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Felix de la Rosa had no need for a map, nor a compass, to navigate his way through the Amazon.  For many years he had, literally, followed his nose and this time was no exception.  You see, Felix’s nose was rather extraordinary.  To the naked eye it did not appear to be a particularly interesting or spectacular proboscis - ugly, disproportional and slightly askew - certainly not the sort of snout that an olfactory chemist dreams of.

Felix was born with an exceptionally heightened sense of smell, present even in the womb.  His mother reported that he would kick violently when she polished her silver and punch when she bleached her whites.  So acute was his nasal detection that he could smell bread baking in an oven from the next town and roses long before the buds had come to bloom.

As he matured, his nose grew more refined and his breadth of smell proved seemingly endless.  He could home in on precise tea blends from old stained cups and saucers at a jumble sale.  His passageways could identify every ingredient of a dish without it ever even touching his lips.  From a single drop of wine on a handkerchief he could reel off the year, grape and vineyard.  His adenoids registered the smells of that which one never thought even had a smell.  Ever wondered what a lie smells like? Or thunder from one hundred miles away?

These inhalations often had grave disadvantages, some of which he had adapted to and overcome, others he simply suffered with.  A few years ago, after returning home from Antarctica, he had found himself engulfed with an intoxicating and utterly repugnant stench as he opened the door.  He later discovered his neighbour had laid down rat poison and the wretches had nestled on their deathbeds under his stairs.  The little carcasses had been rotting for a good couple of months and the shock to his sensory system brought him out in a blistering rash.

There were times when a concoction of smells so fervent and complex - such as a bustling market, or a line of street vendors - would overwhelm him to the extent that he would grow dizzy and his head would swell with such pressure, as if a balloon about to burst, until he fainted.  For this very reason he carried a clothes peg with him at all times in case of such an emergency and took added care wherever he turned.

One blessing was that he could handle rubbish and the enemy of the nose: bin juice.  He had his peers to thank for that; Felix was at once revered and ridiculed as a child.  The doctors labelled him hyperosmic, which immediately changed his status from able to disabled and had him promptly branded a freak.  He was subjected to various smell tests from bullies, who hid their awe well and their jealousy took him to the waste dump as punishment.

As an adolescent, he was as self-absorbed, melancholic and full of angst as the next, but coupled with the woes of his ‘disorder’ and cast on the periphery of his social group, he plunged head-first into an abyss of his own making.  Like many of his peers he abstained from washing, an act of spiteful defiance made in the vain hope that he would shock his nose into retreat.  This served only to cast him further away, from himself as well as his usually patient parents.  Constantly invaded by his surroundings, he withdrew into himself further and suffered from a more acute desire for self-reflection than the average inwardly-labouring teenager indulges.

One morning, as he smeared a dribble of egg yolk that had escaped from his soldier and splattered the newspaper, he saw an advert that was to be his salvation. It read:

‘Esteemed Indian tea and spice house seeks apprentice to study the fine olfactory art of developing unique blends in the capital.  Candidate will have an exceptional sense of smell and superior taste.  The employer demands that only rare and special persons apply, for the successful candidate will be one of a kind.’

Intrigued, but as the keeper of very little self-confidence, he did not deem himself to be ‘one of a kind’, and cast the paper aside.  It was his dear mother who, out of desperation for her boy, with a heavy soul and a blackened heart, applied on his behalf.  She did not want him to leave the nest but she felt that it might just be the only thing to save him from himself.

On the immediate acceptance of his application (his mother had a way with words, voluminous at the very least) by a strange Bengali man who went by the name of Bergamot, Felix realised the burden of his existence was perhaps a blessing and boarded the next plane to New Delhi, six agonising weeks later.  Once there, under the guidance of his sonorous senior he learnt the combinations that alleviated ailments, prolonged life and promised beauty.  Felix discovered brews that paved the way to enlightenment, sought forgiveness and cleansed the soul.  He transformed dishes into amorous weapons for brides-in-waiting to impress their prospective husbands and scrutinising in-laws and he developed compounds that inspired love, ignited carnal desire and triggered flirtation.

Felix’s powers became legendary as they passed in whispers through the ears and lips of henna-painted beauties across the land and before long, unrivalled dowries were bestowed and no girl - even those that pained the eye and burnt the chapattis - was cast aside to suffer spinsterhood.  When his teas were served to royalty and warlords alike, each sip unravelled plots of destruction and corruption and paved the way for progress and renewal.  When school children drank from his cup they became the economists and philosophers of tomorrow and when the poor smelt his potions wafting through the streets they were transported to places of supreme opulence.

It was during this time that Felix acquired the distinguished silver streak in his raven-black hair. A three-hundred-year-old Brahmin living in self-exile in the Himalayas had summoned him with a commission.  It was to create an offering to the Gods of the highest order, one that he foresaw would free his soul and grant him prajna. He lived on the Siachen Glacier of Sasar Kangri, close to the Tibetan border and an inhospitable 7,672 metres above sea level, far beyond the clouds.  He was said to have no clothes and use only his hair - a mile in length - to wrap around himself for protection from the winds, surviving by sucking on ice and blue sapphire alone.

