"Corazones Quijotescos"

Zaragoza, Spain – 1610

On a river called the Ebro, in a country called Spain, there stands a city called Zaragoza. In the center of the city, rising out of the land like a finger stretching to heaven itself, looms the mighty pillar of La Seo, the Cathedral of the Savior.

In a garden behind the church, beside a waterway shining in the sunlight, a small pair of legs dangle off a stone embankment. Small, bare toes skirt the water, weaving back and forth, carving fleeting lines in the surface. A small pair of eyes scan a book held in small hands.

Maybe all those things weren't really so 'small'. Maybe it was just the passage of time that made him think so. Well, it had to be, in fact; after all, he wasn't that much smaller back then than he was now, was he? No, not really.

It was funny: Penance had to think pretty hard to remember that small kid's name. It came to him after a moment. It always did. Each time he had to remember the name, though, it always took him a little longer. Not that it really mattered, of course. That name was as much a forgotten relic, lost to the ravages of time, as anything else from back then. Anyone else, too.

The Boy pored over his book, carefully reading each line, transfixed, and when a lithe shadow fell over his body it didn't even faze him. Not until a pair of hands gipped his shoulders and threatened to send him tumbling down into the waterway.

He yelped, clutching the book tight to his chest, and then a friendly face came up beside his:

"Gotcha, didn't I?" The girl smiled, eyes squinted like a mischievous cat's.

She was older than the Boy. A whole twelve days older, in fact, though in her bossier moods she could treat those days like years. Her sun-kissed body was gangly like a noodle and very thin; only her face betrayed any hint of fat, with small deposits buttressing rosy cheeks. Her eyes were black like standing pools of oil, and her short-clipped brown hair hung down just over the tips of her ears, like a pixie cut, dangling with tomboyish abandon. Of every face Penance could remember from back then hers was the only one he remembered in every detail, right down to the tiny dimples in her cheeks. And hers was a name he remembered without a moment's thought:

Marisol Araceli Villaverde Salcedo.

These days Penance avoided using the Castilian 'lisp' whenever he had to speak in his native tongue, even when he spoke to himself in his own head. He devoted nearly 200 years to 'unlearning' his Castilian, in fact. Part of this was practical (while traveling the Americas it was far less suspicious to speak American Spanish, if he had to speak Spanish at all) but part of it was also simple pain. Penance didn't remember every detail about his life before he became an Immortal, but what he could remember he preferred to forget.

It was just easier that way.

Not Marisol, though. When he rolled Marisol's name around in his head, or when he spoke it on his lips, it was with a delicate and loving Castilian lisp.

But, back at that moment, as the Boy dangled precariously over the water, he said her name with a more irritated tone:

"Cut it out, Marisol!"

"Oh, take a joke, will you?" She teasingly flicked one of the Boy's ears and pulled his body back from the water's edge. She put her chin on one of his shoulders and looked down at the book in his hands: "Why are we hiding back here, hmm? Are you reading something naughty?"

"No!" He said. "I mean, not really. My parents might not like it, though."

Marisol wrapped her arms around the Boy and gripped the book, her hands just above his. Her rough and calloused palms skirted the Boy's silky smooth fingers. She slapped the book shut so she could read the title:

"The... In— Ingee... genious Ge— gennel... lemon"

"'The Ingenious Gentleman'," the Boy said. "Don Quixote."

Marisol thumped the book with her fist and stood up, crossing her arms and huffing:

"I knew that," she said. "You just didn't let me finish!"

He looked up at the girl and smiled gently.

"Sure. Sorry."

"Is it any good?"

The Boy shrugged. He retrieved his shoes and socks and put them on his feet:

"It's okay. It's about some really old guy who wants to go out and become a knight. He keeps trying to go on a bunch of adventures, but people don't really take him too seriously. He thinks he's great, though."

"Does he ever get any better? Fight off any brigands, at least?"

"The best he ever does is fight a windmill..."

Marisol's face scrunched into a cute little ball of confusion. The Boy's smile widened.

"It's not really important," he said. "It's kind of a weird book."

