The Shepherd Who Sailed Off Without Knowing Where He Was Going

It was the summer of 1492, although in those Atlantic islands summer never ended. A Guanche goatherd —that was what the natives of those lands were called— tended his flock in the most absolute solitude. Gonzalo, as he was known, was not yet twenty and had barely spoken a word to another human being other than his mother.

His friends were the goats. He cared for them with a devotion that came close to tenderness, and the few times he had felt another warm body pressed against his own had been with one of them, on the cold mountain nights. He knew no woman. Perhaps that was why he did not miss them: you do not long for what you have never had.

Every afternoon he would climb down from the cliffs to bathe in a small lagoon at the foot of a narrow waterfall. The water was cold and clear, and the roar of the fall drowned out any other sound in the world. Afterwards he would go back to the flock and, at dusk, return to the hut where he lived with his mother. His father had died of a fever when he was still a child, and since then nothing in their routine had ever changed: the goats, the milk, the mother who would go down to the port to sell it.

He had never set foot in the port. Nothing beyond his mountains stirred the slightest curiosity in him.

Until that afternoon.

When he went down for his usual bath, he saw that there was a figure in the water. At first he hid on instinct. Then, with the stealth of someone stalking a prey he did not know why he wanted, he moved through the brush until he was close enough to look without being seen.

He could only make out a back and a long, soaked mane of hair. The body stood still, upright, and only the arms moved, lifting and lowering water over the head. It was the first time he had ever seen anyone in that lagoon. More than that, it was the first time he had seen anyone in those mountains who was not of his own blood.

Then the figure turned to leave.

Before his eyes appeared a beautiful face, the most beautiful he remembered ever having seen. And as the woman walked toward the shore, he discovered something else: two firm breasts, the nipples erect and pointing forward as if they wanted to indicate a direction. Then the belly, smooth and perfect. And at the end, the sex covered in dark hair, hypnotic, which he could not stop staring at.

The woman finished getting out of the water and lay down on the grass beside a pile of cloth that must have been her clothes.

Gonzalo felt that, without having decided it, his member had become not hard, but rock hard. It throbbed. No night with his goats had ever provoked such an erection in him, and it frightened him as much as it excited him.

He stayed there, hidden and trembling, until the girl dressed and left by the way she had come.

What had just happened was bewildering. What’s happened to me?, he wondered, and he had no one to ask. Only the goats, and from them he expected no answer.

***

The following afternoon he returned to the lagoon in the naïve hope of seeing her again. He hid in the same place and waited. Hours passed and no one appeared. He came back the next afternoon, and the next, always with the same result. He began to doubt whether it had really happened or whether he had dreamed it during some nap under the sun.

He had almost resigned himself to forgetting it when, one afternoon, while he was swimming naked in the middle of the lagoon, he heard footsteps on the path.

It was her.

He had no time to get out of the water and hide, so he stayed motionless, the water up to his chest. The young woman came to the shore and looked at him without shame. She was fascinated by the boy’s blond, wet hair and those shoulders shaped by years of climbing cliffs after the goats.

Rather than leave, she slowly began to undress, never taking her eyes off him. When she was completely naked, she stepped into the water and came closer.

“Hello. My name is Catalina. And you?”

“Uh… Gonzalo.”

“And what are you doing here? I’d never seen anyone in this lagoon.”

“I’m a shepherd. I come here to bathe almost every afternoon. And you?”

“I think that’s obvious,” she laughed. “I’m bathing.”

“I can see that. But no one ever comes here.”

“I arrived on the island two weeks ago. I’m the daughter of the Count of Almenara, the lord of these lands. I discovered the lagoon one day when I went out for a walk and slipped away from the ladies.”

“I don’t know that count,” he said with a shrug. “I didn’t even know this island had an owner.”

Catalina laughed again and splashed a handful of water in his face. Gonzalo went from surprise to counterattack, and so, almost without realizing it, they began a game that brought them closer with every splash. They grappled, tried to dunk each other, and through their laughter their bodies grew ever closer, slippery and cold on the surface, burning on the inside.

After a while, she got out and lay down on the grass again.

“Gonzalo, come. Lie down beside me.”

The boy climbed out of the water with an erection he could no longer hide. The young woman’s mouth fell slightly open when she saw the shepherd’s member. She had not seen too many naked men, but this far surpassed anything she had imagined.

He lay down. She could not take her eyes off him.

“Why do you keep looking at me like that?”

“I’d never seen anything like it. It’s huge.”

“I suppose all men have it like that,” he replied, truly knowing nothing else.

“Like that? Not even close. May I touch it?”

“If you want, I don’t mind.”

Catalina closed her hand around that member and began to move it slowly, up and down. In a few seconds it was hard as the waterfall’s stone. He noticed his own sex growing damp, and he did not care: all his senses were focused on what she had between her fingers.

“It’s incredible,” she murmured.

