On the distance

They hadn’t much but they were happy. The girl helped her family work by taking care of the two goats and feeding the chickens each morning. Her father and brother worked long days in the fields of the hacienda, returning home with dust in their lungs and silence in their bones. At home, she and her mother prepared simple meals, mostly beans a little burnt at the bottom and rice so plain it tasted like nothing unless they had salt, stretching what little they had. Sometimes her stomach ached with hunger, but she found comfort in the murmurs of the wind and in the warmth of the sun that fell in golden sheets across the cornfields.

At dusk, she often sat beyond the edge of the sown land, watching the Sierra Madre sink into the horizon. Reddish and pink hues spilled across the sky like brushstrokes from God himself, and she wondered if heaven looked like that. Her mother told her they were God’s children, and that in times of hardship they must pray and endure. One day, she promised, they would all join him, where there was no hunger or pain, but only those with good hearts would be welcomed.

Every Sunday, the villagers gathered at the humble chapel. The priest traveled from a neighboring town to deliver the sermon, speaking of obedience, humility, and the promise of a better world beyond this one, so long as good remained in their hearts.

After Mass, the peons shared what little joy they could: food, music, dancing. But whispers of distant revolts filtered through the village like the desert wind. People were growing tired. Tired of hunger. Tired of injustice. Her brother once said the men in the hacienda slept in soft beds and never went without food, but they carried rifles and locked their gates. “That’s why nothing changes,” he said. “They keep what we need and leave us the crumbs.” Their mother hushed him, repeating the priest’s words. God would judge the good and the wicked alike.

As the girl grew, so did her beauty, and by fifteen she had become the quiet center of attention. Neighboring boys offered her tortillas just to see her smile. After Mass everyone greeted her with kind eyes and shy nods. Everyone but her mother. One day her mother warned her. “Go straight home from the store, do you hear? The men act nice, but don’t talk to them.” The girl didn’t understand, but she knew her mother’s hand was swift, so she stayed close to the animals instead. She found peace in the folds of the hills with the goats, where the wind spoke more honestly than most people.

One afternoon, walking home down the dusty road, she saw riders ahead: charros in dark embroidered jackets, carrying whips and rifles but no cattle. The one leading them wore faded brown and rode a black horse. Don Ezequiel. She recognized his eyes, not for their cruelty, but their strange sadness. He reined his horse and asked in a dry voice, “¿Quién es tu padre?” She answered, “Juan Buendía.” He nodded once. “Dale mis saludos.” They rode off, spurs jingling, and she stood there until the dust settled, a chill blooming under her ribs.

Days passed. Then one Sunday, as the family returned from Mass, the same men waited outside their humble adobe house. The air was heavy. The only sound was the slow breath of the horses. Don Ezequiel dismounted and walked toward them. Her father looked confused, her mother terrified. She seemed to have always known this moment would come.

“Buenas tardes, familia Buendía,” said Don Ezequiel. “I’ve come to take your daughter as my wife.”

The girl’s voice trembled. “Papá… what does that mean?”

Two of the men brought a saddled horse beside her.

“It means,” her father said, avoiding her eyes, “you’ll go to Don Ezequiel’s house. You’re getting married.”

Her mother and brother stood frozen. Their eyes burned with helpless fury, but the polished steel of the men’s revolvers kept them silent. With no more words, she was lifted onto the horse. She twisted in the saddle and looked back at her small home, at her brother’s face, but he stared at his huaraches on the dirt. Her family and her home looked smaller now, as if they were already forgetting her.

At the hacienda , they gave her a small room. The women washed her, dressed her, and combed her hair. She missed the goats, the smell they left on her hands, and her mother’s cooking. The softness of her new clothes felt strange, as if they belonged to someone else. In the kitchen, there were fruits and sweets, but no one spoke to her. The women looked at her with quiet pity. The men stayed near the stables. Don Ezequiel was distant, seen only in the mornings as he rode off.

The sunsets were lonelier now. From the narrow window of her room, she saw only a sliver of red sky. She missed the open plains and the whispers of the wind on her face.

