The Memoirs of Finn O'Brien Villens: Part 3

Stories

Maria woke me when the moon was high above the trees.  The short sleep refreshed me amazingly. Ah, to be young again! Villens had the supplies loaded on the mule and we set off as soon as I pulled on my boots and gathered up the blankets. As we walked, we ate from our dwindling cache of food to which Maria had added berries and edible plants. When dawn broke, we stopped beneath a huge beech tree to rest.

We slept most of the day. Each of us stayed on watch for two hours or so, using the sun as our clock. Maria insisted that we stand guard for the same amount of time. She said that it would not do for any one of us to wear ourselves out in a foolish heroic gesture. I tried to ignore her gentle critique of my actions the previous night.

For four days and nights we hiked eastward through the woods. We didn’t hunt, because we didn’t want a gunshot to give us away. I netted two small birds that we roasted over a low fire with some mushrooms that Maria found. Their spare meat tasted wonderful, but left us wanting more. Maria produced pieces of a root she had washed, and then scrapped away the tough outer layer. We chewed it while we walked. I forget the name, but it looked like a thin, twisted potato and tasted like licorice. 

On our fifth morning in the woods, we decided to rest and then walk a while during the day. “It’s time to rejoin humanity,” declared Villens with a smile. “Time to work during the day and sleep at night.”  We’d left the trail far behind us. We hadn’t seen a soul since we entered the woods. It was time to relax a bit.

After a short walk of an hour so, during which we made silly jokes about how easy it was walk in the forest during daylight, the woods opened onto a beautiful high meadow. The pasture was surrounded on three sides by sheer rock walls and on the fourth by the forest we’d just left. Across the gently domed meadow, a small pond glittered in the rising sun. We’d been steadily climbing since we left the trail, but this was the first high meadow we’d come across. We stepped out of the woods and ran into the meadow laughing. The grass at our feet, the warm sun, the bright colors of the wild flowers and the birds were such a relief after all those nights in the woods.

The change of scene lifted our mood wonderfully. We’d been vigilant and largely silent, focusing our senses to detect any hint of pursuit. In the bright morning sun, with that lovely scene laid out before us, we knew that we’d escaped. Eduardo’s men wouldn’t dare travel so far off the trail. 

Maria announced that instead of scheduling watches, it was time we scheduled washes. She pulled a bar of rough brown soap out of her pocket. “A gift from the Aubusson girls,” she said. “They strongly suggested that I bathe.” She claimed the first wash, Villens was to go last. I was told to go second. I believe that Maria felt if I went last, I might skip my turn. Villens told us to hurry because he wanted to fish, and the poor creatures would need time to recover from the shock of three huge, filthy animals invading their sanctum.

After we’d bathed, Maria declared the day would be a holiday. We’d all do what we liked before we had to leave this lovely place the next morning. Villens and I shouted our approval. I announce that I was going to hunt birds in the high grass where the meadow and forest met. Villens said that he was going to spend the entire day fishing and that he’d appreciate it if one of us would bring him some beer. I offered to return to Aubusson and fetch some wine. He declined. Maria decided that she’d try shooting a few rabbits with the Baker rifle. It had been a while since my father had shown her how to use the rifle and she wondered if she still had the skill with it that had amazed us all. 

Now that I write about that place all these years later, I see that we all were determined to fill our food stocks. However, at the time, it was so enjoyable to be free from concern that our followers would swoop down us, these chores were relaxing. I wish we had spent more time in that meadow. Years later I found it again when I was once again fleeing pursuit, but that time the meadow was anything but a refuge.

I returned to the pond in the late afternoon as agreed. Villens was sleeping, a string of trout hanging from a tree branch. Maria was skinning a rabbit, two others piled by her feet. I walked over to Maria and nonchalantly dropped a huge male pheasant at her feet. Maria’s eyes widened and she cried, “A beauty, Finn!” Her cry woke Villens, and she pointed out the great bird. He whistled and demanded that I tell him everything about netting the bird. 

While I talked, he began to clean the fish and I started plucking the pheasant. Villens declared that we were going to stay right there in that meadow and live like kings and queens. Kings and Queens of the gypsies, added Maria. Anyway, Maria said, we had to live like kitchen help first and prepare all the food for our travels.  

