Such stuff was years ago. I was much younger then. Much. Maybe not a decade, but it is amazing how much you can grow and change in the course of five years. One day you are stepping onto the deck of a new world where the oceans are blue as the sky above, and the sands as white as their clouds. You stand on this mirrored surface where the sky mimics the earth, and the earth mimics the sky above. You stand there and realize that everything after this next step means your life will change. The only difference between now and then? Now, I know better. You only expect the best and as much as you try it is – and always will be – difficult to prepare for the worst. I should have known better, but like I said, now I do.
I was discovered by Mama Gondu and Elias. They had returned the by sunrise with a band of Tairona. They found me cradling Father Leoncio in my lap. I was stroking his hair. I had my habit around him, and I wore but the barest of essential threads. I wanted to keep him warm, because nights at the base of a mountain can prove chilly and unrelenting. They can burrow through layers of skin and strike the very juices of your bone with little pity. Very well, no remorse. Part of my hair had gone white, they said the color seemed to have jumped right out of me. Later, I would hear this was a side effect of shock.Is that really possible? Probably not. I like to think it was a battle
with a demon that altered my state of mind. The rain steamed off of me upon contact, leaving me with a milky, flimsy aura.
How could I have known I had been fighting this evil for so long? Whatabout my brother's death – murder, it had said - was so different from any other? It had mentioned potential, that there was so much to me that could be great. Was he right? Had I been sprinting from my destiny instead of to it? I thought, aside from the incident with my brother, that I was destined for God's graces. No, the demon could not be right. I chose my path, not he, and not even God. I chose to walk in God's way, it was my decision, and I have stayed by that. I would fulfill my place as an anchoress.
Father Leoncio was taken to a hospital, and I soon joined him in this infirmary in the coastal village by the port. The food was terrible from the looks of it. How would I know? I refused to eat it. Father Leoncio visited me room time to time. Then, and only by his hand, did I eat, and Lord, did I eat. I would suckle the last remaining crumb from his fingertips if I had to. Something about that man compelled me to survive in his presence. Perhaps it was the shadow he cast, for when he visited me the sun was often setting outside my western window. He would be bathed in gold
and red, and the colors would spiral and resemble that fateful night on the hill. He told me he would see me back in Spain. That Captain Gonzalo had made sure that any attempt to resurrect the mission would be denied.
“Seville? I am going home to Seville?”
“Yes,” he answered, the wound on his forehead had to have been healing nicely under all of those bandages. The swelling had gone down, and he was speaking again.
“I will see the cloister again?”
“Of course, Hermana Nieve.”
And I will be an anchoress, for my deeds I would be granted this wish.
The thought kept me from going mad on the trip back across the great sea between me and my rightful place in the church. I remember the dock being so busy, and I remember the smell of fish and tobacco in the air. Oh, how I thought of Father Alvarelo, and a shiver ran down my spine. I was loaded into a simple cart. There were nuns waiting for me there in crisp white habits and black embroidery. Deacons were with them too in restrictive collars and expressionless faces. I leaned my head on the shoulder of one of the nuns, and the reigns were snapped. The horse whinnied, and started off down the street away from the dock. I must admit, I was rather surprised upon entering the cloister. It looked much different than before. The steeple was tall, but much more modest, and my memory failed me when I tried to recall if the steeple really was so tall when I left it. We entered an enclosed courtyard where other sisters watched me arrive from the windows and from the open door leading back into the cloister. I was home, I was truly home. Sure, the structure looked much different than it did before, but here I was.
I was prepared for my anchorite lodgings. They took my old and dirty clothes from me, and threw water over me. Oh, how cold it was, though I hardly reacted. There was something burning deep inside of me to keep me resistant to such discomfort. The sensation was nice, and the other sisters and brothers were surprised to see steam rise from my skin in reaction to the cold water. I merely looked out the window, and watched the sky. There was still so much we had to do to prepare, and all they could do was stare. I was scrubbed vigorously, my scalp deeply cleaned to the roots of my hair, and brushes were drawn under my nails, and ever single inch of me washed over and over again.
After this, my hair was cut, and I began to weep. Do not mistake me, dear and sweet Adan, I was not weeping for losing my hair, and such a weep was not distressful. I was elated, I was thrilled to have even be chosen for such a chance. I held my hair in my fingertips and played with it like confetti. They dressed me in my vestments. A cap for my head, a long white gown, and slippers. A robe was draped around my shoulders, and I was escorted to my quarters. I could only keep asking question after question.
“Where are we going? Oh! My quarters, yes? Is it big? Is it small? Will I have a garden? When can I see people? Will I have parchment and quill? Just a little bit of ink, yes?”
The sister accompanying me unlocked the door, and the brothers at our sides stepped away to allow us easier access into the room. The quarter itself is small and quite attractive to me. I would not expect them to be any larger than this. Why, that would be far too lavish! There is a desk by my window overlooking a drooping, decaying garden below. Someone will have to fix that up right away. How could plants go so neglected when they can be such pretty – even efficient – things? My cot was small, there is a simple quilt at the end of it for colder nights. A wash basin and pitcher on a table close by, and at my window's disk there is quill and journals. Father Leoncio had heard my request clearly then! Now I could communicate and chronicle my everlasting marriage with God Himself.
“Oh!” I exclaimed, and swept across the room to the journals and the quill. Beside the quill was a squat ink pot, the glass so smooth to the touch. “Yes, this is perfect. So perfect. Thank you, thank you very much. You are most kind.”
“Yes, Hermana,” the sister said simply, and left me in the room. Just as I had been told, the door was shut and bolted. My life as an anchoress has begun.
And what a life it has been so far. Different somewhat from what I have been told. For instance, sometimes I am allowed to eat with the other sisters of the cloisters. They do not say much, some of them scream every now and then. This is a behavior I find most disturbing and quite annoying. Other differences include me to keep the garden below my window, and should I want to I am allowed to leave my quarters at certain times to walk about the courtyard. This makes little sense to me. Most anchorites are denied so frivolities. Rarely do I take the cloister's suggestion to do these things, and should I ever volunteer to tend the garden or eat beyond my walls, I do so silently, and interact with no one so as to keep up the practices of my anchorite vows.
Other than this, I am kept in my room under bolt and key. I am fed through a slit in the door, and occasionally I may open a window in my door and speak to anyone who would wish advice. I try to speak for God and give them the appropriate guidance. There are even times when strangers will not come to my door. Did you know this, Adan? Father Leoncio still visits me. I will only see him at my door – should he wish to speak. He gave up on this after his visiting hours resulted in silence when I was taken beyond my habitat. The Father is very kind, though after the events in Sierre Nevada he is considering leaving the church. Upon hearing this noise I denied him any more visits. Perhaps I was too harsh.
Perhaps I can see him again. I said such nasty things to him though. Do you think he would forgive me, Adan?
Sometimes, Adan, I have visitors in my room that are much different from the sisters and the other workers within the church. I have seen angels as I have seen demons, and each of them seductive in their own promises and their own touches. It is not them I am worried about. Sometimes, I worry about what is inside me... churning, growling, impatient as he is anxious.
My days are otherwise normal. I write to you every day, Adan. Sometimes I have conferences with the Father of this place, and he is often accompanied by the Mother Superior. He is like the demon in that he is always trying to convince me to leave this place. What a devil, I know his tricks, and I curse him as the devil he is, and refuse conversation until I am taken to my room. I will tend my garden in silence, and I eat my modest meals gratefully by candle light. They are worried about giving new anchorites such things, and I cannot blame them. Anchorites are refused general interaction, and if a fire should break loose in here? My, what a mess that would have to clean up, eh?
Occasionally, I am not myself. I must admit. The sisters here must calm me. You see, what is inside me these days, Adan, wants to be let out quite terribly. He threatens at any moment to break down the door, that he would imbue me with such might that I could tear the portal off its very hinges if I wanted to. His threats are as idle as his coaxing. He has tried everything to free himself of me, but I keep him close, and I keep him inside.
We had a deal, and I am not one to break my vow.
So, for my part I do my best to behave and do God's work. I speak with God every night when I am not writing to you, Adan. He is, after all, my true husband in this world now. I am so lucky that he would forgive me for the occurrences at the mission. That he would even forgive me for you, Adan. I can feel him in this room sometimes when I am sleeping. He is holding me very close, and wrapped up in such love I fall asleep. I dream that I am made love to by him in a way that is indescribable for it is not like the earthly, passionate kind. The ecstasy is difficult to phrase, it is only able to be felt. I awake from these evenings, rejuvenated and ready to begin my next day as an anchoress. Sometimes, I forget about the devil lurking inside of me, but I know as I impart God's greatest wisdom do those outside my door that the devil he still, he still follows me.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Entry #30
Lope was ready to charge like some enraged bull. Snorting, snot caked along the edges of his widening and then deflating nostrils. Heaving, every breath a heated inhale and exhale, breathing in the smoke, exhaled a burn that set my throat, as well, ablaze. He ran for me, drawing his dagger, and swinging. I cried out, and dove for a pew, hitting the flat of the seat before rolling onto the ground to cradling my arm. He lunged for me again, but I had rolled onto my stomach and was crawling beneath the wooden seats. He began to laugh deeply from the pits of his chest, and started to heave pews off the ground. They would fly through the air, colliding with the walls and
shattered into sharp chunks that cartwheeled through the air behind me. I crawled though, as fast as I could, while he teased and played with me like a fat cat would with a tiny, cornered mouse. I came out at the end of the aisle, and was by Father Leoncio's side.
“Father, please. Rise. Please!”
Pieces of the roof were collapsing, as if Father Alvarelo's death had been the signal the entire structure had been waiting for. Debris clattered all around Lope, who at first reacted with a violent roar before we both realized the roof was about to give out. I quickly shoved my hands under the pits of Father Leoncio's arms and started to haul him off outside. I looked up only once to find Lope straightening from his bestial slouch. He sneered, and drew his thumb along his thick, muscular neck as the roof caved in.
I stumbled down the steps just before the collapse, falling to the sooty courtyard as the chapel collapsed. I held Father Leoncio close. He was still unconscious, and probably for the best. I know he poured hours, weeks, sweat, and tears into building this stately mission. I know only this surface that he sacrificed, and nothing more. I could only assume that beneath this durable veneer were things and other precious unknowns he had fed into making sure this place stood among the Tairona. Still, I was tearful for him. How could this fall? After everything the Fathers had done before my arrival, and after everything we had done toghter? I could not help but think of the day Carmen and I arrived, or my first day with the children, seeing Doctor Gil and Pepita in his garden, and the day the Fathers and I planned the curriculum in the library.
I took a deep breath and hauled Father Leoncio up again. I began to march backwards, trying to tug him as far away from the deteriorated, burning mass. I looked over my shoulder to make sure nothing was behind me, but I was wrong. There was. I saw a curvaceous woman standing near the gate. Her back was to me. Long red hair tumbled down her back. She was not standing, so much as balanced on her toes. When she turned, these toes rolled and cracked under the weight that could not be fully lifted off of them. Though maybe that was the sound of the several bonfires around us still popping and crackling. Upon her fully facing me, however, there was no mistake this time.
I saw Carmen.
“Father Leoncio,” I whispered frantically, and shook him, but there was no response. The wound on his head was gushing, and already a lump had formed about half the size of an apple. When I looked up, Carmen was still there and watching me with solid black eyes and a grin spread across her face so wide that her skin had split along the creases. She resembled a puppet, both in her behavior, her experiences and soon enough, her speech.
“Nieve. Little, sweet Nieve. He cannot hear you. You are all alone. We have some time to spend together.”
“What do you want?” I stammered, and she cocked her head sharply.
“What more could I ask for? You. I want you. Come away to the jungle with me. There is no fire like this. There is a lake that is beautiful and cool.” Her body began to sweep across the courtyard slowly, dragged as if by strings. Her broken toes rattled and bumped along the courtyard floor. Now that I could see her up close I could see that her nightgown from the infirmary had been ripped. Her skin was pale and wrinkled, as if she had been in the water too long. Her hair was wild and wet, drops collecting at the tips of her locks before cascading across her chest, down one exposed breast.
“Stay away from me,” I tore Father Leoncio's rosary from around his wrist, and held the cross out to the creature. “I drive you from this place, demon. I drive you out! In the name of the Son - ”
“That will not work.”
“And of the Father - ”
“It did not work for her either,” Carmen rasped, her hand playing along her belly in a tempting rub.
“And of the... Holy Spirit.”
“Admit it, my girl. You have no control. You never did.”
“Why? Why have you done this?”
“When a ship is sunk, and when a lover is taken, do you not ask God the same questions, girl?”
“I tell you leave this place!”
“And just like God, an answer is not one you will receive.”
“These were good people - ”
“Good!” Carmen's head cracked when she threw it back to bellow a loud and lasting laugh. Good? Let us begin with your precious Father Alvarelo? A lustful man who thought he could control his urges, who hid his want behind innocence. Doctor Gil, the man who could not do math because he abused his own drugs far too ceremoniously.”
I stared.
“Ah, I see some of these may not be ones you know. Like Pepita, though you knew her a whore. Did you know she was pregnant with a bastard boy? Let us not forget Lope, the rapist, the beater. The Captain, the adulterer, and you. The murderer, the insane girl who cannot face what she is.”
“Stop it!”
“A killer. You killed your brother! You pushed him down the stairs, Nieve, sweet Nieve. Did a part of you enjoy it?”
“I am no killer, these were good people.”
“You keep saying this, but you do now know.” She reached down to me, I had buried my head in Father Leoncio's shallowly rising chest. Her hand curved under my chin and she lifted me to see her, that face lined in blue veins, those red-purple lips, and solid black eyes. “I want you to join my side. You have a potential for such horridness, child. I have seen it since you were young. Such viciousness that would fit the devil himself. You would have the world to yourself. Take this place, this Heart of the World as they call it, and you control ever beat it makes to power this earth. To keep it together. Take this place with me. You are fully capable.”
I spat in her face, and the spit sizzled and hissed in such a manner as the demon before me. She recoiled, as I screamed no and no and no, but then seized my neck. I was lifted my feet, and brought face to face with her in mid-air.
“You would deny the promise of immortality and the known world, the known universe that floats beyond even the deepest banks of your imagination.”
“I would deny you. Again. Again. And again.”
“I will not stop,” she hissed, drawing her finger down my cheek. “And if God has not answered you now – oh, yes, little one, I have heard you pray for such aid every night – he will never answer you later.”
“Then have me,” I sputtered, shivering from head to toe and wracked with tears. “Have me, and no other.”
Carmen canted her head again, her voice was not her own as it rasped along my lips. “You mean this.”
“Recruit me, and have me, and let me be yours. Only me,” I whimpered, and my mouth was seized in hers. The demon kissed me through her, a searing union that sealed my fate. The hand tightened around my throat momentarily, and Carmen's eyes widened.
“Devil take you,” she snarled and threw me to the ground. The stone of the courtyard split under my back, and I gasped blood across my lips. A piece of my inner lip had been bitten off on contact. “You tricked me! You... you – no!”
Carmen began to wither before my eyes. She wilted and bent like a swiftly dying flower, all the while lowering slowly to the ground. She writhed and spasmed, vomited water and drooled blood, and in a matter of moments it was over. We were both laying beside each other, Carmen an empty husk and the demon nowhere to be seen... except inside of me.
shattered into sharp chunks that cartwheeled through the air behind me. I crawled though, as fast as I could, while he teased and played with me like a fat cat would with a tiny, cornered mouse. I came out at the end of the aisle, and was by Father Leoncio's side.
“Father, please. Rise. Please!”
Pieces of the roof were collapsing, as if Father Alvarelo's death had been the signal the entire structure had been waiting for. Debris clattered all around Lope, who at first reacted with a violent roar before we both realized the roof was about to give out. I quickly shoved my hands under the pits of Father Leoncio's arms and started to haul him off outside. I looked up only once to find Lope straightening from his bestial slouch. He sneered, and drew his thumb along his thick, muscular neck as the roof caved in.
I stumbled down the steps just before the collapse, falling to the sooty courtyard as the chapel collapsed. I held Father Leoncio close. He was still unconscious, and probably for the best. I know he poured hours, weeks, sweat, and tears into building this stately mission. I know only this surface that he sacrificed, and nothing more. I could only assume that beneath this durable veneer were things and other precious unknowns he had fed into making sure this place stood among the Tairona. Still, I was tearful for him. How could this fall? After everything the Fathers had done before my arrival, and after everything we had done toghter? I could not help but think of the day Carmen and I arrived, or my first day with the children, seeing Doctor Gil and Pepita in his garden, and the day the Fathers and I planned the curriculum in the library.
I took a deep breath and hauled Father Leoncio up again. I began to march backwards, trying to tug him as far away from the deteriorated, burning mass. I looked over my shoulder to make sure nothing was behind me, but I was wrong. There was. I saw a curvaceous woman standing near the gate. Her back was to me. Long red hair tumbled down her back. She was not standing, so much as balanced on her toes. When she turned, these toes rolled and cracked under the weight that could not be fully lifted off of them. Though maybe that was the sound of the several bonfires around us still popping and crackling. Upon her fully facing me, however, there was no mistake this time.
I saw Carmen.
“Father Leoncio,” I whispered frantically, and shook him, but there was no response. The wound on his head was gushing, and already a lump had formed about half the size of an apple. When I looked up, Carmen was still there and watching me with solid black eyes and a grin spread across her face so wide that her skin had split along the creases. She resembled a puppet, both in her behavior, her experiences and soon enough, her speech.
“Nieve. Little, sweet Nieve. He cannot hear you. You are all alone. We have some time to spend together.”
“What do you want?” I stammered, and she cocked her head sharply.
“What more could I ask for? You. I want you. Come away to the jungle with me. There is no fire like this. There is a lake that is beautiful and cool.” Her body began to sweep across the courtyard slowly, dragged as if by strings. Her broken toes rattled and bumped along the courtyard floor. Now that I could see her up close I could see that her nightgown from the infirmary had been ripped. Her skin was pale and wrinkled, as if she had been in the water too long. Her hair was wild and wet, drops collecting at the tips of her locks before cascading across her chest, down one exposed breast.
“Stay away from me,” I tore Father Leoncio's rosary from around his wrist, and held the cross out to the creature. “I drive you from this place, demon. I drive you out! In the name of the Son - ”
“That will not work.”
“And of the Father - ”
“It did not work for her either,” Carmen rasped, her hand playing along her belly in a tempting rub.
“And of the... Holy Spirit.”
“Admit it, my girl. You have no control. You never did.”
“Why? Why have you done this?”
“When a ship is sunk, and when a lover is taken, do you not ask God the same questions, girl?”
“I tell you leave this place!”
“And just like God, an answer is not one you will receive.”
“These were good people - ”
“Good!” Carmen's head cracked when she threw it back to bellow a loud and lasting laugh. Good? Let us begin with your precious Father Alvarelo? A lustful man who thought he could control his urges, who hid his want behind innocence. Doctor Gil, the man who could not do math because he abused his own drugs far too ceremoniously.”
I stared.
“Ah, I see some of these may not be ones you know. Like Pepita, though you knew her a whore. Did you know she was pregnant with a bastard boy? Let us not forget Lope, the rapist, the beater. The Captain, the adulterer, and you. The murderer, the insane girl who cannot face what she is.”
“Stop it!”
“A killer. You killed your brother! You pushed him down the stairs, Nieve, sweet Nieve. Did a part of you enjoy it?”
“I am no killer, these were good people.”
“You keep saying this, but you do now know.” She reached down to me, I had buried my head in Father Leoncio's shallowly rising chest. Her hand curved under my chin and she lifted me to see her, that face lined in blue veins, those red-purple lips, and solid black eyes. “I want you to join my side. You have a potential for such horridness, child. I have seen it since you were young. Such viciousness that would fit the devil himself. You would have the world to yourself. Take this place, this Heart of the World as they call it, and you control ever beat it makes to power this earth. To keep it together. Take this place with me. You are fully capable.”
I spat in her face, and the spit sizzled and hissed in such a manner as the demon before me. She recoiled, as I screamed no and no and no, but then seized my neck. I was lifted my feet, and brought face to face with her in mid-air.
“You would deny the promise of immortality and the known world, the known universe that floats beyond even the deepest banks of your imagination.”
“I would deny you. Again. Again. And again.”