Weeks passed, then came the wedding day.

The chapel was filled: charros, peasants, strangers she didn’t recognize. She was dressed in a simple white gown. A thin veil covered her face. The priest spoke of unity and divine blessing, but she understood little. When she looked for her mother, she found her standing in the back, weeping silently. No one came to speak to her. When Don Ezequiel pressed his lips to hers, she froze. Her mind raced: if this was God’s word, what became of those He didn’t speak for?

The reception was lavish. She sat beside him, silent. People congratulated Don Ezequiel. They smiled at her, but their smiles felt hollow. Her father drank with the charros until they had to take him away. Her brother danced with peasant girls, wearing brand-new charro clothes and a holster with a beautiful pistol. Neither looked her way.

She felt detached, as if watching someone else’s dream; one she couldn’t wake from. When he touched her hand, she didn’t flinch. When he pulled her close, she didn’t resist. And when the night ended, he led her to a larger room.

He reeked of aguardiente. He undressed her. She didn’t move.

He pushed her onto the bed and entered her. The pain was sharp. She cried out, then bit her lip, tasting blood. She called to God, but the room was silent.

The nights repeated. The pain dulled, and her silence grew.

She stared at the cracks, counting them, trying to remember the knot in the old kitchen table back home. Wondering if someone really cared at the dinner table or if they had already forgotten.

And so, time passed.

The girl began to forget how to pray.

Two winters passed. The earth dried and cracked like old skin, and so did she. The house groaned in the wind. Wood warped. Doors swelled. Shadows grew longer and never quite disappeared, even in the morning. She spoke little, only to the servants, and only when necessary. Don Ezequiel summoned her sometimes: to sit beside him at crowded parties or to his bed when the guests were gone. She never smiled; except the day he brought her two goats. She tried to hide it, but her mouth twitched anyway, just for a second; a gift not from him, but likely from her brother, who now rode with the charros and laughed as if he belonged with their leather clothes and metal pistols.

Her brother spoke to her sometimes, as if things were fine. She replied in monosyllables, her voice flat like dust settling on cold stone. He no longer complained about the suffering of others, now that his belly was full and he had a comfy bed. Sometimes she watched him, waiting for the old brother to come back, but he never did. She didn’t hate him, maybe she couldn’t, but whatever tied them together was gone, snapped like a dry twig, and sometimes she wondered if it had ever been real.

She tended to her goats. They were the only thing she could stand to touch. After one long argument that left her with a swollen lip and a black eye, she convinced Don Ezequiel to let her lead them out during sunset. She needed that hour; the open sky and the silence. It was the only time she felt alive.

Don Ezequiel would sometimes walk with her. He told stories of burned villages, of bandits turned into legends, of revolutions that never stayed won. Names she didn’t know. Places she would never see. He spoke of the world like a man who owned it, as if its tragedies were trophies. She listened, but what she heard was the absence: no stories of women, no tales of those who endured quietly. Only glories, betrayals, men who chose their deaths and were sung for it.

She began to wonder if she could disappear, if her name could slip into the dust without anyone noticing. If someone, somewhere, might sing her suffering into a corrido, or bury her with a whisper of her name.

Once, near the cornfields, she saw the charros hang a man from a mesquite ; a horse thief, they said. His eyes were swollen shut, mouth open to the flies. She stood there for a long time, staring at him swinging in the heat, and wondered if maybe that was kinder than another night beneath the cracked ceiling, with Don Ezequiel’s sweat pressing her down like a second skin.

The girl stopped going to church. Her mother had nothing left to say, only tears, and she had no use for tears. The goats, the hills, the dry wind: that was all she really had. She led them up toward the Sierra, where the land grew rough and the sky opened wider. The charros warned her: coyotes, bandits. But she didn’t care. She was not afraid of what could kill her, only of what kept her alive. She was watched from afar, but was left to herself.

The wind spoke in low, rattling voices. The same words, again and again. Something old. Something buried.

