Chapter 17
The way
Nine thirty
She stuck her head out the door. In the corridor, there was darkness, the buzzing of some insect and the smell of earth, but not a soul.
She breathed in through the mouth, then out.
In one side of her mind, Diego waiting to help her get on a flying horse with him; in the other, Monasterio and the gallows with her name on it: Josefina de la Vega.
Again, she inhaled another puff of the night's warm air.
And stepped out.
Down
It was no coincidence that it was a night of new moon. What was around, more than seeing it, she guessed it. The stairs had to be right there. She went down the steps cautiously, feeling the way along the wall with a hand. Once on ground level, she rested her back against a pillar and listened: crickets, the faint breeze in the bushes. Where were the soldiers? She wouldn't stay to find out.
To the right
Objectively speaking, it wasn't a long distance, but each meter she overcame felt like the prelude of a rifle that would materialize in thin air to block the way. Memories of Don Quixote popped into her mind, him and another scene of a remote book, in which the protagonist managed to escape the dungeons of a medieval castle.
She forced herself to scare all of those fictions away, for the moment. She had to focus.
Shed
There was the wooden door, the haystacks, a few tools resting against the walls. She had to go around; behind, somewhere, there was the perimeter fence.
One corner.
Another one to go.
All of her focus was on where to place her feet… so much… that when she saw it... it was too late.
A hazy brightness shocked her sight.
To turn around, to run away, to hide…
Too late.
The light turned around the corner and came in her direction.
Don Alejandro's premonitory words from few days back, slapped her in the mind: it's over.
Holding her breath, ready to lie or bawl or fight with whoever was standing in front of her, what she met was a very round, astonished and open mouthed face.
Time might not be constant and it can also freeze.
Maybe it was the terrified and pleading face that stared at him with those black, wide eyes, the same that so many times had smiled at him kindly at the tavern. Or knowing that he'd lost track of how many times Zorro had saved the lives of his lancers and his very own. Or being aware that the wanted outlaw always fought for causes that ended up being fair, it could not be said that he'd ever stolen something or killed anyone, unless it was in self defense or in defense of others. Sargeant García knew all of this well. Or maybe the term traitor resounded in his head, which that girl that was now pretty much shrinking before him, called him that time.
The shout of alarm died out in his mouth. An almost imperceptible nod, and he continued his way with his little lamp.
Fence
With her hands and forehead sweat like a pot on the fire, Josefina was able to move again, faster, jogging, running towards the fence. She felt almost blind, could only see (or imagine) dead leaves under her feet, partly because of how dark it was and also because of the shock, which had clouded her sight. In fact, she was seeing tiny little green and reddish lights, like little sort of colorful streaks that popped up everywhere and she had to blink once and again for them to disappear, only to see them reappear a second later.
She almost falls when the fence appeared out of nowhere and she crashed into it.
A foot, a hand, something that pricked her finger, a bump that scraped her knee while she climbed up guided only by a visceral instinct. She was crying without tears, flinched in a sob that wouldn't come out.
The fence was two meters high or a bit more, though it had seemed kilometers high.
She let herself fall on the other side and congratulated herself on the pants idea, which fit her like those of a traveling circus clown.
And she started to run again.
Creek
After a couple of minutes, she stopped. The fence was behind her back… or wasn't it? She had the feeling, or instead, the fear, of having gone off course, of taking a wrong turn and heading straight to the hacienda's main entrance, or who knows, right to the garrison or Monasterios's office. It made no sense, really, but that was her mental state.
Yes, the fence and the house were behind, she was sure. The creek had to be to the front. And above… the only lights in the world, perhaps not millions but hundreds of thousands, where Cassiopeia and the Major Piano were crystal clear.
She went on.
A faint brightness opened up her sight now, like she had activated a lever that made the light of the stars pour over all things, even if a little.
Brushwood, weeds, she could already hear the water dripping and sprinkling, the creek was close.
And also the-
Tree
She didn't look back once, all of her being placed on that crown, leafy and dark, that interrupted the flatland. The throbbing pain of the prickling in the finger vanished, when she recognized the rectangular shape below the tree.
Cart
...you get under the hay. You ask no questions… There was no one to ask them to, anyway, since there was no one at the reins. So she dug on a side, put some larger branches aside, crawled in and covered herself as best as she could. With her hands put together, she made a sort of small chamber of empty space in front of her nose and mouth.
And once again, waited.
Trust
Not for long. She wasn't sure if she felt it or heard it, but there was a movement or a presence; an instant later, the cart began to move.
It was a relief in a way, at least now she could take a break from having to act. In spite of it, it was hard to breathe, partly because of the blight and dust and the tangled mess of hay, and also, still, because of the encounter with the Sergeant. When it came to him, she had to trust, too.