“I will not stop,” she hissed, drawing her finger down my cheek. “And if God has not answered you now – oh, yes, little one, I have heard you pray for such aid every night – he will never answer you later.”
“Then have me,” I sputtered, shivering from head to toe and wracked with tears. “Have me, and no other.”
Carmen canted her head again, her voice was not her own as it rasped along my lips. “You mean this.”
“Recruit me, and have me, and let me be yours. Only me,” I whimpered, and my mouth was seized in hers. The demon kissed me through her, a searing union that sealed my fate. The hand tightened around my throat momentarily, and Carmen's eyes widened.
“Devil take you,” she snarled and threw me to the ground. The stone of the courtyard split under my back, and I gasped blood across my lips. A piece of my inner lip had been bitten off on contact. “You tricked me! You... you – no!”
Carmen began to wither before my eyes. She wilted and bent like a swiftly dying flower, all the while lowering slowly to the ground. She writhed and spasmed, vomited water and drooled blood, and in a matter of moments it was over. We were both laying beside each other, Carmen an empty husk and the demon nowhere to be seen... except inside of me.
Entry #29
My prayers were unanswered. We bolted through the gate just a pillar of wood detached and slammed to the ground. The horses were already spooked, and there was no way we would put them in the stable. The structure – like the others, so motionless and ordinary – was now full of fire movement, twisting and turning over itself, occasionally chopping the air with falling beams and a heaving rooftop. Was Lope still alive? Father Leoncio was off of his horse, and running to the stable. He could not fight the flames, he could not know for sure. Was there screaming inside? So many times I have heard the fireplace of my childhood offer such shrills and squeaks as the heat exhausts the wood within the hearth.
I made a move to dismount the horse, but Mama Gondu gripped me tightly. “Stay here, child,” he told me, but I fought myself out of his grasp. I knew just what Father Leoncio was about to do. He was ready to pass through the curtain of fire. Hateful as he was of Lope, his own sense of duty and the leaden seals of his vow propelled him to enter that fire and retrieve the wretched soul. He would not have Lope swallowed by the very Hell fire that inspired him to act out so aggressively, lustfully, inconsiderately.
Father Leoncio was a strong man. I caught him around the waist before he could go inside, and I planted my feet. “Please!” I implored as he fought and struggled against me. He did not have long to struggle, I had to calm him immediately or he would break my hold. “There is nothing you can do. If he is in there, he is dead. He is gone! We cannot lose you, not now!” I threw all of my weight behind me, slamming me hip first into the ground in an effort to pull the Father off of his feet. We both clashed with the ground, and re-insured my grip around him. “You will die in there. Please, do not throw your life away, there may be others that need our help now.”
Father Leoncio threw himself off of me, collapsing to his hands and knees. He pushed to his feet, and turned on Mama Gondu, advancing with a fury burning in his eyes as spit seethed past his bared teeth.
“You bastard! You knew, you knew this would happen.”
Mama Gondu straightened on his saddle. “I cannot see the future.”
“This place is not safe! Stay with us! We have made up a bed, we will keep your horses safe. You really wish to help me?”
“Of course I do!” Mama Gondu roared, and Father Leoncio grabbed his horse by the reigns and started to turn the beast around.
“Then ride to the coast, and bring back someone who can help us.”
“I will not leave,” he barked, “you need my help here, you need me to stay here.”
“I need you to ride.”
“Send the girl! She cannot stay here!”
“This is my home,” I called to him over the roar of fire around us. “And I will make it my tomb if I have to. Find Father Alvarelo, find Tairona along the coast and bring them back.”
Mama Gondu gaped at me, and I advanced with a wicked coldness to my sudden and inexplicable roar.
“You heard the Father, now go!”
He slammed his heels after a doubtful hesitance, and the horse screamed with fear and aggravation. The bright flames and argument around it was probably enough to drive the beast into an angry, frustrated temper. Mama Gondu exclaimed loudly, whistling shrilly, and snapped the reigns. The horse kicked up onto its back hooves and took off through the gate. There were swirls of fire behind Mama Gondu as he left us to scavenge the flaming remains of the mission; the place that had once been our tranquil home.
“Father?” We turned to find Elias lying among the still bodies scattered about the charred courtyard. He reached to us, his arm darkened and burned. In the midst of his burnt leather cuirass and his blackened skin there were deep and shining red slits. He peered up at us, gripping onto Father Leoncio's hand as he came to kneel beside the fallen soldier.
“Elias...”
“You should not be here. I am sorry, I could not keep them back. I had concentrated the Tairona here, around the stable. They... dear God,” tears peeled down the temples of his head, clearing away soot to reveal his natural skin beneath.
“We need to find the doctor,” I gasped, tearing off the sleeves of my habit to wrap his wounds. He stopped my hands, leaving dark smudges of ash and blood along my skin.
“I am done, Hermana.” He shuddered, and vomit swelled behind his lips. Father Leoncio turned him, and he vomited across the ground. The sour smell filled the air, mixed with the smoke, and overpowered any other senses Father Leoncio and I entered this place with. Still, we were faithfully by his side. “I am so sorry, I tried... I wanted to – for once... -” but he never finished. He spasmed in Father Leoncio's arms. He roared, and clasped Elias to him. He rocked the young soldier back and forth, weeping.
Someone approached us, and Father Leoncio saw him before I did. He wheeled around, Elias's dagger drawn from his belt. He put the bloody blade to Doctor Gil's throat, but luckily refrained from pulling. The doctor gaped at him, but the two men embraced, only causing Doctor Gil to recoil, holding his shoulder. He braced himself on a sword he must have taken off one of the soldiers. The blade tilted on its point, and I was to my feet to hold onto the doctor and keep him from falling.
“Basilio,” I exclaimed. “What happened?”
“They set fire to the village. The Tairona were drawn out to save their families, and they were shot. Elias and his men managed to seal the gate, but that soon was set ablaze. The fire spread to the stables.”
“Lope!” Father Leoncio caught Doctor Gil by the arm, his look was desperate. “What happened to Lope?”
Doctor Gil shuddered. “He escaped.”
“Was it the fire?”
“No,” the doctor answered. “No, he escaped before the fire. I am not sure how, but he must have been let out.” He glanced between the two of us. “I saw him run into the chapel. That was before the attack though. I did not want to believe it, but just as I was reporting to Elias, the village was attacked.”
I cut in. “Where is Father Alvarelo? Has he returned?”
“I am not sure,” Doctor Gil shook his head. His dark hair was strewn in front of his light brown eyes, a mixture of sweat and blood in them, his cheek bruised, and his hands were shaky. A thin sheen of red blood was drying into the crevices of his skin with dirt and ash. Beyond these grim colors, he was struck pale.
“Where are the men?” Father Leoncio inquired.
“They set fire to the mission on Lope's orders, and ransacked it looking for you and Hermana Nieve. When they could not find you, they ran off.”
“And have you seen Lope leave?”
“No. Nor Father Alvarelo. I have been trying to save men since the group left, it seemed the only safest time.”
“You are armed though... and wounded.”
“They had not all left.”
Father Leoncio exchanged a glance with me, and I stared at him levelly. “We should try and find Father Alvarelo and Lope.”
“The chapel is still intact,” Doctor Gil panted. “God knows why. You might want to start there.”
“Get yourself to safety, Doctor Gil,” Father Leoncio demanded, but Doctor Gil caught him before he could take off for the chapel.
“Take this,” he pressed a single shot pistol into his hand. “It has not been fired yet,” he winced, blinking sweat from his eyes. “I managed to disarm one of the soldiers that attacked me. I think it can help you more than me.”
“Take my horse,” Father Leoncio indicated the pacing and fretful beast. Doctor Gil nodded, and went to calm the creature. I was startled out of a horrified stupor when Father Leoncio seized my arm. “You, I want you to go with him.”
“No,” I answered firmly. “I am staying here. You heard me when I spoke to Gondu, and I will not say it again.”
Father Leoncio was reticent, but I knew he understood. Perhaps that is why he let me stay and did not insist. Why he waved Doctor Gil on. The doctor wheeled about on the horse, dug his heels into the mount's sides, and took off through the smoldering gate, leaving us once more with the courtyard and deteriorating fire around us. We could only hope that Gondu or Gil would bring back help. Father Leoncio checked the pistol, I was surprised by how well he knew his way around the firearm. He nodded for me to follow, and we both raced for the chapel that now towered over us. The flames licked higher than the tallest point on the roof. The bell inside would occasionally strike as if some ghost hand were pulling the rope that ran deep into the stomach of the chapel. Father Leoncio shoved the doors open.
The walls were being licked by flames, the glass was warping and cracking, ready to burst, and the bits of the roof fell. However, it seemed something unnatural was keeping the fire from progressing. The fire surrounded us, but was holding its ground as if waiting for a command from some superior. At the end of the aisle, I saw Father Alvarelo kneeling in prayer at the feet of the crucifix. The altar was going up in a colorful blaze, carrying bouquets of flowers with it, and reducing their petals to perfumed dust. The sweet smell mixed with the air, but was ultimately vanquished by the smell of burning wood and thick, dark smoke.
“Father Alvarelo!” I called, and just then Lope lunged from his place beside the door. The gun went off, and pierced through Lope's shoulder. The bullet slammed through and burst out the other side, imbedding in the wall with a slap of blood and tissue. This did not seem to slow Lope. His hand ensnared Father Leoncio's face and he slammed the back of the priest's head into the nearest pew. Father Leoncio spilled across the floor, his robe swirled around him and he was out. Lope stepped over the heap that was Father Leoncio and advanced on me. His skin was crawling with the bot fly larva. There were two or three at a time crawling out of the deep warbles in his flesh, leaving puss and blood in their wake – a sick mixture of pink that dripped off his flesh.
“Stay away from me!” I screamed, and brandished the dagger I had slipped into my hand upon leaving the courtyard. He did not seem afraid of the knife, only laughed cruelly in my face. I staggered away, falling to the ground, and he shuffled closer to snag one of my kicking legs as I attempted to push back to my feet again.
“Lope, leave her,” came Alvarelo's voice from its place by the inflamed altar. “I would like to have a word with our Hermana Nieve.”
Father Alvarelo stood slowly. The fire behind him was brilliant, but his form was lanky and dark. He was much more slender than he had been when he left, though maybe that was the fire, the smoke that had reduced my vision. I looked from him to Lope, who begrudgingly backed off. He sat down in front of Father Leoncio, and started to play with his fingers. He was tugging on the Father's nails experimentally. I am not sure what had happened to Lope, but he was no longer in control. Not of the situation, not of himself or his actions. He was completely depleted, his mentality that of a child's upon discovering a new bug.
“Of course you would come here with him,” he snarled, nodding toward Father Leoncio. This was unlike Father Alvarelo. His footsteps were not straight either. They meandered, and he was stumbling over chunks of debris that had tumbled into an ashen heap on the ground. “I am amazed you even came back. Father Leoncio is a very demanding man, and the Tairona love to keep little girls in the jungle.”
“Father Alvarelo?”
“Father Alvarelo! Father Alvarelo! He was right about you.”
“He?” I stood slowly, and stepped back, though I knew I only had so far to go before I staggered into the range of Lope's strong, long reach.
“The ingrate – Lope. He is behind you now, you know?”
Of course I knew, so I did not look. My eyes were focused on Father Alvarelo. I was afraid to take them off him.
“What happened to you? You were gone for so long.”
“I have sent word to the Yucatan and Mexico as well... inquiring as to the whereabouts of our beloved Captain. I was told I would receive word from the messenger in town if I stayed but a night. The way the man put it was so appealing. Have a drink with him, have a smoke with him, chew some coca and eat a warm meal. We drank. And we drank. And he told me that a woman could not be an indulgence, that wine could not be an indulgence, that such things could not be unacceptable if God allowed their existance.”
“It is not God that has such things in this world, but the devil himself. Were you tempted?”
“I was,” he smiled boyishly at me, and strode closer. “By a beautiful woman,” he reached slowly for my hand, and drifted his fingers along one of the knuckles and up the wrist. I remember his touch now and my skin crawls with pleasurable bumps and shivers. “She came here a stranger. She had never seen the coast of the Caribbean, and she had never seen the cloudy forests at the base of the sierras. She wore dark robes, and there were only occasional flashes of white to be seen in them,” he traced my collar, he traced the band now laden with sweat across my head, and slowly peeled the cloth away from my head. “Her hair was long and dark,” he pinched a stray, wild lock between his fingers and coiled it experimentally. “Her skin was pale, but the longer she stayed in the Caribbean the darker it became. I was reminded of amber that would drip from strong pines back home. I could only imagine such skin,” he leaned in, and smelled the exposed skin of my neck, “could taste as sweet,” and his tongue was warm and coaxing in the path it drew along my pulse. He must have sensed the rush of blood, he had a knowing chuckle to him.
“I found a woman who looked like her,” he was behind me, his longer fingers trailed down my stomach as his arms wrapped around my sides, “and I ravaged her fiercely but a few nights ago,” he spilled his whisper into my ear, and where there was part of me who hated it, there was another part that so loved the tickle of his voice and breath. “Over and over again. I returned to my mission, re-imagined. I would tell this beautiful woman my revelation. I would explain in detail how much I wanted her from the very first moment I saw her, how she wove mischief and magic in my heart in a way not either of us could have thought possible. I would tell her these things only because I sensed... she wanted them as well.”
“Victor,” I closed my eyes, this could not be happening. I was on fire, not just from the heat surrounding us, but his touch was like the very flames licking up along the wall. He was setting my skin ablaze, suffocating me within the folds of my habit. I wanted nothing more than to shed these trappings.
“But I come back to a man chained like a beast in my stables. Lope. He has killed Pepita. He has told me that she wanted nothing more than for him to rot. That like all women she is an Eve, so innocent in appearance and demeanor, but with actions so sinful and so despicable by man that I could do nothing but empathize. His words had a strange power over me, but really in the end... it was knowledge he gave me. Do you want to know what he told me next? That you had left with
Leoncio. Imagine my amazement. I released Lope, he was all I had left.”
Father Alvarelo laughed unevenly, the laughter shrill before descending into lower tones that were enough snap me out of the spell he was putting me under. I turned, but Father Alvarelo clasped into my shoulders and forced me down the aisle toward the burning altar.
“Just tell me it is not true. You were not with him. You were not by his side. Did I see you with him when you returned? Was it really you in the courtyard together? Lope said it was true, that you left with him for a tryst in the underbrush. I did not want to believe it, but... what he said seemed so true. Did you leave with him?”
“Father Alvarelo... Victor... I left, but...”
“You foul whore!” He threw me to the ground, and was on top of me. He used his knees to spread my legs apart, and he ripped at my habit over and over, his hands tearing into the cloth like claws. All the while he wept and bowed his head to nearly exposed breasts, now heaving up and down with each deep breath. “You... horrid bitch,” he cradled his hands along my ribs band began to kiss a trail up my chest, around my neck, his body and lips shaking with openly gushing sobs. “How I wanted you. How I loved you.”
My dagger slipped in to his stomach with ease. There was a moment of pause where his eyes went wide and he sputtered his breath before the blood gave and started to flow over the hilt. The durable skin had been difficult to penetrate, but once the blade had sunk in, the blood would not be denied its escape. He peered at me, this broken woman so full of tears beneath him.
“I loved you,” I whispered, a brief throe through my body as a sob wracked my form. “I still do, why else would I do this?”
He held me in spite of my murder done to him, and he folded his lip in. The color was fading from his face, those cheeks I had found so sunkissed and smooth upon first seeing him in the tavern. I remembered him in the wide brimmed hat, the night by the bonfire, the night in the rain when it was clear just what we felt, and what we had denied. I remembered every minute of him, and I knew I would never forget these final moments. His body dropped against mine. Not dead, but
unconscious from shock and such a sharp grief I only felt when my brother died. I could only shove Alvarelo off and face a seething, spitting Lope at the end of the aisle.
I made a move to dismount the horse, but Mama Gondu gripped me tightly. “Stay here, child,” he told me, but I fought myself out of his grasp. I knew just what Father Leoncio was about to do. He was ready to pass through the curtain of fire. Hateful as he was of Lope, his own sense of duty and the leaden seals of his vow propelled him to enter that fire and retrieve the wretched soul. He would not have Lope swallowed by the very Hell fire that inspired him to act out so aggressively, lustfully, inconsiderately.
Father Leoncio was a strong man. I caught him around the waist before he could go inside, and I planted my feet. “Please!” I implored as he fought and struggled against me. He did not have long to struggle, I had to calm him immediately or he would break my hold. “There is nothing you can do. If he is in there, he is dead. He is gone! We cannot lose you, not now!” I threw all of my weight behind me, slamming me hip first into the ground in an effort to pull the Father off of his feet. We both clashed with the ground, and re-insured my grip around him. “You will die in there. Please, do not throw your life away, there may be others that need our help now.”
Father Leoncio threw himself off of me, collapsing to his hands and knees. He pushed to his feet, and turned on Mama Gondu, advancing with a fury burning in his eyes as spit seethed past his bared teeth.
“You bastard! You knew, you knew this would happen.”
Mama Gondu straightened on his saddle. “I cannot see the future.”
“This place is not safe! Stay with us! We have made up a bed, we will keep your horses safe. You really wish to help me?”
“Of course I do!” Mama Gondu roared, and Father Leoncio grabbed his horse by the reigns and started to turn the beast around.
“Then ride to the coast, and bring back someone who can help us.”
“I will not leave,” he barked, “you need my help here, you need me to stay here.”
“I need you to ride.”
“Send the girl! She cannot stay here!”
“This is my home,” I called to him over the roar of fire around us. “And I will make it my tomb if I have to. Find Father Alvarelo, find Tairona along the coast and bring them back.”
Mama Gondu gaped at me, and I advanced with a wicked coldness to my sudden and inexplicable roar.
“You heard the Father, now go!”
He slammed his heels after a doubtful hesitance, and the horse screamed with fear and aggravation. The bright flames and argument around it was probably enough to drive the beast into an angry, frustrated temper. Mama Gondu exclaimed loudly, whistling shrilly, and snapped the reigns. The horse kicked up onto its back hooves and took off through the gate. There were swirls of fire behind Mama Gondu as he left us to scavenge the flaming remains of the mission; the place that had once been our tranquil home.
“Father?” We turned to find Elias lying among the still bodies scattered about the charred courtyard. He reached to us, his arm darkened and burned. In the midst of his burnt leather cuirass and his blackened skin there were deep and shining red slits. He peered up at us, gripping onto Father Leoncio's hand as he came to kneel beside the fallen soldier.
“Elias...”
“You should not be here. I am sorry, I could not keep them back. I had concentrated the Tairona here, around the stable. They... dear God,” tears peeled down the temples of his head, clearing away soot to reveal his natural skin beneath.
“We need to find the doctor,” I gasped, tearing off the sleeves of my habit to wrap his wounds. He stopped my hands, leaving dark smudges of ash and blood along my skin.
“I am done, Hermana.” He shuddered, and vomit swelled behind his lips. Father Leoncio turned him, and he vomited across the ground. The sour smell filled the air, mixed with the smoke, and overpowered any other senses Father Leoncio and I entered this place with. Still, we were faithfully by his side. “I am so sorry, I tried... I wanted to – for once... -” but he never finished. He spasmed in Father Leoncio's arms. He roared, and clasped Elias to him. He rocked the young soldier back and forth, weeping.
Someone approached us, and Father Leoncio saw him before I did. He wheeled around, Elias's dagger drawn from his belt. He put the bloody blade to Doctor Gil's throat, but luckily refrained from pulling. The doctor gaped at him, but the two men embraced, only causing Doctor Gil to recoil, holding his shoulder. He braced himself on a sword he must have taken off one of the soldiers. The blade tilted on its point, and I was to my feet to hold onto the doctor and keep him from falling.
“Basilio,” I exclaimed. “What happened?”
“They set fire to the village. The Tairona were drawn out to save their families, and they were shot. Elias and his men managed to seal the gate, but that soon was set ablaze. The fire spread to the stables.”
“Lope!” Father Leoncio caught Doctor Gil by the arm, his look was desperate. “What happened to Lope?”
Doctor Gil shuddered. “He escaped.”
“Was it the fire?”
“No,” the doctor answered. “No, he escaped before the fire. I am not sure how, but he must have been let out.” He glanced between the two of us. “I saw him run into the chapel. That was before the attack though. I did not want to believe it, but just as I was reporting to Elias, the village was attacked.”
