The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind
Page 15
Sonia was waiting when Pancho returned with her parents and Tía Neli. She was standing at the edge of the outcrop with her bare shawl on her shoulders. Tía Neli, still in her apron, gave her a worried look. Felix and Blanca stood watching her in awkward silence.
“Is your plan to finish us off by scaring us to death, Sonia?” Tía Neli asked. “Come away from there.”
But Sonia did not move.
“There are other more important things that need to be finished off,” Sonia said. “Things that should have been stopped long ago.”
She held out the remains of Abuela’s gauzy shawl, light as a whisper without any of the charms. When she opened her hands, it was snatched by the wind and carried far up into the drafts of the canyon. Blanca and Felix watched, speechless, as it sailed out of view.
Finally, Sonia came to their side.
“I would have saved him if I could have,” she said. “But I’m no more a savior than anyone else, Papi. I wish I could be what you hope for. All I am is Sonia.”
Felix cast down his eyes.
“God does the right thing by crooked paths,” he repeated. “This is the just punishment for sin.”
He caught her by the elbow as she started to walk off. His grip was still firm. “The sins here have been mine all along, hija.”
Sonia looked into his face. Felix’s lips were trembling.
“Look at what I’ve done with my bull-headedness. I asked a young man to give up hope for a future. I made a girl carry the burdens I was too weak to carry myself. For all I’ve done, there is no forgiveness. I’m cursed. All I can do is beg you to have pity on me, Sonia.”
Sonia buried her face in his shoulder. Soon Felix drew his wife and daughter closer.
“We can make things right again. Your brother wanted a future, one that he chose for himself. He knew he deserved one, and so do you. I don’t want him to have died for nothing.”
Blanca took his hand and kissed it. She ran her hands along Sonia’s hair.
“I knew she wouldn’t come back the same,” Blanca said. “But I never imagined she would come back so strong.”
“If you will permit me . . .”
Sonia lifted her head to find that Pancho had joined them. He offered his elbow and walked her parents to the fig tree, where Tía Neli was already waiting. A single milagro was hanging from a strip of cloth on the lowest branch. It was the charm Rafael had given Sonia. . . . A silver eye for wisdom and clarity.
“Pancho and I think this silly tree has always looked too bare.” She surveyed the canopy with misty eyes. “I can’t stand the sight of it another minute.”
Pancho held out the next charm on a strip of Tía Neli’s torn apron. He pressed the copper heart into Sonia’s hand and cast a cautious glance at Felix, who was looking on.
“Put this one on next,” he whispered.
The Ocampos worked together, their feet firmly on the mountain that had seen them born, but their sights high enough to see new possibilities. As the day wore on, news spread from one yard to the next and one by one, the people of Tres Montes gathered to watch them work. By dusk, the limbs of the fig tree glittered with what had once been the prayers of a whole mountain. The milagros moved in the breeze and reflected even the dimmest of evening light. Everyone stared in awe at the power and beauty of their own hopes and fears laid bare.
That night the music of charms in the wind guided them home.
YEARS LATER, SONIA used the money that hadn’t been able to save her brother to build a new school for the village. Sometimes she would stand at the door and listen to the music of the Prayer Tree outside. Each year her students added their own hopes and dreams to the branches for all to see. Sharing them, she told the students, was the first step toward helping their dreams come true. This, she thought, was the best way to honor Rafael.
Indeed, mentioning a hope out loud was how Sonia would realize her own dream, although she didn’t know it at the time. How could she have guessed that a chat over shaved ice with a chauffeur would lead to this? But it was true. Oscar never forgot Sonia or her bright, intelligent eyes. A few years later, when he died a content old man, a letter arrived for Sonia from the capital. Teach, his note said. Inside was the money for her studies. Somehow, he managed to return every penny she had earned during her time in the capital — and then some.
As for Pancho, in time he earned fame for his poems and mountain tales, telling them with the same joy, whether to kindhearted thieves or to men of honor. As Sonia had predicted, he’d become Francisco Muñoz, a favorite of the president and his wife, both of whom tirelessly requested the tale of the Girl Who Could Silence the Wind.
“It’s superstition and nonsense,” the dignitaries told their friends with embarrassed chuckles.
But Sonia and Pancho knew better. Privately, when they held hands and shared stories under their Prayer Tree, they confessed they had always had a soft spot for old mountain stories like his, for tales of humble people and the courage it took to live their days. For true stories of magic and love.
Meg Medina is the author of the picture book Tía Isa Wants a Car, illustrated by Claudio Muñoz. Of The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind, she says, “I wrote Sonia’s story in the tradition of old Latino tales — romantic and magical. But I didn’t want a telenovela. I wanted a novel that spoke to what’s happening all around us even today. The question I kept asking myself as I developed the story was: What is it that all young people deserve, regardless of where they’re born or their station in life? To me the answer is love, respect, and a chance at a future full of possibility. That’s the core. These are the things for which a person will risk everything.” The daughter of Cuban immigrants, Meg Medina grew up in Queens, New York, and now lives in Richmond, Virginia. This is her first novel for young adults.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2012 by Meg Medina
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First electronic edition 2012
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number pending
ISBN 978-0-7636-4602-8 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7636-5968-4 (electronic)
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