A while later, she noticed they were starting to go upwards, as if up a slope. She felt tempted to peek out to see where they were going or who the driver was, if it was a familiar face (Bernardo? Pepe? One of the vaqueros?) or a strange one, a friend of the priest, perhaps. But she didn't move. All of her focus was in allowing air into her lungs, in keeping her eyes closed, in curling up underneath the hundreds of tiny needles that pinched her in the neck, hands, ankles, and any square centimeter of skin that dared exposing itself; in trusting, in trusting with all of her might, because she was at the mercy of Diego's plan, and therefore, everything would be all right.
They pulled over.
What now?
Are we there yet?
Where?
Again, her mind started to string together ideas outside the instructions of father Felipe.
Three knocks on a side of the cart.
Well, the father hadn't mentioned this, but it had to be included in the trust part.
She slid out and hopped off, shaking off the wisps she had from hair, half up in a bun, half lose, to blouse and pants.
Rocky formations, high as houses, appeared in her field of vision; a mountainside; and someone taking care of freeing the donkey from the cart. It looked like he had… yes, a mess of hair almost down to the shoulders and a hat. It reminded him of an American mountain man that had passed by the town some years ago.
"Hello?"
Once the cart was free, the man got to hiding it under a pile of brushwood and branches.
Josefina then had time to have a look around, or at least at what was visible, hugging herself. The place seemed vaguely familiar.
Something had to be said or done:
"Excuse me, where are we going now?"
Silence.
The wagon was almost completely covered now. That meant they only had the donkey left, right there in the middle of nowhere. There had to be some plan, a next logical step she wasn't aware of yet.
Wait. Trust.
Hard to, the moment that tall man dressed in fur of who knows what, with a face concealed by darkness, turned around and walked towards her.
She didn't mean to take a step back. But she did.
And then, she heard him:
"I'm not going to hurt you, señorita." He emerged from the shadows, his eyes as clear as his voice: "Or is it… señora?"
All of the fear, the anguish, the uncertainty of the previous days, turned invisible to let her recognize, maybe not the beard that hid half his face, but the eyes she had met behind the mask of Zorro, his eyes, that always spoke to her without words.
It couldn't be said if it was a cry, a laugh or a hybrid of the two; either way, Josefina was about to fall apart when his chest went to meet her, when she sank in the embrace she'd spent whole sleepless nights praying for.
She looked up, felt his face and his kiss, threw her arms around his neck, he swept her up in the air.
"Señora" she finally said, right next to his lips: "I'm a señora."
Another kiss and he put her down:
"We must hurry."
"Wha-"
He took her hand:
"We have to run, all right?"
She nodded and didn't have time to say anything else; they started the ascent.
The way got narrower by the minute, that's why they hadn't been able to go on with the cart, the donkey, free of ties, reins or any other things, could easily be taken for a wild donkey, the rocks were mostly sharp and downwards there was only blackness, and that's when it hit her, how hadn't it occurred to her before?, they were going to the cliff, the place no one would ever reach, that precipice only he knew, the soldiers wouldn't get there in a million years, wherever they stepped, the dirt and loose rocks bounced under their feet with every step, he was deliberately walking slower than he could, in order to wait for her, who kept on squeezing his hand hard, to force herself to go on, had he spent over two months living up there by himself like a hermit?, she wanted to ask him a hundred things but the air was enough only to stay in motion and avoid those large rocks, how was Tornado able to take this road?, well, it was the flying horse, though maybe this was another way, they were heading to the top, that was for sure, one ankle failed her at a point, but he held her and kept her from crashing her already scratched knee against some pointy stones, everything seemed unreal but she didn't have to tell herself anymore that she had to trust, because hand in hand with Diego, that just came naturally.
The last chunk of the road was tight, with steep walls on both sides, a gorge that some trickle of water eroded for thousands of years; or that some earthquake had split in half like a cracker, who knows. He climbed up first, then held out his hands to help her up.
Once at the summit, on flat land, half beat up and covered in remnants of hay and dust, she couldn't have been better (given the circumstances); they had made it to the top of the cliff from a side road, to the same place where that mountain man in front of her, had got on one knee and proposed.
"We made it!" she laughed, overwhelmed with a sudden euphoria. They kissed again. "How are you, are you hurt? They told me they shot you, have you been up here all this time, where how, what are we going to-"
He wasn't looking at her, but past her. She turned to see a sight that gave her a jolt.
Among the rocks, as if they were part of the geological formation, there were two immobile indians, they probably had even seen them arrive and she hadn't noticed their presence. They stared blankly at the newly arrived.
"It's all right" he said. "They're friends of mine."
(...)
Note: Woo! This was a long one to translate, I hope it turned out ok! It's always harder for me to translate stuff when there's a lot of motion, you know? A lot of verbs that mean similar stuff but that have different shades and nuances; I hope it's understandable at least in the intention XD Thanks for reading!