I cut in. “Where is Father Alvarelo? Has he returned?”
“I am not sure,” Doctor Gil shook his head. His dark hair was strewn in front of his light brown eyes, a mixture of sweat and blood in them, his cheek bruised, and his hands were shaky. A thin sheen of red blood was drying into the crevices of his skin with dirt and ash. Beyond these grim colors, he was struck pale.
“Where are the men?” Father Leoncio inquired.
“They set fire to the mission on Lope's orders, and ransacked it looking for you and Hermana Nieve. When they could not find you, they ran off.”
“And have you seen Lope leave?”
“No. Nor Father Alvarelo. I have been trying to save men since the group left, it seemed the only safest time.”
“You are armed though... and wounded.”
“They had not all left.”
Father Leoncio exchanged a glance with me, and I stared at him levelly. “We should try and find Father Alvarelo and Lope.”
“The chapel is still intact,” Doctor Gil panted. “God knows why. You might want to start there.”
“Get yourself to safety, Doctor Gil,” Father Leoncio demanded, but Doctor Gil caught him before he could take off for the chapel.
“Take this,” he pressed a single shot pistol into his hand. “It has not been fired yet,” he winced, blinking sweat from his eyes. “I managed to disarm one of the soldiers that attacked me. I think it can help you more than me.”
“Take my horse,” Father Leoncio indicated the pacing and fretful beast. Doctor Gil nodded, and went to calm the creature. I was startled out of a horrified stupor when Father Leoncio seized my arm. “You, I want you to go with him.”
“No,” I answered firmly. “I am staying here. You heard me when I spoke to Gondu, and I will not say it again.”
Father Leoncio was reticent, but I knew he understood. Perhaps that is why he let me stay and did not insist. Why he waved Doctor Gil on. The doctor wheeled about on the horse, dug his heels into the mount's sides, and took off through the smoldering gate, leaving us once more with the courtyard and deteriorating fire around us. We could only hope that Gondu or Gil would bring back help. Father Leoncio checked the pistol, I was surprised by how well he knew his way around the firearm. He nodded for me to follow, and we both raced for the chapel that now towered over us. The flames licked higher than the tallest point on the roof. The bell inside would occasionally strike as if some ghost hand were pulling the rope that ran deep into the stomach of the chapel. Father Leoncio shoved the doors open.
The walls were being licked by flames, the glass was warping and cracking, ready to burst, and the bits of the roof fell. However, it seemed something unnatural was keeping the fire from progressing. The fire surrounded us, but was holding its ground as if waiting for a command from some superior. At the end of the aisle, I saw Father Alvarelo kneeling in prayer at the feet of the crucifix. The altar was going up in a colorful blaze, carrying bouquets of flowers with it, and reducing their petals to perfumed dust. The sweet smell mixed with the air, but was ultimately vanquished by the smell of burning wood and thick, dark smoke.
“Father Alvarelo!” I called, and just then Lope lunged from his place beside the door. The gun went off, and pierced through Lope's shoulder. The bullet slammed through and burst out the other side, imbedding in the wall with a slap of blood and tissue. This did not seem to slow Lope. His hand ensnared Father Leoncio's face and he slammed the back of the priest's head into the nearest pew. Father Leoncio spilled across the floor, his robe swirled around him and he was out. Lope stepped over the heap that was Father Leoncio and advanced on me. His skin was crawling with the bot fly larva. There were two or three at a time crawling out of the deep warbles in his flesh, leaving puss and blood in their wake – a sick mixture of pink that dripped off his flesh.
“Stay away from me!” I screamed, and brandished the dagger I had slipped into my hand upon leaving the courtyard. He did not seem afraid of the knife, only laughed cruelly in my face. I staggered away, falling to the ground, and he shuffled closer to snag one of my kicking legs as I attempted to push back to my feet again.
“Lope, leave her,” came Alvarelo's voice from its place by the inflamed altar. “I would like to have a word with our Hermana Nieve.”
Father Alvarelo stood slowly. The fire behind him was brilliant, but his form was lanky and dark. He was much more slender than he had been when he left, though maybe that was the fire, the smoke that had reduced my vision. I looked from him to Lope, who begrudgingly backed off. He sat down in front of Father Leoncio, and started to play with his fingers. He was tugging on the Father's nails experimentally. I am not sure what had happened to Lope, but he was no longer in control. Not of the situation, not of himself or his actions. He was completely depleted, his mentality that of a child's upon discovering a new bug.
“Of course you would come here with him,” he snarled, nodding toward Father Leoncio. This was unlike Father Alvarelo. His footsteps were not straight either. They meandered, and he was stumbling over chunks of debris that had tumbled into an ashen heap on the ground. “I am amazed you even came back. Father Leoncio is a very demanding man, and the Tairona love to keep little girls in the jungle.”
“Father Alvarelo?”
“Father Alvarelo! Father Alvarelo! He was right about you.”
“He?” I stood slowly, and stepped back, though I knew I only had so far to go before I staggered into the range of Lope's strong, long reach.
“The ingrate – Lope. He is behind you now, you know?”
Of course I knew, so I did not look. My eyes were focused on Father Alvarelo. I was afraid to take them off him.
“What happened to you? You were gone for so long.”
“I have sent word to the Yucatan and Mexico as well... inquiring as to the whereabouts of our beloved Captain. I was told I would receive word from the messenger in town if I stayed but a night. The way the man put it was so appealing. Have a drink with him, have a smoke with him, chew some coca and eat a warm meal. We drank. And we drank. And he told me that a woman could not be an indulgence, that wine could not be an indulgence, that such things could not be unacceptable if God allowed their existance.”
“It is not God that has such things in this world, but the devil himself. Were you tempted?”
“I was,” he smiled boyishly at me, and strode closer. “By a beautiful woman,” he reached slowly for my hand, and drifted his fingers along one of the knuckles and up the wrist. I remember his touch now and my skin crawls with pleasurable bumps and shivers. “She came here a stranger. She had never seen the coast of the Caribbean, and she had never seen the cloudy forests at the base of the sierras. She wore dark robes, and there were only occasional flashes of white to be seen in them,” he traced my collar, he traced the band now laden with sweat across my head, and slowly peeled the cloth away from my head. “Her hair was long and dark,” he pinched a stray, wild lock between his fingers and coiled it experimentally. “Her skin was pale, but the longer she stayed in the Caribbean the darker it became. I was reminded of amber that would drip from strong pines back home. I could only imagine such skin,” he leaned in, and smelled the exposed skin of my neck, “could taste as sweet,” and his tongue was warm and coaxing in the path it drew along my pulse. He must have sensed the rush of blood, he had a knowing chuckle to him.
“I found a woman who looked like her,” he was behind me, his longer fingers trailed down my stomach as his arms wrapped around my sides, “and I ravaged her fiercely but a few nights ago,” he spilled his whisper into my ear, and where there was part of me who hated it, there was another part that so loved the tickle of his voice and breath. “Over and over again. I returned to my mission, re-imagined. I would tell this beautiful woman my revelation. I would explain in detail how much I wanted her from the very first moment I saw her, how she wove mischief and magic in my heart in a way not either of us could have thought possible. I would tell her these things only because I sensed... she wanted them as well.”
“Victor,” I closed my eyes, this could not be happening. I was on fire, not just from the heat surrounding us, but his touch was like the very flames licking up along the wall. He was setting my skin ablaze, suffocating me within the folds of my habit. I wanted nothing more than to shed these trappings.
“But I come back to a man chained like a beast in my stables. Lope. He has killed Pepita. He has told me that she wanted nothing more than for him to rot. That like all women she is an Eve, so innocent in appearance and demeanor, but with actions so sinful and so despicable by man that I could do nothing but empathize. His words had a strange power over me, but really in the end... it was knowledge he gave me. Do you want to know what he told me next? That you had left with
Leoncio. Imagine my amazement. I released Lope, he was all I had left.”
Father Alvarelo laughed unevenly, the laughter shrill before descending into lower tones that were enough snap me out of the spell he was putting me under. I turned, but Father Alvarelo clasped into my shoulders and forced me down the aisle toward the burning altar.
“Just tell me it is not true. You were not with him. You were not by his side. Did I see you with him when you returned? Was it really you in the courtyard together? Lope said it was true, that you left with him for a tryst in the underbrush. I did not want to believe it, but... what he said seemed so true. Did you leave with him?”
“Father Alvarelo... Victor... I left, but...”
“You foul whore!” He threw me to the ground, and was on top of me. He used his knees to spread my legs apart, and he ripped at my habit over and over, his hands tearing into the cloth like claws. All the while he wept and bowed his head to nearly exposed breasts, now heaving up and down with each deep breath. “You... horrid bitch,” he cradled his hands along my ribs band began to kiss a trail up my chest, around my neck, his body and lips shaking with openly gushing sobs. “How I wanted you. How I loved you.”
My dagger slipped in to his stomach with ease. There was a moment of pause where his eyes went wide and he sputtered his breath before the blood gave and started to flow over the hilt. The durable skin had been difficult to penetrate, but once the blade had sunk in, the blood would not be denied its escape. He peered at me, this broken woman so full of tears beneath him.
“I loved you,” I whispered, a brief throe through my body as a sob wracked my form. “I still do, why else would I do this?”
He held me in spite of my murder done to him, and he folded his lip in. The color was fading from his face, those cheeks I had found so sunkissed and smooth upon first seeing him in the tavern. I remembered him in the wide brimmed hat, the night by the bonfire, the night in the rain when it was clear just what we felt, and what we had denied. I remembered every minute of him, and I knew I would never forget these final moments. His body dropped against mine. Not dead, but
unconscious from shock and such a sharp grief I only felt when my brother died. I could only shove Alvarelo off and face a seething, spitting Lope at the end of the aisle.
Entry #28
We left shortly after that moment. Mama Gondu watched us leave, and made no attempt to stop us, nor any attempt to hail us. He only watched as we left the village behind, and crossed the bridge. The misty blanket of clouds lay thick across the bridge, a garment that had spilled over from draping the trees surrounding the ravine; a chasm masked below us by celestial veils. At the end of the bridge, a couple Tairona boys with spears had been sent to watch our horses. They eyed us nervously, not about ready to commit themselves to any small talk. Not that they had to. Mama Gondu had caught up to us.
“Wait. Wait!”
Father Leoncio nodded to me, and I went to my horse. I climbed into the saddle and watched them. Father Leoncio made sure he stood between us.
“Mama Gondu. You wish something of me and my companion.”
“Stay with us tonight. Stay here in the village. We have already made a bed, we have fine blankets to keep you warm, and we will be sure your horses are protected as you sleep.”
“We are needed back at the mission,” Father Leoncio answered crisply, his words clipped.
“Father Leoncio, I will be honest with you. You are at a great risk if you return to the mission. Please, stay with us. At least until tomorrow morning when it is light out.”
“If my mission is endanger, Mama Gondu, I will stay with her, and protect her. As it is, the mission is in capable hands. We will return tonight, and we will send the doctor out tomorrow to check on the new mother, should you allow it.”
Mama Gondu sighed. “Of… course,” he relented, and peered at me. Father Leoncio followed his gaze.
“Unless hermana wishes to stay.”
I shook my head.
“Then,” Mama Gondu cleared his throat, “let me come with you. Let me help you.”
“You were so keen to shake yourself free of us before.”
“I was not thinking, and my thoughts were clouded with the need to protect my people. For an instant, I forgot you are as much my people as they. Forgive me, and let me come.”
In no time, all three of us were heading back down the stone path to our mission. Our pace was leisurely, not as rushed as before. We took our time moving through the cloud forest where we could not see the stars nor the moon, we could only assume such light existed beyond the murky surroundings. I watched my travelers, so amazed that Father Leoncio had come to my defense and been an unimaginable savior in the midst of this evening. He had a certain peace to him, more like a reassurance. He never seem phased, no matter how stressful the moment or dire the situation. He was peaceful, but such peace was often projected as a firm, steadfast nature. They were not projected the way an actor might, but in the way a man of experience might. The fact that someone so worldly would stand by me now - of all people and of all times - was remarkable in my eyes.
Mama Gondu seemed tense, even nervous. What had given him such misgiving? He had not been at the mission in a long time. Sure, he knew of the occurrences - the disappearances, the murder of Pepita, all of it - but I did not expect him to return after learning of such happenings. Nor did I expect him to be so naïve. Or maybe it was I who was naïve? He seemed to have a preternatural way of handling the world, as if he had encountered these things time and time again. He was anticipating something, he knew what was around the next bend in the road before we could even consider the possibility of what could lay waiting for us.
We were close to the mission, only about a mile away now. There was something in the air. Not a pleasing scent, like the forest at night, or the wet, soothing smell that often accompanied the mist. This scent was burning and intrusive, tickling and teasing our noses to the point I was ready to sneeze. The only other time I remember such a smell was when father let the fire burn too wild in the hearth at home and the room filled with smoke.
“What is that?” Father Leoncio tensed.
“Fire,” I could say before Mama Gondu, who stood rooted between us. He quickly mounted into my saddle, wrapping his arm around my waist.
“We must hurry. We must get to the mission, quickly now!”
He and Father Leoncio slammed their heels into the sides of the horse’s bellies, and our mounts took off down the path. Their hooves clapped along the road, their nostrils were flared and snorting loudly at the sudden exertion, but they were more than capable. I held the horn of my saddle tightly, and relied on Mama Gondu’s strength to keep me from crashing to the racing ground below.
We turned the bend, we broke down the path that led away from the main road, and upon clearing the thin path that cut through low hanging branches and thick bushes we discovered the mission ablaze. Not only that, but fire had spread to the Tairona huts below. Their thatched rooftops crackled, bursts of orange and bright yellow popping into the smoky, black air. We could see no survivors outside as we charged through the village. I thought I saw mangled forms in the huts, half of them poured out their homes’ entrances, charred and reaching for air or help. I could not make them out clearly, we were riding so fast.
We took to the hill, our horses pumped their legs in a bid to follow their masters' command. No matter how hard Mama Gondu or Father Leoncio pressed their rides, the slower we seemed to go. I looked at Father Leoncio. His brow was furrowed, his eyes were narrowed in a determined stare, bent on reaching the top where the mission was ablaze. The gates were falling apart, the fire threatened to consume everything at any moment. Still, we raced, and we prayed as we bolted up the hill. This place was our home, I could only hope it had not transformed completely into a tomb.
“Wait. Wait!”
Father Leoncio nodded to me, and I went to my horse. I climbed into the saddle and watched them. Father Leoncio made sure he stood between us.
“Mama Gondu. You wish something of me and my companion.”
“Stay with us tonight. Stay here in the village. We have already made a bed, we have fine blankets to keep you warm, and we will be sure your horses are protected as you sleep.”
“We are needed back at the mission,” Father Leoncio answered crisply, his words clipped.
“Father Leoncio, I will be honest with you. You are at a great risk if you return to the mission. Please, stay with us. At least until tomorrow morning when it is light out.”
“If my mission is endanger, Mama Gondu, I will stay with her, and protect her. As it is, the mission is in capable hands. We will return tonight, and we will send the doctor out tomorrow to check on the new mother, should you allow it.”
Mama Gondu sighed. “Of… course,” he relented, and peered at me. Father Leoncio followed his gaze.
“Unless hermana wishes to stay.”
I shook my head.
“Then,” Mama Gondu cleared his throat, “let me come with you. Let me help you.”
“You were so keen to shake yourself free of us before.”
“I was not thinking, and my thoughts were clouded with the need to protect my people. For an instant, I forgot you are as much my people as they. Forgive me, and let me come.”
In no time, all three of us were heading back down the stone path to our mission. Our pace was leisurely, not as rushed as before. We took our time moving through the cloud forest where we could not see the stars nor the moon, we could only assume such light existed beyond the murky surroundings. I watched my travelers, so amazed that Father Leoncio had come to my defense and been an unimaginable savior in the midst of this evening. He had a certain peace to him, more like a reassurance. He never seem phased, no matter how stressful the moment or dire the situation. He was peaceful, but such peace was often projected as a firm, steadfast nature. They were not projected the way an actor might, but in the way a man of experience might. The fact that someone so worldly would stand by me now - of all people and of all times - was remarkable in my eyes.
Mama Gondu seemed tense, even nervous. What had given him such misgiving? He had not been at the mission in a long time. Sure, he knew of the occurrences - the disappearances, the murder of Pepita, all of it - but I did not expect him to return after learning of such happenings. Nor did I expect him to be so naïve. Or maybe it was I who was naïve? He seemed to have a preternatural way of handling the world, as if he had encountered these things time and time again. He was anticipating something, he knew what was around the next bend in the road before we could even consider the possibility of what could lay waiting for us.
We were close to the mission, only about a mile away now. There was something in the air. Not a pleasing scent, like the forest at night, or the wet, soothing smell that often accompanied the mist. This scent was burning and intrusive, tickling and teasing our noses to the point I was ready to sneeze. The only other time I remember such a smell was when father let the fire burn too wild in the hearth at home and the room filled with smoke.
“What is that?” Father Leoncio tensed.
“Fire,” I could say before Mama Gondu, who stood rooted between us. He quickly mounted into my saddle, wrapping his arm around my waist.
“We must hurry. We must get to the mission, quickly now!”
He and Father Leoncio slammed their heels into the sides of the horse’s bellies, and our mounts took off down the path. Their hooves clapped along the road, their nostrils were flared and snorting loudly at the sudden exertion, but they were more than capable. I held the horn of my saddle tightly, and relied on Mama Gondu’s strength to keep me from crashing to the racing ground below.
We turned the bend, we broke down the path that led away from the main road, and upon clearing the thin path that cut through low hanging branches and thick bushes we discovered the mission ablaze. Not only that, but fire had spread to the Tairona huts below. Their thatched rooftops crackled, bursts of orange and bright yellow popping into the smoky, black air. We could see no survivors outside as we charged through the village. I thought I saw mangled forms in the huts, half of them poured out their homes’ entrances, charred and reaching for air or help. I could not make them out clearly, we were riding so fast.
We took to the hill, our horses pumped their legs in a bid to follow their masters' command. No matter how hard Mama Gondu or Father Leoncio pressed their rides, the slower we seemed to go. I looked at Father Leoncio. His brow was furrowed, his eyes were narrowed in a determined stare, bent on reaching the top where the mission was ablaze. The gates were falling apart, the fire threatened to consume everything at any moment. Still, we raced, and we prayed as we bolted up the hill. This place was our home, I could only hope it had not transformed completely into a tomb.
Entry #27
Dearest Adan,
Elias met us with the horses at the bottom of the hill. He led them to us, and while we mounted, he spoke briefly with Father Leoncio.
“Return soon.”
“You will fair fine on your own, Elias?” Father Leoncio inquired firmly, his demand was for an honest answer, not just out of concern for Elias, but the mission he had just sworn to us he would protect.
“I have some Tairona from the village,” he gestured behind him, “and there are still men who will not stand with Lope. Doctor Gil has also managed to sedate Lope... crazy bastard.”
“We will be back, keep an eye open for Father Alvarelo, and if he is not back in the morning organize a messenger to fetch him. He should not be gone this long.” Father Leoncio wheeled his horse around, and took off through the village, my horse followed him. I clutched the reigns tightly, I had never traveled at this speed, but I was too intimidated to demand that the Father slow down. We plowed through the jungle, and left our horses at the bridge. A Tairona was waiting for us, he was waving for us to hurry. I recognized him as the pregnant woman's first son. We followed him quickly, and the village enveloped us. Some were minding their own business, carrying about their own chores, but those close to the woman – now screaming and prostrate in her hut – were gathered around her. A mama was with her, cradling the baby's head and calling for her to push the child out. Father Leoncio knelt beside her, and she fastened her hand around his, and gripped tightly.
The two began to pray together, her body was shaking from the exertion of every fiber she possessed. In her other hand she held a necklace, a golden Tairona pendant dangled from the chain next to a cross. I thought I would join them, but the woman – who had once been so friendly and playful in the kitchen – waved me away violently, screaming to get me away!
“Get her out! Get her out of my home!”
I was snagged by the shoulders before Father Leoncio or I could act upon her requests. I was too terrified to truly move anyway. I had never been treated so hatefully. I was pulled from the hut and was turned to face Mama Gondu himself. He watched me silently, unsure of what to do, his face a mask of thought and calculation. I had tears in my eyes, they burned and disoriented my view of him, making him fuzzy and dream like in my eyes, but no less of a godsend. I lunged for him, I embraced him, and I lay my head on his chest. He seemed taken aback, not sure how to respond. His body was tense, but in a matter of moments he relaxed and drew his arms around me.
