The rest of Fernando’s journey proceeded without much incident. Having lived more or less on the streets as a boy, he knew to travel lightly and inconspicuously. He kept as little in the way of money or valuables on him as possible. Physically, he caught the eye. There was nothing he could do about that.

But he wore his oldest, shoddiest clothes. He didn’t wash much, let alone bother to shave. No one would have guessed he was the son of a wealthy aristocrat. He looked the part—and in some ways was the part—of a scrapping young vagabond backpacking around from town to town, in search of fortune and adventure.

His belongings were only stolen twice from him while he was sleeping, and twice recovered by him after. He chucked the glowering urchins under the chin as they kicked at the dirt. If they apologized, he tossed them a few pesos for their trouble.

It felt good to him to be out among the common folk again. Free in a way he’d almost forgotten, living within the confines of high society. Walking down the wide dusty streets, he grinned and waved to the shying girls and smiling ladies. He whistled to the dogs and children who scampered after him, nodded to the porch-sitting men who raised their beers to him as he hoofed it on toward his final destination.

His mother’s hometown of Cortez was as unremarkable as its name would suggest. In a glance Fernando could see why she had left it, never to return. It was a squalid, depressing, ramshackle place. All the buildings were sad and decrepit, half-crumbling actively into ruin. From old to young, everyone he passed bore a dejected, sullen look, which they directed at him as if he were somehow to blame for their misfortune in being here. Fernando had been right when he’d told Juan Francisco he’d be bored in this place. Less than an hour’s walk about town, and Fernando had seen the breadth of it.

He stopped in at the town church, a cracked and tottering old mission that looked as though it had been erected on first conquest of the region and neglected ever since. Beams showed like yellowed bones through great chinks in the stucco. The ill-patched ceiling glared with holes. A flock of trespassing pigeons roosted in the rafters. Coal-eyed and wary, they cooed down at him from the shadows.

The lone ancient priest was half-blind and half-deaf, as wasted in his appearance as his blighted place of calling. His flapping old gums smacked out words in a dialect so thick, or simply so mangled, that Fernando could not puzzle them out. A vain sort of mummery ensued between them, as each tried to make sense of the other’s garbled gibberish.

This fruitless exchange continued until the hour of daily Mass. It was a glum-faced local woman who came to Fernando’s rescue. She harried the priest to his pulpit and Fernando to a pew. The priest delivered the service in Latin, which to Fernando’s amazement was comprehensible.

After the Mass was over, Fernando spoke to his dour savior. He inquired of her whether she knew of Carmencita and her kin.

“Ah, little Carmen fox-tail?” Her leathery face split into a cryptic smile. Beneath the frayed cowl of her shawl, she cackled. “Sí, sí, la conozco.”

Hearing at last that someone in this blasted town knew of his mother, Fernando perked. “Soy su hijo.”

The woman peered hard at him with her dark beady eyes. “Little fox-tail had a son? You don’t resemble her much, do you?”

“No, señora. I take after my father.”

The shawled woman hmphed. She muttered something under her breath that might have been an invective, or another sort of oath entirely. Fernando couldn’t make heads or tails of this, so he waited for her to say something else.

“Her first man died, you know.” As Fernando’s brows knit, she said, “Her father, too. Many years ago. The old woman never comes down anymore from that miserable shack. She’s been up there alone for so long now, it’s no wonder she’s crazy.”

The leathery matron gave another galling cackle at this. Fernando frowned. Judging by how poor this town was, for her to call his grandmother’s dwelling ‘miserable’ it must truly be rundown.

“How did he die?” Fernando asked.

“Which one?”

“Mi abuelo,” he said, then reconsidered. “Both.”

“They went into the jungle, never came back.”

Before Fernando could ask her more than this, the woman turned from him and made the sign of the cross. Through the weedy churchyard, she went shambling away, mumbling about the devil.

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La Gorgona © CS Dark Fantasy