While Villens and Maria worked on the food, I was sent to collect wood for a fire. We were going to smoke the fish and prepare the pheasant and rabbits on spits. I brought two arm loads of twigs and small sticks and started two fires. Once they were caught, I went deeper into the woods to get thicker branches.

I wasn’t very eager to get back to the food preparation, so I wandered around a bit. I was a good way south of where we’d passed on our way to meadow when I found piles of stone rubble and a huge rock outcropping rising from the forest floor. The forest was so thick around the rock that I didn’t see the rock until I nearly upon it. It towered over me, stretching into the treetops. I tried to walk around the massive stone, but looking along the face I could see that this was a line of rocks running off to the southeast. I couldn’t tell if the huge stones had been placed there like the monoliths I’d heard of near the mountains or if they somehow had been pushed out of the earth. 

I walked along the foot of the rocks and saw that I was on path gradually widening to about five feet across. The path was nearly free of growth. It was paved with hard packed rock chips. I could not imagine how this path could form naturally. I was following the path when it turned sharply and led directly into a crevice, the first crevice I came to in over two hundred yards since the rubble heap that marked the beginning of the rock wall. I say wall, because that is what it felt like. I couldn’t go over or around it, and it separated the forest as a wall separates the rooms in a house.

The path ended at a bottom step of rough stairs carved into the rock. The crevice was about five feet wide, as wide as the path. The stairway twisted out of sight after the third step. I started to climb, and then wondered if it was the right thing to do. It would take me many years and some hard lessons before I learned to ask that question before taking action.

There were over forty steps to the top. The path began again along the top of rock, at least thirty feet above the forest floor. It stretched along the rock tops to the southeast as far as I could see. The rock path was lined with shrubs, which turned out to be the tops of the tallest trees in the forest. I looked to the northeast and saw the meadow and the small pond. I could almost make out the shapes of Maria and Villens preparing dinner. Ahead the path was clear and very slightly rounded. Rain would roll off of the rocks. The path rose with an easy slope as it climbed into the hills. It was getting dark and I needed to get back with the wood. Only my respect for Villens and Maria kept me from racing down that trail in the treetops to what lay down that strange road.

At the top of the stairs I noticed carvings in the rock that I had missed  on the way up. At first I thought they were cracks in the rock, but when I stopped and examined them, I saw that they were pictures made a few lines. The first was an arrow with several points. The second was an oval made of wavy lines with a heavy line descending from it. The third was a thick line with a narrow, diamond shape on one end. The carvings were worn by the wind. As I followed the path back to the meadow, I saw these three carvings repeated several times, along with carvings of animals, some I recognized, others I did not.

I didn’t realize how long I’d been gone, and it was quite dark on the forest floor. I quickly gathered several long, thick branches and returned to the pond. Running as fast as I could while loaded down with firewood, I raced across the meadow. I stopped several times to look over my shoulder and try to locate the rocks, but the thick trees completely obscured them. When I reached Maria and Villens, I threw the wood down and excitedly told them of my discovery. I must have made little sense in my excitement for they made me sit, drink some water, and calm down. Maria kept telling me to breathe slowly and Villens looked at me like I was insane.

Eventually I calmed down enough to explain what I’d seen. I couldn’t tell if they believed me or not, but Villens pointed out that there seemed to be no way out of the meadow, except back into the woods. That being case, he proposed that we inspect my discovery in the morning and perhaps it would prove useful to us. We agreed, and I was pleased that they were taking my discovery seriously. I decided that I would sneak away when they were asleep to explore my find further, but when Villens began telling his story I was enthralled and forgot about my plan.

Villens and Maria returned to cooking dinner, while I told Maria about the carvings. She listened and asked questions. I grabbed a twig and drew the shapes in the dirt. Maria looked carefully at them for a while, then she told me that when she was a little girl, a Jesuit came to visit her father. He was an old man and very learned. He had lived in the mountains with the Incas since he was a young man. He mentioned Incan carvings and showed pictures of them from one of the journals he’d kept and had brought to show to Maria and her father. The carvings looked like the ones on the rocks. There was the mountain and the spear, but she did not recognize the third one, the oval made of curving lines with a jagged, thick line descending from it. What didn’t make sense was that we were hundreds of miles from the mountain kingdom of the Incas. 

