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About six hundred meters from the house, in the opposite direction of the emperor owl’s refuge, I no longer recognized the curves of the road along which I had come years ago. Why had I forgotten them? Had I been sleeping and only awakened as we neared the house? Had the route been erased from my memory because I assumed I’d never leave? What awaited me a kilometer or two away? The neighbors’ lands?

I leaned against the soft moss and ashen lichen crusts that covered the trunk of an oak. I could smell my cold sweat. The muscles in my legs had tensed, poised to sprint at every sound. I was venturing through a jungle teeming with predators. If I let my guard down, a pack would burst from the undergrowth.

I marched on, clutching the swollen portfolio against my side like a shield. Five minutes later I sensed a shadow. As I shifted my gaze toward it, it slipped from trunk to trunk.

I veered off the road and crouched among clusters of prickly bushes adorned with yellow flowers. I drew a deep breath while keeping a fixed, unblinking watch on the road, which, in the distance, twisted through a grove of narrow, charred-looking trunks. They distorted the distances and masked the gaps with their mint-green foliage, which draped stripes of shadow over the path.

The ground trembled. A gaze fixed on the back of my neck. I turned. A thick shadow spread over the pebbles and earth of the road, cloaking them like a funeral veil.

I sprang from my hiding place among the bushes. I imagined sprinting, but my body froze. I wanted to scream, to call for help. The fading twilight exposed me like a mouse to a bird of prey.

At the edge of my vision, two columns of shadow emerged from mud-splattered boots. Father approached until a pair of denim trousers appeared in my sight. His breath heated my face like a bonfire.

“Are you lost?”

His voice barely contained a roar.

“I was watching the landscape, sir.”

“What are you looking for? What is it you need to see?”

When Father encircled me to block the path, I raised my eyes by a span. The man’s right hand—his arm bristling with hundreds of iron spikes—clutched the long handle of a headless tool.

I counted from one to ten to distract my heart as I fought against my muscles betraying me. My mind was growing hazy.

“You heard me,” Father said.

“I was watching the landscape.”

The man inhaled, drawing the air from my lungs. He straightened the tool’s handle and pressed its headless end against my sternum.

“You have too much free time. Have you finished your duties?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Surely you can help your mother.”

He shoved me with the handle, forcing me to step back. I turned and walked upright, but within seconds, I lowered my head. My lost gaze swept over a doubled path as Father’s bulk followed me and, with every stomp, the earth quaked.

Five minutes later I was clutching the portfolio and hobbling. The emperor owl refused to let me accompany him, and I would never leave this place. How could I have managed it? I only knew how to shear, to milk, to draw. Gifts and miracles were reserved for those who deserved them.

The twilight faded. Colors hung from the treetops, the branches, and the grass lining the road like a dress several sizes too large.

Father led me to the barn, where Mother, seated on a stool, was sharpening the axe with a pumice stone. From beneath her hair, a gray, angular face peeked out. Father jabbed the tool’s handle against one of my shoulder blades and pushed me to the back of the barn. He pointed to a stool beside the flank of a cow, whose swollen udders bore veins bulging like branches swathed in skin.

“It’s her turn tomorrow, but surely you can do it ahead of schedule.”

While clutching the portfolio, I sat like an abandoned puppet. The stone of my thoughts sank deeper and deeper into a black ocean.

With a snap, a pressure clamped around my ankle. A shackle. It was connected by chains as thick as a finger, bolted to the rock.

Father straightened. In one swift motion, he snatched the portfolio from me and held it under his armpit.

“Remember your duty.”

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Author’s note: I wrote this novella in Spanish about ten years ago. It’s contained in the collection titled Los dominios del emperador búho.

Today’s song is “I Put a Spell on You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.