The journey was jeopardous and the elements fought hard to steal Felix’s life from him, consuming anything that crossed their path.  With his supplies running low, he had no choice but to walk through the night and he became delirious and began to hallucinate.  He took out the last of his bal mithai - only the crumbs remained - pushing them past his frostbitten lips and into his mouth.  He could not swallow for dehydration and there they remained to dissolve of their own accord.  The winds were howling and the clouds darkened with the promise of an electric storm.  Soon lightning forked fiercely around him.  As he drank the last drop of water from his flask he felt a surge of pain and heat course through his arm, erupting in a brilliant light and then darkness.

Felix awoke days later in the arms of the Brahmin, who wet his lips with the tea for the Gods.  He turned his head and in the ice he saw his reflection.  A stripe of silvery-white now ran from his front right temple curling round to end just behind his ear lobe.  The Brahmin told him that this was a mark of the Gods and would protect him in this life and the next.

Humberto Moredecay eyed the woman’s skull sceptically.  The right side of the cranium had been crushed almost beyond recognition.  Rambling in the forest, she had met her instantaneous death from the impact of a tortoise free-falling at a velocity of 40mph after escaping from the claws of an eagle.  Humberto poured a bag of flour into a bowl, added water from the tap and began to make dough.  After some careful kneading he set about reconstructing the head.

Once the woman’s loaf vaguely resembled an oval shape he went about closing the mouth by inserting a large needle and wire thread through the chin, up through the mouth and out through the nose.  With the skilful use of a little super glue he managed to create just a hint of a curl at the sides of the lips that transformed her expression from one of startled bewilderment to serene contentment.

Humberto surveyed the shelves that covered an entire wall of the room with a rainbow of lotions and potions.  He took down four large jars.  Three clear ones containing formaldehyde, ethanol and methanol and a green one containing homemade disinfectant. He mixed the three clear liquids together to make the embalming fluid and added a few drops of red food colouring, which was his trick for mimicking the healthy glow of life in the skin’s hue.

While the fluids found their way into Silvina Ocampo’s veins, arteries and organs, Humberto went about designing a bespoke headrest to stop her head from tilting to the left - often the side one naturally slept on in life - out of an empty egg box that he kept a stash of for just that reason.

A decade passed and Felix, growing tired of the superficial demands of his customers whose devious hands his elixirs had fallen into, packed his bags, entrusted his three-year-old Plum-headed Parakeet to his landlady and took himself around the world seeking out rare and delicious fragrances.  From that moment on, he dedicated his life to the pursuit and deliverance of these strange and wondrous scents.

In Nepal, he discovered that if one were to mix a red powder used for religious ceremony with the ash of rosewood and a dash of myrrh, the result could only be described as amber.  While trekking through the Atlas Mountains, he came across a bird so small that it and its nest could fit into the palm of your hand.  When this little creature laid its eggs, the shells possessed the odour of humility and good taste, not all that dissimilar to leather.

In South America, he found that the smoke from the cinders left by firewood from a Guyana tree conjured up the image of a woman with hair as black and shiny as that of a scarab beetle.  It was not long after this time that he met with an indigenous tribe of northern Brazil and was told about a mythical orchid.

Folklore had it that this rare and elusive flower grew in the depths of the Amazon jungle. It was said to have grown from the tears of a princess who was distraught after hearing the news that her brother had died in battle.  The flower bloomed there and then and when it opened its leaves, the scent of her brother wafted up and enveloped the girl, giving her great comfort in his memory, as if his arms were around her, absorbing her grief.

The powerful gift of the orchid was its ability to emit comfort and memory smells of past experiences and loved ones; whatever the recipient so desired.  To Felix, it became the Holy Grail, his golden chalice.  He knew he had to track it down on behalf of all the noses in the world and without hesitation, set the wheels in motion for one last trip.

Santiago Devoto rolled down the car window to clear the rain so that he could see outside.  His eyes focused away from the slow-rolling tyres and onto the bloody wreckage of a hare, sliced open by the treads of a motorbike.  Its ruby-red guts spilled out onto the tarmac and merged with the puddles of rainwater to form a pale rose-pink liquid that trickled down towards the curb.  Its body reminded him of the way his piggy bank had looked when he decided to buy his first bike.  The right foot was still twitching as they pulled away. A spasm counting the last few seconds in time: its own death metronome.

The boy watched out of the back window as the animal’s foot came to a rest and wondered who was going to glue it back together again.  His mind joined the dots of previous images that linked themselves to this one and he thought about the sticky mess of legs and wings a fly left on a swat and of a bloated beetle face down in a glass of milk.  Without him knowing, death had come to him time and time again in many shapes and sizes, preparing him for the existential issues it would undoubtedly bring upon him as a grown-up.  Distracted, Santiago turned his attentions to a small Daddy-Long-Legs that had found its way into the car and proceeded to pick the legs off, one by one.