While our dinner slowly cooked, we relaxed and talked. Villens said that he wished we’d taken some of Aubusson’s wine. I gagged and Maria looked confused. She’d been spared the old man’s hospitality. Villens told her about the wine, then our thoughts turned to the future. Maria asked Villens to tell us about his family. Villens had rarely mentioned them. We never knew what to make of this reticence. He’d lived among our noisy, boisterous mob of a family, but his was a mystery. 

We knew from own experience that Lieutenant Martin Villens was an educated man. He was an officer in the cavalry, but he was ambivalent about being in the military. His gracious manner convinced Don Hernando, Maria’s father, that Villens was an aristocrat. His uniform was expensive and his horse was excellent, but when he came to us from the battlefield, he didn’t have a penny. He lived in two rooms over the stables, and seemed quite pleased with them, even though Don Hernando had offered him rooms in the hacienda. He’d even taking on the daunting task of educating the O’Brien children in return for rent.

Villens tried to fend off Maria’s curiousity about his family. Finally Maria won the point, by saying that she refused to meet Villens’ family without knowing something about them. Villens grudgingly gave in as he would usually do when Maria insisted.

“My family is French, of course,” he began. “We have commanded horsemen for the Kings of France for centuries. It is said that it was a Villens who placed the child who would become Charlemagne on his first mount. We have been Knights, Lancers, Cuirassiers, Dragoons, and Chasseurs tearing across Europe, sword in hand, slaughtering the enemies of France.”

“We were well rewarded for our service. We held many estates throughout France, the largest of which were in the South, near Marseilles. The extent of lands and the fortunes of my family have risen and fallen as they sided with winners and losers in struggles for the throne.”

“It was when my grandfather, who is still alive and vigorous and is one the greatest heroes in the long history of the Villens, was fighting for a great French Duke in such a struggle, that he committed one our families greatest blunders. I’m don’t think blunder is quite the correct word. Blunder implies a mistake or accident. His actions were hot headed and ill considered. Perhaps ‘overly proud’ or ‘above his station’ would be better. Maybe ‘impudence.’”

“For God’s sake, what did he do?” I screamed, unable to control my curiosity. 

Villens was caught off guard by excitement, or he acted as if he were. He waited a beat and calmly said, “He married my grandmother.”

“But how ...?,” I asked, completely confused.

“Let him tell it,” said Maria, patting my thigh, amused by my distress. She saw that Villens had hooked me as firmly as he’d hooked the trout.

Villens was smiling, pleased with himself, when the took up his story. “My grandmother was the daughter of the Duke. My grandfather, his name is Lucien, by the way, commanded the Duke’s cavalry. Lucien had led the Duke’s cavalry to victory after victory, scattering the Duke’s enemies before him. The Duke often honored Lucien by inviting him to the palace to dine with the ducal family. That was how Lucien met and fell in love with the Duke’s daughter, Arabella, a great beauty.”

“My grandfather often managed to sit near the Duke’s daughter and the two came to know each other. Soon they were in love. One day, when the Duke was defending his palace, his enemies shattered the center of the Duke’s defenses. The enemy poured through the gap. The Duke and his officers were directly in the path of the enemy. My grandfather rallied the cavalry and they slammed into the left flank of the enemy. They rolled the enemy to the right where the Duke’s left flank was rushing to support the shattered center. The enemy was caught in a vise and crushed. Several times that day my grandfather narrowly avoided death. He had three horses killed from under him. When the battle ended, and the enemy destroyed, my grandfather decided that he would not wait any longer to ask the Duke for his daughter in marriage.” 

“When the Duke saw my grandfather approaching, he rode to him and embraced him. The Duke told the other officers that Lucien had saved their lives and that he had won the day. He praised Lucien’s bravery and skill, then removed a ring from is own hand and gave it to Lucien. The ring had belonged to the Duke’s grandfather. My grandfather thanked him humbly, then said that he had a much greater request to make of the Duke. ‘Anything,’ said the grateful Duke.”

“Your daughter Arabella and I are in love,” Lucien said. “I seek your permission to marry her.”

“The Duke was furious that my grandfather, this mere soldier, would even imagine that he might marry a Duke’s daughter. He heaped abuse on the man he had just been praising. My grandfather sat on his horse, his back straight, and head high. Blood stained his clothes and sword. He did not flinch as the Duke’s abuse grew more heated and more personal.” 

“The final straw was when the Duke, after maligning the heritage of the proud Lucien, roared, “You dare ask this of me! I who have the blood of kings in my veins.”