“Young Sister,” he sighed and stroked the back of my head soothingly. I withdrew, and wiped my tears away. When I spoke, there was little power left in my voice, almost as if I were ready to expire.
“You wanted to see me?” I inquired softly.
“Yes.” He replied, and followed my gaze. It had traveled back into the hut where the woman was now screaming, her prayers ended by her howls and throes of what I could only guess an indescribable pain.
“Will she make it? Will the baby make it?”
“I cannot say.” He extended his arms toward his hut where I had my fitful dream at the hands of coca and his own interrogations. “Follow me,” he turned on his heel and made his way to the thatched hut. I made no attempt to stray or resist his request. Maybe if I could speak to him, the relations between the mission and the Tairon would be reinforced again. As it stood now, such a relationship was strained and hanging by the thinnest thread. I made my way to the hut.
Inside, there was already a fire burning. No large conflagration to speak of, just a small fire crackling and trailing thick tendrils of smoke through the opening in the hut's roof. There was prepared coca again, I could smell it in the air. Mama Gondu gestured for me to join him at his side. He began chewing coca, and he indicated it to me with a nod. He knew how hard this had to have been, I knew my distaste for the stuff was written over every inch of his face. I still began to chew the coca over in my mouth, pressing it around my gums and against my cheeks much like he and the others did.
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Have you been having dreams, Hermana Nieve?”
“... Yes. Terrible ones.”
“Your vision had us in the woods. Have you visited the woods in any other visions since then, Hermana Nieve?”
I answered again, tentatively. “Yes.”
“They frighten you... the woods, Hermana Nieve, why is that?”
I shifted my weight, I looked away from him. “I was lost in the woods as a child. I was very frightened.” A man flashed across my memory, he was dark and stood at the edge of a clearing. He was beckoning me, Adan. “I kept calling for my brother,” and the man he moved closer, “and I kept looking for our friends,” and the man held his hand out to me, “but they were gone,” and there were autumn leaves where I once stood.
“I kept screaming for help,” even as he whispered in my ears, “and I kept searching for some way out of the forest,” even though he held onto me. “I tore my dress that day, a pretty one my mother had made,” on dexterous branches and pinning roots, “and there was mud all over my shoes,” that to this day are probably still in the woods. “A neighbor found me,” it was him all along, “I do not know how I never saw his face,” because his hand had been over my eyes, “until then. He led me home, and watched me go. I was so mad at my brother, I did not speak to him long after that.”
Mama Gondu watched me wring my hands, and watched the tears fill my eyes only to flood down my cheeks.
“I miss him. More than anything, I want him here.” I watched the mama now, neglecting to wipe away my tears. “Why did you ask me this?”
“Your vision of the woods
“Mama Gondu,” came a voice by the hut, and I knew just by his shadow pouring over me, that Father Leoncio had arrived. “The mama needs you.”
“Is it bad?” Mama Gondu asked, his voice choked.
“No, Gondu.” There was the sound of a baby's cry filling the air. Mewling and howling into the night, all I could think about was the day you were born Adan.
Father Leoncio took a place beside me. His legs crossed in front of him, drawing his robe around his knees until the material was slightly taught. He began to pack his pipe, and leaned toward the fire to suck some of the flame into the bowl of it. He exhaled ribbons of smoke, and offered me a puff. I declined, sniffing instead and looking away to hide my face.
“How are you?”
“I am terrible,” I laughed bitterly through my tears.
“Has Mama Gondu helped you?”
“I am not sure,” I shook my head, and eyed the smoking pipe. “Perhaps I will have some.”
He exchanged a glance with his smoke, and then held the burnt offering out to me. I began to puff on the tobacco, and sighed plumes in the midst of a hacking, horrible cough. “How is the baby? And mother?”
“Both are well.”
“A boy or a girl?”
“A boy, Hermana.”
“He sounds like my brother when he was born.”
“Yes. Adan, was it? Your mother superior mentioned that you wrote to him often.”
“I write to him when I can,” I said around a mouthful of smoke, handing him his pipe. He took the trinket back, and kissed the smoking clay mouth. He exhaled through his nostrils while he listened to me. “I remember when he was born... he was sparkling, bloody, and so still in the midwife's arms. My mother was so frightened, because at first he did not move. So still. The midwife struck him across his rump. Would not be the first nor the last time he received such a hit – he was a true, little troublemaker. He started crying and pawing the air. He was alive, and I knew he was the most important treasure of my life.”
“What happened to him?” He shifted into a much more comfortable position, one that could lean him close to the fire which he held his hands out to. His hands wove back and forth around each other, until he was satisfied with the attained warmth. “Is he away?”
“He is dead, Father Leoncio,” to which the Father was deeply taken back. All this time he must have thought you alive, Adan. I cannot blame him, or anyone else for that matter. I write to you every day, Adan. I write to you that you might hear me, that you might forgive me. “It was all my fault.”
Father Leoncio said nothing, he only looked at me, waiting for me to continue. I did so haltingly, and clasped my hands tightly together in my lap. Your story is so old to me. I relive it so many times in a given month. Would I instill such a horrid vision in Father Leoncio's head as life had done to me?
“We were fighting at the top of the stairs and... I pushed him. I did not think I pushed him so hard, but when mother found him on the landing, his had was turned around, and I should have known better in any case. He was staring right back up at me. I supposed you could say that is why I entered the church. I was ashamed after that. I locked myself in my room, I only came out for church, but rarely for food. My parents were never the same after the incident either. We just all grew apart rather than together. I have been atoning for this ever since then.”
For the moment we were both very silent with one another. Outside, the baby was crying, the Tairona were celebrating, and we could hear this in a mixture of laughter and bawling tears. Within the hut though, there was a stillness. We were almost afraid to breathe, he and I. The hut was warm, the fire was popping and prattling on with the wood feeding it. A consuming conversation of heat, smoke, and embers. Father Leoncio slowly reached for me. His arm went around my shoulders and he pulled me close. I had never seen the Father express any sort of tenderness before. I did not resist the kind embrace, the first one I had known in quite some time. My arms swept around him, and I sobbed into his robe, eyes clenched shut and teeth grit against the pain of my own memories for you, Adan. I peered up at Father Leoncio, and he smoothed away my tears and my hair from my face.
“We should go.” He smiled to see me nod and make my own attempt at a grin.
“I am foolish...”
“You are not, nor are you lost. You still walk a path, an honest and faithful path. Do not mistake this: just because you have not reached the end of your journey, does not mean you have lost your way.” I burst into tears, he held me close, I could feel his heart beat against my cheek. “I will pray for your safe delivery, Hermana Nieve,” he leaned my head forward, and the kiss he gave to my brow burned like a blessing.
Elias met us with the horses at the bottom of the hill. He led them to us, and while we mounted, he spoke briefly with Father Leoncio.
“Return soon.”
“You will fair fine on your own, Elias?” Father Leoncio inquired firmly, his demand was for an honest answer, not just out of concern for Elias, but the mission he had just sworn to us he would protect.
“I have some Tairona from the village,” he gestured behind him, “and there are still men who will not stand with Lope. Doctor Gil has also managed to sedate Lope... crazy bastard.”
“We will be back, keep an eye open for Father Alvarelo, and if he is not back in the morning organize a messenger to fetch him. He should not be gone this long.” Father Leoncio wheeled his horse around, and took off through the village, my horse followed him. I clutched the reigns tightly, I had never traveled at this speed, but I was too intimidated to demand that the Father slow down. We plowed through the jungle, and left our horses at the bridge. A Tairona was waiting for us, he was waving for us to hurry. I recognized him as the pregnant woman's first son. We followed him quickly, and the village enveloped us. Some were minding their own business, carrying about their own chores, but those close to the woman – now screaming and prostrate in her hut – were gathered around her. A mama was with her, cradling the baby's head and calling for her to push the child out. Father Leoncio knelt beside her, and she fastened her hand around his, and gripped tightly.
The two began to pray together, her body was shaking from the exertion of every fiber she possessed. In her other hand she held a necklace, a golden Tairona pendant dangled from the chain next to a cross. I thought I would join them, but the woman – who had once been so friendly and playful in the kitchen – waved me away violently, screaming to get me away!
“Get her out! Get her out of my home!”
I was snagged by the shoulders before Father Leoncio or I could act upon her requests. I was too terrified to truly move anyway. I had never been treated so hatefully. I was pulled from the hut and was turned to face Mama Gondu himself. He watched me silently, unsure of what to do, his face a mask of thought and calculation. I had tears in my eyes, they burned and disoriented my view of him, making him fuzzy and dream like in my eyes, but no less of a godsend. I lunged for him, I embraced him, and I lay my head on his chest. He seemed taken aback, not sure how to respond. His body was tense, but in a matter of moments he relaxed and drew his arms around me.
“Young Sister,” he sighed and stroked the back of my head soothingly. I withdrew, and wiped my tears away. When I spoke, there was little power left in my voice, almost as if I were ready to expire.
“You wanted to see me?” I inquired softly.
“Yes.” He replied, and followed my gaze. It had traveled back into the hut where the woman was now screaming, her prayers ended by her howls and throes of what I could only guess an indescribable pain.
“Will she make it? Will the baby make it?”
“I cannot say.” He extended his arms toward his hut where I had my fitful dream at the hands of coca and his own interrogations. “Follow me,” he turned on his heel and made his way to the thatched hut. I made no attempt to stray or resist his request. Maybe if I could speak to him, the relations between the mission and the Tairon would be reinforced again. As it stood now, such a relationship was strained and hanging by the thinnest thread. I made my way to the hut.
Inside, there was already a fire burning. No large conflagration to speak of, just a small fire crackling and trailing thick tendrils of smoke through the opening in the hut's roof. There was prepared coca again, I could smell it in the air. Mama Gondu gestured for me to join him at his side. He began chewing coca, and he indicated it to me with a nod. He knew how hard this had to have been, I knew my distaste for the stuff was written over every inch of his face. I still began to chew the coca over in my mouth, pressing it around my gums and against my cheeks much like he and the others did.
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Have you been having dreams, Hermana Nieve?”
“... Yes. Terrible ones.”
“Your vision had us in the woods. Have you visited the woods in any other visions since then, Hermana Nieve?”
I answered again, tentatively. “Yes.”
“They frighten you... the woods, Hermana Nieve, why is that?”
I shifted my weight, I looked away from him. “I was lost in the woods as a child. I was very frightened.” A man flashed across my memory, he was dark and stood at the edge of a clearing. He was beckoning me, Adan. “I kept calling for my brother,” and the man he moved closer, “and I kept looking for our friends,” and the man held his hand out to me, “but they were gone,” and there were autumn leaves where I once stood.
“I kept screaming for help,” even as he whispered in my ears, “and I kept searching for some way out of the forest,” even though he held onto me. “I tore my dress that day, a pretty one my mother had made,” on dexterous branches and pinning roots, “and there was mud all over my shoes,” that to this day are probably still in the woods. “A neighbor found me,” it was him all along, “I do not know how I never saw his face,” because his hand had been over my eyes, “until then. He led me home, and watched me go. I was so mad at my brother, I did not speak to him long after that.”
Mama Gondu watched me wring my hands, and watched the tears fill my eyes only to flood down my cheeks.
“I miss him. More than anything, I want him here.” I watched the mama now, neglecting to wipe away my tears. “Why did you ask me this?”
“Your vision of the woods
“Mama Gondu,” came a voice by the hut, and I knew just by his shadow pouring over me, that Father Leoncio had arrived. “The mama needs you.”
“Is it bad?” Mama Gondu asked, his voice choked.
“No, Gondu.” There was the sound of a baby's cry filling the air. Mewling and howling into the night, all I could think about was the day you were born Adan.
Father Leoncio took a place beside me. His legs crossed in front of him, drawing his robe around his knees until the material was slightly taught. He began to pack his pipe, and leaned toward the fire to suck some of the flame into the bowl of it. He exhaled ribbons of smoke, and offered me a puff. I declined, sniffing instead and looking away to hide my face.
“How are you?”
“I am terrible,” I laughed bitterly through my tears.
“Has Mama Gondu helped you?”
“I am not sure,” I shook my head, and eyed the smoking pipe. “Perhaps I will have some.”
He exchanged a glance with his smoke, and then held the burnt offering out to me. I began to puff on the tobacco, and sighed plumes in the midst of a hacking, horrible cough. “How is the baby? And mother?”
“Both are well.”
“A boy or a girl?”
“A boy, Hermana.”
“He sounds like my brother when he was born.”
“Yes. Adan, was it? Your mother superior mentioned that you wrote to him often.”
“I write to him when I can,” I said around a mouthful of smoke, handing him his pipe. He took the trinket back, and kissed the smoking clay mouth. He exhaled through his nostrils while he listened to me. “I remember when he was born... he was sparkling, bloody, and so still in the midwife's arms. My mother was so frightened, because at first he did not move. So still. The midwife struck him across his rump. Would not be the first nor the last time he received such a hit – he was a true, little troublemaker. He started crying and pawing the air. He was alive, and I knew he was the most important treasure of my life.”
“What happened to him?” He shifted into a much more comfortable position, one that could lean him close to the fire which he held his hands out to. His hands wove back and forth around each other, until he was satisfied with the attained warmth. “Is he away?”
“He is dead, Father Leoncio,” to which the Father was deeply taken back. All this time he must have thought you alive, Adan. I cannot blame him, or anyone else for that matter. I write to you every day, Adan. I write to you that you might hear me, that you might forgive me. “It was all my fault.”
Father Leoncio said nothing, he only looked at me, waiting for me to continue. I did so haltingly, and clasped my hands tightly together in my lap. Your story is so old to me. I relive it so many times in a given month. Would I instill such a horrid vision in Father Leoncio's head as life had done to me?
“We were fighting at the top of the stairs and... I pushed him. I did not think I pushed him so hard, but when mother found him on the landing, his had was turned around, and I should have known better in any case. He was staring right back up at me. I supposed you could say that is why I entered the church. I was ashamed after that. I locked myself in my room, I only came out for church, but rarely for food. My parents were never the same after the incident either. We just all grew apart rather than together. I have been atoning for this ever since then.”
For the moment we were both very silent with one another. Outside, the baby was crying, the Tairona were celebrating, and we could hear this in a mixture of laughter and bawling tears. Within the hut though, there was a stillness. We were almost afraid to breathe, he and I. The hut was warm, the fire was popping and prattling on with the wood feeding it. A consuming conversation of heat, smoke, and embers. Father Leoncio slowly reached for me. His arm went around my shoulders and he pulled me close. I had never seen the Father express any sort of tenderness before. I did not resist the kind embrace, the first one I had known in quite some time. My arms swept around him, and I sobbed into his robe, eyes clenched shut and teeth grit against the pain of my own memories for you, Adan. I peered up at Father Leoncio, and he smoothed away my tears and my hair from my face.
“We should go.” He smiled to see me nod and make my own attempt at a grin.
“I am foolish...”
“You are not, nor are you lost. You still walk a path, an honest and faithful path. Do not mistake this: just because you have not reached the end of your journey, does not mean you have lost your way.” I burst into tears, he held me close, I could feel his heart beat against my cheek. “I will pray for your safe delivery, Hermana Nieve,” he leaned my head forward, and the kiss he gave to my brow burned like a blessing.
Entry #26
Adan,
“Above all else; avoid Lope. Do not go near the barn. Do not let him see you, and do not let me see you near him. Not again, not after last night.”
Gabriel watched me over the tails of steam wagging slowly back and forth from our cups of coffee (and tea, respectfully). The morning was leaking in through the window just over his shoulder. We were alone in the mess. By now, wherever we went, the soldiers usually went in the opposite direction. In the midst of our modest breakfast we had seen a couple soldiers enter, see us, and promptly leave. Those who have little problem with us are different; they are the ones who cannot glare at us. They can only look away. What are they ashamed of? That they cannot stay with us for fear of suffering at the hands of their “cohorts”? This seems logical, but I am trying not to think about it.
I am trying to drink my tea. Just a little tea, just a moment of peace, even if the drink is much too hot, the fruit is nice and cool and this seems an even trade.
As for Father Leoncio’s advice, avoiding Lope was no difficult feat, in that Lope was avoiding everyone else. He had burrowed into the darkest corner of his makeshift cell in the barn. I know this mostly from Doctor Gil’s report. Doctor Gil says that for the past few days Lope has refused his meals, and he drinks from the trough in his pin. When he is waking he is screaming, mumbling, tearing at the worms under his skin. Already he has nearly broken Doctor Gil’s arm when the doctor made an attempt to treat the pulsing, pussing warbles.
“When he tears the worms out, they are not fully removed. They rot in his flesh, and he is suffering from infection. It is poisoning him.”
I find it hard to express any remorse. I merely project a sullen expression in an effort to remain neutral, but I cannot deny that that bleak, dark little part of me wants him gone. I find that Doctor Gil is in a similar place. We both have made vows that nearly mirror one another, but even he is finding it difficult to adhere to his code.
“Though let the creature rot then, if he wishes it,” I heard him curse once. He was cradling an already swelling bruise on his jaw.
There were only a few soldiers that offered their services in guarding Lope. The others were fiercely loyal, therefore unnerved and restless at Lope’s incarceration. Sometimes, they would meet in mess to eat, but only truly spoke in the hallways or courtyard of the mission. Why they avoided their barracks, I do not know. Such a place seems ideal for such hushed and harsh conversations. Then again, they have mentioned hearing noises. They have complained to Leoncio before concerning sounds outside their quarters, but no culprit visible. Perhaps this is why they mention something. I think if there was something tangible there, they would have dispatched it by now. Still, I doubt this disturbance is the root of their suddenly very hostile attitudes.
You think I am so dramatic, Adan? I was coming back from mess, and turned the corner en route to my room. There, clustered and with their heads low as a sickly crow, were a group of soldiers in the midst of heated, whispered conversation. I only heard Lope’s name before they stopped to fixate me with icy glares. I felt myself shrink in my habit. I felt like a frightened turtle, only to find my shell was black and white linens. I quickly passed them, my footsteps a seeming and awkward blur. Even as I left them, they still drove their cruel stares into the back of my neck. What they were discussing, Adan, I cannot truly say. I can only assume a wicked intention was at the heart of their dialogue. Their narrowed eyes seemed a solid black against their white backgrounds. Their whole person was bristling, hands flexed at the ready around their dagger (or sword) hilts. I fear not just for myself, but Leoncio as well. Were they planning on freeing Lope?
“Your suspicions are correct,” Elias told me when he was coming off his shift in the barn. He was smoking a pipe, patting the leaves down with his thumb before flicking away the ash. “They are planning something. They were afraid to act, but the longer the Captain is gone, the more bold they become. I think if they want to do something, they will do it soon. Be on your guard, Hermana. Honestly, you should not even be here.”
I remember shaking my head, and I remember mistaking pride for stubbornness. “I will not leave Leoncio, I will not leave the Tairona. Alvarelo will be back. You will see. Things will change.”
He snickered, and tapped out the contents of his spent pipe. “Will? Hermana. Things have changed. I suggest you start formulating a second plan,” he did not glance back, only hooked his thumbs to his belt as he left me by Doctor Gil’s garden, “just in case.”
It has been three days, and there is no sign of Father Alvarelo. Not even a messenger has come to us. The soldiers have gone back to celebrating, pestering what servants remain, and bothering Doctor Gil for drugs which they are outright refused. I have gone to bed again early in hopes that I will hear Father Alvarelo’s return in the courtyard.
Instead, I was visited by Father Leoncio. He was knocking rapidly, and I answered the door with squinting eyes and a tired voice.
“Father?”
“One of the Tairona is giving birth. They have requested I be there.”
“What? Why? They despise us.”
“Is is the parent’s wish. I want you to come.”
“They want you, Father, not I.”
“The parents wish me, but it is Mama Gondu who wishes you.”
I was silent, and my hands tensed around the robe I was clutching about my shoulders. “Mama Gondu?”
“There are horses waiting for us at the bottom of the hill that the Tairon have supplied. I would rather Lope not know we are leaving. Prepare yourself, please, I will fetch you again soon.”