After many years of nasal service, with the discovery of over twenty-thousand smells under his belt from every corner of the world - and a knighthood to prove it - Sir Felix de la Rosa set off on one final journey.  On a particularly sweltering and sticky August day, the reclusive ninety-two-year-old embarked on an intrepid pilgrimage into the jungle to find his one true love. He had had another love - of the youthful, Kamikaze variety - a very long time ago, but the discovery of cologne on the Persian rug by the fireplace had put an abrupt end to that.

Nine days into the jungle - after being deposited at a tributary of the Amazon River by a naked man in a canoe who told him only a two-headed buffoon would continue - Felix came across a hurdle that could have potentially ended his journey on the spot.  His senses had become slightly numbed after a heady day of jungle inhalation and blistering, oppressive heat.  The soles of his shoes, like his faith, were wearing thin.  He had been taken off-guard by a strange odour that he could not quite put his finger on but he knew it was peculiarly and definitively out of place.  It was then that his eyes met with the hollow and desperate gaze of a crocodile, with a very empty stomach.

Felix searched the crevices of his mind for the small nugget of advice that a veteran champion crocodile hunter had once given to him on a tour of Vienna zoo.  A young man in his late twenties, he had discarded it at the time as superfluous but he trusted that his memory had had the better judgment to store it, should such an incident arise.  It came to him just as the crocodile’s jaws snapped at his heels.  Needing no further prompting he proceeded to run in large, fast, but pronounced zigzags.

Fortunately for Felix, crocodiles have great difficulty turning on land, thus slowing them down just enough for an agile nonagenarian to outrun such a creature.  Unscathed, he continued as night fell, grateful to the crocodile hunter and also to his hip flask which provided welcomed relief from the ordeal.  It was as the Scottish nectar trickled down his throat that he remembered where he had smelt the smell of the crocodile before.  It had been amongst the polished mahogany and chrome of a legal firm, wafting up from his divorce papers.

On the eleventh day of his expedition, dejected and exhausted, he collapsed against a tree and wiped the sweat from his eyes.  His bones ached from the marrow outwards and he could feel his inflamed muscles pulsating.  It was then that he sensed something that filled him with dread, like a shadow in the rain.  He had begun to smell his own self-doubt, which is akin to suicide when one is alone in the depths of the jungle.

As his thoughts turned inward and his soul’s prize appeared to be slipping away, he wondered if he perhaps should have listened to the man in the canoe.  Maybe he was deluded, chasing after a fairytale at his age.  Then again, it was all that he had.

He closed his eyes and leant his head against the tree; the sun’s last rays of the evening speared through the canopy above and he felt his thoughts begin to lighten.  The nape of his neck softened and his bones forgot their aches.  Tiny particles were riding the crest of his airwaves, through his nose and meeting the receptors of his brain with crashing euphoria.  He searched for the emotions within himself but they were remote and unfamiliar.  There was a playful quality to them, they reminded him of his past, of India. They seemed to be playing a soundtrack to his life, his senses fusing together as one.  He could hear and see and feel the aromas flashing past him like the carriages of a train.

He opened his eyes and it took a short while for them to adjust in the dusk.  He could faintly trace the outline of her arching petals, her delicate stem.  She took the breath out of him, but there she was.  He forgot the jungle, forgot himself and saw only her in all her glory there in front of him, with leaves of pearl and gold the size of water lilies.  They seemed to be dancing, breathing, laughing.  He extended a tentative hand towards them and they gently recoiled, flirtatiously.  The doors opened and he saw her just as she was, a thing of nature so incredible and unspoilt and he moved around her, waltzing as she blushed.

He was giddy with elation; never before had he experienced such unequivocal joy.  He inhaled deeply the consummation of his life’s ambitions.  Hours passed but for Felix time had ceased to have relevance; he was lost in reverie.  Standing alone and yet at once united, he smelt every single smell he had ever come across and every other that existed, in harmony.  The result was electrifying; it had its own mass, its own being.

In the last few moments there was, he noted, something lingering: an intruder forcing its way into his Zion.  He could not place it at first, but it registered as internal - crude and corporal - rearing its ugly head amongst the ethereal beauty.  His nose began to itch, his eyes to water and his lungs to heave and he realised he was about to sneeze.  As one does prior to expelling a sneeze of gigantic proportions, he sucked in the air around him like a vacuum: taking with it, a bee.

Now, there exists a thing called an orchid bee, also known as the Euglossine bee and indigenous to South America.  What distinguishes these bees from the rest of the Apidae family is that though they behave in a similar fashion, they hardly look like their relatives at all.  That is to say they are not yellow with black stripes.  Still majestic purveyors of immortality and wisdom, they were instead coloured with metallic red, green and gold.

