Zia by Scott O'Dell

Author:Scott O'Dell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2011-05-20T03:00:37+00:00

15

STONE HANDS had chosen Sunday night because of the fiesta, but also because of the full moon, which would make traveling easier.

It was a quiet fiesta. There were paper globes, which had colored candles in them, looped around the courtyard and three boys played guitars and one played a violin and everyone danced, even the old ones. It should have been a noisy fiesta but everyone was quiet, thinking his own thoughts.

Stone Hands danced with me first.

In the few months I had been at the Mission he had paid more attention to me than to any of the other girls. He brought me a flower sometimes, which he picked in the garden. No one else was allowed to pick flowers from the garden, except the padres. Sometimes he brought me a sweet from the kitchen, which he was not supposed to do either.

But when we were in the fields or were dancing he said very little. Usually, he asked me where I had lived before I came to the Mission. He asked me this over and over. I guess he could not think of anything else to say. Sometimes I told him different stories.

I did not want to get married. I was fourteen years old and the age when most of our girls got married, but I did not want to.

Especially, I did not want to marry Gito Cruz. I did not like the way he talked or did not talk, or the way he made his mustache into a thin line, or the name he chose for himself, or the way he strutted around. There was nothing I liked about him at all.

My friend Rosa said, "You will get used to his mustache."

"Maybe to his mustache," I said, "but not to all the other things. Marry him yourself."

"I would if he would ask me," Rosa said.

As we danced that night, Stone Hands said, "You have told me about your aunt who may come back from the island. I understand how you feel. I understand that you would not wish to go away and have her come here and find no one she knows. I understand all these things. So I do not expect you to come with us tonight. Later, after one moon, I will send you a message and tell you where we are. Then you will come to us with your aunt. I will send you a map, which will tell where we hide."

"I will think about what you have said," I replied, but I did not want a map, nor did I wish to know where they would hide.

It was nearly the end of the fiesta and we were dancing gravely together, saying little to each other.

Anita danced a bamba, which is difficult, with a tumbler of water on her head, while with her feet she picked up from the floor a handkerchief with two corners tied together.

Then Rosa danced a jarabe with Stone Hands, while singers stood in a circle and broke in with short verses.

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