“Above all else; avoid Lope. Do not go near the barn. Do not let him see you, and do not let me see you near him. Not again, not after last night.”
Gabriel watched me over the tails of steam wagging slowly back and forth from our cups of coffee (and tea, respectfully). The morning was leaking in through the window just over his shoulder. We were alone in the mess. By now, wherever we went, the soldiers usually went in the opposite direction. In the midst of our modest breakfast we had seen a couple soldiers enter, see us, and promptly leave. Those who have little problem with us are different; they are the ones who cannot glare at us. They can only look away. What are they ashamed of? That they cannot stay with us for fear of suffering at the hands of their “cohorts”? This seems logical, but I am trying not to think about it.
I am trying to drink my tea. Just a little tea, just a moment of peace, even if the drink is much too hot, the fruit is nice and cool and this seems an even trade.
As for Father Leoncio’s advice, avoiding Lope was no difficult feat, in that Lope was avoiding everyone else. He had burrowed into the darkest corner of his makeshift cell in the barn. I know this mostly from Doctor Gil’s report. Doctor Gil says that for the past few days Lope has refused his meals, and he drinks from the trough in his pin. When he is waking he is screaming, mumbling, tearing at the worms under his skin. Already he has nearly broken Doctor Gil’s arm when the doctor made an attempt to treat the pulsing, pussing warbles.
“When he tears the worms out, they are not fully removed. They rot in his flesh, and he is suffering from infection. It is poisoning him.”
I find it hard to express any remorse. I merely project a sullen expression in an effort to remain neutral, but I cannot deny that that bleak, dark little part of me wants him gone. I find that Doctor Gil is in a similar place. We both have made vows that nearly mirror one another, but even he is finding it difficult to adhere to his code.
“Though let the creature rot then, if he wishes it,” I heard him curse once. He was cradling an already swelling bruise on his jaw.
There were only a few soldiers that offered their services in guarding Lope. The others were fiercely loyal, therefore unnerved and restless at Lope’s incarceration. Sometimes, they would meet in mess to eat, but only truly spoke in the hallways or courtyard of the mission. Why they avoided their barracks, I do not know. Such a place seems ideal for such hushed and harsh conversations. Then again, they have mentioned hearing noises. They have complained to Leoncio before concerning sounds outside their quarters, but no culprit visible. Perhaps this is why they mention something. I think if there was something tangible there, they would have dispatched it by now. Still, I doubt this disturbance is the root of their suddenly very hostile attitudes.
You think I am so dramatic, Adan? I was coming back from mess, and turned the corner en route to my room. There, clustered and with their heads low as a sickly crow, were a group of soldiers in the midst of heated, whispered conversation. I only heard Lope’s name before they stopped to fixate me with icy glares. I felt myself shrink in my habit. I felt like a frightened turtle, only to find my shell was black and white linens. I quickly passed them, my footsteps a seeming and awkward blur. Even as I left them, they still drove their cruel stares into the back of my neck. What they were discussing, Adan, I cannot truly say. I can only assume a wicked intention was at the heart of their dialogue. Their narrowed eyes seemed a solid black against their white backgrounds. Their whole person was bristling, hands flexed at the ready around their dagger (or sword) hilts. I fear not just for myself, but Leoncio as well. Were they planning on freeing Lope?
“Your suspicions are correct,” Elias told me when he was coming off his shift in the barn. He was smoking a pipe, patting the leaves down with his thumb before flicking away the ash. “They are planning something. They were afraid to act, but the longer the Captain is gone, the more bold they become. I think if they want to do something, they will do it soon. Be on your guard, Hermana. Honestly, you should not even be here.”
I remember shaking my head, and I remember mistaking pride for stubbornness. “I will not leave Leoncio, I will not leave the Tairona. Alvarelo will be back. You will see. Things will change.”
He snickered, and tapped out the contents of his spent pipe. “Will? Hermana. Things have changed. I suggest you start formulating a second plan,” he did not glance back, only hooked his thumbs to his belt as he left me by Doctor Gil’s garden, “just in case.”
It has been three days, and there is no sign of Father Alvarelo. Not even a messenger has come to us. The soldiers have gone back to celebrating, pestering what servants remain, and bothering Doctor Gil for drugs which they are outright refused. I have gone to bed again early in hopes that I will hear Father Alvarelo’s return in the courtyard.
Instead, I was visited by Father Leoncio. He was knocking rapidly, and I answered the door with squinting eyes and a tired voice.
“Father?”
“One of the Tairona is giving birth. They have requested I be there.”
“What? Why? They despise us.”
“Is is the parent’s wish. I want you to come.”
“They want you, Father, not I.”
“The parents wish me, but it is Mama Gondu who wishes you.”
I was silent, and my hands tensed around the robe I was clutching about my shoulders. “Mama Gondu?”
“There are horses waiting for us at the bottom of the hill that the Tairon have supplied. I would rather Lope not know we are leaving. Prepare yourself, please, I will fetch you again soon.”
Entry #25
Adan
We put Lope in the pin where horses of an abnormal disposition tend to kick and writhe. How could a mission possess a prison? This was the best we could do. It is barred off, mostly, and the rest is boarded around this enclosed space big a enough for a fully bred, untamed horse. Even if those other people had not gone mission, the fact he killed Lope was still cause enough to lock him away. The stable manager agreed to keep an eye on him, as well as a quieter soldier named Elias. He was silently smoking as Leoncio and I accompanied Alvarelo into the stables.
"Send word to Captain Gonzalo, and to the nearest missions. We need him removed."
"Yes, Father," Alvarelo said, securing a saddle around the horse's back and belly. I was already setting his ride up with a bridle. He began to chomp away at the metal bit now plunged past his teeth.
"Pray you don't take too long," Lope rattled his bars with a passing glance from his fist.
Father Alvarelo eyed Lope with a measured, hateful gaze. He took the reigns in hand, and bundled his coat around his shoulders. "I will return very soon. I promise, we will be helped."
"Ride quicky," Father Leoncio struck the horse's thigh, sending Father Alvarelo off from the mission. He cleared the courtyard in a matter of moments, and was already descending the hill. He disappeared under the curve, and I met Father Leoncio's gaze. He was otherwise preoccupied with the pin. Lope was quiet. For the first time in hours, he said nothing, and he was still. Father Leoncio kept me behind him and went to inspect the pin. He was ensnared by Lope.
His fingers coiled around Father Leoncio's neck. I launched myself at the pin's bars, trying to pry Father Leoncio free. Father Leoncio was snapped against one of the bars. He crumbled to the ground, unconscious, and I in turn was grabbed. Lope must have hidden in the shadows to surprise a keen eye like Father Leoncio's. He had also used the Father as bait. He knew I would try to help, and he even pulled me close to the bars and sneered:
"So predictable." I pushed against him, and I shoved against the bars to try and get away from his grasp. His voice was wet in my ear, and he huffed in and out through his nose like a bull. He was horrifying. More warbles, these on his neck, along his shoulders, covering him. "Too bad you could not save, Pepita," he giggled, and he licked me with one, long stroke of his tongue just as the soldier arrived. He pointed his musket inside, snarling and barking.
"Get away from her - get away from the bars!"
Lope hissed, and released my neck. I stumbled into the soldier's arms, and with such force too. The soldier Elias was strong, but I struck him with what I supposed was the force of a boulder, for he tumbled back so short of breath.
Elias threw me off, and Father Leoncio was to my side to lend his support. The soldier brought up his musket, and Lope caught the barrel.
“Go ahead,” his lips curled in an unnatural snarl that revealed each tooth tile in his mouth. “Shoot him,” he planted the mouth of the barrel right to his throat, and leaned on it with a sickening giggle. “Shoot him through the throat,” he commanded in an inhuman voice, but that had to be the barrel pressing so deep into his neck. “See where I go,” he tittered, and Elias wrenched his gun away. Lope fell to the floor, coughing and hacking, and all the while laughing in the midst of this heaving.
“Come away from here,” Father Leoncio said firmly, pulling me to my feet. “This is not a man, this is a mad dog,” he told me as we moved through the courtyard.
“He has been acting strange, ever since Carmen disappeared.”
“There is something I believe, a matter that I find hard to approach.”
This was peculiar. Though I have found a middle ground with Father Leoncio, I find it remarkable that anything could unbalance him this way. I have never known him to have any trepidation, and here is; a brow furrowed in doubt, his gaze distant as if looking through the courtyard.
“What is that, Father Leoncio?”
“I believe Lope may be at the heart of these disappearances. The brutal way he took Pepita’s life, such a horrible deed makes me sure he is capable.”
“I cannot bring myself to disagree with you, Father. I will confess, my tolerance for the man is thin. Pepita was close to me, and I know he abused her. What should we do?”
“Alvarelo will return upon sending word to Mexico and Yucatan. Until then, we can only keep Lope locked up, guarded. I fear some of his men may be too loyal to him, that they might try to free him.”
“This is my fear as well. Father, there is something else I need to speak to you about.”
He stopped, he looked at me. “Tell me.”
“When I came here... oh, such a day seems so distant to me now. The mission was a lovely place, and sure the soldiers were rowdy, but they were never so cruel. The Tairona were happy. Over the past few months, though... Father, I feel evil here. A terrible notion has settled in my bones, and I feel watched and followed. My dreams are so infected these days. I barely sleep, I barely eat...”
“Shhh, there is no point in crying,” he tucked his thumb under the cuff of his robe, and drew the end of the sleeve over my cheeks. “Calm yourself, keep speaking.”
I took a deep breath. “I think the Devil has come upon this place.”
He watched me carefully, a gaze that desired more than anything to prove I was wrong because of this reason, that reason, and furthermore this reason, too. He could not, and he looked away. “You speak my own thoughts to their final attitudes.”
“Father, we must do something – ”
“We will. I will think of something. For now, I require you to rest. Until we can rid ourselves of Lope for good, we will need to keep our wits about us. Meet me in the mess in the morning, and we will try and think of something.”
I retired to bed. My night shirt was much lighter than my habit; the act of shedding such materials seemed to relieve me of a burden. Every thread seemed to heavy lately and the collar so tight to my neck. Odd, the garment had never been uncomfortable before. As I lay down, the sheets and blanket drew around me like a closing flower, and I nestled into my pillow.
The room was hot though, a sweat overcame me as I began to toss in turn in my bed. A heavy weight was on my chest, pressing into my bones, making it hard to breathe. There was darkness in my sleep swallowing me whole. Not a visible nightmare, just a sensation that pinched the back of my neck.
I awoke, coiling into a ball, tearing at my neck, covering my mouth and simply sobbing. It was not what I saw, it was what I felt. A presence that even now upon waking I still feel hovering around me. I thought I heard laughing, that giggle that Lope was uttering what seemed moments ago. Before I knew it, I had swung my legs over my bed, and I was to my feet, moving toward the kitchen.
Lope looked up when I stepped into the barn. I heard him breathe in deeply through his nose, and in the semi-light of the moonlight coming through the bar I could see his lips part into a mischievous, mean grin. “Hermana Nieve.”
I stood, watching.
“You look as if you saw a ghost. Would you like me to hold you?”
I approached.
“Hermana Nieve, that is it. Come closer. I can keep you safe from the wicked.”
He saw the knife in my hand.
“Oh. What do you intend to do with that, little Nieve.”
My hand shook, and the tears burned my eyes. “You killed Pepita. You killed all those people, too. Tell me.”
“If it is what you want to hear, I will admit to it all freely and without reservation. What do you want me to say? What do you want me to do?”
“Bring them back, but you cannot do that.”
“I would not be so sure about that. Come closer, I have something to show you.”
“Why would you do that? How could you?”
“Why not?”
“You should not live,” I choked on the words, I tightened my grip around the knife. “Those people were innocent.”
“Innocent? Like you?”
He was a monster, draped against the bars, the warbles in his skin all squirming and wriggling with the warms deep inside. His mouth seemed unhinged like the pythons I had seen in the jungle, he never blinked, just penetrated me with a bizarre stare.
“Nieve,” I heard a voice behind me.
“Father,” came my stammering voice.
“Step away from the cage.”
Lope reached for me with a blistered hand, infected and quivering with the white larva. “You are so close, Nieve. You are so close.”
“Nieve,” Father Leoncio persisted, “do not listen to him. He is taken by the devil himself.”
Lope bristled. “Gabriel, stay out of this.”
“Come away, Nieve. Give me the knife.”
I was shaking, and Father Leoncio would tell me I was not myself. So wanton of brutal movement to Lope’s place, my hands trembling from fingertip to knuckle, but unable to move. There was a part of me, until now unbeknownst to me, that wanted nothing more than to slit him hope. The other half begged restraint, attempted to bridle such a sudden, uncontrollable hatred. Father Leoncio’s carefully plucked the knife from my hand.
“I am just taking this, and we will go back to bed.”
“Yes,” Lope rattled his cage, “take her back to your bed Gabriel. Take her back to you bed! Keep her warm.”
I collapsed into his arms, I remember nothing else.
We put Lope in the pin where horses of an abnormal disposition tend to kick and writhe. How could a mission possess a prison? This was the best we could do. It is barred off, mostly, and the rest is boarded around this enclosed space big a enough for a fully bred, untamed horse. Even if those other people had not gone mission, the fact he killed Lope was still cause enough to lock him away. The stable manager agreed to keep an eye on him, as well as a quieter soldier named Elias. He was silently smoking as Leoncio and I accompanied Alvarelo into the stables.
"Send word to Captain Gonzalo, and to the nearest missions. We need him removed."
"Yes, Father," Alvarelo said, securing a saddle around the horse's back and belly. I was already setting his ride up with a bridle. He began to chomp away at the metal bit now plunged past his teeth.
"Pray you don't take too long," Lope rattled his bars with a passing glance from his fist.
Father Alvarelo eyed Lope with a measured, hateful gaze. He took the reigns in hand, and bundled his coat around his shoulders. "I will return very soon. I promise, we will be helped."
"Ride quicky," Father Leoncio struck the horse's thigh, sending Father Alvarelo off from the mission. He cleared the courtyard in a matter of moments, and was already descending the hill. He disappeared under the curve, and I met Father Leoncio's gaze. He was otherwise preoccupied with the pin. Lope was quiet. For the first time in hours, he said nothing, and he was still. Father Leoncio kept me behind him and went to inspect the pin. He was ensnared by Lope.
His fingers coiled around Father Leoncio's neck. I launched myself at the pin's bars, trying to pry Father Leoncio free. Father Leoncio was snapped against one of the bars. He crumbled to the ground, unconscious, and I in turn was grabbed. Lope must have hidden in the shadows to surprise a keen eye like Father Leoncio's. He had also used the Father as bait. He knew I would try to help, and he even pulled me close to the bars and sneered:
"So predictable." I pushed against him, and I shoved against the bars to try and get away from his grasp. His voice was wet in my ear, and he huffed in and out through his nose like a bull. He was horrifying. More warbles, these on his neck, along his shoulders, covering him. "Too bad you could not save, Pepita," he giggled, and he licked me with one, long stroke of his tongue just as the soldier arrived. He pointed his musket inside, snarling and barking.
"Get away from her - get away from the bars!"
Lope hissed, and released my neck. I stumbled into the soldier's arms, and with such force too. The soldier Elias was strong, but I struck him with what I supposed was the force of a boulder, for he tumbled back so short of breath.
Elias threw me off, and Father Leoncio was to my side to lend his support. The soldier brought up his musket, and Lope caught the barrel.
“Go ahead,” his lips curled in an unnatural snarl that revealed each tooth tile in his mouth. “Shoot him,” he planted the mouth of the barrel right to his throat, and leaned on it with a sickening giggle. “Shoot him through the throat,” he commanded in an inhuman voice, but that had to be the barrel pressing so deep into his neck. “See where I go,” he tittered, and Elias wrenched his gun away. Lope fell to the floor, coughing and hacking, and all the while laughing in the midst of this heaving.
“Come away from here,” Father Leoncio said firmly, pulling me to my feet. “This is not a man, this is a mad dog,” he told me as we moved through the courtyard.
“He has been acting strange, ever since Carmen disappeared.”
“There is something I believe, a matter that I find hard to approach.”
This was peculiar. Though I have found a middle ground with Father Leoncio, I find it remarkable that anything could unbalance him this way. I have never known him to have any trepidation, and here is; a brow furrowed in doubt, his gaze distant as if looking through the courtyard.
“What is that, Father Leoncio?”
“I believe Lope may be at the heart of these disappearances. The brutal way he took Pepita’s life, such a horrible deed makes me sure he is capable.”
“I cannot bring myself to disagree with you, Father. I will confess, my tolerance for the man is thin. Pepita was close to me, and I know he abused her. What should we do?”
“Alvarelo will return upon sending word to Mexico and Yucatan. Until then, we can only keep Lope locked up, guarded. I fear some of his men may be too loyal to him, that they might try to free him.”
“This is my fear as well. Father, there is something else I need to speak to you about.”
He stopped, he looked at me. “Tell me.”
“When I came here... oh, such a day seems so distant to me now. The mission was a lovely place, and sure the soldiers were rowdy, but they were never so cruel. The Tairona were happy. Over the past few months, though... Father, I feel evil here. A terrible notion has settled in my bones, and I feel watched and followed. My dreams are so infected these days. I barely sleep, I barely eat...”
“Shhh, there is no point in crying,” he tucked his thumb under the cuff of his robe, and drew the end of the sleeve over my cheeks. “Calm yourself, keep speaking.”
I took a deep breath. “I think the Devil has come upon this place.”
He watched me carefully, a gaze that desired more than anything to prove I was wrong because of this reason, that reason, and furthermore this reason, too. He could not, and he looked away. “You speak my own thoughts to their final attitudes.”
“Father, we must do something – ”
“We will. I will think of something. For now, I require you to rest. Until we can rid ourselves of Lope for good, we will need to keep our wits about us. Meet me in the mess in the morning, and we will try and think of something.”
I retired to bed. My night shirt was much lighter than my habit; the act of shedding such materials seemed to relieve me of a burden. Every thread seemed to heavy lately and the collar so tight to my neck. Odd, the garment had never been uncomfortable before. As I lay down, the sheets and blanket drew around me like a closing flower, and I nestled into my pillow.
The room was hot though, a sweat overcame me as I began to toss in turn in my bed. A heavy weight was on my chest, pressing into my bones, making it hard to breathe. There was darkness in my sleep swallowing me whole. Not a visible nightmare, just a sensation that pinched the back of my neck.
I awoke, coiling into a ball, tearing at my neck, covering my mouth and simply sobbing. It was not what I saw, it was what I felt. A presence that even now upon waking I still feel hovering around me. I thought I heard laughing, that giggle that Lope was uttering what seemed moments ago. Before I knew it, I had swung my legs over my bed, and I was to my feet, moving toward the kitchen.
Lope looked up when I stepped into the barn. I heard him breathe in deeply through his nose, and in the semi-light of the moonlight coming through the bar I could see his lips part into a mischievous, mean grin. “Hermana Nieve.”
I stood, watching.
“You look as if you saw a ghost. Would you like me to hold you?”
I approached.
“Hermana Nieve, that is it. Come closer. I can keep you safe from the wicked.”
He saw the knife in my hand.
“Oh. What do you intend to do with that, little Nieve.”
My hand shook, and the tears burned my eyes. “You killed Pepita. You killed all those people, too. Tell me.”
“If it is what you want to hear, I will admit to it all freely and without reservation. What do you want me to say? What do you want me to do?”
“Bring them back, but you cannot do that.”
“I would not be so sure about that. Come closer, I have something to show you.”
“Why would you do that? How could you?”
“Why not?”
“You should not live,” I choked on the words, I tightened my grip around the knife. “Those people were innocent.”
“Innocent? Like you?”
He was a monster, draped against the bars, the warbles in his skin all squirming and wriggling with the warms deep inside. His mouth seemed unhinged like the pythons I had seen in the jungle, he never blinked, just penetrated me with a bizarre stare.
“Nieve,” I heard a voice behind me.
“Father,” came my stammering voice.
“Step away from the cage.”
Lope reached for me with a blistered hand, infected and quivering with the white larva. “You are so close, Nieve. You are so close.”
“Nieve,” Father Leoncio persisted, “do not listen to him. He is taken by the devil himself.”
Lope bristled. “Gabriel, stay out of this.”
“Come away, Nieve. Give me the knife.”