Another trait that distinguishes these marvellous creatures from the common household bee is that instead of the standard powdery pollen, they are equipped to transfer the delicate fragranced oils that the regal orchid secretes for pollination.  While Felix had been enraptured in climbing his Everest of ecstasy, just such a bee had been diligently mopping up these tiny droplets from the orchid’s appendage and carefully depositing them into tiny pockets in his back legs for safe keeping.

On finding itself in this strange man’s nasal cavity, the orchid bee had little choice but to enter further, forced by the vacuum around it.  Upon reaching his brain, frightened and confused, it planted its sting.  At that exact moment, while with dismay it dawned on Felix de la Rosa that he would not have the satisfaction of releasing this particular sneeze, he was overwhelmed with the delicious sweet aroma of his mother’s banana loaf.

A little while later a local tribesman collected his misguided arrow from the heart of a very tall man with a very large nose, who he had mistaken for dinner potential.  He carried the body back to his settlement, where a lady from National Geographic alerted the authorities.

Humberto Moredecay unhooked the carriage from the horse’s bridle and released the bit. He took a brush and began to smooth down the mane and sweat-soaked coat with care, muttering under his breath to the horse.  He sped up as he felt another raindrop, this time heavier than the first and followed in quick succession by another.  He hung the tack up and led the horse out into the field, closing the gate behind him.

He had satisfied his wife that the carriage had been a shrewd investment, catering for the sort of processions favoured by the Evangelical and Caribbean community.  Not that there was much of either in these parts but the parlour had a wide catchment area spanning four towns and six villages at the very least.  In truth, he had bought it for himself.

He was a simple, solitary man and had always found the Dead far more agreeable than the living.  He lacked the necessary social skills or desire for them that were required for even the most banal chitchat.  Though his intentions were usually good-natured, he often found himself misunderstood and conceived of in a negative light.  Still he counted this as a blessing, for it followed that he was generally left to his own devices.  His wife, however, was the exception and these morning meditations along the beach in his carriage were what he attributed the longevity of his marriage to.

The door banged against the wall as he entered the kitchen, causing his wife to drop the bowl of cake mixture from her hands and onto the parquet.

‘Look what you’ve made me do!  And you’re soaking!  Take off those boots before you come any further!’

He obediently followed his wife’s orders and with his usual quiet suffering made himself scarce.

‘There’s a special delivery for you downstairs,’ she shouted after him.  ‘Came in on a plane all the way from Manaus or somewhere or other.  No living relatives but he was born just down the road, in 1903 would you believe!’ She mopped up the spillage with a tea towel.  ‘And we’ve little Santiago on his way.’

Santiago Devoto was wondering if raindrops experienced pain when they smacked against the windscreen and if they flew down like birds of free will or fell at random.  He wondered if they were autonomous or worked together, navigating their landings in unison.  When the wipers swished them away they all merged together but were they still just separate little raindrops squished next to one another or had they changed the way water does when you fill an ice tray and leave it in the freezer a while?  He thought about what it would feel like to be liquid.  Would everything be blurry?

If he was liquid he could travel in the drains and taps, even in the shower, but that could be painful if he were to be separated.  He could slide down rivers and jump off waterfalls, but he would prefer to be air so that he would be invisible and could go anywhere he wanted.  The car turned a corner and a puddle from the road splashed up against the side, interrupting his thoughts.

Humberto thought the man had a rather peculiar expression on his face.  It was, he thought, the sort of look that a man only has under certain circumstances.  Though it was lacking in urgency, there was an almost celestial quality to it: a permanent euphoria.  He wondered if the man had ever felt that way when he was alive or only in those last few moments of death.

The will had requested his ashes be scattered, so Humberto’s work was minimal.  The man had a brilliant silver streak in his jet-black hair, a nose that was slightly askew and considerable height.  Humberto took out a tape measure from his desk drawer and measured the man’s body, which in length was 7’8”. Humberto was rather small in stature - 5’5” to be precise - and he struggled to imagine the man standing there next to him.  People always appeared shorter when they were dead, as if life had taken a few compensatory inches with it.  Humberto checked the clock and scribbled the measurement on a piece of paper before leaving to catch the carpenter before lunch.

Santiago deliberated whether or not to go into the room.  His grandmother had told him which rooms he could and could not enter and his six years of experience told him that this fell into the latter category, largely because it smelt funny and had a plaque on the door with his grandfather’s name.  He concluded though that as the door was already ajar and not locked, he was technically doing no wrong.

He pushed the door open with his free hand, the other clasping a plate with his sandwich.  The room was cold and the chemicals that lingered in the air got to the back of his throat and made him cough.  His eyes traced a web of tubing that led to two metal cylinders hung up on the wall.  In them he could see himself in the reflection of the room; his body distorted and squashed so that he appeared almost puddle-like on the floor.

