My Dearest Marie
I have traveled for many weeks from the Spanish port of Alicante across the Atlantic, braving tempests and disease, pirates and slavers, starvation and Gods as beautiful as they were merciless to reach the great jungles of South America.
We have seen miraculous things already – fish that leapt out the water and hovered as if borne on the wind for many miles, huge leviathans of the deep that snorted plumes 30 feet high, flat sea monsters with wings wide as three men and spiked tales that floated hungrily after the ship, fish of all manner of colors and seaweed that glowed with eldritch green lights in the dark.
Many are the tales I have for you already and many are the most mysterious and unfathomable things that I have seen, but strangest and most mysterious of them all was the man who I met out in the ruins of Ingarica. There in the once great citadel of the Incas, their capital and the site of their ghastly sacrifices, my life has come to be changed forever.
We had traveled many miles inland from the port of São Sebastião through the hot jungles, which are quieter and more foreboding than I had ever imagined. We had lost over three quarters of our company by the time we reached the ruins, to fever, dysentery, attacks by local tribesmen, our leader Costeau rolled off his canoe by a crocodile, two men savaged by starvation and one to snake bite.
I myself was riddled with fever and perhaps that can only explain the miraculous things that I saw out there in the jungle. The Incas have a proverb “Those who lose dreaming are lost,” and maybe this too can help explain when my words fail me.
The night after we reached Ingarica, we were attacked. There was fire and chaos and I fled into the night. I must have fallen and become delirious, for when I awoke the hardened face of The Man With No Name was crowded over me. While he cared for me I saw this man levitate whilst meditating, I saw him wrestle a python larger than any snake I thought imaginable, I saw him speak to plants and dance before the moon. He fed me powerful medicines that transported me into other worlds and I saw you Marie, my dearest wife, in a thousand lives and in all we loved each other, although in not all did we know it.
The Man With No Name was muscular and lithe, brown skinned and hard of face and habit. Among his many strange rituals were to stand under thundering waterfalls, to hold his breath for many minutes such that I was certain he had perished, to demonstrate incredible flexibility of body, being able to contort himself into frightful shapes at sunrise, to show inhuman strength and to act without question in all things. He told me that he had once been a warrior among his people before he was banished for defeating the King’s favorite.
He believed that breath is both life and a weapon. Before combat he would lower his heart rate, sucking his muscular stomach in and acquiring control over his mind and the mind of his opponent through his lungs. In the cauldron of the arena, among the bloodlust of the baying crowds, he would begin the contest 20 beats lower than the other man and by the time their hearts were both screaming he would still be 20 lower. And it was in that space he would ruthlessly exploit an opportunity, for he said fatigue makes cowards of us all.
He was a grappler by trade who played human chess with his victims. He believed his mind was his most deadly asset and yet as he explained to me one day, he in truth did not exist. I have tried to transcribe his words to the best of my ability, but I fear I did not truly grasp his meaning.
“If you allow yourself to be here, with an empty mind, you don’t commit to the offense or the defense. You commit to give nothing and to take everything. If you give me an opportunity I will be there. If you try to surprise me I will be there, accordingly, to defend myself. Every possibility exists and there are no surprises because there are no expectations. The mind is empty even when it's boiling, this is how I am. I am not existing. I am not there. God is there. Therefore, I am God, and no man can defeat God.”
After he said this to me, he left the next morning. Why he did not explain, or when or if he would ever return. He was not a man of whom you could ask questions, and in this way I think he was very beautiful.
I am running out of parchment and the ink that I have fashioned from local tinctures is very nearly finished. I believe that I will die out here in the jungle without ever seeing you again, my beloved Marie. But do not cry for me. For we have loved each other in every universe I have seen, for when I am not there, God is there, and God as you know is love.
I remain, your devoted husband,
Edgar
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