I was shaking, and Father Leoncio would tell me I was not myself. So wanton of brutal movement to Lope’s place, my hands trembling from fingertip to knuckle, but unable to move. There was a part of me, until now unbeknownst to me, that wanted nothing more than to slit him hope. The other half begged restraint, attempted to bridle such a sudden, uncontrollable hatred. Father Leoncio’s carefully plucked the knife from my hand.
“I am just taking this, and we will go back to bed.”
“Yes,” Lope rattled his cage, “take her back to your bed Gabriel. Take her back to you bed! Keep her warm.”
I collapsed into his arms, I remember nothing else.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Entry #24
Adan,
Since Pepita’s confession, I find my mind completely mixed, lost within its own thoughts, it struggles for a solution to question that nags me through meals, nags me through sleep, nags me at every step I take.
“I have chosen to kill Lope.”
Why would she tell me? She must mistake my habit for a gag - how can I possibly remain silent regarding this? My vows, my beliefs, everything I have devoted myself to would be as good as smoke. What would even the point of my visit here be? To reveal me a conspirator? An assistant murderer? That I even know is punishment enough!
Pepita’s decision… she could not possibly follow through. No, she is not a woman so out of control and beastly. She is not like Lope! A man like that, so long exposed to a woman like her could not transform her so ghastly, so heinously. Could this really be Pepita?
I go to her room almost every night these past few months. She draws sweeping curves, sharp lines and light shadows, thus creating a lonely, beautiful person alone and nude on what used to be a blank and altogether plain parchment. As she works she hums with a voice so different from the one she speaks with. Usually, she speaks so sardonically, and coolly, yet in that hum she is soft and melodious. Who is this woman and why would she do this? Why would she think to take the life of another man?
And yet…
And yet. Can I call Lope a man? Would a man truly debase himself into a creature that would attack someone of the fairer sex? Would a man bring himself to that, reduce himself so, in order to feel what? Power. Control. Worth. Self-worth! Lope is a soldier, whose power should have been proven in scars, his control in the way his fingers can manipulate a blade, his worth measured by his comrades, and his self-worth measured by what he sees at the end of such a victorious path. Instead, Lope sees power in the way we - the clergy! - shuffle past him, he sees control as a fist, and he sees worth not in how his men measure him but in how he measures up to their previous exploits. And self-worth.
His self-worth has yet to be discovered, thus he hits and brutalizes, attempts to diminish every living thing he meets into something that will fear him, respect him, ultimately do as he prefers lest they suffer his boot.
And I ask myself if helping Pepita exorcise such a demon from her life goes against everything that has brought me here. What if she is part of my coming to this place? That saving her from such a devil’s grip is a task. Is it so insane to imagine that what I would be doing, swearing myself to secrecy, is not as wrong as I first though?
I stood within the corridor, divided from feet were two paths. One would lead me to Father Leoncio, who I would inform probably breathlessly, hastily, tearfully. The other way leads me to Pepita, who I would promise my silence to. That I would stop my words up with liquid lead and cool such into a metal cork so that Pepita’s plan may never be caught by some stray ear.
I take the left corridor, and my steps are slow, not yet ready to yield the next inch to me though I force their progress. So continues such progression, the lead I have depicted to you earlier Adan has dripped into my stomach instead, where a heavy disk forms and settles there, slowing me, fermenting and rotting… a core of self-doubt where my meal used to be. Had I made the right decision? I asked myself this as I lifted my hand to the door, and before I could answer such a burning question, my knuckles had already made contatct.. Over and over again, I knocked. I stopped, I stepped back, and I waited.
Pepita answered the door, and found me with tears in my eyes, and my face pale. She quickly pulled me inside, and shut the portal behind me, bolting it. “Dear Nieve, what is the matter? Are you all right?”
“My heart is so heavy. I am afraid.”
“Sit down, please. Have a drink.”
“No, a drink would simply make me more sick,” I assured her with a nervous laugh, though took the offered seat on the side of her bed. She moved some drawings aside and sat next to me. I had never seen her like this, her face was somewhat concealed and unremarkable… save for her eyes. They were so dark, but in their centers I could see a faint glow, like the last spark of a match before it reaches the end of its brittle stalk. “I have thought about what you said.” Her head lifted into the light of the candles surrounding her bed.
“About… Lope?”
“Yes, Pepita. About Lope.”
“I should not have told you anything…”
“I will not speak of it.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“I will keep your secret.” I wept momentarily, tears drove their way down my cheeks, and I had to look away as she watched me so intently. So curiously.
“What changed your mind, Hermana?”
“I want you safe, and I do not think you are safe even avoiding him. The man is a predator, he would seek you out, and I believe end you. I would rather someone like you survive over someone like him. I have tried to change your mind as God would have me beg you, but your decision is yours. I cannot sway your choice, and what is more, I do not think I want to.” I wiped my tears away. “How will you do it, Pepita?”
Pepita stood from the bed. She went to her trunk, and pulled the lid back. A red rag was pulled from its contents. The bundle was cradled in her hands as she approached me again, and settled beside me. I could not take my eyes off her. The candle light was golden and smooth around her skin, the color of which was amber against her white dress and chemise. She was simply startling, and my decision did not seem so wretched.
“I retrieved this from the port the last time I was fetching drugs for Basilio. He is a very particular doctor. He may know one organ from the next, and he may know how to set limbs, but in the end the man cannot keep his papers together. I began to taking down the orders, and I also fetched them from the port. Before my most recent visit, I requested something from the apothecary there.”
She unfolded the rag, and revealed a vile no wider than my thumb, no longer than my ring finger. Inside there was a liquid of a bland color, not quite clear, but not gray, just this hazy yellow in-between that made chills run races up and down my spine.
“The venom of a barba Amarillo, a pit viper.”
I shivered. “What does it do?”
“The victim bleeds profusely, sometimes from his mouth and nose, other times from the bite itself… were he bitten. Blood cannot clot, so it disperses throughout the muscles and the rest of the body, even into the spine. The victim can hardly breathe, and his body will often shock before expiring. It is very painful.”
“Pepita,” I sighed, horrified. Her hands were shaking as she closed the bundle up again and left it on her bed.
“But I do not want to use it.” She folded her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking. I saw a tear drop off her face, though I never saw her blink to scattered the welling water in her eyes. The droplets simply fell. “I cannot kill him. I do not think I could kill anyone. My life is devoted to saving people. They may be bastards most of the time,” she wiped her eyes, “but I still must save them. I am sure you understand.”
“Of course.” Oh, what a relief, Adan! My spirits have lifted, I am rejuvenated. Adan, Pepita’s decision changed my entire soul. I embraced her tightly, we were golden together for that moment in the candle light and that was when we heard the loud bang against her door.
“Pepita!” A ragged voice barked from behind the door, which began to buckle and shake under the vigorous pounding it took from the balled fist beyond it. We instantly recognized Lope, and gripped tightly into each other.
Pepita’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You must hide.”
“I will not leave you with him, I cannot.”
“Please,” she dragged me off the bed and pulled me to her amoire. “This is deep enough. Please, stay here.”
“Pepita!” Came Lope’s demand again as he pounded on the door.
“Do not breathe a single sound,” she shut the armoire on me before I could protest. I was on my knees, and through a keyhole I could see her searching her drawings for the poison.
“Pepita!” There was a surge against the door, I could hear the bolt tinkling and ready to give, and just as she found the poison and stuffed it under the pillow, the door flew open. I heard it bash against the wall beside it, and then click shut. “Mmm,” Lope chuckled behind a hacking cough, “your lock is broken.”
“Yes,” I watched Pepita straighten from the bed, her hands sliding into the pockets of her dress’s skirt. “Someone broke in once.”
I heard Lope’s laugh stagger at the back of his hoarse throat, but I could not see him yet. “Funny. I love a funny girl. I love a girl that can make me laugh. You know you make me laugh so much, Pepita.”
“Lope, you look sick…”
“Doctor Basilio Gil,” he sounded drunk too, “says I have some sort of malaise. He cannot identify it, mainly because he is beast.”
“A beast, Lope?”
“You know a beast, right? A beast when you see it.” He shuffled closer, I could see him approaching her now at the bed. “Do you know a beast when you see it?”
“Lope, you have been drinking,” she turned her head away, but he caught her by the mouth and turned her back to him.
“Such a pretty little mouth for such an ugly little dog. You waste your time talking, you should be howling.” He pressed against her, his hands were laid across the front of her hips, and when he flexed his fingers he drew her skirts up. “What do you say?”
I could see the back of his neck, there was a warble there, just like the ones on Carmen’s back. I put my hands over my mouth, I was shaking all over.
“Lope, find me when you are sober,” she caught his wrists gently and began to push them away, “and I will show you just how what a beast is. Yes?”
“Come come. It is a quiet night, one I would make loud with you.”
“Leave me be, Lope, I am far too tired, you are far too drunk - ” And I saw his hand slice across her face in a resounding smack. Her head whipped to the side, she held her cheek, and peered back at him.
“I can get you drunk. I have much that you can drink. You have to be on your knees though,” he gripped her shoulders to push her down, and she shoved him away and made a break for the door. Yes, Pepita, escape! Please, escape! Your door is so close. He lunged out of my field of vision. I heard the door open, and then slam. There were two sets of breathing, both deep. One was strained with sickness, the other frightened and thin. Pepita had not escaped, in fact, I could hear her whisper:
“Please. I want you to leave.”
“I want to stay, and you want me to stay too, you just will not admit. I can convince you if I am wrong. I can convince you one way… or another, or maybe another, or another until we find the way that makes you like me most.”
“I will scream.”
“Then I will snatch out your tongue, and I will break your jaw should you clench your teeth to stop me, should you gnaw on my knuckles so.”
There was movement, I heard him strike her again, and then she must have struck him back because I heard him stagger and snarl.
“You whore,” he seethed, and I watched her stumble away before stopping suddenly, and putting her hands on her chest.
“Stop, stop, stop!” She pled, and drew her body near to his as she began to pull him toward the bed. “Perhaps I have been unfair.”
“Hmph.”
“Perhaps I have been unkind to you,” she took his mouth to hers, rolling her lips across his, and pulling at his trousers, loosening them. “Perhaps I could be sweeter?”
“You angel,” he chuckled derisively, and bit her lip as her hand pressed past the waistline of his trousers. I saw his body folded against her, his teeth gnawing at her shoulder as he tugged her shirt away from this skin. Her arm was pumping slowly, rhythmically.
“You see? I can give you just what you want, but you must go when you are done. Do you understand? Now, break my bed.”
He shoved her to the bed, and he was on her like a beast upon the fawn. He pried her legs apart, he ripped her shirt. I saw her hands raise over her head, fingers slowly stealing away under the pillow. I could not help but pray in the darkness of the armoire that her ruse succeeded. My prayers were not answered, his hands caught her wrists, and fingers flooded over hands beneath the pillow. All movement stopped.
“What is this?” He pulled the vile out from under the bed, and before she could even lunge he had hooked both of her wrists in his one large and free hand. “What a peculiar little trinket this is I have found in your hand. Was this,” he turned his head slowly down to her, “for me?”
Pepita was breathless, speechless. Her once golden form was engulfed in the shadow he poured over her as he bent closer.
“Is this for me? In case I am thirsty? In case I am parched?” He snarled in her face, pouring that sickening breath over her. “Put it in your mouth.”
Pepita’s mouth tore open, her scream short lived as he released her wrists to grip her lower jaw, the crook of his thumb and forefinger pushing between her teeth to force her mouth to stay open. She gagged, her body buckled, and he shoved the vile in her mouth.
“Bite it.”
Pepita tried to scream again, and her fists flew against his face, but he caught both of them again. She managed to spit the vile out, but he caught it off her chest, and forced it in again before controlling her arms once more. He slammed the heel of hand into her chin and I heard a fragile snap. The vile had burst open, and Pepita’s eyes were wide. He snickered, and pushed off the bed to storm from the room. I was immediately out of my hiding place.
I threw the doors to the armoire open just as Pepita had reeled over the bed. She spat out a mass of poison, glass and blood. She spat over and over again, shoved her fingers in her throat to try and make herself vomit. The venom had seeped in though. Soon she was bleeding, and I held her as I screamed for help. I tried to move her out into the hall, but I knew I would not make it into the infirmary. “Someone, please! Help me! Help me, please!” She was twitching, convulsing, and sobbing, reaching for me, and dying in my arms when Father Leoncio found us. The little lights I had seen in her big, dark eyes had gone out, and I saw instead an unending black.
Since Pepita’s confession, I find my mind completely mixed, lost within its own thoughts, it struggles for a solution to question that nags me through meals, nags me through sleep, nags me at every step I take.
“I have chosen to kill Lope.”
Why would she tell me? She must mistake my habit for a gag - how can I possibly remain silent regarding this? My vows, my beliefs, everything I have devoted myself to would be as good as smoke. What would even the point of my visit here be? To reveal me a conspirator? An assistant murderer? That I even know is punishment enough!
Pepita’s decision… she could not possibly follow through. No, she is not a woman so out of control and beastly. She is not like Lope! A man like that, so long exposed to a woman like her could not transform her so ghastly, so heinously. Could this really be Pepita?
I go to her room almost every night these past few months. She draws sweeping curves, sharp lines and light shadows, thus creating a lonely, beautiful person alone and nude on what used to be a blank and altogether plain parchment. As she works she hums with a voice so different from the one she speaks with. Usually, she speaks so sardonically, and coolly, yet in that hum she is soft and melodious. Who is this woman and why would she do this? Why would she think to take the life of another man?
And yet…
And yet. Can I call Lope a man? Would a man truly debase himself into a creature that would attack someone of the fairer sex? Would a man bring himself to that, reduce himself so, in order to feel what? Power. Control. Worth. Self-worth! Lope is a soldier, whose power should have been proven in scars, his control in the way his fingers can manipulate a blade, his worth measured by his comrades, and his self-worth measured by what he sees at the end of such a victorious path. Instead, Lope sees power in the way we - the clergy! - shuffle past him, he sees control as a fist, and he sees worth not in how his men measure him but in how he measures up to their previous exploits. And self-worth.
His self-worth has yet to be discovered, thus he hits and brutalizes, attempts to diminish every living thing he meets into something that will fear him, respect him, ultimately do as he prefers lest they suffer his boot.
And I ask myself if helping Pepita exorcise such a demon from her life goes against everything that has brought me here. What if she is part of my coming to this place? That saving her from such a devil’s grip is a task. Is it so insane to imagine that what I would be doing, swearing myself to secrecy, is not as wrong as I first though?
I stood within the corridor, divided from feet were two paths. One would lead me to Father Leoncio, who I would inform probably breathlessly, hastily, tearfully. The other way leads me to Pepita, who I would promise my silence to. That I would stop my words up with liquid lead and cool such into a metal cork so that Pepita’s plan may never be caught by some stray ear.
I take the left corridor, and my steps are slow, not yet ready to yield the next inch to me though I force their progress. So continues such progression, the lead I have depicted to you earlier Adan has dripped into my stomach instead, where a heavy disk forms and settles there, slowing me, fermenting and rotting… a core of self-doubt where my meal used to be. Had I made the right decision? I asked myself this as I lifted my hand to the door, and before I could answer such a burning question, my knuckles had already made contatct.. Over and over again, I knocked. I stopped, I stepped back, and I waited.
Pepita answered the door, and found me with tears in my eyes, and my face pale. She quickly pulled me inside, and shut the portal behind me, bolting it. “Dear Nieve, what is the matter? Are you all right?”
“My heart is so heavy. I am afraid.”
“Sit down, please. Have a drink.”
“No, a drink would simply make me more sick,” I assured her with a nervous laugh, though took the offered seat on the side of her bed. She moved some drawings aside and sat next to me. I had never seen her like this, her face was somewhat concealed and unremarkable… save for her eyes. They were so dark, but in their centers I could see a faint glow, like the last spark of a match before it reaches the end of its brittle stalk. “I have thought about what you said.” Her head lifted into the light of the candles surrounding her bed.
“About… Lope?”
“Yes, Pepita. About Lope.”
“I should not have told you anything…”
“I will not speak of it.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
“I will keep your secret.” I wept momentarily, tears drove their way down my cheeks, and I had to look away as she watched me so intently. So curiously.
“What changed your mind, Hermana?”
“I want you safe, and I do not think you are safe even avoiding him. The man is a predator, he would seek you out, and I believe end you. I would rather someone like you survive over someone like him. I have tried to change your mind as God would have me beg you, but your decision is yours. I cannot sway your choice, and what is more, I do not think I want to.” I wiped my tears away. “How will you do it, Pepita?”
Pepita stood from the bed. She went to her trunk, and pulled the lid back. A red rag was pulled from its contents. The bundle was cradled in her hands as she approached me again, and settled beside me. I could not take my eyes off her. The candle light was golden and smooth around her skin, the color of which was amber against her white dress and chemise. She was simply startling, and my decision did not seem so wretched.
“I retrieved this from the port the last time I was fetching drugs for Basilio. He is a very particular doctor. He may know one organ from the next, and he may know how to set limbs, but in the end the man cannot keep his papers together. I began to taking down the orders, and I also fetched them from the port. Before my most recent visit, I requested something from the apothecary there.”
She unfolded the rag, and revealed a vile no wider than my thumb, no longer than my ring finger. Inside there was a liquid of a bland color, not quite clear, but not gray, just this hazy yellow in-between that made chills run races up and down my spine.
“The venom of a barba Amarillo, a pit viper.”
I shivered. “What does it do?”
“The victim bleeds profusely, sometimes from his mouth and nose, other times from the bite itself… were he bitten. Blood cannot clot, so it disperses throughout the muscles and the rest of the body, even into the spine. The victim can hardly breathe, and his body will often shock before expiring. It is very painful.”
“Pepita,” I sighed, horrified. Her hands were shaking as she closed the bundle up again and left it on her bed.
“But I do not want to use it.” She folded her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking. I saw a tear drop off her face, though I never saw her blink to scattered the welling water in her eyes. The droplets simply fell. “I cannot kill him. I do not think I could kill anyone. My life is devoted to saving people. They may be bastards most of the time,” she wiped her eyes, “but I still must save them. I am sure you understand.”
“Of course.” Oh, what a relief, Adan! My spirits have lifted, I am rejuvenated. Adan, Pepita’s decision changed my entire soul. I embraced her tightly, we were golden together for that moment in the candle light and that was when we heard the loud bang against her door.
“Pepita!” A ragged voice barked from behind the door, which began to buckle and shake under the vigorous pounding it took from the balled fist beyond it. We instantly recognized Lope, and gripped tightly into each other.
Pepita’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You must hide.”
“I will not leave you with him, I cannot.”
“Please,” she dragged me off the bed and pulled me to her amoire. “This is deep enough. Please, stay here.”
“Pepita!” Came Lope’s demand again as he pounded on the door.
“Do not breathe a single sound,” she shut the armoire on me before I could protest. I was on my knees, and through a keyhole I could see her searching her drawings for the poison.
“Pepita!” There was a surge against the door, I could hear the bolt tinkling and ready to give, and just as she found the poison and stuffed it under the pillow, the door flew open. I heard it bash against the wall beside it, and then click shut. “Mmm,” Lope chuckled behind a hacking cough, “your lock is broken.”
“Yes,” I watched Pepita straighten from the bed, her hands sliding into the pockets of her dress’s skirt. “Someone broke in once.”
I heard Lope’s laugh stagger at the back of his hoarse throat, but I could not see him yet. “Funny. I love a funny girl. I love a girl that can make me laugh. You know you make me laugh so much, Pepita.”
“Lope, you look sick…”
“Doctor Basilio Gil,” he sounded drunk too, “says I have some sort of malaise. He cannot identify it, mainly because he is beast.”
“A beast, Lope?”
“You know a beast, right? A beast when you see it.” He shuffled closer, I could see him approaching her now at the bed. “Do you know a beast when you see it?”
“Lope, you have been drinking,” she turned her head away, but he caught her by the mouth and turned her back to him.
“Such a pretty little mouth for such an ugly little dog. You waste your time talking, you should be howling.” He pressed against her, his hands were laid across the front of her hips, and when he flexed his fingers he drew her skirts up. “What do you say?”
I could see the back of his neck, there was a warble there, just like the ones on Carmen’s back. I put my hands over my mouth, I was shaking all over.
“Lope, find me when you are sober,” she caught his wrists gently and began to push them away, “and I will show you just how what a beast is. Yes?”
