“Did they say where they were going after your papá told them no?” Néstor asked. “They didn’t mention the porción by the river, did they?”
“No,” Nena said. When the Anglos left, she fixated on Papá, trying to gauge how severe the threat they posed was based on his reaction. If the Anglos spoke among themselves as they retreated, she did not hear them. She wouldn’t have been able to understand them anyway. But why was Néstor asking after the unoccupied bit of land south of Los Ojuelos, farther along the river? “Why?”
They walked in silence for a few steps. “Because that’s the land I want to buy,” he said at last.
He had often mentioned wanting to become a ranchero, to build his own casa de sillar, but for some reason, Nena had never connected that with him no longer living on Los Ojuelos. Now that he said it aloud, it was painfully obvious. Was he planning to leave all this time?
“You’d leave me?” She felt the panicked pitch of her voice before she heard it.
“I won’t. Never.” He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll still live on Los Ojuelos while I’m building the house. It’ll take time, lots of time,” he said. “Then when it’s finished, you can visit every day. Maybe . . .” he added, then his words quickened, as if pausing meant what he intended to say would be swallowed by the night. “Maybe, if you wanted, you could even live there too. With me. We could get married. Or something like that.”
Hand in hand with Néstor, she felt as if each step they took led them closer to a future that she wanted, one she caught in glimpses of color and smell like a half-remembered dream: cutting rosemary and lavender in her own garden like Néstor’s abuela. Holding hands with Néstor unabashedly, with no Mamá watching her every move, her disciplining hand waiting to bend Nena to the strict ways of honorable womanhood. Life would be as simple as it was when they watched the sheep together with Tío Macario, dozing in the heat of the siesta. Life would be perfect.
Knowing that he wanted the same thing she did filled her chest with a pleasant, tingling warmth. It spread over her cheeks too, drawing gently at the corners of her mouth.
“Or something like that,” she said, squeezing his hand back.
The slope of the path curved downward now as they followed the well-worn trail to the springs. It was the same trail Nena walked every morning with her cousins to collect water and bring it to la casa mayor. Habit guided her around every rock and root.
But something felt off.
The happy warmth in her chest faded as she scoured the rocky path before them, willing her eyes to peel away shadows. As they grew closer to the springs, the distant cheeps of bats and hooting of a screech owl faded away. It was as if even the crickets fell silent in anticipation, or fear; as if the breeze caught its voice in its throat, apprehensive of the way the night thickened.
One last turn of the path, and they reached the twin springs, the eyes that gave Los Ojuelos its name. Moonlight filtered through the laurel trees that curved over the water; doused by its silvery touch, the trees’ roots plunged into the rippling water. They looked like curving, skeletal fingers gripping the edges of the pool and the stream that led south.
Her heart jumped as Néstor stopped them short. The whites of his eyes glinted with surprise as he gestured sharply with his chin before them. Look.
A wink of light reflected off the surface of the springs. Its color was not that of moonlight. It was like an orange from Reynosa—no, it was like a grapefruit, perfectly round as a full moon, heavy with a strange, warm light.
Néstor stepped forward.
Nena hesitated.
She had believed Néstor when he told her the carreteros’ version of the legend, the lights in the night that marked the place where treasure had been buried. But she had not anticipated feeling so uneasy when they found it. The world felt twisted in the way of dreaming; needles skittered up her arms and down the back of her neck.
She wanted to tell him to stop. The air hummed with the prickling tension of a gathering storm, and like facing down a storm, she felt a powerful, overwhelming need to find shelter. To hide.
But from what? Nena knew this land like she knew every inch of the square rooms of la casa mayor or the lines of her siblings’ faces. There shouldn’t have been any reason to feel this uneasy, but she did. She felt as if the darkness were watching them, as if it had a mind and a will, as if it wanted them to draw closer.
She should have told him that she was frightened—silver or no, he would have stopped then. Or would he?
Néstor released her hand and walked forward, his jaw set. If he felt the same sudden unease she did, he gave no hint of it. He gripped the shovel with determined intention.
“I think . . .” I think we should go back was what rose to her lips, but at that moment, her words were cut off by Néstor’s shovel striking the gravelly earth with a metallic sound.
The orange light vanished.
Nena let out a cry of surprise as darkness bloomed around them. Was it a trick of the night, or were the shadows lengthening?
No, it was a figure. It was a creature.
It darted forward, fast as a cougar, cutting between Néstor’s turned back and Nena. Fear flushed her limbs as she stumbled backward, as the creature reared up on hind legs. It towered over her, as tall as Papá, perhaps taller, with limbs as long as a spider’s.
She had to get away, but her limbs moved too slowly. She turned; her boot caught on a root, sending her sprawling. Her breath shattered out of her. She gasped, coughing, curling into a tight ball on the ground. Black spots pocked her vision, growing and darkening.
“Néstor!” she cried, grasping and failing to push herself up. He had to get to safety. She had to run. She could still get away, if she could only force herself upright.
A crunch of gravel by her right ear, then her left, as the creature’s feet—or were those hands?—struck the ground on either side of her head. Its hot breath washed over her face as its head swung low, thick with the odor of carrion.
A flash of teeth in the darkness.
Fear was sour in her sweat, in her breath, in the pale, wordless ringing in her ears as teeth as sharp as knives sank into her neck.
2
N?STOR
AT THE SOUND of Nena’s sharp intake of breath, Néstor straightened. She only ever made that sound when she was hurt—was she all right? Was something wrong?
When he turned to ask her what was the matter, a dark form bolted forward from the thick brush alongside the stream.
Toward Nena.
He could not see if it had four legs, or two; now it lunged high, now it dived low on all fours. All he knew was that it was a threat to Nena, that it was racing toward her, and that he had to get between her and it. He wrenched his shovel out of the ground and adjusted his grip on it, so that he held it like a machete, and when he was about to run forward, he heard his name.
“Néstor!” Nena’s cry was weak and breathless; it was followed by the sound of a body striking the earth. The dark form was upon her, holding her to the ground.
A wet sound, like the butchering of a hog, sent fear coursing through Néstor’s gut.
Nena was his home. The one thing on earth more precious to him than his own life. Whatever that creature was, it did not matter—the only thing that mattered was getting it away from her.
He ran forward, shovel held aloft. When he was upon the dark form, he raised the shovel higher and threw his weight into bringing the shovel down.
The creature whirled on him.