Work Text:
”Ouch!” Marco Rodríguez startled awake from the pain in his left palm. His carving knife and a half-formed wooden donkey lay at his feet, and after wondering whether Julieta Madrigal was still in class or in the plaza handing out food, he remembered that of course she wasn’t at school; her and Pepa and Bruno’s class had graduated a few months before. Before he rounded up the sheep to where he would hand them off to his uncle Miguel for the night, though, he heard… carts? Hoofbeats? What were carts doing this far from the village and fields?
Marco had struggled to hear the stories that Tío Miguel would mumble after a few too many rounds of aguardiente before he was shushed by Marco’s mamá and the other mothers. Stories of how the adults had run from the city they’d all come from, how Doña Alma had run with Don Pedro and the three children she had borne hours before. Stories of how Doña Alma and her triplets had been blessed by a Miracle and shared that Miracle and its protection with those who had followed her and Don Pedro to what Marco had always known as the Valle del Encanto, the only home he could remember.
Stories of how the Miracle had kept them safe for fifteen years, not allowing anyone in after Padre Álvarez and some of the other old people who had urged the younger and healthier on ahead of them.
Marco’s brief confusion turned to terror.
Had it not been for the flock he had been given responsibility for the year before, Marco would taken off for the safety of the village immediately. Instead, he hid in a nearby copse and listened.
“Tomás, why in heaven’s name did we come here? My sister in Itagüí—”
“Is in the same city where the good Senator’s brother is the chief of police.”
Marco vaguely remembered what a “Senator” was from Señora Gómez’s class.
An older woman joined the conversation. “What he offered you, Tomás—what that could have done for Agustín’s career!”
“With strings that would have made both me and your grandson his puppets, Mamá Valentina.”
Marco ventured a glance at the group from behind his tree. He didn’t know much about clothes beyond what his sister Angélica exclaimed to him about not doing to the hems of the shirts she made and mended for him, but the strangers looked both well-dressed and filthy.
And there were so very many of them.
Marco did what he should have done earlier; he abandoned the sheep to either theft by the newcomers or being completely unharmed by the kind of people he’d only ever heard about in those books his teachers had made them read in school, and ran back into the village to warn Doña Alma and the older men.
The thought that someone should have seen this coming flitted through Marco’s head… though on second thought, maybe it was a good sign that “Bad Luck Bruno” hadn’t.