“Come come. It is a quiet night, one I would make loud with you.”
“Leave me be, Lope, I am far too tired, you are far too drunk - ” And I saw his hand slice across her face in a resounding smack. Her head whipped to the side, she held her cheek, and peered back at him.
“I can get you drunk. I have much that you can drink. You have to be on your knees though,” he gripped her shoulders to push her down, and she shoved him away and made a break for the door. Yes, Pepita, escape! Please, escape! Your door is so close. He lunged out of my field of vision. I heard the door open, and then slam. There were two sets of breathing, both deep. One was strained with sickness, the other frightened and thin. Pepita had not escaped, in fact, I could hear her whisper:
“Please. I want you to leave.”
“I want to stay, and you want me to stay too, you just will not admit. I can convince you if I am wrong. I can convince you one way… or another, or maybe another, or another until we find the way that makes you like me most.”
“I will scream.”
“Then I will snatch out your tongue, and I will break your jaw should you clench your teeth to stop me, should you gnaw on my knuckles so.”
There was movement, I heard him strike her again, and then she must have struck him back because I heard him stagger and snarl.
“You whore,” he seethed, and I watched her stumble away before stopping suddenly, and putting her hands on her chest.
“Stop, stop, stop!” She pled, and drew her body near to his as she began to pull him toward the bed. “Perhaps I have been unfair.”
“Hmph.”
“Perhaps I have been unkind to you,” she took his mouth to hers, rolling her lips across his, and pulling at his trousers, loosening them. “Perhaps I could be sweeter?”
“You angel,” he chuckled derisively, and bit her lip as her hand pressed past the waistline of his trousers. I saw his body folded against her, his teeth gnawing at her shoulder as he tugged her shirt away from this skin. Her arm was pumping slowly, rhythmically.
“You see? I can give you just what you want, but you must go when you are done. Do you understand? Now, break my bed.”
He shoved her to the bed, and he was on her like a beast upon the fawn. He pried her legs apart, he ripped her shirt. I saw her hands raise over her head, fingers slowly stealing away under the pillow. I could not help but pray in the darkness of the armoire that her ruse succeeded. My prayers were not answered, his hands caught her wrists, and fingers flooded over hands beneath the pillow. All movement stopped.
“What is this?” He pulled the vile out from under the bed, and before she could even lunge he had hooked both of her wrists in his one large and free hand. “What a peculiar little trinket this is I have found in your hand. Was this,” he turned his head slowly down to her, “for me?”
Pepita was breathless, speechless. Her once golden form was engulfed in the shadow he poured over her as he bent closer.
“Is this for me? In case I am thirsty? In case I am parched?” He snarled in her face, pouring that sickening breath over her. “Put it in your mouth.”
Pepita’s mouth tore open, her scream short lived as he released her wrists to grip her lower jaw, the crook of his thumb and forefinger pushing between her teeth to force her mouth to stay open. She gagged, her body buckled, and he shoved the vile in her mouth.
“Bite it.”
Pepita tried to scream again, and her fists flew against his face, but he caught both of them again. She managed to spit the vile out, but he caught it off her chest, and forced it in again before controlling her arms once more. He slammed the heel of hand into her chin and I heard a fragile snap. The vile had burst open, and Pepita’s eyes were wide. He snickered, and pushed off the bed to storm from the room. I was immediately out of my hiding place.
I threw the doors to the armoire open just as Pepita had reeled over the bed. She spat out a mass of poison, glass and blood. She spat over and over again, shoved her fingers in her throat to try and make herself vomit. The venom had seeped in though. Soon she was bleeding, and I held her as I screamed for help. I tried to move her out into the hall, but I knew I would not make it into the infirmary. “Someone, please! Help me! Help me, please!” She was twitching, convulsing, and sobbing, reaching for me, and dying in my arms when Father Leoncio found us. The little lights I had seen in her big, dark eyes had gone out, and I saw instead an unending black.
Entry #23
Oh, Adan!
More people have gone missing. Since my last entry, about a month ago, two more have disappeared. We can only presume they are dead. We can never find them. When one search comes to an end, a team of Lope’s soldiers enter the forest to begin yet another. The manner in which these victims are spirited away is so violent. Why, in the village beneath our hill, the last disappearance revealed to Father Leoncio that the victim had struggled, knocking over things in the hut. There were streaks of blood across the floor, and then dragged sweeps of red when the victim was finally taken away. He said he found fingernails lodged in the earth. That and the blood have been the only traces. Who could be doing this? The crimes are too violent to blame an angry predator surfacing from the deeps of the jungle to claim a meal. No, such a terrible and calculated act can only be attributed to a person.
I was later assaulted in my room as I was trying to sleep. There was a rapid knock at my door, the rhythm repetitive and urgent. I drew a robe around me as I rose from bed, and took a candle stick with me. I tucked the object behind my hip, and threw the door open only to find Pepita. Her face was haggard. Her eyes sparkled with tears. I drew my arm around her and tugged her into my room, dropping the candle stick. I locked my door and guided her to my bed.
“Easy, easy.”
I lit a couple of candles, just enough to give me some light. When I saw her face, I could not keep myself from withdrawing a step. No, I recoiled at the sight of her, so aghast was I at the face I hardly recognized. Her cheek was a swollen bruise, ripe and split. Her jaw was a queue of bruises, all waiting to pile up under a swollen, burst lower lip.
“I am sorry, I should not come.”
“Did he see you come here?”
“No,” she shook her head, hardly able to speak.
“You should be at the infirmary. You cannot stay like this. Let us go together.”
But I progress was slow. We had to be sure we were not being watched. A trip that normally only took a few minutes took much longer, but we eventually arrived to the infirmary. I lit a candle by the bed, and Pepita helped me gather some tools. Something to clean her cuts, something to decrease the swell of those bruises. I set to work mending her face. Her tears had started to slow, no longer making her uneven face a slick surface to work on.
“I am finished,” Pepita whispered, and I only heard this upon her second saying of this.
“Do not say that, Pepita. You are not defeated, not by someone like that.”
Pepita laughed, “Defeated?” She lifted her handkerchief to her mouth to spit out a gob of blood. “Who said anything about defeat? I am finished taking this. One of these nights, you know, one of these nights,” she laughed again, “he will kill me.”
“I hardly see the humor in that,” I chastised her lightly, distracted with my repairs.
“Nieve, I am being serious, do not mistake my laughter. It is the laughter of Elektra herself, the laughter of a vengeful woman.”
I frowned at her, I began to clean her wounds with a solution that would normally make someone flinch and pull away, but Pepita was still. Eerily still, her eyes focused on some point beyond my shoulder. Maybe on the vision she was about to describe to me.
“I can let Lope kill me, or I can get rid of him. For good.”
I stopped, I looked at her. “Pepita, you will be jailed for that. He is a man of war, as well, you could be… Lord, I do not wish to think it.”
“I am finished taking his hits, I am finished pleasing him, I am finished doing everything he tells me to do. I want nothing more than to see him suffer for this.”
“Then you are just as wretched as he…”
“Am I?!” Pepita shrilled, pushing my hand away. “Were you to be beaten, pummeled, and raped, would you stand for it as long as I? Would you let that man, that brute of a man, get away with making you his toy? Manipulating you? Would you let him do that, and get away with it.”
For once, I could not say:
“No, Pepita, I would find a way to forgive him.”
“No, Pepita, he will meet his judgment in time.”
“No, Pepita, such power is not ours to wield against a man, only God’s.”
I could say none of this, because I did not believe it.
“You know I am right,” Pepita said, recognizing my hesitance for what it was.
“No!” I stood away from her, dropping the rag I had been using to clean her face. “Such a thing is not so simple as that. I cannot… agree with any of this because I do not want there to be any more death in this mission, or in the village below us. I do not want it!”
“Lope and his men are out of control, they are doing this. They are carrying these people away for their own sick amusements.”
“Do not say that. Such an accusation is too vile, too grave.”
“I cannot let other people get hurt, and I cannot let myself be killed by such a swine.”
“Pepita - ”
“You do not have to help me,” Pepita interjected. “But please… do not tell anyone what I have told you. I will not breathe your name, not a single syllable of it, only do not breathe to anyone what I have come to you with. Can you promise me?”
I shook my head sadly. “Pepita. This is not confession. I cannot hear such an atrocious action and pretend I did not. The Fathers could not either, that is not how this functions, Pepita.”
“You would let a mad man like him live,” Pepita’s voice shook, “a monster, a demon like him…”
“Demons will meet their angels, and they will lose. You cannot mistake yourself for such an angel. You cannot mistake one sin as good compared to another, Pepita, you cannot! You will damn yourself. This is not your decision - ”
“This is my decision, Nieve, this is my choice. I have chosen to kill Lope.”
More people have gone missing. Since my last entry, about a month ago, two more have disappeared. We can only presume they are dead. We can never find them. When one search comes to an end, a team of Lope’s soldiers enter the forest to begin yet another. The manner in which these victims are spirited away is so violent. Why, in the village beneath our hill, the last disappearance revealed to Father Leoncio that the victim had struggled, knocking over things in the hut. There were streaks of blood across the floor, and then dragged sweeps of red when the victim was finally taken away. He said he found fingernails lodged in the earth. That and the blood have been the only traces. Who could be doing this? The crimes are too violent to blame an angry predator surfacing from the deeps of the jungle to claim a meal. No, such a terrible and calculated act can only be attributed to a person.
I was later assaulted in my room as I was trying to sleep. There was a rapid knock at my door, the rhythm repetitive and urgent. I drew a robe around me as I rose from bed, and took a candle stick with me. I tucked the object behind my hip, and threw the door open only to find Pepita. Her face was haggard. Her eyes sparkled with tears. I drew my arm around her and tugged her into my room, dropping the candle stick. I locked my door and guided her to my bed.
“Easy, easy.”
I lit a couple of candles, just enough to give me some light. When I saw her face, I could not keep myself from withdrawing a step. No, I recoiled at the sight of her, so aghast was I at the face I hardly recognized. Her cheek was a swollen bruise, ripe and split. Her jaw was a queue of bruises, all waiting to pile up under a swollen, burst lower lip.
“I am sorry, I should not come.”
“Did he see you come here?”
“No,” she shook her head, hardly able to speak.
“You should be at the infirmary. You cannot stay like this. Let us go together.”
But I progress was slow. We had to be sure we were not being watched. A trip that normally only took a few minutes took much longer, but we eventually arrived to the infirmary. I lit a candle by the bed, and Pepita helped me gather some tools. Something to clean her cuts, something to decrease the swell of those bruises. I set to work mending her face. Her tears had started to slow, no longer making her uneven face a slick surface to work on.
“I am finished,” Pepita whispered, and I only heard this upon her second saying of this.
“Do not say that, Pepita. You are not defeated, not by someone like that.”
Pepita laughed, “Defeated?” She lifted her handkerchief to her mouth to spit out a gob of blood. “Who said anything about defeat? I am finished taking this. One of these nights, you know, one of these nights,” she laughed again, “he will kill me.”
“I hardly see the humor in that,” I chastised her lightly, distracted with my repairs.
“Nieve, I am being serious, do not mistake my laughter. It is the laughter of Elektra herself, the laughter of a vengeful woman.”
I frowned at her, I began to clean her wounds with a solution that would normally make someone flinch and pull away, but Pepita was still. Eerily still, her eyes focused on some point beyond my shoulder. Maybe on the vision she was about to describe to me.
“I can let Lope kill me, or I can get rid of him. For good.”
I stopped, I looked at her. “Pepita, you will be jailed for that. He is a man of war, as well, you could be… Lord, I do not wish to think it.”
“I am finished taking his hits, I am finished pleasing him, I am finished doing everything he tells me to do. I want nothing more than to see him suffer for this.”
“Then you are just as wretched as he…”
“Am I?!” Pepita shrilled, pushing my hand away. “Were you to be beaten, pummeled, and raped, would you stand for it as long as I? Would you let that man, that brute of a man, get away with making you his toy? Manipulating you? Would you let him do that, and get away with it.”
For once, I could not say:
“No, Pepita, I would find a way to forgive him.”
“No, Pepita, he will meet his judgment in time.”
“No, Pepita, such power is not ours to wield against a man, only God’s.”
I could say none of this, because I did not believe it.
“You know I am right,” Pepita said, recognizing my hesitance for what it was.
“No!” I stood away from her, dropping the rag I had been using to clean her face. “Such a thing is not so simple as that. I cannot… agree with any of this because I do not want there to be any more death in this mission, or in the village below us. I do not want it!”
“Lope and his men are out of control, they are doing this. They are carrying these people away for their own sick amusements.”
“Do not say that. Such an accusation is too vile, too grave.”
“I cannot let other people get hurt, and I cannot let myself be killed by such a swine.”
“Pepita - ”
“You do not have to help me,” Pepita interjected. “But please… do not tell anyone what I have told you. I will not breathe your name, not a single syllable of it, only do not breathe to anyone what I have come to you with. Can you promise me?”
I shook my head sadly. “Pepita. This is not confession. I cannot hear such an atrocious action and pretend I did not. The Fathers could not either, that is not how this functions, Pepita.”
“You would let a mad man like him live,” Pepita’s voice shook, “a monster, a demon like him…”
“Demons will meet their angels, and they will lose. You cannot mistake yourself for such an angel. You cannot mistake one sin as good compared to another, Pepita, you cannot! You will damn yourself. This is not your decision - ”
“This is my decision, Nieve, this is my choice. I have chosen to kill Lope.”
Entry #22
Adan,
It has been a week. Class has been cancelled indefinitely. Set is unfound, and the Tairona congregation has severely dwindled. Most of the Tairona have refused to return for services, and because they keep their children close at all times we were forced to close down the school again. Teaching those children was my life, my escape, and it gave me such a great joy. They seemed to love these lessons as well. We could learn so much about one another on any given day and to lose that connection has severely affected me. My diet has become sporadic once more, with moments of light to no eating, anywhere from two very light meals to no meals at all.
What do I do? I have tried so much to snap myself out of this terrible, depressive trance. I garden with Doctor Gil again, harvesting the weeds to be disposed, plucking tomatoes and collecting flowers to brighten up the infirmary. An infirmary now empty of patients who have insisted on being treated back at the village beneath the hill, or the ones in the jungle and along the coast. Pepita draws, and I read in her room, and in a way I enjoy these moments because she is not constantly asking about my health, how I am, how is my state. She just draws, and I just read. The moments are peaceful, but not enough to draw me loose from this miserable state.
Even Father Alvarelo, who usually knows just what to say, is speechless to my behavior. Father Leoncio would probably care more if he was not busy trying to calm the soldiers, all seemingly wild-like now that Lope has assumed control of the squad. Normally, he would have to answer to Captain Gonzalo, stationed on the coast, but with Gonzalo all the way out at the Yucatan, Lope answers to no one. He runs free around the mission, terrorizing the servants with harsh commands, and the violence and depravity he has wrought on Pepita is disgraceful.
The way Lope treats any of us is disgraceful. Just the other day I was taking a batch of dry linens off the lines behind the infirmary. I had them all gathered in my arms and was making my way back into the infirmary when I bumped into the man himself. He stepped away, straightening his shirt and eying me.
“You ought to be more careful, Nieve.”
“I am busy, excuse me.”
“Of course, after you.” He drew his arm out, a long gesture down the garden path that would lead me into the infirmary. I swept by him, and moved quickly down the path. In order to avoid any further, unwanted discussion, I ducked into the infirmary and set to work. I began dressing the beds, all the while keep an eye on the prowling soldier beyond the curtains surrounding the first bed I was working on. He watched me, smirking, some sort of joke known only to him circulating his mind over and over. “You and Pepita have grown quite close, I see.”
I did not answer, I moved onto the next bed.
“Such a relationship is so charming. Tell me, do little girls always whisper big secrets to each other?”
He was speaking oddly. I never knew him to have such an eloquent, cold attitude. He had always been rough, callous, violent, but never possessed such a malicious inquiry. Regardless, I was silent.
“Or are they as coy around one another as you are around me, little Hermana Nieve?”
I never even saw him, just the sudden disturbance of the white curtain. He flanked me, swept me right off my feet and had me on my back. He tilted his head, his nostrils were flared as if he were smelling me, but I could hear no sniffing.
“Answer when you are spoken to, girl?”
Remaining calm was difficult, I believe I was not honestly steady at this very moment. I was shaking in his grip, my eyes as wide as coins so much so I could feel the strain of my startled stare all throughout my perchance pale face. “I am busy…”
“So you say,” he snarled. This close to him, I could see that the change was not just in his voice. His appearance had morphed as well. He was very pale, with dark rings under the eyes now burrowing through my darting gaze. His breathing was rasped and strained, like a man with a heavy cold.
“You are sick, Lope,” I said, feeling the fever pulse off his skin at that very moment. The breath he expelled was even stale and reeked. Had he eaten something foul, or perhaps drank too much wine the night before?
“Indeed, so that is why I am here. There is no doctor though, and no nurse - my sweet little nurse - just you, and I wonder if you might help me. See, my Pepita has been quite stubborn lately. I do not like to be so forceful, but such stubbornness stands in the way of any satisfaction. Before you two began clucking, flapping your chops about so sisterly - sickening, really - I had Pepita lapping me up every night like the good little bitch I had made her.”
I stiffened, he was pinning me further into the bed. His pale face was turning red, and there was excitement to him that I could see in his eyes, and feel through his body against mine. I shut my eyes.
“And now? Now, she hits me so cruelly, she flings the coldest insults you would hear… all because I wanted a little bit of her time, all because she started talking to you. So, Hermana, I will say this once,” he huffed, trying to swallow a fight of hacking coughs to maintain the threatening note in his voice, “and no other time; stay away from her.”
“I cannot - ”
“If I see her speaking to you, if I so much as smell any trace of her on you the next time we cross paths, I will be sure to beat every little bit of you into the wall so that the Fathers will mistake you for mortar. Do you understand? Am I perfectly clear?”
I saw someone from over his shoulder, standing beyond the curtain; Doctor Gil.
“Lope Romero,” he barked, and I saw Lope’s eyes widen. He smiled wickedly at me, and straightened from my person. He pawed at his pants to fix them right again, and adjusted his sleeves so they were rolled around his elbows.
“Doctor Gil. Glad you could finally make it.”
“Perhaps back in the mission and among the hill you are a man who can do what he pleases. As I have the medicine and other tools to make you healthy again, I would recommend you behave yourself whenever you are here.”
“This is none of your business, doctor.”
“Under my roof? The roof I built myself for my practice? Yes, Lope, it is. I say this to you not as a request; you harm no one, and I mean no one.”
“Just fix me up,” Lope barked.
“No, I am afraid our session will have to be delayed until this afternoon. For now, rest and keep drinking water, and I will come to your quarters personally.”
“Hmph,” Lope snarled, and eyed my hatefully before taking his leave of the infirmary. He stalked around the doctor to do so, emerging slowly from the curtains so that the light muslin of them would drag along his broad shoulders. He slammed the door once he had passed the doctor, plunging us into silence. Doctor Gil came to my side with a cup of water shortly after this, and watched me with the utmost concern.
“You mind that man. You seem to have a knack for crossing him, so Father Leoncio tells me. Why not you avoid him for the remainder of your stay?”
I drank the water, panting. “This is my home too. I am not afraid of him.”
Doctor Gil frowned. “You should be. A man like that is not safe. Not for men, not for women. Unless you are some other creature, I would recommend keeping your distance.”
I paused, and I finished my cup. “Yes, doctor,” I murmured, and stood to leave, only to find his fingers wrapped around my wrist, and an imploring glance given up to me.
“And please… tell Pepita as well. I do not think she will listen to me anymore, at least when it concerns a monster like Lope.”
It has been a week. Class has been cancelled indefinitely. Set is unfound, and the Tairona congregation has severely dwindled. Most of the Tairona have refused to return for services, and because they keep their children close at all times we were forced to close down the school again. Teaching those children was my life, my escape, and it gave me such a great joy. They seemed to love these lessons as well. We could learn so much about one another on any given day and to lose that connection has severely affected me. My diet has become sporadic once more, with moments of light to no eating, anywhere from two very light meals to no meals at all.
