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Chapter siete: The River Remembers The next morning came colder. A thin mist curled along the riverbank, drifting slowly over the water like ghosts searching for home. I had not slept much. Every time my eyes closed, I heard the shouting again, the gunshots, the pounding hooves that had thundered through San Miguel like a storm. But morning does not wait for grief. The town had already begun moving again. I walked back toward the plaza as the first golden rays of sunlight broke over the hills. The air smelled of ash and wet earth. People were already working. Some cleared broken beams. Others stacked stones from fallen walls. A few men dug shallow graves at the edge of town. No one spoke loudly. Grief had made us quiet. Doña Teresa stood outside what remained of her bakery, sweeping ash from the doorway. I remembered how her bread used to smell every morning warm, sweet, filling the whole street with life. Now the oven was cracked in half. She noticed me standing there and gave a tired nod. “Buenos días,” she said softly. “Buenos días,” I replied. Neither of us said anything else. Further in the plaza, a group of men had gathered around the broken statue. Mateo stood among them, his face dark with soot, his eyes sharper than I had ever seen. “They will come again,” one man said. Mateo nodded slowly. “Sí,” he said. “They always do.” It was the truth of the northern lands. For generations, towns along the frontier had lived this way building, losing, rebuilding again. History here was written in dust and endurance. Many small towns across northern Mexico had once organized their own defense patrols, called guardias rurales or local militias. When government soldiers were too far away, the people themselves watched the roads, the mountains, the rivers. They learned every canyon, every trail through the desert. San Miguel would have to do the same. Mateo pointed toward the hills. “The passes must be watched,” he said. “And the river crossing.” Someone added, “También el camino viejo the old road.” The men began arguing quietly about watch rotations, horses, rifles, and who still had ammunition. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t official. But it was something. I sat on the fountain’s cracked edge and listened. Part of me was still afraid. My hands trembled when someone dropped a piece of metal or when a horse snorted too suddenly. But the fear was changing. It was becoming sharp. Focused. A boy about my age walked past carrying a bucket of water for the wounded. His name was Luis. Yesterday we had both been hiding in the reeds by the river. He stopped beside me. “You stayed too?” he asked. “Sí.” He stared out over the broken plaza. “My father says towns like ours survive because people refuse to leave.” I thought about that. San Miguel was small. Maybe forgotten by the capital. Maybe ignored by soldiers fighting wars somewhere far away. But it was ours. And people who loved a place did not abandon it easily. Later that afternoon, Mateo placed an old rifle on the wooden table outside his house. It had belonged to my father. He didn’t hand it to me. Not yet. But he let me sit beside him while he cleaned it. “Listen,” he said quietly. “The land speaks. The wind tells stories. If you learn to hear it, you will know when danger is coming.” Fight that is it.