“I am a Villens,” replied my grandfather angrily. “I have the blood of kings on my sword.” 

“The Duke was speechless. My grandfather knew that his service to the Duke was through, so he and several officers rode to the castle, found the Duke’s daughter, and they all escaped to Spain. My grandfather insists that the cavalry were so offended by the Duke’s treatment of their commander, they refused the Duke’s command to hunt him down.”

Villens paused for bit to let the image of his grandfather and grandmother fleeing to Spain linger in our minds and then continued. “My grandmother, alas, is dead. She was the kindest, most loving soul I ever knew. She was a steadying force on my wild grandfather. They complimented each other perfectly and loved each other more on the day she died than on that wild day when they fled from her father’s rage. My grandfather has felt her loss deeply. He will sometimes sink into long periods of despair. My mother does what she can for him. She loves him and he is very fond of her, but it is difficult. I hope that I can help, as he and I have always been very close.”

Villens turned to his own thoughts for a while and my mind was filled with visions of men who looked like Villens, but were dressed in uniforms I’d seen in Don Hernando’s history books. Villens horsemen thundered before my eyes slaughtering Tartar horse archers, Teutonic knights, Turkish infantry, and English swordsmen. Maria was watching Villens, but her face did not give away her thoughts.

“My father,” began Villens suddenly picking up his tale, “my father is quite different from my grandfather. He followed his father into the cavalry, as expected, and has, if anything, outshone the old man. His talents lay in strategy and tactics, while my grandfather relied on wild, insane bravery and feats of arms. My father, Théodore, sees the battlefield as a chessboard, and makes moves that anticipate and check the enemies actions. Lucien sees the battlefield as a place of blood and honor, where heroes’ actions become the stuff of songs. Father and son would argue about these different approaches. That is, my grandfather would argue and my father would calmly discuss.” 

“No one writes songs about delicate strategic maneuvers,” my grandfather would scoff. 

“No one fills cemeteries with dead men from battles prevented,” my father would reply. When my grandfather was no around, my father referred to him as ‘the Beserker.’ My grandfather was told of this and now openly calls my father ‘the Diplomat.’ My father ignores this intended insult, but I think he is privately proud of it.”

Villens paused and then said, “Please don’t misunderstand. My grandfather and my father love and respect each other tremendously. It is just that they are oil and water. Perhaps fire and water would be better.”

Villens turned to Maria and with as sincere a look of innocence as he could manage, asked, “Would you like to know about mother?” Maria said nothing, but the look of annoyance and disgust on her face said everything that was required. “Perhaps I shall tell you of my mother,” began Villens.

“My mother and father’s story is not as dramatic as my grandparents, but it’s surprising in its own way. My mother’s family are impoverished nobility who reside in their crumbling country house near Nancy.  Her father was a Marquis whose family had been driven to near bankruptcy by multiple generations bursting with daughters. The marriage settlements whittled away the family fortune so that when my mother reached marriageable age, precious little remained.” 

“My mother was a rare beauty.” 


“Claro que sí,” murmured Maria. Villens pretended not to hear and went on with his tale. Maria interrupted and said to me that it would save time if I simply took it as given that all the Villens women were beautiful. “They send the plain girls to the convent,” she added.

“What can I do?,” asked Villens mournfully. “Such is the way it is. Nature has chosen to shower beauty on Villens women. Who am I to say otherwise? But I was talking of my lovely mother before a heckler interrupted. My mother’s family could not afford to present her in court, but word of her great beauty spread and soon many courtiers found their way to her parents’ house. Entertaining these uninvited dignitaries further diminished her family’s resources.”

“At this time, my father was serving the Spanish King, who sent him to the French court to provide a service to Louis. My father was to review the French King’s forces on the border with some of the restless German Princes. My father proposed a system of deploying the troops that he claimed would discourage aggression and, failing that, would place the French troops in better defensive positions. He also was charged with assessing the troops’ readiness for combat. He spent his days traveling from camp to camp, hotel to hotel, encountering dubious and often angry officers who had no intention of changing their comfortable routines. He travelled in the drab uniform of the Spanish Engineers, as he thought that his Major’s uniform from the Spanish cavalry was so garish it was a provocation just to appear in it.  His only accompaniment was two clerks. He was so unassuming that the lowest Musketeers were unaware of his high rank and openly mocked him.”

