She could now string letters into words. She marveled at the magic of it all, how human beings had thought to etch markings on stone to tell their stories, sensed each lifetime too grand, too interesting, not to document. She placed one hand to her belly and felt the something in her move and stretch as if seeking its own freedom, felt as if the whole world were her womb. She wanted to write her own words. She wanted to write her life into existence and endure. Perhaps a piece of her knew death crouched close.

How did the soldiers find out? No one would ever know for certain, though they would speculate: perhaps Antonio had left behind compromising evidence at Porteños y Gómez (the translated letter from Victor Hugo?) and Porteños denounced him, perhaps a worker had betrayed him, perhaps it was simple bad luck—the soldiers marching through the field and finding the clearing, hearing the voices, the words.

The four soldiers were kind enough to let the workers go after they disrupted the lesson with whip cracks, a pistol shot. But they stood Antonio atop one of his fat books. One said, “Now will your literature save you?” Antonio clasped his hands behind his back, looked up.

And María Isabel, as though she knew, collapsed on the floor of their home, moaning, watching the liquid burst beneath her. She gripped her sister-in-law’s hand and screamed, beseeched the santos. She let Antonio’s mother wipe her brow and pray before her. She called the names of everyone she’d loved and lost.

“Declare your loyalty to the Crown,” the soldier in the field said, rifle pointed at Antonio’s head.

“Libertad!” Antonio yelled, loud enough that he hoped María Isabel would hear, that she would know he’d fight until the end.

But the world was going silent for María Isabel as she strained with the little strength left in her. She tasted the salt of her sweat and pushed and grasped at all before her, saw the room undulate, felt the waves crash inside. She heard her mother-in-law and sister-in-law’s voices as if sieved through layers and felt herself go in and out of consciousness. Her fingers brushed against the stickiness of her own blood.

María Isabel felt her mother-in-law grasp at the fleshy head that emerged. And she heard her own pulse inside her, loud, multiplying as if fighting for two, for three, rippling. We are force. The resounding scream of life rushing out of her.

A soldier commanded his fellow men to raise their rifles. Antonio cried out again.

There was a click. There was a “Fire!”