Near the stream bordering María Antonieta's land, shrubs shift slightly—and not because of the wind.
A trace of drizzle remains after the deluge of the previous two days, but it is not those clean drops that dampen the leaves. Other drops, salty ones, do. Eyes blink among the foliage, so thoroughly woven into the branches that they are invisible at first glance.
Between the wind and the dripping remnants of rain, faint rapid whispers can be heard—short sounds indistinguishable from the other tones around them. The southern lapwings know there are presences here that should not be. They refuse to approach, cry out loudly and voice their alarm at such an invasion.
For a while everything remains still, eyes watching María Antonieta's farmhouse until daylight fades and the hour before twilight darkness arrives. The wind strengthens as the sky darkens, shaking leaves and shrubs and concealing other sounds that now grow clearer.
At last, between the final gloom of day and the beginning of night, come the very soft footsteps of at least ten pairs of bare feet. They are muddy, their soles hardened by constant walking for as long as that skin can remember, from toes to heels.
Across the last gleams of an already hidden sun pass several silhouettes: one, five, then ten, as many as fifteen, perhaps more. Their bare feet move so silently that they cannot even hear one another. With stealth trained since childhood, they grip spears and point sharp stone tips ahead.
The group approaches María Antonieta's isolated farmhouse. Immersed in the vast countryside of the Banda Oriental, the house stands with its front door wide open. The window to the left is broken. As they draw nearer they become even more cautious, slow their advance and divide into three groups.
Five circle the house to the left; five more move around the right. Those remaining before the façade approach the porch and climb wooden steps that creak despite their soft tread. They advance in single file behind a man named Yammeric.
He looks back when the steps creak and stops. The person behind him—a woman, the only one in the group—does the same. She is a young woman named Tamasic. Concerned by the creaking too, she fixes her eyes on the man before her, though her expression does not change in the slightest.
Behind her, three men following closely—Hiljaleu, Ymaldoyve and Homit—have also stopped. All five wait until Yammeric resumes his advance, placing his bare feet along the edges of the steps to keep them silent. He succeeds. Tamasic follows in the same way, spear held between her hands.
Yammeric leaves the creaking steps behind, crosses the porch with his spearpoint always forward and enters the house. Behind him, Tamasic watches everything intently. The dark band of clay painted across her eyes with two fingers from left to right makes their whites stand out. Her irises are as black as the night sky now above them.
The moment they enter, they inspect the hall and the staircase leading to the upper floor, then ignore it. Yammeric advances into the room on the left. Tamasic follows, her restless, curious gaze searching everything. Hiljaleu, Ymaldoyve and Homit instead choose to climb the stairs.
"There is no one here," Yammeric tells Tamasic.
He speaks a language almost no Spanish speaker knows. His voice is low and hoarse; his guttural words sound dry yet possess a strange verbal music, almost like rhyming verse. She speaks only that language too and understands him perfectly—so perfectly that the words anger her, and she does not suppress what she wants to say.
"He passed through here. His scent is still strong in the air. His footprints are fresh on the floor. He is close, but he is getting away," she cuts in furiously.
"We rest today. The mothers are tired; the children cannot keep the pace," Yammeric replies.
Tamasic strikes the wooden floor with the blunt end of her spear and reluctantly concedes that he is right, meeting his gaze and nodding.
After searching everything, the fifteen regroup before María Antonieta's farmhouse. They exchange what they have learned: the grave of Esteban Ibarra Pérez, whose inscription on the cross they could not read; the window shattered by pellets; signs of a gunfight between the owner and Ramiro; and other details of domestic life.
With no useful conclusions beyond what they already knew, the fifteen prepare to return to the rest of the group hidden among the trees and shrubs beside the noisy stream. Sheltered there from the wind—and especially from the invaders who crossed the great water—are mothers nursing babies, children too young to carry spears, someone ill, two wounded people and three elders who no longer have the strength to fight.
The fifteen who searched the house return toward them, but two halt. Tamasic stops halfway, before María Antonieta's farmhouse disappears into the mist of the cold, dark night. She catches Yammeric's arm hurriedly and without much gentleness. He looks at the hand gripping him; she releases him, and they stand in silence, eye to eye.
"We are losing his scent in the air and his marks on the ground. We will be left with nothing," Tamasic tells him. "I saw blood marks. They lead that way." She points toward a native woodland near the farmhouse.
"I have spoken. The mothers…" Yammeric begins, but she cuts him off.
"I will go. If I find lifeless flesh, it ends here."
Yammeric nods and immediately gives a whistle very like the calls of birds that speak at night. Ymaldoyve and Hiljaleu hear it. Both had been heading toward the riverbank, where the rest of the group waits, to rejoin their wives and children. They turn on their bare heels and return to Yammeric.
"Look for dead flesh and return before Guidaí is gone," Yammeric instructs them.
Ymaldoyve nods and looks at Tamasic, who ignores his gaze, her attention fixed on the native woodland. Hiljaleu does not wait; as soon as Yammeric finishes speaking, he sets off toward the trees. Tamasic refuses to be left behind and follows closely, with Ymaldoyve coming after them. Yammeric watches without expression for a moment, then turns and heads toward the stream to join the others.
A short while later, crouched low, Tamasic touches a pair of fresh tracks in the mud and grass. They were made by boots standing just before a long wire fence, which divides the grassland around María Antonieta's farmhouse from the native woodland on the other side.
Tamasic rises and looks Ymaldoyve and Hiljaleu in the eyes beneath the round silver light of Guidaí, shining in the night sky. Then she leaps over the fence. They follow. All three move silently, spears pointed ahead, and enter the woodland with scarcely a sound.
They pass between the trees. The darkness is almost absolute, forcing Tamasic to crouch every few steps and feel for the boot marks they are following. They advance in this way until they reach a trunk thicker and older than the rest. There the three separate, for the trails multiply.
Hiljaleu finds bootprints different from those they had followed and takes the new trail. Ymaldoyve discovers small bare footprints that do not sink as deeply into the earth. Both paths remain close to the one Tamasic follows. After some time tracking through the darkness, amid frogs and crickets and beneath the ceaseless gaze of owls, the woman finds María Antonieta's lifeless body.
Crouching beside the corpse, Tamasic turns it over, feels it and pushes the fingers of one hand into holes where the farmhouse owner's wrinkled face had once been.
"Lifeless flesh, but not one of ours," Tamasic reflects aloud while her two companions watch.
Unsatisfied, Tamasic continues along the boot marks she had been feeling for since the fence. With the same methodical, uncomfortable process—crouching and moving slowly—she follows them until she leaves the native woodland. Outside, she breathes the fresher night air gathering beneath Guidaí, who rules the sky with silver light.
The young woman finds different tracks there: semicircular, but not entirely unknown to her.
"Jual," Tamasic murmurs.
With that, the young woman races after the trail, followed by her two companions. Unknown to her, Homit follows them too, from a considerable distance.
END OF AVAILABLE CHAPTERS