“At a fort near Nancy, the Captain of the Musketeers arranged a ball for the visitors. His intention was to humiliate my father through the glory of the French officers in their finest uniforms and the gracefulness of their dancing. The Captain was certain that his magnificent officers would win the hearts of all the women. My father would be shoved aside by the real soldiers, thought the Captain, which was as it should be.”

“The night of the ball my father made the one great dramatic gesture of his life. He appeared at the ball in his usual understated uniform. He was dancing with a Lieutenant’s sister, and as the Captain had predicted, he was overshadowed by the bright plumage of the French officers. My father is an excellent dancer when he is interested, but he was having difficulty keeping up with the flashy Musketeers. The orchestra played a very fast piece that my father did not recognize or appreciate. He excused himself and retired to a chair, surrendering the floor to the handsome Musketeers.”

“He sat for awhile and contemplated returning to his rooms and working on his reports, when the most beautiful woman he ever seen swept past him in the arms of the Captain of the Musketeers. Instantly my father rose from chair and forced his way through the crowd to reach the conductor. He somehow persuaded the conductor to halt playing. In the confusion that followed, my father found the beautiful woman, bowed gracefully to her, and extended his hand. She took it and he led her to the center of great hall, threading their way through the milling crowd.” 

“They reached the very center, where he turned to face her. He was still gently holding her slim white hand, which he held high, a prelude to dancing. The couple stood stock still, looking into each others eyes, and their intensity rippled throughout the great room, silencing the amazed crowd. The couple remained still as statues until all eyes were on them, then my father gestured to the conductor and the orchestra began playing a waltz. My father took his beautiful partner in his arms. They spun and twirled, the crowd giving way as the young couple danced across the crowded floor as if they were they only two people in the room. Soon other couples began to dance and before long the entire hall was filled with dancers wishing to a part of the magic. Yet no matter how many people began to dance, a moving open space surrounded the beautiful young dancers that would become my father and mother.”

“When the music ended, my father bowed to his partner and kissed the hand he had been holding so tenderly. He walked out of the hall and returned to his rooms. During the night, the girl’s father met with several courtiers and discovered that my father was a Villens and that, though young, he was highly thought of by the Spanish and French Kings. The next day, my father went to the girl’s home, introduced himself to her father, and asked to marry his daughter. The gentleman asked for his daughter to join them. He asked her if she wished to marry the young man and she said that she did. A month later they were married.”

“I was born not a a great time later and my life has been as it has been. After a while my brother Philippe was born. He is intelligent and learned, the scholar of the family. Maria, you will like my younger brother. He is studying Natural Philosophy at the Sorbonne. We thought he might become a priest, but books and collecting take up all his time. I have a sister, Julianna, who is sixteen. She has been at a Swiss school and I’m afraid I know little of her. Her letters are terribly witty and they say she is beautiful, I’m afraid. She should be home when we get there. It is possible that Philippe will be there as well.”

“And that is the Villens family,” he said with a theatrical bow. “I have overlooked the drunkards, neer-do-wells, and heretics. The stories are as my grandfather and mother have told to me. They are responsible for any exaggeration. I seem to have taken up all the time. We must sleep or Finn’s secret passageway will be a difficult march. Do you mind waiting until tomorrow to take your turn?” he asked Maria and I. We both said that we needed to rest and our family histories could wait. It was late before we cleaned the place and packed our things for an early departure.

Morning came long before I was ready to waken. Villens and Maria let me sleep as long as possible, but I still struggled to clear my head as we reentered the woods. I need a clear head because I had to lead the way to the base of the rock trail. For the first time, the mule was having difficulty getting through the forest. The undergrowth was thicker than anywhere we’d passed so far. Had we not been searching, we would have avoided the dense undergrowth and missed the rocks altogether.

Villens used the sword bayonet as a machete to clear a path for the mule. Maria followed me closely. We pushed through a tangle of vines and fallen branches and the first rock stood about six feet in front of us. It was if it appeared out of nowhere. A few minutes later, Villens and the mule crashed through the barrier and the four of us stood on the crushed gravel path that ran along the face of the rock. 

Because we hadn’t seen the rock until we nearly ran into it, it loomed over us. Had we seen it from a distance and walked up to it, the rock would still be massive, but the suddenness of its appearance lent it an unnerving, brooding quality. Lost in our own thoughts, we stood and looked at the rock for a time. My description hadn’t prepared Villens and Maria for its scale. Even though I’d seen it already, I saw in the late afternoon gloom of the forest. Seeing it in the morning light was an entirely different, unsettling experience.

