Along the dark line of trees, a shadow shifted.
She shied sideways, boots scuffing the dirt, nearly stumbling as she righted herself. Her heart leaped to a gallop. A hot, itchy prickling spread over the skin above her right collarbone, right over her scar.
She scanned the trees, rubbing a hand over the rippled skin at her neck. Her palm rolled over the chain of her scapular, grounding her. That must have been a deer. So where was it now?
She saw nothing.
And yet, a sensation lifted on the back of her neck, cloyingly soft as the legs of insects, that she was being watched.
That she should run.
But there was nothing there.
She inhaled sharply through her nose and set off toward the vaqueros’ jacales at a brisk, determined pace, rubbing her scar to dismiss the prickling sensation. She ignored the creeping on the back of her neck. The messenger who pounded on the door of la casa mayor said Ignacio had suffered susto. Haste was of the essence. Now was not the time to let the mist play tricks on her.
The sloping roofs of jacales sharpened through the mist as she grew close to Ignacio’s home. They slumbered like dogs curled around a fire, but not for long. Within a short time, before sunrise, vaqueros, pastores, and farmworkers would rise for the day’s work. The rancho would twitch and stretch, yawning and rising to sniff out the news: was the young curandera successful at curing Ignacio or not?
But for now, the only sign of life stood on the patio of Ignacio’s jacal. The dark hair of his wife, Elena, hung in sleep-loosened plaits over her shoulders. The closer Nena drew to the patio, the more evident the worry and grief on Elena’s face was.
Elena was two years younger than her; they had known each other their whole lives on the rancho, listening to Abuela’s ghost stories together around the fire at Nochebuena, feeding the chickens every morning until they were old and strong enough to help carry water from the springs to the house. Now, Elena was married and—judging from her recent and persistent requests for ginger to combat nausea—was with child. Worry weighed on the gentle slope of her shoulders as she looked past Nena.
“Where is Abuela?” she asked, voice high and strained with anxiety.
“She’s ill,” Nena replied. She nodded at the mist. “It’s the damp. She will recover when the rain breaks and passes, but for now . . .”
A cloud passed over Elena’s face. Nena knew that look well: it was a flicker of doubt about Nena. It struck like a stone flung against her shoulder, but she pushed the hurt aside. Whatever state Ignacio was in, she had to be able to heal him. She had to. Elena would never trust her as a curandera otherwise. Neither would anyone else.
“Come in,” Elena said, and turned to the door.
Nena cast one final look over her shoulder at the mist, at the dark line of trees, then followed Elena into the jacal.
But behind Nena’s turned back, something shifted through the fog. A dark shadow moved, fluid as spirit, from one tree to the next.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
THE JACAL WAS one room, lit by candles and thin streams of gray light from its single high window and the door. Humble, sparse furnishings attested to how recently its inhabitants’ life together began. Elena and Ignacio had been married less than a year ago, and their jacal completed not long after—a feat of speed and strength that few but a vaquero like Ignacio could accomplish. He was tall and fast and canny-eyed; his precision with the lasso and skill with breaking wild meste?os matched by only one other person Nena had ever met.
She pushed that thought from her mind before it had the courage to take the form of words. An old reflex, a hard-won habit. A necessary one, for the state Ignacio was in demanded her full attention.
The vaquero lay on a sleeping pallet at the back of the jacal, half covered in a blanket. Nena crossed the room and knelt by his side, Elena her shadow to her left.
His face was bloodless, slack. No spirit animated its grooves and creases. No breath lifted his naked chest.
Or so it seemed at first glance.
Yes, this was certainly susto. Madre Santa, why did Abuela have to be ill today of all days? Only she had ever cured a man of susto. Nena had watched.
“How long has it been?” she asked, keeping her voice crisp to mask her rising panic. She shrugged her bag off her shoulder and bent forward, placing her ear to the man’s chest. His sweat reeked of fear and sickness; his skin was cool to the touch.
“Maybe half an hour?” Elena offered. “That’s when his brother brought him here and ran for help.”
Nena listened for a heartbeat. She waited. She closed her eyes, and in the darkness, in the silence broken only by Elena’s jagged breathing, she waited.
There—just barely—she felt a soft beat.
She exhaled in relief.
“He’s alive.” She had suspected this, she had hoped this, but hearing his heartbeat shored up her shaky confidence.
Elena let out a soft whimper. When Nena straightened, she saw that the young woman’s hands were twisting in her lap. Nena reached out and put her left hand on Elena’s, willing calming energy to flow from her to Elena.
“It’s going to be all right,” she said softly. “I know what to do. I’ve seen this before.”
It wasn’t a lie, at least.
She reached for her bag and pawed through its contents, placing them on the floor to her right. She felt the weight of Elena’s eyes on her hands as she removed a bundle of rosemary for limpias, a bag of herbs for tea.
Abuela did not know what caused these incidents of susto. But she had taught Nena what to do.
Nena reached for her bundle of rosemary. As her hand closed around the dried herbs, she thought of sinking her fingers into the earth as she grew the rosemary in the herb garden behind la casa mayor. Of watching it grow. Of Abuela next to her as she cut it one morning, the herb’s cleansing fragrance rising from where leaves crushed against her palms as she cut stalks with a small knife.
Now, those herbs were bound together and ready. She inhaled deeply through her nose to steady herself, then ran the rosemary over Ignacio’s prone body to perform a limpia. Head to foot, down his limbs.
If she closed her eyes, if she closed herself off to the sharp spikes of Elena’s anxiety, she could sense the contours of Ignacio’s aura. It was weak; porous. Wounded in a way that she had come to recognize through Abuela’s instruction. She focused her limpia over his chest, where his aura was the darkest, the most wounded.
The cases of susto that had occurred in the young men on the rancho—even ones as seemingly impervious as Ignacio—all presented the same. They had experienced a violent shock that left a severe wound in the aura, that separated the soul from the body. Abuela had called three souls back; two, she had been unable to retrieve. Those graves were still fresh behind the chapel. She saw them every day.
“Regresa, Ignacio.” Please, come back. She closed her eyes and thought of directing her energy into him to help heal that breach in his aura, to heal its wounds, to strengthen him as she called his soul back. She reached. She beckoned.
Nothing happened.
Panic rose in her throat.
Come back, she willed, curling her hands so tightly around the rosemary the aroma of crushed leaves rose to her nostrils. No, Abuela said she had to be relaxed in order to call a victim of susto back. She inhaled deeply and refocused. It is safe now. We are waiting for you.
“Regresa, Juan Ignacio Rubio Espinosa,” she said. Los Ojuelos needs you. Elena needs you. Come back, be whole. “Regresa.”
Elena gasped sharply; Nena’s eyes flew open in surprise.
Ignacio’s chest rose and fell—softly, at first, and then with more vigor. He coughed, and his eyes opened.
A sob rose in Nena’s throat. She moved out of the way as Elena bent over Ignacio.