Marta reached the age of sixteen and her soul became like a polished mirror that reflecting the virtues of the open fields, while her heart resembled the empty spaces in the gullies that return the echo of every sound . . . On a fall day that resounded with the sighs of nature, she sat near a spring that had been liberated from the earth’s prison, just as thoughts strive free of the poet’s imagination. She contemplated the trembling of yellowed leaves upon the trees, the way the wind toyed with them, so like the manner in which death plays with human souls. She looked at the flowers, finding that they had wilted and withered to the core and had burst apart, entrusting their seeds to the earth the way women do their jewelry in times of war and revolution.

While gazing at the flowers and trees, feeling with them the ache of summer’s departure, she heard the sound of hoof beats on the gravel at the bottom of the gully. She looked around and discovered a horseman slowly approaching her. He drew near the spring, his features and clothing suggesting a certain wealth and style. He dismounted from his charger and hailed her with a courtesy she had in no wise come to expect from a man.

He asked her, “I’ve wandered from the road that leads to the coast. Can you guide me to it, girl?”

Standing straight as a branch on the edge of a spring, she answered, “I don’t rightly know, sir. But I’ll go and ask my guardian, who does know.”

She spoke the words with obvious anxiety, and her bashfulness lent her a certain beauty and delicacy. When she rose to depart, the man stopped her, the wine of youth flowing in his veins, his gaze abruptly altering.

“No,” he said. “Don’t go.”

She stood rooted to the spot, bewildered, conscious of a power in his voice that prevented her from moving. When she timidly stole a glance at him, she saw that he was contemplating her with an interest she could not understand and smiling with an enchanting kindness that, in its sweetness, nearly brought tears to her eyes. He was gazing with love and affection at her naked feet, her lovely wrists, her smooth neck, and her thick, soft hair. He mused, enthralled and infatuated, upon the way the sun had tanned her complexion and nature had given strength to her forearms. As for the girl, her head bowed with shyness, she did not want to leave but she could not speak, for reasons that escaped her.

That evening, the milch cow came back alone to the corral, but Marta did not return. When her guardian arrived from his fields, he searched for her among those ravines, but did not find her. He called her name, but his only reply came from the caves and the sighing of the wind among the trees. He returned, sorrowful, to his shack and informed his wife, who wept softly the entire night. She said to herself, I saw her once in a dream, caught in the talons of a savage beast that shredded her body as she smiled and sobbed.