The hacienda grew quieter when she walked through. Servants looked down. Women stopped laughing. Men avoided her eyes. Her beauty was like a blade no one wanted to touch.

She was not a girl anymore. But a shadow that refused to vanish.

The fields were drier than usual, and at night, fires in the Sierra Madre glowed through the trees, carving a trail of red that was visible even from the plains. People prayed more than usual, uneasiness was in the air.

One dusk, when the sky burned pale orange and the light stretched thin over the Sierra, she found a man sitting next to a giant Yucca tree near the dry arroyo. He wasn’t there before. The goats hadn’t noticed him, neither had she. No horse, no dust trail or marks; He was just there.

His clothes, elegant, but travel worn. Not ragged but faded with time like a lithograph, the coat too long for the heat, boots too black for the desert dust, and a wide-brimmed black hat casting a shadow over his eyes. He seemed familiar, but his face was unreadable.  Not old, but it projected an ageless presence.  He looked back at her like he already knew her name.  A soft smile plays on his lips. He bows his head slightly, as if greeting royalty.

“You’ve walked this trail many times”, he said, his voice rough, like stones tumbling in a stream. “But today you stopped.”

She didn’t answer. She kept her distance. The goats wandered ahead, unbothered by his presence.

“Your silence has weight to it, señorita. Like a church with no choir or a fiesta without mariachi. Heavy with what’s missing. “ 

“I wonder”, he said, watching the sky, “if you ever thought of going beyond the ridge. Just not looking back.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Who are you? I don’t know you.”

He smiled, but it was the kind that held no warmth. “A passerby. A listener. I follow the noise people leave when they try to be silent. “  

She felt something tighten in her chest. Not fear, but something else.

“But I know you. And I’ve seen women in cages smile wider than you.”

He stood slowly, dusted off his coat, and stepped towards the goats. One of them walked to him, unafraid. He knelt and stroked its back with some kind of reverence.

“There were and are many like you”, he continued. “Buried alive. Waiting for the wind to carry them off.”

The girl didn’t reply. She closed her hands into fists.

He looked at her again, and this times his eyes were deep like a well you couldn’t see the bottom of. Not cruel but neither compassionate.

“But the wind doesn’t carry” he said. “It scatters, transforming seeds into new life and dust into distant memories, for better or for worse. “

She looked at the goats. The wind stills. The bird and insects have gone quiet.

“If you seek the road, you are far from it,” she says.

“Not all roads are drawn in form and dust. Some are carved in memory. In scars.”

They spoke about the land, the weather, the silence between the rains. His voice was calm, the way old riverbeds are dry, but holding the memory of ancient floods.  

Each word he said carried its own weight, as if it had been rolled in the mouth and tested before being set free.  He told her of roads and cities that slipped away into nothing, of paths that existed for only those willing to walk without looking back. He said that some chains were made of iron and other of promises, and both could be broken if one’s hand was steady enough.

The girl listened, thought her eyes stayed on the hills. She felt his words like the smell of smoke before the fire comes into view; something dangerous, something near.

“You’ve been counting your days here,” he said, thought it was not a question. “And I reckon you’ve decided they’re too many.”

The words settled in her chest like a stone dropped into a deep well.

He did not tell her what to do. Instead, he spoke of women who had walked away in the dark, leaving behind palaces and men and names that were never truly theirs. Of nights when the only sound was the crack of a match, and mornings when the sun rose over the ruins no one mourned. He made no promised of safety or happiness, only of change.

Then, just like that, he walked past her downhill, towards the darkening horizon that had once looked like heaven.

She didn’t look until he was gone. That night, she dreamed of fire. Not in horror, but in relief.

The dream followed her for weeks. She thought it would fade, but it seemed instead to be preparing itself; like something waiting for its moment to come.

That year’s fall came dry and windless. The fields cracked open like old skin, and the goats wandered farther to what a little they could find. Don Esequiel spoke often of new times; how the revolution had cleansed the land of vermin and heft in the hands of men who knew how to keep it. He said it like a prayer, or a warning. There was to be a gathering at the hacienda, a night to celebrate his position with the party men from the capital.