The mule, however, was unmoved. It stepped onto the gravel path, pleased to free on the entangling undergrowth, and trotted away. This movement shook us from our lethargy and Villens called out for me to lead the way. I ran ahead to catch up with the mule and Villens and Maria fell in behind. Soon we were at the crevice where the path leads to the stairs. I was worried about how the mule would handle the stairs, but needn’t have been. It tripped as lightly up the steps as if it were on level ground. 

I stopped at the top of the steps and looked back. Villens was right behind me, but Maria had stopped and was examining a set of carvings. She ran a finger in the deep grooves and frowned. She walked up the rest of the way and I showed her the carvings at the top of the steps. She asked for my knife and ran the blade along the carving. She held her hand so that she would catch anything the knife dislodged. The morning sun slanting over the tree tops illuminated the rock face. I looked in Maria’s palm and saw only dust and grit. She must have thought the same, for she handed me the knife and brushed off her palms. “I thought I remembered that the Incas painted their carvings. Perhaps these are so old the paint’s worn away.” She and I walked over to where Villens was standing with the mule. He was looking over the tree tops to the small pond were he’d fished the other day. 

“I had no idea that all this was here. I was sitting right there, by the pond, and all this was hidden. Incredible. Quite a find, Finn,” he said.

We walked a few steps along the trail and checked our direction against the sun. We agreed that the rocks ran to the southeast, the direction that we were going. Maria said that we might as well follow the path along the top of the rocks for as long as we could as the smooth, straight surface would be faster than walking through the woods. Also, from this height, we could see a good distance in all directions. We agreed that Maria made sense and off we went. 

Villens studied the rock carefully and Maria paid attention to the carvings as we walked. Villens noted the path was cambered so water would run from the rock instead of pooling and leading to cracks. Maria wondered if the water pouring over the side explained the thick plant growth near the rocks. I pointed out that stones of different sizes had been worked into the spaces between the standing rocks. This allowed for the smooth road to bridge the gaps between the rocks. After a while we settled into a comfortable pace and simply enjoyed walking in the warm sun with the cool breeze in the tree tops now cooling us as well.

We travelled for three days on what we came to call the rock road, covering a distance that would have taken us at least ten days in forest. At first we thought we’d make a mistake, for we had no idea where we would be able to get down. There was no food or water on the rock and if we slept there we would have been exposed and uncomfortable. After we’d walked a few hours that first day, Maria raised the question of getting down. We felt foolish for an hour or so, that we hadn’t considered this before we set out, but then we found another flight of steps that led to the forest floor. Before we went down, we looked from the rock and saw that the stairs would put us a short way from another small meadow, this one with a spring. We spent the night there and returned to the rock road in the morning. It turned out that these little meadows with water sources were scattered through the hills and whoever built the trail built stairways leading down to each one. 

Traveling on the rock road and sleeping in the lovely meadows was so far removed from our flight from Eduardo’s men that we lost any sense of danger. The atmosphere became one of an extended holiday. Game was plenty in the forest, along with berries and edible plants. There was fresh water easily available in the meadows. As we walked along we’d sing and joke and tell stories. Villens would tell exquisitely detailed adventure stories or hilarious comic tales. Maria often speculated about the carvings, which fascinated her. She pointed out that animal carvings had started to appear. She showed me a carving of a beast that looked like a shaggy mule. She said it was a llama, a pack animal used by the Inca to carry loads in the high mountains. 

I had heard about llamas, but had never been anywhere near enough to the high mountains to see one. Maria explained that llamas would have an easier time on the rock road than mules. The stairs would be no trouble to them nor would the cold winds in the winter. She also said that since llamas lived in mountains, that might explain the mountain and llama carvings appearing near each other. She noticed that the carving of the spear had differing numbers of feathers attached and pointed in different directions. Perhaps they were signposts. 

I said that I thought the last carving, the one we weren’t sure of, could be a thundercloud with a lightening bolt. We stopped and looked carefully at the next one we found, and they agreed with me. Maria noted that the thunderstorm carvings looked recent. “My grandmother says that the worst storms come out of the mountains,” I said. Maria said she’d have to think about that. It would be several years until I found out what the thundercloud meant, until I and many others were caught up in the great storm that rolled down from the mountains.