Zorro by Isabel Allende Page A

didn’t know what else to do, though he was confident that the medicine woman’s magic could not achieve a cure where exorcism had failed. Diego was dying to go with his milk brother, but he didn’t have the heart to leave his mother, who was still in convalescence, and besides, Padre Mendoza had forbidden him to ride while he was still wearing the corset. For the first time since they’d been born, the boys were separated.
    Once White Owl was satisfied that Bernardo had not swallowed his tongue there it was, intact, in his mouth she diagnosed that his muteness was a form of mourning: he wasn’t speaking because he didn’t want to. She believed that beneath the unvoiced rage devouring the boy lay a fathomless ocean of sadness. She did not try to console him or cure him in her opinion Bernardo had every right in the world not to speak but she taught him to communicate with the spirit of his mother by observing the stars, and with other people through the sign language used for trading among tribes. She also taught him to play a delicate reed flute. With time and practice, the boy would learn to draw almost as wide a range of sounds from it as that of the human voice. Once everyone had left him alone, Bernardo began to come around. The first symptom was a voracious appetite there was no need to force-feed him now and the second was the timid friendship he struck up with Light-in-the-Night. The girl was two years older than Bernardo, and she was given that name because she had been born on a stormy night.
    She was small for her age, and she wore the pleasant expression of a squirrel. She treated Bernardo normally, without any notice of his speech problem, and she became his constant companion, unknowingly replacing Diego. They were apart only at night, when he had to go to White Owl’s hut, and she to her family’s. Light-in-the-Night took Bernardo to the river, where she stripped off her clothes and dived in headfirst, while he tried to find something else to look at; even though he was only ten, Padre Mendoza teachings on the temptations of the flesh had made an impact. Bernardo would dive in after her, still wearing his pants, and wonder at the fact that, like him, she could swim like a fish in the icy water. She knew the mythic history of her people by heart, and never tired of telling it to Bernardo, just as he never tired of listening. The girl’s voice was a balm to the sorrowing boy, who listened in a trance, not realizing that his love for her was beginning to melt the glacier of his heart. He began to act again like any boy his age except that he didn’t speak and he didn’t cry.
    Together they tagged after White Owl, helping her in her duties as a healer and shaman, gathering curative plants and preparing potions.
    When Bernardo started smiling again, the grandmother decided that she had done all she could for him and that the time had come to send him back to the de la Vega hacienda. She was occupied in the rites and ceremonies that would acknowledge Light-in-the-Night’s first menstrual period; nearly overnight she was an adolescent. That sudden transition did not distance her from Bernardo; on the contrary, it seemed to bring them closer together. As a farewell, she took him once again to the river and on a rock, using her menstrual blood, drew two birds in flight. “This is us, we will always fly together,” she told him.
    Bernardo spontaneously kissed her and then ran off like the wind, with his body aflame.
    Diego, who had been awaiting Bernardo’s return with the sadness of an abandoned pup, saw him in the distance and ran to welcome him, whooping with joy. When he stood in front of him, however, he understood that this friend who was like a brother to him was a different person. He was riding a borrowed horse; he was larger, and rugged-looking. He could have passed for a man. His hair had grown long, his face was that of an adult Indian, and the unmistakable light of a secret love blazed in his