He scanned the neighbouring shelves that were brimming with glass jars and coloured liquids nestled side by side, punctured only by the occasional powder, cream or jelly.  It reminded him of the old black-toothed man who pushed the sweet cart through the village when the schools finished for the day.  He had a cramped shop with peeling paint and a broken window that had been there for as long as Santiago could remember.  It was nothing special from the outside but when you stepped inside it was another world.  The man had arranged the sweets by flavour, type and colour and the walls were shelved and layered like a puzzle.  There were drawers and hidden compartments that he manoeuvred with buttons and pulleys so that they came apart and out into the room.  Ask him for a green apple, watermelon fizzy cable and a flying saucer and he would slide along the ladder, wind the wall forward with the rope and run his finger down the labels until he reached the necessary drawer.

Santiago rested his plate on top of a box that had a worn label with the barely legible letters: JAUNDICE/CYANOSIS.  He unscrewed the lid of a jar and dabbed his finger into the pink powder inside, he brought it to his lips and licked, instantly recoiling with disgust.  Far from the saccharine-sour fizz of sherbet he had anticipated, it was instead bitter and vile.

Replacing the jar, he took a bite of his sandwich to banish the taste.  He peeked into the box and found what he presumed to be his grandmother’s misplaced makeup. Turning around, he noticed for the first time that there was a man sleeping on a metal bed. It did not strike him as being particularly comfortable but it did not seem to bother the man, who appeared dead to the world.

On a double take he took in the man’s astonishingly big nose, a wonky one at that.  In fact, thought Santiago, eyeing up the body, he was a giant.  He decided it would not be wise to wake him and tiptoed around the room to the other side, being careful where he trod.  As he was in his grandparents’ house, Santiago reasoned that the giant must be the friendly type.  He flicked his tongue against his teeth, where a residue of chemicals still lingered.  He remembered his sandwich and deliberated whether he could chew quietly enough that he would go unnoticed.

There was a chair at the end of the bed, but at a safe distance from the man and he climbed up onto it.  The man had long toenails and a bump on one side of his foot.  The silvery streak in his black hair made Santiago think of a skunk.  He thought he saw the man’s nose twitch and it gave him such a fright that he almost dropped his sandwich. Fearful that it might be lost, he took to gobbling the remainder down.

Smelling cinnamon toast in the air, Santiago grew excited at the thought that his grandmother might be making his favourite treat.  The strange thing was that it seemed to be wafting up from the man and not from the kitchen.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw the nose wrinkle again, but was distracted by the sound of footsteps coming towards him and he froze.  He looked around for a place to hide, but there was nowhere. It was already too late.

Humberto stopped in his tracks.  His grandson - almost a stranger to him - was sitting cross-legged on a chair at the feet of the dead man, which, Humberto had overlooked, still had the tag on.  The boy’s mouth was full and he was struggling to swallow.

‘What are you doing in here?!’

The boy put a finger to his lips and looked at the man on the table.

‘Sssshhh, you’ll wake him.’  Santiago sprayed breadcrumbs from his mouth across the room.

Realising what a mess he had made, he momentarily forgot his plate and it slipped from his grip, falling to the ground and smashing into pieces.  He looked warily at the sleeping giant, who had not flinched.  He then looked at his enraged grandfather.

‘Sorry.’ Santiago bent his head and shuffled his feet.

‘Abuelo, why didn’t he wake up?’

Humberto ignored the question and continued to gather up the broken pieces of china.

‘He must be dreaming,’ offered Santiago.

‘He’s not dreaming.’

‘How do you know he’s not dreaming?’

‘Because he’s not sleeping. He’s gone.’

‘But he’s right here!’

‘Gone in another sense.’

‘Gone where? Is he coming back?’

It was at this moment that it dawned upon Humberto that he had absent-mindedly wandered into the lion’s den and he would have to navigate a delicate retreat.

‘Little one, death works in mysterious ways.’  Humberto turned to face the boy. ‘The machine - the body of flesh and bones - still remains, but the man that was once inside has now gone.  His batteries have run out.’

‘Can’t you fix him with new ones?’

‘No, there are no batteries or parts that can bring him back from where he’s gone.’

Santiago racked his brains.  ‘Maybe he’s lost.’

‘Or perhaps he’s found his way.  Men spend their lives following different paths but in the end they all lead to the same place.  We live for as long as the world permits us to and then it is over, finished.’

‘But if it’s all going to end in nothing, then what’s the point?’

‘How old are you?’

‘Six and three quarters.’

‘Well then, maybe you should stop worrying about these things.  You’ve yet to understand life let alone death.  Everything has to come to an end eventually.’

Humberto was entering into treacherous waters.  He had never been one for embellishments or distortions of the truth, which was at times a blessing and at others a curse.  His daughter-in-law - who did not approve of his professional underworld - had been raised by a priest and this was undoubtedly his cue to plant the seed of fear that goes by the name of heaven and hell into the boy but Humberto was a man of science and reason and could not find it within himself to offer up what he considered to be a bastardised version.

