Your World

PROLOGUE

"I only had the right to know of their existence and enter their world because I was chosen, because HE chose me. And this had happened to me just after I'd gone through some unavoidable upsets. I don't know either if it was surprising or fate. However, if one only looked at it from my point of view, I'd always think that I decided all this on my own.

So, I accepted the power he offered me and saw what he wanted me to see. At no time had he said his world was beautiful, he hadn't needed to. Beautiful but dangerous, as ancient as human's, and which possessed everything one had ever desired.

And I had to say that I've had various dreams in my life, but this reality went beyond them all.

But in the end, it didn't really matter. Only he did, his existence, that seemed forever torn between duty and desire, and that I was unable to ignore.

From the first moment I met him, and even knowing perfectly well the heartbreak that would follow, no regret crossed my mind, nor did I have any doubt about how I felt. And I never will, until my last breath. "

***

That day, the sky was cloudy as usual, but sunlight filtered through to illuminate the Amazon rainforest that stretched to the horizon. The green foliage glistened with moisture and countless animal calls echoed in every corner of this supreme realm of flora and fauna, still so mysterious and partially unexplored despite man's greed and progress.

On this day, as is almost always the case in the modern era, the sounds of heavy machinery and hard-working people rose into the air and disturbed the harmony of nature. It was a road construction site, where some twenty workers were busy building a road that was no doubt clandestine. Twenty workers dressed in burgundy-blue overalls that, from a distance, made them look like huge Smurfs.

The site foreman, a debonair man with a greying moustache, went here and there to give orders as much as to follow the progress of operations.

A red-haired worker, whose origins we could only guess at, was felling trees with his electric saw, disturbing and chasing away the monkeys, who shouted at him as if aware of the situation.

"Don't forget, Cory, to cut only what's necessary, it'll save us time," the foreman reminded him, amused despite himself by the vindictive cries the monkeys were hurling at his flamboyant-haired employee.

"Yes, boss," nodded Cory, answering the monkeys' angry glare. "And I'm sure these monkeys are part of what's needed to cut."

Cory had barely finished unplugging the tree he'd just felled when a huge metal clamp grabbed it and carried it away in a huge transport truck already well filled with long, thick trunks.

"Hey, look out!" cried the Irishman. "You could have hurt me."

An indifferent apology was his only response.

The driver's name was Bill, a factory worker fresh from Montana, always in a taciturn mood. You got the impression he'd never laughed in his life. That fun was a concept totally absent from his existence.

When this latest trunk was placed in the back of his truck, his walkie-talkie went off.

"Bill?

It was the foreman.

"Yes, boss."

"It's okay, you can make your delivery, we'll have lunch when you get back."

"Yes, boss," he replied laconically.

So, he set off as ordered.

Seeing the huge truck disappear at the end of the freshly compacted road, the worker driving the compactor laughed and triggered his walkie-talkie.

"The unfortunate clown is gone," he said, addressing the man closest to him, a worker named Mateo, who had come straight from the slums of Mexico, but had managed to find a way to survive, albeit illegally.

"Stop it, Tom, what you're saying isn't funny."

They both burst out laughing.

"Stop joking," said the boss, even though the tone of his voice showed that he totally shared their point of view.

When Bill returned, they took their lunch break as planned. They'd pulled out chairs from a huge bulldozer and each had taken a small lunch box. At the beginning of each week, before starting work, the foreman handed his workers a yellow envelope containing the lunch quotient. And every Friday, at the end of the day, the same foreman would hand them another envelope, still yellow, but this time containing their wages for the week, which was laughable given that they were still working on Saturdays. However, the road authorities, in their almost non-existent goodness, had decided to give them a day off, as every human being deserves, and that of course was Sunday. The pay was, of course, commensurate with the work offered, for nothing could be more lucrative for the greedy company directors capable of building this kind of road through such a beautiful, sacred and protected place than to employ people who would cost them as little as possible, people who had so few options that they had no choice but to accept hard work, devoid of any insurance.

In short, at least on this day, these small, over-employed and forgotten workers had a little something to eat, since this very day was a Friday.

"Ah, you jerks, I can't wait for tonight!" exclaimed Cory, his ungraceful face almost handsome as his smile radiated. "And you all know why?"

"Yes, we do, Irishman," replied the worker nicknamed Old Clown. "Alas for us, this is not our weekend."

"Who cares? I'm going to have a nice evening with Loreta."

