Black Sealing Wax on Slate

Beltrán Maza didn't take a single step toward her. He merely tilted his head slightly, pressing the ledger against his ribs with the unhurried ease of someone holding a service weapon and knowing full well he doesn't need to draw it.

"Out-of-hours visits are for peddlers, Jimena," he said, in that thick voice that seemed to come straight from his starched lapel. "Or for people who still haven't figured out how the order of this valley works."

Jimena pressed her boot against the frost-covered cobblestone to keep her balance on the pedals. The air tasted of scraped iron at the back of her palate, and the corners of her lips, chapped by the wind from the descent, pulled tight when she pressed her mouth shut.

"I only brought an errand, Beltrán."

"Hammer Alley has been closed to communal traffic since All Saints' Day. You know it, your mother knows it, and anyone who can read a proclamation nailed to the square knows it."

He paused. His small, yellowish eyes behind round lenses dropped slowly from the twisted handlebars of the bicycle to the narrow space between the blacksmith's door and the stone threshold. There was no trace of the envelope. The inner bolt remained thrown with the heaviness of a funeral slab.

No one answered.

"The widow doesn't receive errands," Beltrán added, lowering his voice half a notch, not out of kindness, but with that bureaucratic contempt wielded by people with official stamps. "That forge hasn't smoked for two winters. If I catch you prowling around with your grandfather's old junk again, the fine won't go to the post. It'll go straight to your house's threshing floor, where your mother still has two cows left to pay for."

Jimena didn't answer. She pressed her numb fingers against the worn rubber grips, turned the bicycle around by forcing the fixed gear, and pushed off with her calves burning on the steep slope. The front tire gave a dry snap against a rounded stone jutting out under the ice.

The handlebars vibrated violently to the left.

"And don't kill yourself on the curve!" Beltrán shouted from the bottom of the alley, without raising his volume, like a marginal note on a death certificate.

Teo Vidal's workshop didn't smell like a bakery when the gate was closed; it smelled of old chain grease, of soaked wool evaporating over the belly of the iron stove, and of the sour stench of burned paraffin from the three burners he kept lit so the awl wouldn't freeze between his fingers.

Teo was in his shirtsleeves, wearing a frayed flannel vest with his hands stained to the knuckles. He had the grandfather's bicycle hanging upside down from two hooks in the ceiling beams and was spinning the front wheel with a gentle touch of his thumb. Every half-turn, the steel rim brushed against the brake shoe with a dry, metallic lament.

"You hit a boulder the size of a fist," he said without looking at her as she entered, pointing at the wheel with the spoke wrench he held between his teeth.

"The hill was iced over."

"The hill has been iced over since November, Jimena. What happens is you ride down as if the brakes were just for show."

Jimena dropped the mail sack onto the carpenter's bench, next to a pewter plate still bearing crusts of chestnut purée from the night before. She pulled off her mittens with her teeth, rubbing her reddened wrists. The stove was puffing in a corner, throwing off a thick heat that smelled of pine embers and ash.

"Beltrán was at the salting warehouse," she blurted out, bringing her palms close to the blazing metal until her skin began to sting.

Teo removed the wrench from his mouth with a slow gesture. The rhythmic click of the rim stopped.

"Did he see you put the paper in?"

"He saw it was there. And he heard the latch."

Teo let out a brief snort through his nose, one of those he saved for when his rye dough turned sour ahead of time. With a chipped brass feeler gauge, he measured the distance between the rim and the fork. It was out of alignment by almost half a finger.

"He's more stubborn than a lame mule," he muttered, applying the wrench to one of the spoke nipples. The metal screeched as it yielded a quarter turn. "If Beltrán is prowling around Hammer Alley, it's not because of Adela or the forge. Yesterday he was at the town hall until all hours. He left his horse tied to the post with its blanket on, and he only does that when he doesn't plan on sleeping."

"What is he plotting?"

"He's going to seal up the old post station."

Jimena looked at him. Teo didn't raise his eyes from the wheel, but the vein running across his left temple throbbed with a tight, tense cadence.

"He can't do that before spring," she said. "The high road becomes impassable as soon as the first heavy snow falls. If he cuts off the lower delivery, the village gets cut off from mountain reports."

"Tell that to him. He's carrying the decree signed by the basin secretary. He says the post station is a communal ruin, that the slate roof is giving way under the weight, and that official mail now comes in by truck via the new track."

"A truck won't make it up the track with three feet of snow even if a pair of oxen pushes it."

"Beltrán doesn't care about snow, Jimena. What he doesn't want are papers floating around without his stamp."

Teo adjusted two more spokes with dry, precise movements, with a contained violence that was only noticeable in the tendons of his forearm. The sound of the metal tightening was like an out-of-tune violin string.

"Want some chicory?" he asked suddenly, pointing to a dented coffeepot on the edge of the hot plate.

"It tastes like smoke."

"Take it or leave it. Either chicory or melted snow from the drainage ditch."

"Hand me the cup."

They drank in silence for two minutes. The liquid was bitter and burned the tongue, but at least it took away the numbness in their hands and the lingering taste of frost in the palate. Outside, the milky light of the mid-afternoon mountain began to tinge with a leaden blue, sliding over the damp slates of the neighboring eaves.

Teo set his cup down on a box of rusted screws.

"There are silences in this village that only hold together because no one dares spend a match to burn the paper."

Jimena stared at the mail sack resting on the bench. It was a crude piece, made of coarse canvas tanned with beeswax, worn at the edges and with brass rivets covered in a greenish verdigris. Her grandfather had carried it for forty winters slung over his shoulder, crossing snowdrifts when the mules refused to take another step.

Something didn't add up.

The sack should have been empty. The only errand she had dropped off was the blacksmith widow's, and that envelope was already on the other side of Adela's gateway.

Yet, the sagging leather bottom leaned heavily to one side with a strange awkwardness, as if a small stone were pulling at the main seam.

Jimena walked over to the bench. She thrust her hand through the wide mouth of the bag, feeling around the main pocket. Nothing. Just dry lint, two forgotten horseshoe tips, and the persistent smell of damp leather and resin. But as she slid her fingertips along the bottom lining, where the folded drill fabric protected the frame against mud splashes, her nails snagged on a rough edge.

There was a tear in the interlining.

"What are you looking for?" Teo asked, wiping his fingers with a rag soaked in turpentine.

"The sweat leather is loose."

"It's sixty years old, Jimena. It'd be a miracle if its guts weren't hanging out."

She didn't answer. She slipped two fingers through the tear in the lining, pulling carefully so as not to snap the fabric stiffened by the frost. Her fingers brushed against a grainy, cold, and brittle surface.

She pulled slowly.

They were three envelopes.

They were tied with raw hemp twine and cut from thick butcher's paper, the kind the old folks in the valley made by grinding linen rags and birch bark. In the center of each one, a perfect drop of black sealing wax shone with a dark, almost oily gleam, stamped with the impression of a small seal depicting a broken sewing needle.

Jimena read the three names scribbled on the front in straight, angular strokes.

They were neighbors from the high mountain cabins. Three men who shared a boundary in Wolf Ravine and had spent over thirty years crossing paths without looking each other in the eye, ever since the irrigation water dispute that left the mill pond dry.

Teo leaned over the table, the rag still in his hand. His breathing became imperceptible.

"Those envelopes..."

Jimena didn't let him finish. She brushed the tip of her thumb against the handwriting on the first envelope, right at the flourish of the last letter.

The iron-gall ink, black and shiny on the brown paper, stuck to her skin, warm and glowing as if it had been traced ten seconds ago.