“…help…”
She shut her eyes.
“Look! Listen—” The mayor’s man pointed. “He’s still alive, in the field. We’ll have to kill him.”
“No!” her father said. “You’ll make my field barren if you shed blood.” He shriveled slightly as the other turned back coldly toward him. “He’ll die anyway. Let God punish him as He sees fit. Let him die slowly; he’s a sorcerer, he deserves to suffer for it.”
Amanda’s fingers twisted on her dress, sweat tickled her ribs. The stranger’s head fell forward, his hands moved, clutching at the golden, broken grass.
“... help me ... for Christ’s sake…help me…”
“Listen! He’s calling on devils,” one of the merchants said. “If you go into the field, he might lay a curse on you.”
“God will punish him.”
“The metal thing—”
“…ayuda ...”
“Don’t go near it! God only knows what demons are still left inside it…”
“... please ...”
Amanda heard a sob, choked back her own sob of anguish. Father, he sees us! Please, help him— She turned imploringly, but no one looked at her.
“... that such a thing happened here. We must consult the Prophet’s Book ...” Their voices droned on, the cries from the field grew weaker, broken by hopeless silences.
“... pelo armo de Deus, please ...”
Amanda started toward the ditch. She heard an oath, looked back at the startled faces of the men, froze as she saw her father’s face. Will you humiliate me again, Amanda, before the mayor and God? She stopped, stepped back into the road, her head down.
The merchant who had helped her up came toward her, said kindly, “This is no place for you, maid; there is evil here, these things are too strong for a woman’s mind. Go home.”
She faltered; she glanced again at her father, signaled to Dog and turned away down the road.
Amanda entered the cool, shuttered darkness of her cottage. She slammed the bottom half of the door, leaned against the lime-washed adobe of the wall, feeling the bricks erode under her fingers, tiny flecks of clay. In the yard Dog harried chickens, barking. “Dog, stop it!” He stopped, silence fell around the fading clutter of the chickens. She heard a gull’s cry, as it wheeled above the river, heard in it the cry of the man in her father’s field. It isn’t right—
But it wasn’t right for her to feel this way: It was a sin to meddle with magic, to harness the power of demons. It was unnatural. The Book of the Prophet Angel taught that these things must be denied, they had been damned by God. And surely she had seen the stranger struck down, before her eyes, by God’s wrath. Surely—
She moved away from the door, pulled down her veil, unfastened the ties of her stiff, constricting bodice. The damp folds of her worn dress beneath it fell free. She sighed in relief, stretching. The weaving must be finished tonight, or she would never have the cloth dyed by market day…
He woke in darkness, retched with the blinding pain in his head. The matted wheat was sodden with blood under his cheek. Weakness settled his stomach; he lay without moving, shivering in the warm air, staring at his own groping hand. There was one memory, like a beacon on a black sea of pain: They would not help him…His eyes closed, the wheat between his fingers became the stuff of dreams, became the endless, rippling grass of the Pampas:
He was fifteen, living on his uncle’s ranch in the Argentine province. His cousins had gotten him drunk on the nameless liquor that the ranch hands sucked out of hollow gourds. He had bragged, and they had saddled the half-wild mare who was the color of blood…And she had reared and thrown herself over on top of him, spraining his back.
He lay in the crumpled grass, every breath searing in his chest; stared at his uncle’s black, gleaming boots, like bars against the endless freedom of the sky. “Help me, Uncle Josef—’’
Get up, Cristovāo.
“I can’t; it hurts too much, please help me.”
Help yourself, Cristovāo. You must learn to be strong, like my sons. You must be independent. Get up.
“I can’t. I can’t.”
Get up. The boot lifted his shoulder: he cried out.
“I can’t!”
Get up, Cristovāo. You can do anything you have to do.
“Please help me.”
Get up.
“Please ...”
Get up. Get up—!
Amanda rose from her stool, began to work the finished piece of cloth free from the loom at last. The candles flickered, her shadow danced with her on the wall. The weaving soothed her in the quiet hours of the evening, patterned her thoughts with its peaceful rhythm. Often she sang, with no one but Dog to hear, and the crickets in the yard for a chorus.
She folded the cloth carefully, kept the edge from sweeping the floor…and noticed that the crickets were silent. She stood still, listening, heard an unidentifiable noise in the yard. Dog stirred where he lay sleeping, growled softly. He climbed to his feet, went to the door and snuffled at the crack. Another small sound, closer to the cottage. Dog’s hackles rose, her skin prickled. A coyote or wildcat out of the desert, hunting ... a drunken herder or field hand, who knew she lived alone—
Something struck the door, struck it again. Dog began to bark, drowning her cry of surprise. “Dog, be quiet! Who’s there? What do you want?” No answer came. “Go away then! Leave me alone or I’ll set my dog on you!”
She heard a fumbling, a scratching, slide along the wood, and a sound that might have been human. She moved toward the door stiffly, caught in a sudden, terrifying prescience. Her hand shook as she unlatched the top of the door, pulled it open—“No!” Her hands covered her unveiled face, denying the nightmare that was the face before her.
The man from her father’s field clung to the lower door with blistered, blackened hands. A gash opened the side of his head, slashed his cheek, oozing sluggish red; his eyes showed white in a death mask of crusted blood and filth.
“Sweet Angel!” Amanda whispered, stumbled back, hands still covering her face. “I can’t help you! Go away, go away—” Dog crouched, his muscles coiled.
“Please ...” Tears spilled down the stranger’s face, runneling the crusted mask. She wondered if he even saw her. “Please.”
She dropped a hand to Dog’s neck, rubbed it, felt his crouching tension ease. She unlatched the bottom door and pulled it open.
The stranger stumbled forward into the room. Amanda caught the bruising burden of his weight, led him to her pallet and let him slip down her arms onto the blanket that covered the straw. He lay weeping mindlessly, like a child, “Obrigado, obrigado ...” Dog nosed his tangled legs.
She poured water into a bowl from the olla by the door, crossed the room again and took up the newly woven cloth from the loom’s stool. He’ll die anyway— She hesitated, looking back; then biting her lip, she began to tear the cloth into strips.
He sank through twisting corridors of smoke, lost in the endless halls of dream, where every convolution turned him back into the past and there was no future. He opened the doors of his life, and passed through. . . .
He opened the door to the crowded outer office, pushed his way through the confusion of milling recruits around the counter. He felt his blood pressure rise with every jarring contact, at every sight of an army uniform. He broke through, almost ran down the hall to Mario Coelho’s office.