As a young boy, destined to take over the family business of delivering the Dead to their graves, his father had warned Humberto to steer clear of religion.  He had told him explicitly not to entertain any such notions because the Dead and their grieving come in all shapes and sizes and if you begin to question just an inch of it you would never get any work done.  That had suited him just fine and he would spend his Sundays at home with his inventions and household remedies while the other boys sang in the church choir.

‘What will happen to his body?’

Humberto sucked in a deep breath through his tobacco-stained teeth.  ‘Nature lends us our bodies for a few years and at some point we have to give them back.  His body will become part of the earth, and eventually it will disappear.’

‘Things don’t disappear, they just go somewhere else,’ Santiago contested.  ‘Like when a magician makes a coin ‘disappear’, it hasn’t really gone anywhere.  Everyone knows it’s been behind your ear all along.’

Santiago had had a magician for his last birthday party but had not been overly impressed.  Part-timer Manuel had fallen off the wagon that morning and, with the bourbon still firing his lips, had arrived hatless and rabbitless, with his wand hanging out.  He had then proceeded to do a line of mediocre card tricks, finishing up with a ‘balloon giraffe’ that vaguely resembled the lower intestine.

‘Well, you are right Santiago.  It is the cyclical nature of life that when a living being dies its body slowly breaks down and crumbles into the earth, and there it becomes part of life again.  The crumbs become tiny specks and these feed the soil with the goodness that plants and other life need in order to grow and survive.’

Death was his life, but never before had he been forced to entertain the sort of doubt now posed to him by a child.  Even the people that came through the parlour, swollen-eyed with tear-stained cheeks, did not demand such truths.  Humberto was distracted by the sound of a bee buzzing and seized the opportunity to divert his grandson’s attention.

‘That damn bee, can you see it Santiago?’  Humberto’s eyes darted frantically around the room.

Santiago stopped and listened.  ‘It’s coming from the lost giant.’

‘Don’t be silly boy.’  Humberto could not help but observe that the noise did actually appear to be coming from the corpse.

Santiago looked around and spied some peacock feathers in a vase on the windowsill and plucked one.

‘What are you doing?’

The boy ignored his grandfather and focused on the man.  He took a feather and softly began to tickle the very large nostrils.  Almost instantly the nose started to wrinkle and twitch.  It moved first up and down, then in and out, picking up an accelerated rhythm until suddenly the room was filled with a tremendous bellow.

‘Ahahahahchoooooo!!’

A flash of brilliant gold and emerald green was propelled with such force from the man’s right nostril that Santiago struggled to keep track of the creature.  After dancing around the room a short while, it took flight out of the window and into the garden.  Santiago ran outside leaving his grandfather standing pale and motionless: he had just spotted a sprig of green growing out of the man’s ear.

Now the Dead had played some tricks on Humberto in his time, a flicker across the corner of his eye or a voice that shook him from his thoughts and made him question the fragility of his mind, but never something as curiously brazen as this.  As he stood rooted to the ground, he puzzled over the sleeping giant there before him, at once dead and alive.  He did not know what fortunes had brought the man there, but he sensed that this might not be his final resting place.

The bee twisted and turned in the sky, coursing through the honeysuckle and brushing the peonies to pass Santiago as he burst out of the back door in pursuit.  He ducked and dived through the garden until something hard hit against his foot and he went tumbling over onto the grass and into a flowerbed.

He felt two large hands under his armpits lifting him up effortlessly as he spat the soil from his mouth.

A voice came from the hands.  ‘Steady on, you’ll bruise the foxgloves.’

Santiago turned around and saw a bearded man with a weathered face that had lines traversing it like the contours of a map. He did not look as though he came from around here, or for that matter, like anyone he had ever set eyes upon.

‘Sorry, I was just chasing…ouch.’  He rubbed his knee.  He could see the red speckled flesh coming through the mud and skin.

‘Let’s have a look at that.  Wait here and I’ll fetch something to fix that right up.’  The man disappeared and was back almost as soon as he had gone.

‘So who are you then?’

Santiago noticed that the man smiled with his eyes.

‘Santiago Devoto. This is my abuelo’s house. Ouch.’  The cream stung his leg.

The man finished laying the plaster and extended his hand.  ‘Federico Benito Revollo. I look after your abuelo’s garden when he’s busy.’

The boy touched the plaster on his knee and winced.

‘I like flowers.’  Santiago offered.  ‘But not roses, I hate when the thorns prick.’

‘Sshhh they’ll hear you.  Very sensitive things are roses.  They only have thorns to protect themselves.’

‘Flowers can’t hear.  They don’t have ears.’

‘Of course they can hear.  How do you know?  Have you ever been properly introduced to one?’

 Santiago mulled over this for a moment.

 ‘When someone’s batteries run out where do they go?’

‘Little one, death works in mysterious ways.’

Federico removed a snail from the path and placed it on a leaf.

