In the small, mountain village of Río Bonita, there lived a young woman. Her name was Sofia and she had always lived in the village. Sofia knew every last square meter of the village and of the surrounding land on the mountain. There was a reason for this. That reason was that Sofia had spent hours walking to class every day for seven years, from the age of five, when she would walk with her older brother, Tomas, until the age of twelve, when Tomas died and Sofia was forced to stay home because her mother so feared losing Sofia, too. Sofia, of course, had no problem with this, as she feared the very thing herself.
The loss of Tomas had a tremendous effect on Sofia, who at the time was a mere child. That was when she grew up, really. She was forced to do so.
She remembered seeing the snake, but thinking nothing of it. Snakes were fairly common on the mountain, after all, and Tomas knew as well as she did which ones were poisonous and which were not. He was a year older and quite intelligent. But Tomas had either not seen the slithering beast or had chosen to ignore it. The serpent had struck out, catching Tomas in the leg. Sofia had not known what to do, but Tomas had instructed her to run for help, which was miles away. Sofia ran and ran for what felt like hours, and at last reached her village.
“¡Ayudame!” she shouted as she came within earshot.
No one asked why. She looked very clearly distressed. Several men followed her as she ran, leading them back to Tomas. They stuck with her, with little urging on her part, for the duration of the run, and at last reached Tomas, who had managed to bring himself much closer than he had previously been. Even so, the men were unable to bring Tomas back to the village and have him taken care of in time, and he died the next day.
Tomas’s death had a profound effect upon Sofia’s life. From that day forward, she did not roam as she did previously. She stuck to the village streets religiously, not allowing herself to venture even a yard into the woods. Even a glance in the direction of the dense trees sent a shiver down her spine. The devil was in those woods. Her mother had said it time and again, and Sofia was now in agreement. The devil, in his classic form of the serpent, had taken her poor brother Tomas from her. Tomas, who had been kind-hearted and gentle. Tomas, who had never harmed another person in his young life. Tomas, who had led her safely to school for seven years. Tomas.
For over a year after the incident, Sofia relived the tragedy every night. She could hardly sleep for fear of having the nightmare that plagued her dreams. She lost weight that she really did not have to lose. She turned sour towards the closest of her friends, who truly meant well. She blamed herself for allowing it to happen. Had she just called out “serpiente” her brother would still be alive. She could feel it in her heart and knew it was truth.
Sofia did not voice these fears to anyone. She didn’t want anyone to blame her for Tomas’s death, even if she blamed herself, and was afraid that if the others knew that they would hate her as she hated herself. Of course, had she actually told someone, anyone, she might have been relieved of her suffering, for nobody that she knew would have blamed her as she blamed herself. Sofia did not know this, though, and she continued to suffer.
She had held this guilt with her every day and night, for five years. Now she was seventeen. She had as much education as many women around her, but unlike the women around her, she was not pursued by the men. She wondered why. It was not that she so wanted to be married, but the neglect only added to her self-loathing.
They know, she thought every time one of her friends or any young girl in the village was married. That’s why they don’t want me. And who can blame them?
That was not it, of course, though the reason was related. You see, Sofia was thought to be cursed, tainted. It was ludicrous, yes, but the superstitious men of the village had spread rumours that she had wished her brother dead that day, or that she was a witch who had possessed the snake or otherwise forced it to do her bidding. Absolute lies, but ones that carried the weight of truth. Men can be cruel, though, and rarely do they call each other out on such things. It is often simpler for them to go on with the lie and embellish. After all, it is not any of the men who suffer from such claims, just a single woman.
Sofia had heard of women committing suicide for less, and had she not so feared death, she might have followed in their footsteps. But she did fear death, and it saved her life, time and again, even when she did not want it saved. Life simply did not have the pleasures it used to have, at least in Sofia’s estimation. She often wondered if that was something only she thought or if others dealt with similar musings or realities. It was something that plagued her daily.
At nineteen, Sofia was still unmarried. This was virtually unheard of in her village, and she was fast becoming the old hag, at least in her eyes, that would no doubt end up living on the outskirts of the village and whose hut kids would run by as fast as possible for fear of being drawn in. There was such a woman already, but Vera would not live forever, most likely, even if common superstitions said she might. It was a running joke, of sorts, in the village, that Vera sucked the life force out of little children that wandered too closely to her hut. It was nothing that could be proven, but that did not stop the rumors from spreading throughout not only the village but the surrounding villages on the mountain as well.
By twenty-one, Sofia had given up on marriage entirely. She had not entirely resigned herself to a life on the edge of civilization, but men had proven unreliable in terms of being willing to provide a future for her. She had made peace with that. She had heard whispers of the things the men said about her over the years, even if she did not know the whole of it, and knew that marriage prospects, at least in this village, her home, were non-existent. And she refused to leave her home.