"Suits a weird boy, doesn't it?" Marisol flashed a childish grin, which the Boy reciprocated.

"I'm not weird. You're weird," he said.

"No, you are!" She laughed.

"Says the weird girl!"

He and Marisol grew up together. The Boy's family lived on the outskirts of town, bordering Marisol's family farm, separated only by a great field of majestic willow trees. Their families were acquainted as well as any neighbor, but they forged a true friendship when the Boy was born. His father's legal practice, supplemented by his work for the Church, ensured his family a relatively comfortable life, and where childbirth was concerned they relied on the services of a midwife. She was well-schooled in birthing and had already assisted in the birth of the Boy's two sisters and two brothers. The Boy, however, was another story. He came many days early and quite suddenly, in the middle of the night. The midwife was elsewhere and there were complications with the delivery— the Boy was 'turned around wrong', whatever that meant— and so his father made a desperate journey through driving wind and rain, stumbling through the field of willows to Marisol's family's door, desperately seeking aid.

Luckily Marisol's mother was an expert at birthing— her resume included six other children besides Marisol, and about ten-times as many calves— and the Boy's 'complicated' birth meant nothing to her; within ten minutes of her arrival at their house the woman had him out and wrapped in fresh linens, snuggled down in his mother's arms. The two women became the best of friends after this; the Boy even occasionally nursed alongside Marisol at her own mother's teat, as his own mother was left strained and weakened by the ordeal of birthing him.

As very little children they were inseparable. One of them simply couldn't be in one place without the other for very long. Their favorite haunt was under the branches of the willow trees between their family properties, where dangling green curtains helped buttress their many little 'forts'— an entire kingdom of greenery just to themselves. When Marisol's chores on the farm kept her away from him the Boy would stare moodily out his window at the misty field of trees, and whenever the Boy's tutors kept him late at his studies, for whatever reason, he knew that once he was finally free to go outside and venture into the willows he'd find Marisol lurking amongst the maze of limbs.

Usually ready to pounce on him, as punishment for keeping her waiting.

One day when they were both about seven years old there was a grand wedding at La Seo. The Boy saw Marisol and her family there. Later that day, under cover of their grand willow tree fort, the two of them played a game of stacking small stones into towers, trying to make the biggest ones they could. Given the uneven lay of the earth beneath them it wasn't very easy. Marisol talked a lot about the wedding they saw— all the pomp and regalia, and the bride's brilliant white dress— and out of the blue she looked up at the Boy and spoke with a very matter-of-fact tone, as if confirming the weather:

"You're gonna marry me when we grow up, right?"

The girl's talk of weddings and pretty clothes didn't interest the Boy at all. He hated having to dress-up enough as it was. Marisol was lucky that her family didn't make her wear fancy clothes very often. When she asked him that question, though, he merely rested back on his haunches and shrugged. He thought about it for a few seconds, as if deciding on what to have for dinner, and then he nodded:

"Yeah. I guess so," he said. "Why not, right?"

This seemed to satisfy the little girl, who promptly returned her attention to their little tower of pebbles.

Four years was a long time. They were both 11 now, on the verge of 12, and they no longer stacked little stone towers in willow tree forts. They played far less together, in fact. The Boy's studies kept getting in the way, and Marisol's responsibilities on the farm grew greater with each passing day. They were both no less attached to each other, but nonetheless were pulled apart. As a smaller boy he'd often shared his studies with Marisol, including his sloppy first attempts at penmanship. In time books opened up a whole new world to him (at least the ones he wasn't forced to read by his stuffy old tutors), and he tried sharing that world with Marisol, too. But she only learned enough writing at home to sign for receipts and bills of goods for the farm.

There were other things, too. The Boy was observant enough to hear whispers in the halls of his house: conversations between husband and wife on the 'unseemliness' of their youngest child's free time, carousing with a farmer's daughter. No, not conversations: arguments. His father demanded more 'respectability' in his son's activities, while his mother interceded on behalf of Marisol. Intercessions, however, could only take one so far, and there were other whispers, now: his father thought it was about time for his son to have a more formal education, and Barcelona was the place to get it. If nothing else, putting 200 miles between the Boy and his farm girl playmate would solve several problems at once.