The banners hung heavy over the hacienda’s gates, red, green and white, each marked with the eagle and the serpent. Beyond, the courtyard swelled with voices; men in clean suits, polished boots, the smell of cigar smoke and roasted goat drifting with the brass music. Don Ezequiel moved among them like a crowned bull, his laughter louder than the trumpets. This was his night, his reward for backing the right party just before the shooting stopped, and he wore it like a crown.

She stood at his side for the first hours, a hand resting lightly on his arm when he introduced her. The dress he’d chosen for her shined under the oil lamps, gold threads catching the light. She was a symbol of his success, a beauty plucked from the dust and given to him by force and fate; it hardly mattered which.

It was then she saw him.

He was near the steps of the balcony, speaking with two men in gray uniforms. He wore the same coat, but now it looked brand new, and his hair was oiled, his boots shined.  In the yellow light he could have passed for a government envoy, and the officials listened to his words and laughed at his jokes. But his eyes, cool and steady, found her across the crowd.

Later, when Ezequiel was swallowed by a knot of political allies, she moved towards the fountain, to gasp at least a small moment of air. He was already there, hands resting on the marble edges as though he had been expecting her.

“Do you know,” he said, not bothering with a greeting, “these men have been at war and revel both, a tide running back and forth. They speak of causes, but their only contest is for the largest chair. The good ones, the ones who came with hope in their fists, they’re in the ground now or else they’ve learned the taste of power and found it sweet, and they’re lost same as the rest.”

Burst of laughter spilled into the night. He straightened, his voice low enough to be heard only by her. “Watch them closely tonight. Listen to what they do not say. The walls and bars are not as solid as they seem.”

Then he was gone, swept into the smoke and music, trading words with the other capital men as thought they had always known him.

She stayed by the fountain longer than she meant to, watching him vanish into the crowd of sombreros and uniforms. The music swelled again, and the night pressed close, smelling of mezcal and sweat.

When she returned to the crowd, it was as the air had shifted slowly. She began to hear what had always been there: low voices in the party’s shadow corners, the quick, malicious glances from one man to another. Near the veranda, two colonels argued in murmurs over the division of some valley she’d never heard of. On the terrace, a merchant with golden rings on every finger smiled too widely as he promised his support in exchange for a rail contract.

Everywhere she turned, words concealed blades forged in greed.

Ezequiel, swollen with drinks and praise, clapped backs and made boasts about the land he’d acquired during these harsh days; how his loyalty had “helped share the nation’s future.” They laughed with him, but she was able to notice the way some of the guests’ smiles vanished as soon as he turned away. Another’s eyes followed the path of the stranger as he crossed the floor, speaking briefly to the governor’s aide, then slipping away to someone else’s ear.

By the time the music shifted to a slower waltz, she felt as thought the entire hacienda were a stage, and every player was rehearsing their betrayals for a later act.

She caught site of him once more, at the edge of the dance floor, dancing with a beautiful, sophisticated lady she didn’t saw before. He met her gaze briefly, then looked to the ceiling wooden beams as if drawing her attention to the weight above them.

That was when she understood: this night was not a celebration of sorts. It was a balance, and all it would take was one shift in its weight for it to come down.

She found her father near the card tables, a cigar smouldering between his fingers, his laughter louder than the others.  Her brother stood at his side, already with the hard, narrow smile of men like Ezequiel who think that world is for them to take. They were talking and laughing with an officer whose medals caught the light like coins.

She passed them without saying a word. Their voices seemed as a port of the same foundation that kept the walls upright, same as the charros who appeared at her house years before. The same foundation he hinted was cracking from within.

The music shifted again, brighter now, and the crowd parted just enough for her to see him. He was on the dance floor, his frame cutting sharp line against the sophisticated woman who was wearing a dress in black satin. She was beautiful in a way that made the air colder; her dark eyes held no warmth, and her smile never reached them. Around her neck, a single silver chain caught the light.