As she grew older, so did her mother. Her father was long gone, having left soon after the death of Tomas. This was one reason Sofia stuck around—she wanted to take care of her mother, who was deteriorating rapidly at forty-one years of age. Her mother needed her. There was not much work for a woman in the village, due to extreme tradition that permeated the culture of most of the mountain, but Sofia was able to gather enough food and barter enough to live off of.
From time to time, Sofia thought about what she might do after her mother had passed, but it was not something that she liked to dwell on, so she did not have an answer when it happened, abruptly, a few days after Sofia turned twenty-four.
Suddenly, after years of taking care of her mother, Sofia was all alone. With zero prospects of marriage, she had a decision to make: she could continue as she had been, bartering and trading and gathering to scrape by; or she could set off for the city down the mountain. The city was much more modernized than the village, and she could find work. Not to mention the fact that her past would not follow her. She could start over. It seemed like an easy decision, but making it was anything but. Sofia would have to leave everything she had ever known behind in order to start over. She could not ever truly leave her family behind, not in any spiritual sense, but even the act of leaving the village where she had lived her entire life was a daunting prospect.
Nonetheless, she decided to go.
Sofia set out early in the morning on a day in the late summer. It would be hot later, but if she walked fast and with purpose she could make the city before noon.
Finding work proved to be more difficult than Sofia had expected. She went into business after business, asking if help was needed. Some of the men—it was always a man inside—were kinder than others, but the result was the same. The answer was always “no.”
At the end of the first day of searching, Sofia was more tired than she had been as far back as she could remember and she had nothing to show for it. She also had nowhere to sleep. She had always heard about the dangers of the city, and to be there at night for the first time, all alone, was a source of fear for her. She found herself wishing that her brother was there with her. He could protect her. But she had not protected him. That is why he was not there with her.
Sofia did her best that night to melt into the shadows. She did not want to be seen or heard, and when the tears began to flow, she tried to be as quiet as possible.
Day two of searching yielded no results as well. She went door to door again, but each place wanted someone with a level of experience Sofia did not have or documentation she did not have—more than one wanted her to do things that she was not willing to do. She grew more depressed with each man she talked to, and by the end of the day, she felt more tired than the day before, and much dirtier. She felt a strong desire to wash herself, even though washing day was not for three more days, or had not been when she was still in the village.
That night, Sofia once again did her best to melt into the shadows. She once again did her best to stifle the sound of her weeping. When men walked past where she was hiding, she held her breath, taking no chances. She had heard stories about bad men in the city who took advantage of women many times growing up. She feared the men of the city, and the day’s experiences did nothing to calm her fears.
Before going to sleep that night, Sofia decided that she would try to find work in the morning, and if she did not succeed, she would head back to the village and try again some other time.
Sofia tried all morning. She visited as many places that morning as she had each of the previous two days, but again without results. One of the men even told her she smelled bad. Another told her they were looking for someone “from the city” and not “from the pisspot villages in the mountains.”
At noon, Sofia cut her losses and headed back up the mountain. She had a long journey ahead of her, and she wanted to be back home before dark. The road up the mountain was much safer in the daylight. Vehicles and walkers frequented the road during the day. At night, the bad men came out to do their bad man things.
She walked at a good pace, but going up was more difficult than going down had been for several reasons. The first and most obvious reason was that she was going uphill instead of downhill. It is a well-known fact of life that climbing is more difficult than descending. The second reason was that Sofia was very tired. Not only had she spent the previous two and a half days wandering the city on foot searching for work, but she had also spent two nights on the hard ground, outside, hiding from the men of the night and fearing for her life. She had hardly slept.
These things combined to slow her journey home, and by three o’clock Sofia had not yet made it halfway back to the village she called home. She could only see the sun from time to time when it poked its way through the trees, but she had a strange sense of the passing of time as she climbed. She could feel the sun heading for the horizon and would have sworn that dusk was approaching faster than usual.
By five o’clock, Sofia knew she would not make it home before dark, but she picked up her pace, anyway, hoping to get as close to the village as possible before she was caught in the dark. This was both for familiarity and safety. The road was easy enough to follow, but knowing exactly where she was provided a sense of comfort. The closer Sofia got to the village, the more familiar with her surroundings she would be and thus more comfortable. Likewise, being closer to the village would provide her with more protection. If she was close enough, she could yell for help or run the rest of the way, something she was considering anyway and would have done so if she had any more energy. She was just hoping to make it without stopping, and that was looking less and less likely with every step.
Not long after six o’clock, the sun had shifted below the line of the mountain top. Had she been climbing up the other side, she would have been able to reach home before the darkness began to set in, but as it was, Sofia found her surroundings increasingly difficult to see. Shadows covered everything, and within those shadows a desperate hopelessness sat, waiting. Sofia felt that she had to get to the village as soon as possible. She was spooked by the whispers the wind was making through the trees on either side of the road. She saw eyes of creatures that may or may not have been lurking just behind the treeline, biding their time until utter darkness enveloped the road—then they would pounce on her.
