Jorge Luis Borges & Marcos Borges ~