Most recently the Boy was chastised for skinny-dipping with Marisol in a pond on her family farm. They were both told that their 'age' made such a thing inappropriate somehow, never mind the fact that they'd been doing it ever since they were little tots. The only explanation he got came from his mother, who cryptically advised the boy that, given another year, he would understand the problem such an activity created. He had no idea what she meant, and neither did Marisol.

But he guessed that he'd just have to give it that extra year; by then maybe he'd understand what she meant.

But it wasn't only his parents that drove a wedge between them. As terrible as it was the Boy himself felt the strain. Every touch of Marisol's hands— warm and precious, but rough and calloused— and every sidelong glance she'd give him when he brought up some point of philosophy or another ("Staring at your bellybutton all day won't feed chickens in their pen!") he came to realize more and more that there were some disturbing changes developing between them. The changes in him were terrible, he thought, but not so with Marisol: she was the same chipper girl as she always was. The Boy didn't really think she noticed anything amiss. God knows he wished that he didn't. He never let on that he felt anything at all. He could never bring himself to speak these fears to her. But the damage was done to him, and the naiveté of his childhood heart was slowly bleeding out of him. Deep down he understood that...

...well, he understood that four years was a really long time.

"Hey!"

The Boy came back to the here-and-now with a playful punch to the shoulder from Marisol; the girl tapped his forehead.

"You in there?" She teased. "Maybe you do need a nice dunk in the water, hmm?"

"Don't you dare!" He pouted.

Marisol crossed her arms and took a small step back from him, grinding one foot against the garden soil:

"I heard that your father's been called up north. He's going to a city that's plagued by witches and demons. Is that true?"

The boy nodded:

"Logroño," he said. "It's kinda bad there, apparently."

"I also hear that he's going to be there a long time. Right?"

He nodded again.

"At least a couple months, they think. There are lots of cases up there for him to consider. It's a very wicked place, I guess."

It really was quite the scene up there, apparently. Heretics and pagans were doing great mischief, he'd been told, and God needed his 'gardener' to pluck them from the land. That was something funny the Boy's father once told him (when his father was being funny, which wasn't often). He told the Boy that he and Marisol's father were in the same business: to 'root up weeds'. They just happened to work in different gardens, and they rooted up different kinds of 'weeds'.

"And..." the girl's lips scrunched up a bit. "And your family? And... and you?"

The Boy stared down at Marisol's feet. He nodded.

"You're going, too, aren't you?" She asked.

"I was gonna tell you. Honest. I just..."

The girl's brow furrowed, more a wounded look than an angry one, but she dispelled this look quickly enough and closed the distance between them. She raised the Boy's chin with her hand, and then gave him a quick kiss on the forehead, availing herself of her slight height advantage.

"Hey: listen. You be safe up there. And come back on time. Don't make me go looking for you!"

The Boy smiled. Marisol looked to one side, pensive:

"Is Logroño on the Ebro River, too?" She asked.

"Mmm-hmm. Why?"

"I guess it's, well, just kinda nice to think about. You and I will still be on the same river. You upstream, me down."

"So?"

Marisol took a moment to answer. When she snapped out of her little trance she gave the boy a wicked smirk and tapped his skull again:

"So? Try not to piss in the water, 'kay?"

This prompted a laugh from both children. All at once the Boy felt a small weight brush his feet; he looked down in time to see a small field mouse scurrying past his foot, whiskers twitching in cute abandon. He ignored the little creature, but Marisol let out a muted oath and quickly stamped her foot down, snaring the mouse by its tail.

"Filthy little beast," she growled. The girl raised her other foot to squash the mouse, but the Boy took hold of her leg, which nearly sent her tumbling over on her side. The girl glared at him as she teetered unsteadily, one foot on the mouse's tail, and the other suspended in mid-air:

"Come on, Marisol: you don't have to kill it! Let the little thing be, for God's sake."

