Catalina left Marcela alone during her outbursts. From outside, she watched her struggle against herself in a useless battle whose only possible outcome was defeat. But when the girl, her hair flattened down with sweat and her eyelids reddened by her efforts, surrendered to exhaustion and huddled up in a corner, Catalina came to her with the potion she had prepared to help her recover. Marcela tried to push it away in vain. In the end, she always opened her mouth to swallow what was offered. Afterward she wept at great length, with jagged sobs and sighs that were quickly extinguished because her torn muscles ached. And the thing, that thing, stayed in there, swelling out her belly grotesquely, weighing her down.

How difficult it was to walk up the sheep paths; how problematic to stand up or sit down on the tree trunk used as a seat. Pedro would sometimes help Marcela. Lorenzo laughed when he saw the awkwardness of his wife’s movements, the delay in her reactions.

One day when Marcela went to herd the flock without anyone accompanying her, she did not want to return. She abandoned the animals and walked without following a trail, stumbling, unable to dodge the thorns that scratched her clothing and skin, made her bleed. She went along aimlessly, aghast at her decision and at the warm and obscene burden she carried within her, stopping from time to time to vomit, until she fell down next to an anonymous rock.

Woodcutters who were passing by found her there and sent word to the judge’s family. Between all of them they carried Marcela back to the hut where she convalesced slowly under Lorenzo’s opaque gaze, Winiktón’s guilty aloofness and Catalina’s efficient ministrations. Thanks to the latter (to her power, the ilol preferred to say), the danger of a miscarriage was averted. Now, every time a momentary discomfort made Marcela shift her position too rapidly, Catalina ran to restrain her, warning her, “You are going to have this child. I do not care if you want it or not. After all, are you the one it will belong to?”

Marcela, whose fiber had been sapped by adversity, no longer protested. She nodded humbly. She watched the preparations for the birth without interest or even curiosity, as if the event had nothing to do with her.

The men of the household busied themselves building the pus, the steam bath, next to the house. They bound reeds together and filled in the cracks between them with mud, leaving only a narrow crawl space for an entrance. Catalina arranged for the most famous pulsetakers in the region to come and pray before the hut’s central cross to banish evil influences and the grim desires of enemies.

The others were keeping close track of time, but not Marcela. She was there, laid out flat like the land where the flocks graze. Defenseless, parched under the August sun.