‘If a person has been kind and treated their neighbour well then they will go to a wonderful place, greater than anything here on earth.  If they have turned their back on their neighbour and chosen the Devil’s path then they will join him in his fiery pits.  That is what the Christians and Jews believe.’

Santiago did not think this sounded particularly fair.  He was always getting into trouble at school for crimes that he did not commit.

‘How do they know if you’re good or bad?’

‘There are powers higher than us who are all-seeing and all-knowing.’

‘What do they look like?’

‘Well, they are invisible.’

‘So how do you know they’re there? Can you feel them? What do they feel like?’

‘You will know when you let them in.’

‘Is everyone a Christian or a Jew?’

‘No, there are a myriad of different beliefs that change from place to place and person to person.  Muslims believe that when you die you enter an alternate world that you prepare for in life.  The Hindus and the Buddhists believe that instead of going to a place, you return to this earth as another person, animal or being.’

‘So I could come back as a lion or a shark?’

Federico chuckled.  ‘Yes I suppose you could, it would depend on your previous lives.’

‘How many lives do you have?’

‘Some people are very old souls.’

‘What’s a soul?’

‘A soul is what is inside of you.’  Federico points at the boy’s heart and head.  ‘It is the spiritual part of you that lives on when your body no longer works, when it dies and a person is dead.’

Federico caught Santiago’s gaze, which was now fixed upon his shoulder.  He slowly turned his head to see a bee that appeared to him as though it had been dipped in pure gold.

‘Bees are very wise and special creatures.  In ancient times they were thought to represent the soul and a link to the afterlife,’ said Federico.  ‘There is an expression ‘telling the bees’ which means to send messages to the dead.’

‘So the bees are like postmen.’

‘Yes, that is exactly what they are.’  Federico laughed.  ‘When they are not passing on messages they are delivering pollen from one flower to another so that they may make more flowers.’

‘When do they have time to make honey?’

‘They are very hard little workers.  Honey is a very special thing.  Some of the great Gods and philosophers were said to have had their lips anointed with honey to inspire them.’  Federico paused.  ‘A few years ago, archaeologists were digging in the pyramids of Egypt and they discovered some honey from thousands of years ago and it was still good enough to eat.’

‘Yuk!’ Santiago recoiled in disgust.

 ‘Santiago!  Come inside for tea, it’s getting late!’  The voice of his grandfather came from the kitchen window at the side of the house.

‘That’s my abuela. It was nice to meet you.’

‘It was nice to meet you too Santiago.’

Santiago ran clumsily into the house.  He turned to wave at the man but he was gone.  He opened the door to the kitchen and saw that his grandmother was at the table sewing.  He sat down on the chair next to her.

‘Abuela. Are you a Muslim?’

‘No. What has got you thinking about that?’

 ‘What do you think happens to people when they die?’

‘Little one, death works in mysterious ways. It is one of life’s great riddles.’  Rosa raised an eyebrow at her grandson.  ‘Have you been in abuelo’s office?’

‘Yes and there was a giant sleeping there except that abuelo said he’s not going to wake up.’

‘Just because he is not sleeping does not mean that he is not dreaming.’

‘Abuelo says that he’s not dreaming.’

‘Here is a little secret: abuelo is not always right,’ Rosa replied with a mischievous wink.

‘I thought grown-ups were always right.’

Rosa smiled at her grandson.

‘The truth is, there are certain things that grown-ups have never been able to agree on or understand.  Sometimes they pretend that they do to make living less complicated.’  Rosa got up to put the kettle on the stove to boil, her knees creaking from arthritis.  ‘People are frightened of the unknown, but what they do not always realise is that life is full of unknowns and you meet them with the weapons of knowledge that you learn along the way.’

‘Do you think the dead man will be alright?’

‘I’ve no doubt he will be.  Dead is just the name we give it.  What we call life may well actually be death and when we die we start to live; they are just two sides of the same coin.  Just as when we are awake we might be dreaming and what we dream might be reality.  For all we know there might be many you and Is living and dying in different worlds all at the same time and we are simply moving from one to the other.’

‘So there might be another me somewhere else?’

‘Yes there might be. Imagine that.’

‘Can you come back to earth after you’ve died?’

‘If one can it is like a one-way mirror, the Dead can see the Living but the living cannot see them.’

‘How do you know they are there?’

‘Just because you cannot see something does not mean that it is not there.’  Rosa put down her sewing and stood up.  ‘Come with me, I want to show you something.’

Santiago followed his grandmother outside.  He thought that it must have been past six o’clock because the sun had gone to sleep and the moon was waking up the stars.  Rosa lay down and patted the grass next to her for her grandson to join.

‘Here on Earth the stars dot our sky with an umbrella of effervescent lights.  These stars live millions and millions of miles away and their light takes as many years to travel down to us.  Some of these stars are already dead and their lights have gone out where they come from but still exist here on Earth.  In the same way, just because we cannot see people here around us does not mean that they do not exist somewhere else.’