They danced with precision, the band playing as thought they alone dictated the rhythm of the room. For an instant, she thought she saw the outline for something else; not two dancers, but a man and the shadow that followed every living thing.

When the song ended, he bowed to his partner, kissed her hand, and turned towards the balcony. He found her in the crowd without searching. He tilted his head as thought inviting her to follow him and so she did.

Outside, the air drove a cooler breeze, the sounds softened by distance. Lanterns swayed on the nights winds, casting shifting shapes across the stone.

“Some think their place will stand forever”, he said in a serious tone. “But everything they build is funded on debts the earth has not forgotten.” His gaze flicked towards the inside, where her father and brother still laughed and drank at the card table. “Every root must be cut for the tree to fall.”

Her heart beat quickened. She wanted to speak, but the words would not form.

She could see in the faint light his smile, which was almost kind. “When the music stops, you will know.”

He stepped away, rejoining the black-satin lady, and both disappeared into the dancing crowd.

The music swelled again the part, louder now, and she lipped back through the doors. He was already on the floor with the woman in black. They danced like a tide, slow and inevitable, their steps guiding the room and the dancers around them.

She felt the air in the hall grew warmer. She noticed a lantern, slightly ajar from its hook near the flags, its flame licking dangerously close to the fabric.  Her eyes met his over the lady’s shoulder. He smiled and gave a small nod.

She crossed the room without a hurry, as thought going for a glass of wine. At the base of the lantern, she reached up to steady it; but tipped it instead. The flame caught one of the flag’s edges in a whisper.

For an instant, nothing happened. Then the green fabric transformed into orange, the fire climbing upward with a hunger that founds its own rhythm.

The first shouts came from the far ends of the room. She moved towards the main doors, but instead of opening them, she swung the iron bar down across the latches and slid the bolt in place. Guests pushed the heavy wooden panels, unaware it was sealed from within.

His voice vibrated in her mind like an echo: Every root must be cut.

Don Ezequiel stood by the main table, shouting for calm. The charros drew their pistols, trying to herd the crowd away from the flames. One woman tripped and fell; a soldier who tried to help her was shot in confusion. So, the officers pulled out their guns too. Shots rang out, and the screams drowned the music beneath them.

Smoke thickened, stinging her eyes. She ducked into the side hallway, towards the storage rooms. There, the oil barrels waited. She cracked one open, letting the sharp scent bloom, and dragged it across the floor towards the read doors; the other exit the guest might reach. She poured oil in a wide arc, then kicked a lantern from its hook. Fire leapt up like a beast.

By the time she returned to the main hall, the crowd had realized the doors would not open. Panic tore through them. He and the lady in black still danced, stepping over the dead and the screaming alike.

She saw her brother’s face appear in the smoke; red, twisted, coughing and scared. He looked like the boy he once was, but before she could do anything a falling beam crushed him. She had no time to look away.

Don Ezequiel, stumbled towards her from the smoke, his fine charro suit scorched, his face a mask of sweat and ash. In his hand, a silver revolver hung limp, the cylinder empty. His eyes were wild, not from bravery or rage but from the creeping certainty of doom.

“Ayúdame por favor!” he rasped, catching her by the wrist.

She could have pulled him toward the side corridor that let to the stables; the scape route she planned for herself. Instead, she guided him toward the main hall, where the smoke thickened and the cries sharpened into panic.

A burning rafter cracked and fell, cutting off their path. Ezequiel coughed, staggered, and dropped to one knee. On the far side of the room, through the chaos, she saw him and the lady. They stood holding each other, watching the mayhem bloom. Their smiles reminded her of the way she used to look at sunsets on the hills; amazed, in peace, and something close to happiness.

Ezequiel gasped for breath, reaching for her again. She bent low as if to help, but her hands found not his harm, but the strap of the chandelier’s winch. A par tug, and the iron mass groaned above them.

He saw her movement a moment too late. The great wheel of iron and glass crashed down, breaking him under its weight. His cry was short, swallowed by the roar of the fire.

