Deep in summer, in the thickness after dawn, he came to her by the river for the third and last time. Adelaida welcomed him with a graceful touch to his neck. It was as simple as the rain falling from nothing to nothing at the horizon. Her clothes gave way to his hands and, all too soon, his body. When he spoke, his words were rolls of thunder in a language she had never learned. Somehow Africa still filled him. His name was Anselmo, but that was only the name the master had given him. His true name—the name he brought with him—was Adisa. His name was the only word she spoke that she knew he understood, so she spoke it to his ear in the morning stillness.

            After his love, Adisa had lain by her in the grass, his heart pounding against his muscled ribs so powerfully she could feel it against her cheek. He was a picture of strength. Back home he would have been a warrior or a chief, desired by many women but choosing only one. Adelaida knew this about him even though they never spoke. During the day as she stoked the furnace with bégasse—the pressed cane husks—she could spy on him in the field each time she went out for another armload of shredded stalks. He was easy to spot at any distance, bigger than the others, swinging his machete at the cane as if beating back an ocean of hissing green. Adisa came from vivid far lands, a place Adelaida no longer remembered, and must still have held the images of them in his heart. The scars on his ankles and wrists still bulged. The welts on his back, from a needless altercation on the passage, still protruded from his back, reminding her as she touched them how strong and yet how vulnerable he was.

            One day, Adelaida had told herself, she would find a way to ask him everything, and he would find a way to tell her, and there would be no more questions or secrets. And there would still be love.

            This morning, a year later, there was only the cry of their hungry infant, as loud as the day he was born. Junia, a furnace tender, had been useless all night, grumbling about how Adelaida was cursed by dryness and her child was on the doorsill of death. When Peio Etxarte, the mayoral, walked by in the wee hours with his lantern, Adelaida thrust baby Domingo into Junia's sleeping arms and leaped to the door and slid open the grate to hail him.

            “Sir!”

            The Basque replied, “What do you want?”

            “My child...” said Adelaida, mouth pressed to the grate.

            “What about your child?”

            “Cry and cry," she gasped in halting Spanish. "Need milk. Send doctor.”

            “The doctor is in bed.”

            “Please, sir...”

            “Wait for the bell.”

            The mayoral moved along, boots clunking on the long wood porch that ran all the way around the interior of the barracón.

            "Wait!" Adelaida called again, desperate now. "Send my brother!"

            Peio Etxarte paused and turned, his face a puzzled question in the straining light.

            "Please," Adelaida begged.

            The mayoral gave no response, but walked from Adelaida's sight and returned a few moments with Anastasio. He unlocked the door with a key from his bulging iron keyring and let Anastasio in.

            The little child wailed at the creaking of the door. His gasps ragged, his body tensed and shaking.

            "Cursed," muttered Junia through half-closed lids.

            Anastasio took the crying infant into his strong arms and held him against his chest. Adelaida heard the song coming from deep within him. He shut his eyes. The infant bawled in shock, eyes wide, then abruptly stopped.

            The only sound in the airless room was Anastasio's song.

            "Father ran away," Junia huffed in her shadows.

            "No," Adelaida whispered back. "He led the way."

            Junia shook her head and lay back down. She rolled to the wall.

            "I will see him there," Adelaida told Junia's unmoving form.

            "Where?"

            "The palenque." Adelaida kept her voice low. "He awaits me there."

            "How do you know? Your Adisa speaks a different tongue."

            Adelaida bristled but refused to submit to the older woman's provocations.

            She said, "I know because he gave me this." And she drew out the token of wood attached to a cord of leather that hung around her neck. On it were three burn-marks, side by side.

            Junia turned. Her eyes squinted, then slowly widened. 

            "I know the way," Adelaida said, the triumph rising in her voice.

            "You must hide that," Junia hissed.

            Adelaida tucked the token back in her nightshift and straightened it. It would remain there, night and day, until her time came.

            Domingo had fallen asleep.

            "He will cry again," Anastasio whispered.

            Adelaida received the infant back into her arms and sat down on the cot.

            Anastasio leaned back against the base of the wall, below the tiny window, and began to sing again. A song as soft as the waking day, as gentle as Adelaida remembered it from her youth. It was the song he'd sung to her in the entrail-stenched darkness of the boat all those years ago.

            Anastasio sang, and the infant slept.

            Adelaida slept too, and dreamt of a place beyond the mountains.