Sofia tried to ignore everything but the road. She made up her mind to stare at her feet as she put one in front of the other, but it was difficult to make them out, close as they were, and when she heard a branch snap not far behind her off to her left, she gave up any pretense of calm and began to run for the village, frightened of any- and everything that could have stepped on the stick. Had it not been so dark, Sofia would not have been spooked in such a way, would not have started to run, and absolutely would have seen the rock in the road.
But it was dark.
She had attempted to run.
And she absolutely did not see the rock in the road.
She tripped and sprawled upon the ground awkwardly. Her ankle throbbed and she feared it was sprained, but the pain had brought her back to reality and she was no longer spooked as she had been seconds before. She still wanted very much to get back home, but she allowed herself to linger on the ground for a moment before standing back up and hoping her ankle worked better than it felt.
It was during this moment that she heard the hissing.
“¡Está de vuelta!” she whispered, violently.
Sofia fought to stay calm. She knew the sound from her nightmares, but could not tell how close the devilish creature was or where it was coiled. There was no doubt in her mind that it was coiled. It was always coiled in the nightmares as it had been that day twelve years before.
She dared not move, but staying still hardly felt like an option either. Sofia was locked in place until the serpent left or she could learn how far away it was and in which direction it was waiting for her.
Is this the end? she thought.
She wanted to yell as loud as she could for help. She could not be more than a few hundred yards from the outermost parts of the village by now—even in the dark, she was reasonably certain she knew where she was—but she worried that yelling would cause the serpent to strike, or that whoever came would be killed by the slithering devil. She could not have another death on her conscience.
So she sat, silently, awaiting her fate.
The hissing grew ever nearer, ever louder, and Sofia did her best not to cry out. Tears of fear were streaming from her eyes. She tried praying, but she had not done so in so long that it did not feel as if God heard her. She felt alone, deserted. Nobody was coming to help her and she knew it. She could feel it deep inside her spirit that she was going to die. She was sweating, no longer from exertion—she had been sitting long enough now that she had cooled off—but from fear and anxiety of what was to come. She felt chilled, abandoned.
Then, suddenly, the road was bathed in light. Sofia saw the serpent four feet off to her right, coiled, about to strike. She closed her eyes and prayed, one last time, not for forgiveness, because she did not feel she deserved it, but for a quick and painless death. She knew it would be neither, but she prayed for it anyway.
The serpent never struck.
There was a loud buzzing that made her flinch. She knew the sound of machine gun fire from the times drunken military policemen had wandered through Río Bonita, terrorizing the villagers, and flattened herself to the ground. She knew the gunfire was likely not aimed at her, but she was taking no chances. When it stopped, after less than two seconds which had felt like much longer, she opened her eyes. The serpent’s body was shredded and no longer a threat.
Sofia heard voices and slowly turned around towards the light, towards the men that had saved her, hoping that they did not expect anything in return as they were known to occasionally ask for things she did not want to give them.
“Sofia?” one of the men asked.
“Si,” Sofia replied, wondering who the man was and how he knew her. Yes.
“Es tu padre,” the man replied.
“No puede,” she whispered. “Es imposible.”
“Vienes aquí, hija.”
Sofia stood up, slowly. She still could not see the man claiming to be her father except for his silhouette. It had been years, and she would need to see his face to know for sure, even if he did know her name. Father or no, the man had saved her life, so she felt she had to go. The possibility of seeing her father after so many years only added to the compulsion, though what she would say to him if he was indeed the man he claimed to be, Sofia did not know.
“¿Papa?” she said as she got closer. “¿Eres realmente tú?”
“Si,” the man said.
Sofia did not know what to say as she looked into her father’s eyes for the first time in years. When he had left, she was a girl. Now she was a woman. When he had left, she was dependent on him and her mother for many things. Now she was independent. When he had left, she had loved him. Now she wanted to hate him for what his leaving had put her and her mother through. But she could not really hate him. The man in front of her was broken, scarred. He had been chewed up by life and spit back out. He had had it as rough as she had, though in different ways. She could tell by looking at him that he had seen much suffering over the last twelve years, as had she.
“¿Vienes a casa?” Sofia asked.
“No puedo,” her father replied, shaking his head.
The look in his eyes said he longed to do just that, but something was keeping him from returning. Pain, perhaps, or guilt.
“Lo entiendo,” Sofia said.
She took one more long look at her father, hoping he would say something else, but he did not. Finally, she forced herself to turn around and began to limp away from the man who was no longer her father, but a man lost to her memory of a better time, waiting for him to say something that would change everything, but no sound called after her.
Sofia returned to Río Bonita in the dark, more alone than ever, tears streaming down her face.
“Mañana,” she vowed, “mi vida comienza de nuevo.”
She went to sleep immediately, and when she awoke the next day, she began her life again, as she had vowed, as if the past had been erased, never looking back.
Caleb Bedford 