She didn’t run. She walked through the chaos, past the stranger, who stepped aside for her as if she were the honoured guest of the night.

When she finally stepped into the open air, the locked doors behind her thundered with fists and boots, until all the sounds of the screams were swallowed by the flames. The night air burned her lungs as she walked away.

The dawn came in slow, a light pushing over the blackened ruins of the hacienda. Ash still drifted in the air, soft. Where the courtyard had been, there were only bodies; faces frozen in the last shapes their fear had given them.   They carried no bodies out. There was no one left to carry them. The air inside still trembled with heat, and in the courtyard, the fountain had boiled away, leaving only a ring of ash and glass.

She sat on the low wall, her dress grey with soot.  No one spoke to her; there was no one to speak. Far away, the church bell rang for the dead, though no priest had come.

He was gone. No sign of his boots on the dirt, no smell of his cologne, only the faint echo of laughter from somewhere far oof. They said the woman he danced with had hair black as a cuervo’s wing, and her eyes did not blink when the fire rose. No one knew her name.

She stayed there until the sun rose high, until the smell began to fade and the flies and zopilotes came. Then she stood, turned her back to the ruins, and began walking towards the hills.

---

Years had peeled away like the paint from the doors of old churches. Towns had risen and others fallen. Flags had changed their colours, their owners. The governor’s ballroom was filled with the clink of champagne cups and the dry murmurs of men whose fortunes had outlived their enemies. She stood near the back, her hair straked with white now, the dress black thought it was not a day of mourning.  She didn’t come here to be seen. Yet the eyes that mattered found her. She had learned how to smile without speaking, how to stand still until the moment mattered.

Through the crowd, he came. No older than before, as if time had never touched him. Not a single line on his face. Not a grey hair. His suit looked European made. Hist subtle smile, unchanged.

“I was told you’d forgotten me.” He spoke. “I tried” she replied. “You have done well. The city knows your name. Both the dead and the living.”  He looked at her while fixing his black hair. “The dead more than the leaving.”  She replied giving him a dry smile.

He glanced at the men talking at the high small tables, politicians, generals, the new breed of landowners and industry barons. One raised a glass towards her.

“You have learned,” he said,” that the earth eats the living before it forgets the dead.”

She studied him, as if expecting the years to revel his trick. “You’re here for them”, she said.

“I’m here for everyone and for no one,” he replied, his eyes drifting over the room.

“And what will it cost?,” she asked, as if he might reveal the truth of the world.

He took a glass of champagne from a passing waiter. “It costs what it always costs.”

She sipped her wine, bitter and warm. “You took much from me that night.”

“You had much to give”

“And the price?” she pressed.

He tilted his head, as if weighing something invisible.

“The price is always the same, niña. It was the rest of your life. You’ve paid it, moneda por moneda, without knowing the sum.”

Her gaze drifted to the tall woman who approached. She was wearing a gown in the color of dried roses, gliding with a dancer’s grace. Her gaze deep and hollow as the space between church bells at night. She took his arm, and she recognized her from her black hair.

“And her?”  She wondered.

He smiled faintly, the woman on his arm. “She does not speak of debts. Only collects them”

“Do you still follow me? She asked.

“I follow no one,” he said. “But I have always been where the roads end.”

“And mine?”

You have not yet reached it,” he said, and the black-haired woman spoke for the first time, her voice sweet and dry. “But the map is smaller now.”

They stood there in the center of many conversations, the sound of politics and power drifting like a distant sea. His eyes held the same quiet that had burned the night she left the hacienda in ashes.

“When the fire came,” he said, “you chose to open the door for it.”

“You lit the match.”

He shook his head slowly. “I only showed the darkness. You decided what do with the light.” He glanced towards the governor and the men he laughed with. “Men here and elsewhere have made the same choice, only they burn the land before the fire burns them.”

And then he was gone, the woman in dried roses with him, the air behind them carrying the faintest scent of smoke ; the kind that stays in your clothes long after the fire is out.