Free The Mapmaker's Daughter by Laurel Corona

against the Moors, who control North Africa and still hold Granada. It’s a very good dream, but Papa tells me that until explorers find the bottom of Africa, it’s best not to count on sailing around it so easily. Until Henry’s men find the Gold River, it’s fruitless to think of getting to Prester John that way, if indeed such a river or such a man exists. “I draw what the prince tells me to,” he says, “and if he wants me to show a river that may not be there, I’ll do it. But even a prince can’t make something real just by putting it on a map.”
    ***
    I am on Chuva, staring out to sea, when I glimpse the masts of Henry’s latest expedition growing tall on the horizon. I hurry back to tell my father, who sends Martim at full gallop into Raposeira with the news.
    Within a few weeks, Father has a new logbook to examine, with drawings and descriptions of more than a hundred leagues of newly explored coast. The Gold River, it seems, must be pushed even farther south, and the bottom of Guinea as well.
    The prince is undisturbed by this news and is not pressuring my father to finish. His attention is now focused on something else—the capture of Tangiers, a day’s ride from Ceuta on the north coast of Africa. Prince Henry is famous for having captured Ceuta from the Moors, but twenty years is a long time to see no further triumph for Christendom.
    He has been in Lisbon the last few months, convincing his brother, King Duarte, to attack Tangiers. Now that he has gotten royal approval, he is too busy to summon my father, and with no translating to do, I have little to occupy my time except daydreams. These I weave into fantasies about the life I would have if I weren’t an eleven-year-old girl living a solitary life on a cape at the end of the world.
    When I leave the house to go riding, it takes me awhile to get used to noise. My voice sounds foreign when I greet Martim, and Chuva’s soft whinnies seem to come from another world. Then, as my ears adjust, my senses start to tingle, and I feel the heat on my skin, the wind in my hair, the soft leather reins in my hand as if I were experiencing them for the first time. Then I am gone into a world of colors, textures, and sounds, where I roam, dizzy with imagination and spilling over with all the yearnings of my heart.
    Everything is music. I understand this in the drum of Chuva’s hooves, the syncopated crash of waves inside sea caves, the crackle of foam as waves recede around my toes, the calls of birds on the wing. Out here in the world of the hearing, I inhabit the place music comes from, part of one great soul from which Martim, Tareyja, and their friends pull their joyful cries and pained laments as they make music outside their cottage on summer evenings.
    Colors seem like living things, the spirits of ancient gods perhaps, lingering in the world like a taste on the tongue long after the food is gone. The sea, the cliffs, the beach, the point at Sagres change by the hour as if they are passing thoughts in the mind of something, someone, beyond all comprehension.
    The Holy One. I have never stopped believing in him. I don’t understand the idea that God wants to be worshipped one way alone, and when I feel overwhelmed by the immensity and beauty of his creation, I am glad my mother taught me to bless and praise him everywhere.
    My prayers and dreams are wrapped up together, vague and contradictory. “Let me leave my mark in the world,” I say to the air around me. I don’t want to feel so invisible, yet I’m torn between wishing to move away from this place and wanting it to be me and I it.
    I spend my days talking with lizards and birds, watching the clouds change shapes overhead, and acting out stories where I am a queen with magical powers, a warrior princess, or the only female sea captain the world has ever known.
    “Looks like a storm’s ahead.” I hold my spyglass as I peer at the horizon, my legs planted wide on the beach to withstand the