Gonzalo closed his eyes. His legs tightened, his belly contracted, and a thick spurt shot out, tracing a long arc across the grass. Catalina’s eyes opened wide, but she did not stop her hand. And, far from going soft, the member remained as firm as before.

Then she bent down and took it into her mouth. The boy thought he was touching glory. Catalina tried to take as much of him as she could, but she barely managed a third. A couple of minutes later he came again, this time into her mouth. Without stopping swallowing, she took two fingers to her own sex and, while doing so, had an orgasm she did not even try to hide.

When she got her breath back, she sat up and began to dress.

“I have to go. My father will be missing me. Tomorrow?”

“I’ll be here, Catalina.”

***

The following afternoon they met again. First the bath, then the rest. This time they consummated it on the grass, her on top, he unable to believe what he was living. Catalina felt completely full, and her orgasms followed one after another without giving her any respite. Gonzalo seemed tireless; to his size he added a hardness that never slackened.

They sought each other without rest and only stopped when it was time to return. Day after day they went back to the lagoon, and day after day they gave themselves to each other as if the world were going to end at nightfall.

A couple of weeks later, the Count of Almenara began to worry. His daughter went out every afternoon without explanation, and her appearance had changed: her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright, and she had a new thinness he did not know how to interpret. He ordered one of his knights to follow her unseen and report everything.

At dusk, the knight returned with his head bowed.

“My lord, young Catalina meets every afternoon with an islander in a lagoon not far from here. They bathe naked and then… they give themselves to each other without modesty.”

The count flew into a rage. He ordered that the next day they go out hunting the shepherd and bring him chained before him.

***

That afternoon, Gonzalo sensed that something was wrong. Catalina did not appear, and instead he noticed strange movement among the bushes. The instinct of a man raised among cliffs put him on alert before he understood why.

The soldiers burst out suddenly, running toward him with swords raised and shouting for him to surrender. The boy had enough reflexes to leap twice and scramble up onto a large rock behind him.

“Quick, seize him!”

But Gonzalo knew every stone in those mountains. With the agility of a mountain goat he slipped away uphill and vanished among the rocks before anyone could reach him.

When they reported the escape, the count clenched his fists.

“Damn it. Tomorrow bring more men. And if you have to search this whole island inch by inch, do it. I want him alive or dead.”

They tried for days. The shepherd always kept them in sight and never allowed himself to be seen. Unable to catch him, the count made another decision: he would send Catalina back to the peninsula on the first ship that sailed, far from that savage. There would be time to hunt him down afterward.

The young woman’s protests were useless. She was going back to Castile. But she was determined to say goodbye to her beloved at any cost.

***

The day before her departure, she managed to slip away. She did not know whether she would find him, but she was certain that he would see her. And so it was: it was Gonzalo who stepped out in front of her at a bend in the path.

“They’re sending me back to Seville,” she told him, her eyes wet.

“I don’t want you to go.”

“I don’t want to leave either. But they won’t let me choose.”

“Then I’ll go with you.”

“You can’t come on my ship. They’ll be waiting to seize you. But you can board another one later and join me.”

“And how do I know which ship to take?”

“That doesn’t matter,” she said, taking his hands. “Any vessel leaving here is bound for Cádiz or Huelva. This is the end of the world, Gonzalo. Once you’re on the peninsula, look for the palace of the Count of Almenara, in Seville. I’ll be there.”

“You’re saying any ship will take me?”

“Any one. There’s nowhere else to go from here. I have to leave now. I love you.”

“I love you, Catalina. I’ll see you in Seville.”

She boarded the next morning at dawn. Gonzalo waited a full week, until he thought the watch had eased, and then he went down to the port for the first time in his life.

***

The port was a seething mass of sailors, bundles, and voices he did not understand. He asked after the first ship that was about to leave. They pointed him to three vessels preparing to weigh anchor.

He took advantage of the back-and-forth of the men loading merchandise to slip aboard one of them. He hid under some tarps, in a corner of the deck, and through a hole in the canvas he watched the bustle. On the little shelter over the helm he was able to make out the ship’s name: Caravel María Galante.

He thought of Catalina. He thought of Seville, of a palace he could not imagine, of a life with her that he barely dared to dream of. For the first time, the end of the world did not seem so terrible.

An hour later, a voice cut across the deck like a lash.

“You still haven’t changed the name! Do it now!”

A few sailors approached with planks and tools. They ripped off the sign that said María Galante and nailed another in its place. From his hiding place, Gonzalo laboriously spelled out the new letters: Santa María.

Fifteen minutes later, another voice, forceful and solemn, rose above the murmur of the port.

“Admiral, we’re ready!”

“Good. Cast off the lines,” the man replied. “The immense ocean and the Indies await us. The Virgin and the Catholic Monarchs protect us.”

And under the tarps, dreaming of Seville, the shepherd who had never left his island set sail, without knowing it, for the other side of the world.