Santiago and his grandmother lay there in silence for a while watching the stars and as one fell across the sky, he wondered if the dead man was shining somewhere in another place.

After dinner that night, Santiago lay in bed with his book but he could not sleep for all the thoughts running around his head.  He thought that grown-ups had some funny ideas about things and that death seemed to be as unpredictable as life.  He thought about what he would do when he died, if he would be a star or a tiger or if he would go to live in a special place.  He thought about all the other Santiagos in all the other worlds and if in one of them he might be talking with the giant.

As his eyes grew heavy his thoughts became lucid and he started to dream.  He dreamt of the smell of wet, salty dog when Pirate - the mongrel stray he had adopted as his own - came out of the sea.  He dreamt of the smell of rain on hot, dusty earth when he scored his first goal in football.  He dreamt of the smell of the candles he blew out on his birthday cake mixed with the smell of coconut oil in his mother’s hair as she bent over him, urging him to make a wish.

In the neighbouring house, Ana Binello was dreaming of the smell of her late husband’s gloves when he came in from gardening.  Tomas Villalobos Lopez dreamt of the engine oil he used to watch his father pour into the old Beatle as a boy and on the other side of town, Jorge Perez dreamt of when his brother was alive and the smell of tobacco when they would sit and roll cigars together.

Up in the old lighthouse, Armando Benedetti dreamt of the daisies in his daughter’s hair when he walked her down the aisle.  As dawn broke, the village was filled with the memories of lost loved ones that floated in the air and up into the noses and dreams of the sleepers.

The next morning Santiago rolled over with an almighty stretch and wrapped himself in a cocoon of linen.  He lay still for a while and then peeked through one eye and then the other.  The air had the warmth of morning but he was confused to find that he was surrounded by darkness.  He could hear the sound of muttering voices and the pigs arguing with the cows from the farm next door.  He thought he must still be dreaming but then a gust of wind came through the window and a shard of light pierced the room.

He sat up and swung his body around so that his legs were hanging off of the side of the bed.  His little feet felt around blindly for his slippers but to no avail.  Barefooted, he tiptoed towards the window, rubbing the sleepy dust from his eyes and blinking so that he could see clearly.  As he got closer, it appeared as though there were curtains on the outside of the house.  He stretched out his arm to touch them and they were soft and velvety.  He felt a tingle of fuzzy warmth run down his fingers and through his body.  He pushed them aside and down below he could see a crowd of people - at least this village and the next, he thought - gathered in the garden.

He ran downstairs as fast as his legs could carry him and outside to the back of the house.  There he was confronted with an assortment of legs and bottoms - some were short and squat, others were small and thin, some were pear shaped and others like watermelons.  He ducked and dived through them, tugging at the cloth and treading on toes until he arrived at a clearing.  He turned around to apologise to the last pair of feet that he had trodden on with particular force but the man had not seemed to notice and was instead transfixed, staring up at the sky.

Santiago’s eyes followed his and met with a large, bright green stalk as wide as the trunk of an old oak tree that climbed high above the house and further than his eyes could see.  All the way up there were little knobbles and nooks that seemed to have been made especially for little boys to climb and he tentatively put his foot on one of them to test if it could hold his weight.  Satisfied that it could, he began his ascent.

Up and up he went, until the people below were just a jumble of heads: partings, scalps, buns, locks and three hats.  As he climbed he began to smell the heat of the air, which was as still and electric as the eye of a storm.  The scent of his grandmother’s coal tar soap wafted into his nose, accompanied by the aroma of her apple pie, which awoke his taste buds and set his tummy rumbling.  He caught a whiff of toffee ice cream, the glory of catching a fish, wrapping paper and the first day of summer holidays.  They kept on coming, a thousand wonderful smells that bombarded him so that he almost forgot where he was and lost his footing.

He tumbled down, falling and bouncing from branch to branch until a young leaf reached out and caught him safely.  He lay there a while catching his breath.  When he opened his eyes the leaves of the orchid were shading him but he could still feel the warmth of the sun on his skin.  The smells started to come back to him but this time with less fervour. He could savour each one as they arrived and hold onto them until he was ready to let go.  Each smell triggered his desire for another and he realised that he was calling them.  When he thought of a feeling or thing, the smells transported him there so that he was part of it, inside it.

The orchid above appeared to be smiling and nodding at him, with its blushing petals - blankets of pearl and gold with just the palest tinge of rose - that enveloped the house.  He traced each petal of the orchid: perfectly symmetrical with colour that breathed and lips that glowed.

His eyes rested on the last, which was unlike the others.  He sat up and shielded his eyes from the sun.  When the glare spots had gone and his eyes adjusted he could see that the petal was, in fact, a brilliant silvery-white.  Santiago tilted his head to the side and broke into a wide, knowing grin.  As he did so, he caught his grandfather’s gaze and saw that he too was smiling, for on closer attention the petal was also, just ever so slightly, askew.

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