What do I do? I have tried so much to snap myself out of this terrible, depressive trance. I garden with Doctor Gil again, harvesting the weeds to be disposed, plucking tomatoes and collecting flowers to brighten up the infirmary. An infirmary now empty of patients who have insisted on being treated back at the village beneath the hill, or the ones in the jungle and along the coast. Pepita draws, and I read in her room, and in a way I enjoy these moments because she is not constantly asking about my health, how I am, how is my state. She just draws, and I just read. The moments are peaceful, but not enough to draw me loose from this miserable state.
Even Father Alvarelo, who usually knows just what to say, is speechless to my behavior. Father Leoncio would probably care more if he was not busy trying to calm the soldiers, all seemingly wild-like now that Lope has assumed control of the squad. Normally, he would have to answer to Captain Gonzalo, stationed on the coast, but with Gonzalo all the way out at the Yucatan, Lope answers to no one. He runs free around the mission, terrorizing the servants with harsh commands, and the violence and depravity he has wrought on Pepita is disgraceful.
The way Lope treats any of us is disgraceful. Just the other day I was taking a batch of dry linens off the lines behind the infirmary. I had them all gathered in my arms and was making my way back into the infirmary when I bumped into the man himself. He stepped away, straightening his shirt and eying me.
“You ought to be more careful, Nieve.”
“I am busy, excuse me.”
“Of course, after you.” He drew his arm out, a long gesture down the garden path that would lead me into the infirmary. I swept by him, and moved quickly down the path. In order to avoid any further, unwanted discussion, I ducked into the infirmary and set to work. I began dressing the beds, all the while keep an eye on the prowling soldier beyond the curtains surrounding the first bed I was working on. He watched me, smirking, some sort of joke known only to him circulating his mind over and over. “You and Pepita have grown quite close, I see.”
I did not answer, I moved onto the next bed.
“Such a relationship is so charming. Tell me, do little girls always whisper big secrets to each other?”
He was speaking oddly. I never knew him to have such an eloquent, cold attitude. He had always been rough, callous, violent, but never possessed such a malicious inquiry. Regardless, I was silent.
“Or are they as coy around one another as you are around me, little Hermana Nieve?”
I never even saw him, just the sudden disturbance of the white curtain. He flanked me, swept me right off my feet and had me on my back. He tilted his head, his nostrils were flared as if he were smelling me, but I could hear no sniffing.
“Answer when you are spoken to, girl?”
Remaining calm was difficult, I believe I was not honestly steady at this very moment. I was shaking in his grip, my eyes as wide as coins so much so I could feel the strain of my startled stare all throughout my perchance pale face. “I am busy…”
“So you say,” he snarled. This close to him, I could see that the change was not just in his voice. His appearance had morphed as well. He was very pale, with dark rings under the eyes now burrowing through my darting gaze. His breathing was rasped and strained, like a man with a heavy cold.
“You are sick, Lope,” I said, feeling the fever pulse off his skin at that very moment. The breath he expelled was even stale and reeked. Had he eaten something foul, or perhaps drank too much wine the night before?
“Indeed, so that is why I am here. There is no doctor though, and no nurse - my sweet little nurse - just you, and I wonder if you might help me. See, my Pepita has been quite stubborn lately. I do not like to be so forceful, but such stubbornness stands in the way of any satisfaction. Before you two began clucking, flapping your chops about so sisterly - sickening, really - I had Pepita lapping me up every night like the good little bitch I had made her.”
I stiffened, he was pinning me further into the bed. His pale face was turning red, and there was excitement to him that I could see in his eyes, and feel through his body against mine. I shut my eyes.
“And now? Now, she hits me so cruelly, she flings the coldest insults you would hear… all because I wanted a little bit of her time, all because she started talking to you. So, Hermana, I will say this once,” he huffed, trying to swallow a fight of hacking coughs to maintain the threatening note in his voice, “and no other time; stay away from her.”
“I cannot - ”
“If I see her speaking to you, if I so much as smell any trace of her on you the next time we cross paths, I will be sure to beat every little bit of you into the wall so that the Fathers will mistake you for mortar. Do you understand? Am I perfectly clear?”
I saw someone from over his shoulder, standing beyond the curtain; Doctor Gil.
“Lope Romero,” he barked, and I saw Lope’s eyes widen. He smiled wickedly at me, and straightened from my person. He pawed at his pants to fix them right again, and adjusted his sleeves so they were rolled around his elbows.
“Doctor Gil. Glad you could finally make it.”
“Perhaps back in the mission and among the hill you are a man who can do what he pleases. As I have the medicine and other tools to make you healthy again, I would recommend you behave yourself whenever you are here.”
“This is none of your business, doctor.”
“Under my roof? The roof I built myself for my practice? Yes, Lope, it is. I say this to you not as a request; you harm no one, and I mean no one.”
“Just fix me up,” Lope barked.
“No, I am afraid our session will have to be delayed until this afternoon. For now, rest and keep drinking water, and I will come to your quarters personally.”
“Hmph,” Lope snarled, and eyed my hatefully before taking his leave of the infirmary. He stalked around the doctor to do so, emerging slowly from the curtains so that the light muslin of them would drag along his broad shoulders. He slammed the door once he had passed the doctor, plunging us into silence. Doctor Gil came to my side with a cup of water shortly after this, and watched me with the utmost concern.
“You mind that man. You seem to have a knack for crossing him, so Father Leoncio tells me. Why not you avoid him for the remainder of your stay?”
I drank the water, panting. “This is my home too. I am not afraid of him.”
Doctor Gil frowned. “You should be. A man like that is not safe. Not for men, not for women. Unless you are some other creature, I would recommend keeping your distance.”
I paused, and I finished my cup. “Yes, doctor,” I murmured, and stood to leave, only to find his fingers wrapped around my wrist, and an imploring glance given up to me.
“And please… tell Pepita as well. I do not think she will listen to me anymore, at least when it concerns a monster like Lope.”
Entry #21
Adan!
One of the children is gone! The boy who brought me Mama Gondu's pendant, he is missing, we cannot find him anywhere. We have looked all over the mission for hours, and down beneath the hill in the village. Lope has just entered the jungle with Mama Gondu to comb the wilderness for the disappeared child, but he has not returned. Father Alvarelo insisted I rest, but I have been in this room for an hour now – sleepless and sick with worry. I have set to writing in hopes that I
can retrace the events, and perhaps discover the nature (or cause) of the boy's relocation.
His name is Set, and I have mentioned him before. The one who gifted me the butterfly. From that day on I have grown a fondness to him. He is quiet, gentle, and very clever. He has picked up the Spanish language much faster than some of the others, and what I teach him he remembers with a remarkable clarity. I wish I had known, as I took that small trinket from him, that he would go missing later on in the semester. I wish I had known, I would have embraced him there and then and told him never to return, to stay with his family, to tell Mama Gondu thank you, but he would prefer to stay with his family just a few months longer.
I wish I had known.
Me and the children, with the help of the Fathers, had been preparing for this celebration for week. I had learned so much about their festivals and their traditions, more than I ever knew before. They seemed to really enjoy learning about their teacher’s holidays as well, especially Easter. They were particularly intrigued with this one. Once we had covered one another’s “holidays” we set about planning the celebration.
One group was assigned to the kitchen, and their parents could enter the mission to help them prepare the menu for the big feast we would have at the holiday festival. Another group had split into two; one would put on a small play, the others would be dancing for us. The last group was in charge of games to be played that day. The morning of the celebration, which we had decided to hold on a day the soldiers were out training for the better part of the morning and afternoon, I was in the mission’s kitchen with some of the Tairona.
Some of their parents were there, teaching them how to use a metate for the first time, or helping them pit fruit. Conch, shrimps, and fish had been brought up from the coastal tribe, a group of which were going to stay to help and partake in the festivities that would follow. Game from the forest such as peccary and fowl were being prepared as well. I was stationed with a mother at a metate, and what a funny woman she was. She was pregnant, ready to pop at any moment it seemed! How quickly she spoke, life fire dancing down a fuse line. Still, I managed to keep up with her, and what jokes I did pick from her rapid fire parlance made me drop my metate stone to hold my sides laughing.
This had to be the happiest I had been since Carmen’s disappearance. The children and I were playing in the kitchen, throwing bits of pit and left over scraps of raw dough at each other, but some mothers were more stern than others and we soon were back to work, giggling under our breaths.
“You have a way with the Tairona, you know that?” Father Alvarelo had stepped up next to me to snag an avocado.
“Why would I not? They are a charming people. I have never met any like them.” I slapped his hand, which recoiled to accompany a playfully sour look he shot me.
“Here now? Not even a small snack?”
I chuckled, “No, Father Alvarelo, I need those.”
“Well, not every one can get along with Tairona. Some are rather intimidated by them. Sure, they are earth loving people, but their passions are sometimes misplaced to those unprepared.”
“I read every document you sent to Seville, you and Father Leoncio. They have proven very helpful. Look, if you really want that avocado.”
“Yes?”
“Pit them, save the shells, and when you are done start mashing. If a few slivers happen to go missing, I am sure the meal will not be ruined.
Father Alvarelo smirked, and began slide a knife around the fall belly of the avocado. He split the green apart, and began to spoon it into a bowl, reserving the shells. I continued to work on the metate, hardly noticing the burn in my arms from working the stone up and down to make the appropriate flat bread. We worked silently, but on occasion I looked at him, and on some of those occasions… I saw him look at me.
In no time, the festival was under way! The coastal Tairona were already drinking and chewing coca with the jungle brothers, enjoying one of the few times they managed to see each other beyond their trading businesses. The children had put on a nativity play to celebrate their Christmas assignment, and then the next few children were dancing around a crude, small fire that, once the dance was over, would be built into a bigger bonfire for us to eat around. The flames were crackling and popping, so warm and comforting here at the base of the mountains looming beyond the jungle.
Father Alvarelo and I were seated by the fire, he had been indulging in some of the liquor the coastal Tairona had brought up from the port, and his cheeks were rosy and appealing. I was keeping a cup of tea nice and warm between my cupped palms. The children had made Tairona masks, and roping them around the back of their heads. Their faces were colorful and twisted, and from behind the crudely painted wooden masks they were giggling and shrieking, and trying to scare one another. Some danced around the fire with their parents.
“It is such a shame you wish to enter the church as an anchorite.”
“Why, Father Alvarelo?”
“Look what you are seeing right now! You have seen a half of the world that some may never see, that some will only hear about upon our return… if we return.”
I smiled. “You really do love it here. Will you truly not return to Spain?”
“Maybe if you truly will not be an anchoress, will I truly return to Spain.”
“What could my - ”
“Herrrrmana Nieve!” Set ambushed me in a blue and green mask, throwing his arms around my neck. He was being followed by a few of his friends, they were also wearing masks. They set upon Father Alvarelo, knocking him off the stool he was occupying.
“Look at you!” I cried, and pushed Set’s mask up onto his head. “You sneaky little monkey, you nearly made the tea jump right out of my cup.” I glanced over my shoulder, the children were tickling Father Alvarelo. “And it looks like the lot of you have scared Father Alvarelo right out of his chair.”
“I am hardly frightened, you cannot frighten a giant!” Father Alvarelo roared and was to his feet, walking away with children laughing and clinging to his back and legs.
Overcome with laughter, I looked back at Set and kissed his brow as he looked up at me with sparkling dark eyes that reminded me of fading embers. “You, Signor Set, go have fun with your friends. We will call you when dessert is ready to be served.” I pulled his mask over his head, and we both roared at one another before he went scampering off to help his friends maul Father Alvarelo.
But, Adan, when dessert finally came I must admit I was unable to find Set anywhere at the table. The boy has an insistent sweet tooth that will often convince him to sneak sweets into class. That he would not be the first at the table for sweet cream, cakes, and candies is beyond me. I searched the children’s faces, but none of them were Set. Just beyond the fire, there were still some children playing in their masks. Perhaps Set was still among them.
“Children,” I called on my way to them, “come along! We are all having desserts together.”
None of the faces that rushed by me were the ones painted in blue and greens like Set’s. No wait, there! I snagged one of the children, desperate that this be Set, and I pushed the mask back. A little girl peered up at me, perplexed. I apologized with a smile, and let her go to run to the table with her friends where they began to tear into their desserts. I turned in place, searching and seeking that blue and green mask, or maybe even Set’s face in case he had abandoned his disguise.
“Hermana Nieve,” came Father Leoncio’s voice behind me, startling me. “What is it you are looking for?”
“Father Leoncio,” I drew close, and he frowned upon recognizing the worry imprinted upon my features. “Set. He is missing. I cannot find him anywhere. I do not want to cause a disturbance.” But much to my chagrin, a disturbance was caused. Father Leoncio and I stole away to search the mission, and we even employed Doctor Gil and Pepita. Still, when we met up again the dessert was almost over, the child was unfound, and his parents in attendance began to worry. They approached us, and after we told them we could not find him, the party erupted. Soon, ever Tairona and every mission worker was scouring the grounds and the jungle beyond.
We have found no Set, and before I even began to write to you, Adan, I was approached by Father Alvarelo. He had emerged from the jungle, climbed the hill, and found me still searching the mission with Pepita. He had Set’s mask in his hands. The flimsy wood had been split and splintered, the rope that kept the mask on Set’s little face… torn apart.
One of the children is gone! The boy who brought me Mama Gondu's pendant, he is missing, we cannot find him anywhere. We have looked all over the mission for hours, and down beneath the hill in the village. Lope has just entered the jungle with Mama Gondu to comb the wilderness for the disappeared child, but he has not returned. Father Alvarelo insisted I rest, but I have been in this room for an hour now – sleepless and sick with worry. I have set to writing in hopes that I
can retrace the events, and perhaps discover the nature (or cause) of the boy's relocation.
His name is Set, and I have mentioned him before. The one who gifted me the butterfly. From that day on I have grown a fondness to him. He is quiet, gentle, and very clever. He has picked up the Spanish language much faster than some of the others, and what I teach him he remembers with a remarkable clarity. I wish I had known, as I took that small trinket from him, that he would go missing later on in the semester. I wish I had known, I would have embraced him there and then and told him never to return, to stay with his family, to tell Mama Gondu thank you, but he would prefer to stay with his family just a few months longer.
I wish I had known.
Me and the children, with the help of the Fathers, had been preparing for this celebration for week. I had learned so much about their festivals and their traditions, more than I ever knew before. They seemed to really enjoy learning about their teacher’s holidays as well, especially Easter. They were particularly intrigued with this one. Once we had covered one another’s “holidays” we set about planning the celebration.
One group was assigned to the kitchen, and their parents could enter the mission to help them prepare the menu for the big feast we would have at the holiday festival. Another group had split into two; one would put on a small play, the others would be dancing for us. The last group was in charge of games to be played that day. The morning of the celebration, which we had decided to hold on a day the soldiers were out training for the better part of the morning and afternoon, I was in the mission’s kitchen with some of the Tairona.
Some of their parents were there, teaching them how to use a metate for the first time, or helping them pit fruit. Conch, shrimps, and fish had been brought up from the coastal tribe, a group of which were going to stay to help and partake in the festivities that would follow. Game from the forest such as peccary and fowl were being prepared as well. I was stationed with a mother at a metate, and what a funny woman she was. She was pregnant, ready to pop at any moment it seemed! How quickly she spoke, life fire dancing down a fuse line. Still, I managed to keep up with her, and what jokes I did pick from her rapid fire parlance made me drop my metate stone to hold my sides laughing.
This had to be the happiest I had been since Carmen’s disappearance. The children and I were playing in the kitchen, throwing bits of pit and left over scraps of raw dough at each other, but some mothers were more stern than others and we soon were back to work, giggling under our breaths.
“You have a way with the Tairona, you know that?” Father Alvarelo had stepped up next to me to snag an avocado.
“Why would I not? They are a charming people. I have never met any like them.” I slapped his hand, which recoiled to accompany a playfully sour look he shot me.
“Here now? Not even a small snack?”
I chuckled, “No, Father Alvarelo, I need those.”
“Well, not every one can get along with Tairona. Some are rather intimidated by them. Sure, they are earth loving people, but their passions are sometimes misplaced to those unprepared.”
“I read every document you sent to Seville, you and Father Leoncio. They have proven very helpful. Look, if you really want that avocado.”
“Yes?”
“Pit them, save the shells, and when you are done start mashing. If a few slivers happen to go missing, I am sure the meal will not be ruined.
Father Alvarelo smirked, and began slide a knife around the fall belly of the avocado. He split the green apart, and began to spoon it into a bowl, reserving the shells. I continued to work on the metate, hardly noticing the burn in my arms from working the stone up and down to make the appropriate flat bread. We worked silently, but on occasion I looked at him, and on some of those occasions… I saw him look at me.
In no time, the festival was under way! The coastal Tairona were already drinking and chewing coca with the jungle brothers, enjoying one of the few times they managed to see each other beyond their trading businesses. The children had put on a nativity play to celebrate their Christmas assignment, and then the next few children were dancing around a crude, small fire that, once the dance was over, would be built into a bigger bonfire for us to eat around. The flames were crackling and popping, so warm and comforting here at the base of the mountains looming beyond the jungle.
Father Alvarelo and I were seated by the fire, he had been indulging in some of the liquor the coastal Tairona had brought up from the port, and his cheeks were rosy and appealing. I was keeping a cup of tea nice and warm between my cupped palms. The children had made Tairona masks, and roping them around the back of their heads. Their faces were colorful and twisted, and from behind the crudely painted wooden masks they were giggling and shrieking, and trying to scare one another. Some danced around the fire with their parents.
“It is such a shame you wish to enter the church as an anchorite.”
“Why, Father Alvarelo?”
“Look what you are seeing right now! You have seen a half of the world that some may never see, that some will only hear about upon our return… if we return.”
I smiled. “You really do love it here. Will you truly not return to Spain?”
“Maybe if you truly will not be an anchoress, will I truly return to Spain.”
“What could my - ”
“Herrrrmana Nieve!” Set ambushed me in a blue and green mask, throwing his arms around my neck. He was being followed by a few of his friends, they were also wearing masks. They set upon Father Alvarelo, knocking him off the stool he was occupying.
“Look at you!” I cried, and pushed Set’s mask up onto his head. “You sneaky little monkey, you nearly made the tea jump right out of my cup.” I glanced over my shoulder, the children were tickling Father Alvarelo. “And it looks like the lot of you have scared Father Alvarelo right out of his chair.”
“I am hardly frightened, you cannot frighten a giant!” Father Alvarelo roared and was to his feet, walking away with children laughing and clinging to his back and legs.
Overcome with laughter, I looked back at Set and kissed his brow as he looked up at me with sparkling dark eyes that reminded me of fading embers. “You, Signor Set, go have fun with your friends. We will call you when dessert is ready to be served.” I pulled his mask over his head, and we both roared at one another before he went scampering off to help his friends maul Father Alvarelo.
But, Adan, when dessert finally came I must admit I was unable to find Set anywhere at the table. The boy has an insistent sweet tooth that will often convince him to sneak sweets into class. That he would not be the first at the table for sweet cream, cakes, and candies is beyond me. I searched the children’s faces, but none of them were Set. Just beyond the fire, there were still some children playing in their masks. Perhaps Set was still among them.
“Children,” I called on my way to them, “come along! We are all having desserts together.”
None of the faces that rushed by me were the ones painted in blue and greens like Set’s. No wait, there! I snagged one of the children, desperate that this be Set, and I pushed the mask back. A little girl peered up at me, perplexed. I apologized with a smile, and let her go to run to the table with her friends where they began to tear into their desserts. I turned in place, searching and seeking that blue and green mask, or maybe even Set’s face in case he had abandoned his disguise.
“Hermana Nieve,” came Father Leoncio’s voice behind me, startling me. “What is it you are looking for?”
“Father Leoncio,” I drew close, and he frowned upon recognizing the worry imprinted upon my features. “Set. He is missing. I cannot find him anywhere. I do not want to cause a disturbance.” But much to my chagrin, a disturbance was caused. Father Leoncio and I stole away to search the mission, and we even employed Doctor Gil and Pepita. Still, when we met up again the dessert was almost over, the child was unfound, and his parents in attendance began to worry. They approached us, and after we told them we could not find him, the party erupted. Soon, ever Tairona and every mission worker was scouring the grounds and the jungle beyond.
We have found no Set, and before I even began to write to you, Adan, I was approached by Father Alvarelo. He had emerged from the jungle, climbed the hill, and found me still searching the mission with Pepita. He had Set’s mask in his hands. The flimsy wood had been split and splintered, the rope that kept the mask on Set’s little face… torn apart.
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