Chenoa, Tom's friend, an Amazonian Indian who preferred to leave his people for the Western world when one of the priests who had visited his village unwittingly dangled the beauty of the modern world in front of him, stopped eating and frowned as he turned to the Mexican.

"Loreta from the Men's Dream pub? I thought you were happily married."

"Precisely, that's the reason for my marital success."

He let out a mocking growl.

"Let me give you some advice, kid. Never believe the nonsense of psychiatrists or those defenders of virtue that married people must be faithful. You have to let yourself go discreetly from time to time to feel good, and come home with enough money so that the wife doesn't harass you. Because let's face it, women value money more than their husbands."

"But if you're planning to spend your evening with Loreta, how much money are you going to bring home?"

The Mexican preferred not to answer, and in any case, there was no plausible answer.

"You're just being unfaithful," Bill said, with a face even more taciturn than usual.

"I'm more realistic, old man. Look at your marriage," he added with insufferable malice.

"I'm divorced."

"That's what I said!"

His friend Tom couldn't help but burst out laughing.

"Shut up, Tom! At least I was married, not like some people."

"And it cost you so much that you had no choice but to run off here in the middle of the forest, building a road that shouldn't be built for a pittance!"

"I think you two comedians are really looking for trouble," said the unhappy clown as he walks over to Tom and Matéo sitting side by side.

"The site manager stopped him with a seriousness that's hard to maintain, laying a hand on his chest. "Lunch break is over. Everyone back to work!"

"Yes, boss!" they all exclaimed in unison.

Later, the workers and their infernal noisy machines arrived at a fairly narrow crevasse. Mateo the Unfaithful, driver of the bulldozer leading the procession of construction machinery, seemed to spot something through the immense, century-old trees, and frowned as he slowed to a complete stop.

He frowned as he slowed to a complete stop. "What the..." he asked himself as he opened the car door and looked at the huge obstacle in front of them.

The foreman, sitting in the huge truck just behind the bulldozer, saw his worker stop and get out of his machine, he in turn got out and joined Mateo. He hadn't yet noticed why the Mexican had stopped like that.

Mateo," he began, "what are you having? I hope you've got a good reason for..." But he finally stopped when he saw the reason. And it was a big one.

A huge boulder that took up almost the entire width of the crevasse. But not only that. It was engraved with strange, incomprehensible symbols.

"It's a sacred rock, boss," said the Irishman in a low, fearful tone that startled the two men.

The other workers joined them, and soon they became aware of something they hadn't noticed a few seconds earlier, and didn't even have to worry about. The almost monastic silence of the place.

Whereas from the beginning, the forest had been one with the noises caused by all the life that reigned there. And all that life-giving noise had now disappeared as if it had never existed, which was really worrying.

The workers had also sunk into a tense silence.

The foreman was the first to break the oppressive silence that enveloped them.

"Right, get ready to destroy this sinister rock".

"But boss!" exclaimed Cory again, his eyes wide with fear. "It's a sacred object! Huge maybe, but sacred nonetheless!"

"No kidding!"

"Well, it's obvious. I don't know exactly what these symbols mean, but I'm sure they originated in my country and are very ancient. Spells of some kind."

"Please!" interjected Tom with a growl. "You may come from the land of wizards, but you're not going to make us believe this nonsense!"

"They're not!" retorted the Irishman, almost shouting. "It's not for nothing that my country was nicknamed so!"

"Of course! I'm from Salem myself, and I don't believe in witches and wizards for all that!"

"Then why is this place, which is right in the middle of the so-called first lung of the earth, filled with all existing fauna, as silent and sinister as a graveyard!"

"Not quite! We're here all right, and so are your stupid monkeys!"

Cory turned and saw the monkeys, silent but sporting faces expressing fierce fury, posted high in the surrounding trees.

"What's going on here?"

"I don't know and I don't care!

"But maybe our West Indian could give us an answer," Bill advanced with the most annoying malice.

But the West Indian was no pushover, and he replied unabashedly.

"Anyway, you're the last person who could give us an answer!"

Bill grinned in fury.

"What did you say?"

"That's enough!" said the boss, taking a deep breath.

"Yes, I'm perfectly aware of the sanctity of this place, but we have no choice. Nobody has a choice since we all chose to do this job. So get out the dynamites and blow this black thing up, sacred or not!"

Mateo and Tom surrounded the rock with dynamite.

"Explosion in fifteen seconds!" they shouted as they took cover with the others.

The boulder exploded with a deafening roar, causing the monkeys to screech and, without waiting, hurl the debris at the workers, particularly Cory.