"It's a pest," she countered. "Filthy things are good-for-nothing grain-eaters!"

"Just let this one go: it's not eating any grains around here—"

"It will, and they do. You'd know that if you had to work a farm— actually feel yourself sweat— and didn't just bury your nose in your 'studies' all the time! Most of us don't have the luxury to curl up with books and be friends with rats and mice and God knows what all day long!"

The Boy released Marisol's leg. He took a few steps back. His face never changed, but Marisol's did; instantly the girl's rosy cheeks blanched, and a look of horror bled out her oily eyes. She put one hand to her lips and shook her head:

"I... I didn't mean that," she said. "It's just—"

"It's okay," the Boy said. He faced away from the girl and crossed his arms. "And you're right: you should do what you want with the mouse."

He waited, motionless, for quite a while. Soon he heard a noise: small paws scurrying off, disappearing into the garden behind him.

"You're soft," Marisol said. "You know that? You wouldn't even wring a rabbit's neck for your supper, would you?"

"I just don't have it in me to kill things," the Boy admitted. "Don't think I ever will, either." He looked over his shoulder, smirking. "Is that weird?"

"Yeah. It is."

"You're weird," the Boy said.

A booming ring pierced the air far above them; La Seo's mighty bells tolled in their tall tower, calling the congregants to Mass.

"You better hustle," the girl said. "It's a long trip up to the front of the pews, isn't it? You might not make it..."

"I'll make it, alright," the Boy slipped his book under the shade of a plant in the garden and dashed off. Marisol called after him:

"Wait!"

The Boy stopped and turned around.

"Uh, listen," she again ground one foot into the earth. "When you come back from Logroño, could you, maybe... you know, read that book to me?"

The Boy tilted his head.

"Really?" He asked.

Marisol nodded enthusiastically:

"Yeah. Definitely. I... I would really like that. If you could. It, uh, sounds interesting."

He nodded:

"Yeah. I guess so. Why not, right?"

Marisol smiled at him, and he returned that smile. But then he had no time to lose; the Boy went dashing off around the corner of the cathedral, making a bee-line for the entrance, while Marisol followed at a much more leisurely pace, given that she only had to join her family at the back of the pews, near the entrance.

He found his seat with seconds to spare, racing just ahead of the priest's opening procession. This brought a stern look from his father, so much that he leaned back against the pew behind him, using his mother's body to shelter him from view. His transgression was forgotten soon enough—although after Mass he'd probably get a stern talking to— and everyone settled into the routine of the service. The Boy dutifully listened as the readings proceeded, starting with the Old Testament. Today was Numbers, chapter 11, verses 4-20. It was a boring passage— long, too— and so the Boy spent some time silently mulling his earlier thoughts about Marisol and himself.

Things really were less complicated when they were both seven-year-olds playing amongst willow trees. He didn't know what the future had in store for him, but whatever it was he wanted Marisol to be a part of it. He looked down at the small space between himself and his mother; the woman's mahogany rosary beads rested in a neat pile between them. He carefully took them up in one hand and ran his fingers along the beads, enjoying the smooth feel of the oiled wood. When he looked up at the altar and the massive wooden crucifix suspended above it the Boy made a small and silent prayer:

He wouldn't mind having just a little more time on his side. He wouldn't mind living in this moment a little bit longer.

And— if it meant having to give up all those play dates with his tomboyish tree-fort buddy— he'd really prefer it if he never had to grow up at all.

.

.

.

Author's Note: He's pretty strapped for cash in 1984, so it's a pity Penance didn't have the foresight to hold on to that book over the years. The last time a first edition Don Quixote went to market it fetched around 1.5 million USD (1989, unadjusted). But, then again, I doubt Sotheby's would take a 12-year-old's claim of ownership and custody over something like that very seriously...

...and of course Penance himself would be worth far, far more at market, anyway. That's only if he could be treated as property, though. Does the 13th Amendment apply to someone who was born 266 years before its ratification?

I'd assume the answer is 'yes', but still...