This was not a trick of the darkness. This was a bent-legged beast the likes of which he had never seen before: its humanlike head was a mouth full of teeth; its face was wrinkled and hairless and mottled gray, gray like the rest of its hide. There were two slits where a nose might be. He couldn’t see its eyes in the dark, but there was no doubt in his mind that it was looking at him as an aggressive hiss came from its lipless maw of teeth.
The hiss nearly froze him. It was sharper than a rattler’s, as angry as a cougar’s. A feral part of him, deep and black and curled at the back of his mind, knew that this was a predator, and he was prey.
Nena was its prey.
Nena was down and trapped beneath it. Every part of his being wanted to run, but he would not, not without her.
He raised the shovel again.
His world narrowed to a single purpose: get to Nena. Get to Nena and get away.
But first he had to draw the beast away from her. He could drive it back, or tempt and taunt it and somehow get between its fangs and Nena.
Through the dark, if he squinted, he could see Nena’s form, prone on the ground, the beast’s forelegs pinning her arms down.
If he did not act now, there might not be any Nena left to save.
He rushed forward, shovel held high, and brought it down against the back of the beast as hard as he could.
“Get back!” he roared, but his voice cracked with fear. It was thin—too thin—against the night, against the possibility that unless he fought harder, he might lose his home again. He raised the shovel and struck once more, pouring all of his fear into his arms. He had to get to Nena.
With a strangled cry, the beast rose. It lifted its forelegs off Nena and turned to Néstor.
Nena was free.
“Run!” he cried. His next words died in his throat, choked by the smell of rotting flesh. His gut clenched with nausea; he gripped his shovel harder as the monster bore down on him.
Perhaps his eyes had adjusted to the darkness; perhaps he had moved into a part of the clearing by the springs where the moonlight was stronger, but he could see the thing’s face clearly now.
It had no eyes.
Skin stretched over its hollow eye sockets, thin as corn husk. Its bat nostrils flared; it bared its teeth at him, its mouth slick with something wet, something that shone black and oily. He had never seen a creature like this, not in his worst nightmares. Run, he had to run—
No. Nena had not risen. Nena needed more time.
He planted his feet and gripped the shovel tighter. He did not run, not even as the beast charged him like a bull, not even as the pounding of his pulse in his skull drowned out the sounds of claws scraping the pebbly earth.
Let your gut guide you, Casimiro always said. When you’re bringing down a bull, your gut knows you could die. Your gut wants to live. Shut up and listen to it.
His world narrowed to that sightless, blood-slicked face. To the stench of carrion. To his hands gripping the shovel.
He waited a heartbeat longer than his head wanted to. Then he brought the shovel down toward the beast’s neck with all his might.
It sank like a cleaver into meat, slicing sinew, crushing bone.
The beast fell, dragging the shovel down with it. Néstor fell to his knees, still holding the handle, bracing for a spray of foul, hot blood. He had seen cattle being butchered. He knew this had to be the same.
The monster twitched, and was still.
No blood came.
With a long, low hiss, the beast’s body deflated like an empty waterskin; within moments, it had curled in on itself like kindling in a fire, and like kindling, was reduced to ash.
Néstor’s shovel lay on the ground in a pile of soot.
He sucked in a long gulp of air. That was stranger than any nightmare, worse than any of Abuela’s stories. What was it?
It didn’t matter. What mattered was that it was dead, as far as he could tell, and could no longer harm Nena.
“Nena?” It came out strangled.
She was a heap of skirts and limbs, prone on the ground. He could not tell if she had moved after he drew the beast away. That was not good. Fear twined tight in his chest; he rose and scrambled forward to her side.
Her face was serene, as if she were sleeping, with wisps of her hair stuck to the sweat on her forehead and cheeks.
But her neck . . .
There was a place between her shoulder and neck where he used to rest his head during long summer siestas watching the sheep. There, strands of her hair and the neckline of her dress tickled his cheek as he rose and fell with her steady breath. There, he would smell her: soap and a tickle of kitchen smoke. Dried herbs. Sunshine. The impossibly sweet, impossibly soft scent of her skin, the one smell on earth he would drown in if he could.
That place was now a wound.
“Dios mío,” he breathed.
Even in the dark, he could see it: a mauling, a butchering. When he gingerly brushed the wound’s edge with his fingertips, they came away warm and wet. A metallic smell soured his mouth as he fumbled for his pocketknife and tore away strips of fabric from the bottom of his shirt. He pressed against the wound, his hands shaking.
“Nenita?”
He put one hand to her chest, below the neckline of her dress, where he would otherwise never have the courage or the shamelessness to touch. Should he feel a heartbeat? A pulse? How strong was a pulse supposed to be? He was too stupid to know what to do. Nena knew more than him. She was smarter than anyone he knew. What would she do, if their positions were reversed?
He tried to imagine her voice, tried to imagine her hale and breathing and alert.
We have to go back to the house, she would say. Abuela will fix this.
“You’re right,” he said, his voice cracking. “You’re always right. That’s why I love you.”
He had never said that aloud before; he had never felt brave enough, especially not recently. Not when Do?a Mercedes looked at him like he was manure on the sole of her boot, not when, with every passing day, Nena grew more beautiful and more like a lady of the rancho, more impossibly out of his reach.
His arms trembled as he arranged her limbs so that he could lift her. He had carried her before, but not in years; he grunted as he swung one arm over his shoulders and lifted her to her feet.
“You’ve gotta help me,” he forced out. “On your feet.”
But she was as limp as a lamb. Her feet would not catch her weight; her head lolled forward.
“Carajo.” Néstor shifted his weight and reached his right arm under her knees, then lifted her like a baby. He swayed; caught his balance.
The air of the clearing by the springs had shifted. It grew less dense, even relaxed. One cricket cried out into the night, timidly at first, then others rose in chorus. The night had sensed that danger was gone.
But the farther Néstor walked, the closer he drew to la casa mayor, the more he grew tense with fear.
For Nena did not stir. Not when he told her how Abuela was going to fix everything, not when he told her how her mamá was going to be angry with him if she did not wake.
“Look at me,” he whispered, voice catching on the uneven hitch of his breath. Then, louder: “Look at me.”
The crickets sang on.
He had to force himself to keep moving, to grind through the pain of carrying her, to take sharp, raw breaths past the sob that was buried in his throat.
Because he knew that if he were to pause, if he were to listen to his gut, he would hear only one answer:
It was too late.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
AT LAST HE was on the patio of la casa mayor, shaking with the effort of carrying Nena. He collapsed, cradling her head tenderly as his knees met the tipichil floor. Her wound had oozed blood over his shoulder, but the bleeding seemed to have slowed. Please, let her be all right. Perhaps he had always known how fragile a home she was. Perhaps he had grown complacent over the years. Now he knew better: one false move and he could lose her.
“Help.” It was too weak, too soft. He lifted a hand and pounded on the door of la casa mayor. “Help!” He pounded again, until sounds of waking sleepers rose from inside. Confused voices; footsteps.