Judith told Francisco, “This mistreatment won’t do. You must move back into the house. You cannot turn your back on her this way! If you don’t like her moods, you have to know that withholding your presence will only make it worse!”
Some may have felt she was being unfair or frivolous. But for newly wed Judith, the party represented something else—a promise that a pure and passionate love was still a pure and passionate love years down the road, despite tragedy and differences in personality. It also represented security. She had remained safe at Bicho Raro all these years only because she had her mother and her father standing guard over her sister and her. But now, if they had separated, anything could happen. Darkness could swallow them all. If there was not going to be a party, she wanted to flee again immediately. She would have fled again immediately, if she did not love her family too much to leave them to their fates.
Francisco did not reply. When he did not like the sound of something, he merely went away inside his head, where it was quieter.
Beatriz joined her father and inspected the plants before him. These were not roses nor mushrooms nor lettuces but instead tender garlic bulbs, broken open for investigation. He offered her two to smell and she did, experimentally, one then the other.
“Make him understand, Beatriz, that really all I want is to make certain that he will celebrate his birthday with the rest of us!” Antonia said. When Judith had lived at home, both she and Antonia had often exhorted either Beatriz or Francisco in this way, as if Beatriz and Francisco had feelings as a second language and that someone who spoke fluent logic was needed to accurately convey their meaning. In reality, father and daughter were capable of deep feelings, but both were victims of that old saying, “believing your own press.” After years of being told they had no feelings, they began to give the opinion credence themselves, which was why Beatriz was having the crisis of decision over Daniel’s letter in the first place. If she had recognized herself capable of such deep distress, she might have been able to better address it.
When Beatriz didn’t answer, Antonia said, clearly hurt, “You always take his side.”
Beatriz said, “That is not true.” She did not take sides.
“It isn’t,” Joaquin agreed. “Beatriz is very fair.”
This statement reminded Beatriz very acutely of a similar statement made by Daniel in his letter. Realizing that there would be no good time to address the task at hand, she produced the letter now without unfolding it.
“I need to tell you something. I have a letter from Daniel,” she said.
“A letter?” Antonia asked, with confusion, unable to imagine what would drive Daniel to do such a thing.
Beatriz went on. “He helped one of the pilgrims.”
This news traveled into the interior of the brains in the room at different speeds. Francisco put down the garlic bulb he had been holding. Judith blinked, and then her eyes widened.
Rage seized Antonia.
Here are things that happen when rage overtakes you: First, your blood pressure begins to tick upward, every escalating beat of your heart punching angrily against the walls that contain it. Your muscles tense, fisting in preparation for action. Adrenaline and testosterone leap from your glands, twin horses dragging a red-faced chariot through your thoughts. It is an interesting and peculiar twist of anger that it is jump-started in the part of our brains responsible for emotions, and it is only after the blood-boiling process has taken hold that our good old cortex, the part of the brain we rely on for thought and logic, has a chance to catch up. This is why we say stupid things when we are angry.
Antonia was nearly always angry.
Pacing, she ranted, “What an idiot! He knew better! We told you all!”
“Did he say what form his darkness took?” Francisco asked calmly. His tone further fanned Antonia’s rage.
Beatriz shook her head.
“Soria darkness?” Judith whispered. Fear built in her just as rage had mounted in Antonia, only it was a lighter, more feathery structure, batting around in her rib cage.
Joaquin broke in. “But we have an idea. Even if we can’t help him with his darkness, he doesn’t have to be helpless.”
Francisco, Antonia, and Judith stared at them both, as intent as the owls that had gazed at Beatriz earlier.
Beatriz added her thought. “That boy from last night could bring him food and water. Pete Wyatt. A Soria can’t help, but there is no reason why he can’t interfere.”
Immediately, Antonia said, “Absolutely not!”
“No,” Francisco agreed. Everyone stared at him, shocked by the agreement and by the firm denial of such a simple solution.
“But why not?” demanded Joaquin.
Antonia said, “We can’t know if helping him in any way would count as interfering with his miracle, even if it is through Pete Wyatt. If it counted against us as interference … where would we be? In the same foolish place he is! And what good would that do any of us?” She opened the door—humidity escaped—and shouted, “Rosa! Rosa! Rosa! Come here! Oh, come here.” She swooned against the door. Judith gasped as if she was sobbing, but she did not cry.
“Oh, Mama, Judith, you’re being dramatic,” Beatriz started.
“You’re just like your father,” snarled Antonia.
Neither Francisco nor Beatriz rose to this remark; they never did.
“I don’t see why going through that guy is a risk,” Joaquin insisted. “We don’t avoid the pilgrims who live here any more than that.”
“We can’t do nothing,” Beatriz said.
“Look, all of you. A Soria’s darkness spreads like nothing you have seen before.” Antonia’s voice was ironclad. “I forbid all of you from going to find Daniel. Over my dead body!”
To understand Antonia’s response to Beatriz’s suggestion, you must know the story of the last time darkness came to Bicho Raro. None of the cousins except Judith had been born yet; it was only a few years after Antonia had come to live with Francisco. There were more Sorias and fewer pilgrims at Bicho Raro then; the pilgrims back then seemed to be swifter about vanquishing their darkness and heading back on their way. The Soria siblings at that time were as close as Daniel and Beatriz and Joaquin were.
It was 1944, and the world was at war. Even if you had not gone to enemy territory, the enemy could come to you. In Colorado Springs, twelve thousand interned German prisoners of war harvested sugar beets in work camps. Trinidad housed another two thousand Germans. Tiny Saguache kept two hundred prisoners of war within their high school. Even Bicho Raro was not exempt: A branch work camp operated in the sugar beet field ten miles away, and on a clear day, the sounds of Germans singing as they worked could be heard in the grazing pastures above the houses.
The prisoners, separated as they were from ordinary life, were the source of much curiosity and contention. The government promised these young German men were the answer to the labor shortage in Colorado, but the Germans did not look like they belonged, with their fair, easily burned skin and their pale hair, nor did they sound like they belonged, with their marching, deliberate syllables. They did not dress like they belonged: Prisoners of war were allowed to wear their uniforms if they wished, and most of them wished, although their khaki shorts grew increasingly improbable as the year marched toward winter.
And winter was dark that year.
Winter in this part of the country was a frozen place. Temperatures plummeted in the desert and snow heaped over the memory of the scrub. Nothing moved. Survival happened by having a warm hole to wait in; if you had not built or found one by the time the blizzards hit, folks relayed the ending of your story with tears and a beer.
Unlike much of the world, Bicho Raro was enjoying a time of prosperity due to the previously mentioned windfall from Elizabeth Pantazopoulus. So although it was bitter outside, and claustrophobic inside, there was plenty of food and comfort to be had.
It was a grim evening when a strange pilgrim came to Bicho Raro. It had been snowing for the entire week, and it was still snowing then, the bored snowfall of a sky that cannot think of anything better to do. It was neither light nor dark—just gray. Everyone was inside when the owls began to make a commotion. They lifted from roofs, sending snow coughing down to the ground, and launched themselves in the direction of the newcomer. He was still trudging a half a mile off, but the owls went straight to him and doubled back to Bicho Raro, and then back to him again, half-mad with the promise of the darkness and the miracle.