“If he leaves, I go with him,” Nena said, raising her voice so that everyone could hear. Her voice rang with something that sounded like confidence; it belied the tremor in her hands. The way each intake of breath shook. “If he stays, then I stay.”
“But Magdalena,” Mamá said. Her voice was sharp, close to cracking, but her expression betrayed sincere concern. Blood was smeared on the skirts of her dress, as if she had been binding wounds. She looked close to shattering from the events of the night. “What will people say?”
“I don’t know,” Nena said. “Maybe they will care. Maybe they won’t. But if you want this rancho to be strong, then keep us. Keep us all together.” She inhaled deeply, looking around the room at her sister and brother, her cousins and her tías. Their nightclothes were covered in dirt and splattered with blood. Her heart ached at the thought of leaving them. “We don’t stand a chance against our enemies if we are separated. The only way to defend this rancho is to stay together.”
She looked at her parents, her heart beating like a trapped bird’s. Staring them down was worse than looking in the face of the first vampire, wondering what might happen when she loosened its muzzle and bared its teeth to the night.
But this time, she was not alone.
Néstor rested his free hand against the small of her back.
When Papá opened his mouth to speak, Nena cut him off.
“I know, Papá. I know rich allies could help,” she said. “But there will be other ways to win them. Can’t you see we are already strong? Don’t alienate the strength that is already here, with the people who are already here. Don’t drive them away. Don’t drive me away.”
“Magdalena,” Papá said, his face falling.
“I’ve made my choice,” Nena said, holding firm. “Now you make yours.”
34
NENA
Diciembre 1846
THE NIGHT OF the Los Ojuelos Nochebuena celebration, Nena sat on the sidelines of the dancing by her parents, watching as Didi and Alejandra were spun around the dance floor by different young men, faces shining with laughter in the light of the bonfires.
She relished their joy. Lately, the shoulders of everyone on Los Ojuelos had been heavy with worry. Matamoros fell. The Yanqui army fought on; Anglo settlers and cattle rustlers crept south, closer and closer to Río Bravo. The Mexican government did nothing to stop them. Canales and other politicians—Félix included—began strategizing about independence from México, for how could las Villas del Norte defend themselves if they continued to be ruled by a government that did not care if they were overrun by Anglos?
Rancheros and politicians argued; the war raged on.
Didi and Alejandra shouted at each other over the music, carefree as meste?as galloping across a plain. Tonight, her cousins would collapse in the girls’ bedroom with curls fighting to be free of their careful hairstyles and wispy hairs stuck to their sweaty faces, grinning and gossiping and keeping Javiera awake well into the night. Nena felt a prick of longing in her breast—she actually missed having to shush Didi and Alejandra as they all went to bed and how crabby Javiera was the next morning. She slept elsewhere these days.
The song stopped; applause rippled through the dancers. As the chief violinist struck the first notes of the next song, a young man approached Nena. He greeted her parents with a broad smile, shaking Papá’s hand and nodding politely to Mamá.
It was a sight that Nena used to think she would never see.
When one of the itinerant priests of las Villas del Norte appeared on Los Ojuelos in the midst of summer, people packed into the chapel that very evening, still in their work clothes: Abuela, Bernabé, Casimiro. Beto, who had elected to stay and help Néstor build a jacal and a corral on his newly purchased land. Every other vaquero who was not in the chaparral. Félix and Javiera, Didi and Alejandra.
When Nena and Néstor said their vows, her parents were not there.
The only sign Don Feliciano was thawing was the gift, several months later, of a portion of Los Ojuelos land that adjoined Néstor’s land. The gift included part of a quarry. The same quarry from which Nena’s ancestors had taken the stones to build la casa mayor of Los Ojuelos.
Mamá had braced for gossip from other rancheros’ wives; with bitter relief, she reported that war and loss dominated conversations among the notables of las Villas del Norte. The marriage of Don Feliciano’s daughter to a vaquero was rarely mentioned.
Day by day, step by step, bridges mended. Hands of peace were extended, and accepted.
Nena rose to greet Néstor, smoothing her skirt. The fabric was redder than fruta guadalupana—it was a deep, scandalous red. One of the tías had raised her eyebrows disapprovingly and whispered behind a hand that it was too reminiscent of blood.
“May I have this dance?”
He was dressed as he had been when he returned to Los Ojuelos and turned her world on its head: in his Sunday best, polished like a silver coin. His smile was sharp; it gleamed in the light of the bonfire, its angle playful. Perhaps a little wicked.
“I suppose so,” she said, taking Néstor’s hand and allowing herself to be swept away. Soon she was laughing as loudly as Didi or Alejandra as he spun her through the dancers. His hands were warm and firm; though she wore no shawl, she did not feel cold. Winter air could not touch them; nothing in the world could touch them here.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
A FEW DAYS after Nochebuena, Nena left her and Néstor’s jacal at dawn. Cold crystallized her breath into gray mist; she drew her sarape tight around her shoulders against the damp as she walked down the path to the stream for water. She had noticed a patch of yarrow near the stream bank; a cloth bag bounced against her hip as she walked, empty and waiting to be filled.
She hummed to herself as she walked; when she turned the last bend, her tune slowed, then died.
A telltale tremor rippled under the scar on her neck. She paused at the edge of the stream, pulse quickening.
Across the rushing water, a vampire rose on its hind legs, disturbing ribbons of mist. Its skin was so like the gray of the morning that it could have been a ghost. Around its neck was a rough scar, as if a rope had burned its skin with friction, or metal had blistered the flesh in the sun.
They gazed silently at each other for a long moment.
The vampire’s nostrils flared.
Then it dropped to all fours, turned, and vanished into the mist.
Nena stared after it, her heart pounding.
Had it recognized her?
She retraced her steps quickly to the jacal. Voices rose from the corral; they grew louder as she approached, rising in greeting. They had come to their ranchito for the promise of good wages and never being beholden to unfair debts. Some brought women with them, and one, a child too. They were the first of the people who would make this land—Rancho Las Flores, a name chosen by Nena for its abundance of wildflowers—a home.
Néstor was saddling Luna. Alongside him were about eight other men: some were from Los Ojuelos, others were strangers to Nena, acquaintances of Néstor’s from his days on the road.
Néstor turned, took her by the waist, and gave her a lingering kiss. His lips were warm against the December chill.
They ignored Casimiro’s suggestive whistle and Beto’s call for them to hurry up.
“I saw one, at the stream,” Nena said when they drew apart. “Be careful.”
“Always.” He gave her one last swift kiss, then mounted. “I’ll be back at noon.”
At noon, they would ride together to Los Ojuelos. Abuela had sent word that one of the vaqueros’ wives was due to deliver any day now, and she needed Nena on hand.
She watched the men disappear into the mist, tightening her sarape around her shoulders.
The war continued in the south. Danger prowled around their home, persistent and hungry.