When the shopkeeper came out with a broom, telling her to leave, she took Tomás’s hand, picked up Carlitos, and, with Lupita beside her, left town along a dirt road that climbed toward the mountains—toward the mountains where no one went, where there was nothing to find. They walked until their legs gave out. Night fell, heavy and moonless, mountain cold seeping through their worn clothes.
Tomás coughed, a dry, groaning cough. Lupita whimpered, her feet aching and stomach growling. Carlitos slept against Catalina’s chest, trembling. Then, by chance—or desperation, or something beyond—Catalina saw the grotto: a dark opening between two large rocks, half-hidden by dry bushes and fallen branches. She approached fearfully, knowing such places could hide snakes, scorpions, or worse.
But when she stepped inside, she found a spacious room with a high ceiling. The floor was scattered with fine dust and loose stones that crunched beneath her bare feet. The air smelled of damp earth, of age, of centuries of confinement—but it was a roof over her head, and at that moment, that was enough. She spread the serape across the floor, brushing off the dust with her hands, and laid the children side by side, covering them as best she could with her own shawl. She didn’t light a fire; she had nothing with which to start one.
They didn’t eat; there was nothing to eat. They simply stayed there, wrapped in the dense silence of the cave, waiting for dawn. Catalina didn’t sleep. She stared toward the entrance, alert to every noise, every shadow, every hint of danger. All she heard was the wind whistling through the rocks outside, and occasionally a faint, muffled tapping, as if someone were shifting stones inside the mountain, or something was breathing beneath the earth.
As the sun began to stream in, warm and golden, Catalina felt she could finally breathe. She rose slowly, careful not to wake the children, and stepped outside the grotto to take in the view. The sight stole her breath. They were atop a hill, surrounded by mountains rolling like green and gray waves to the horizon. Below, the tiny village lay motionless, looking like a cluster of abandoned toy houses in the vast emptiness.
And right beside the grotto, half-hidden among twisted trees and thick undergrowth, stood an old stone-and-adobe structure. Its roof sagged, its walls stained with dark green moss. It seemed like an abandoned house—or perhaps a forgotten chapel. Catalina approached cautiously, pushing dry branches aside with her hands. The door was half-shut, hanging on a single rusty hinge that groaned when she nudged it open. Inside, rubble covered the floor: fallen beams, broken tiles, old birds’ nests, cobwebs thick as curtains, and a pungent smell of rotting wood mixed with a metallic bitterness that scratched her throat.
But there was something else. In the center of the floor, buried beneath dry earth and branches, a piece of wood jutted upward as if part of a trapdoor. Catalina knelt, clearing soil with her hands, pulling up thin roots and moving stones aside, and discovered that yes—it was a trapdoor. An old padlock, corroded by time and covered in rust, held it closed. She pulled hard, and it snapped open with a sharp click. With effort, she lifted the lid—and what lay beneath froze her in place.
Downstairs was a small, dark cellar, with stone steps descending into gloom. Against one wall were stacked wooden crates, some open, some closed, and dusty glass jars. Inside an open crate, old silver coins gleamed faintly in the light filtering from above. Catalina descended carefully, her hands gripping the damp walls, her heart hammering. She lifted a coin with trembling fingers.
It was heavy, cold, real. A blurry date was engraved on it: 1898. There were more—dozens, maybe hundreds—piled in sacks of rotted cloth that crumbled to her touch. She didn’t understand this place, or why she was here, or who it belonged to. But in that moment, holding the coin, she felt something shift. Perhaps, after all, they weren’t as lost as she had feared. She ran up the stairs, out of the house, and back to the grotto.
The children were awake, sitting on the serape, eyes tired, mouths dry. Tomás looked at her with that heartbreaking seriousness and asked if there was any food. Catalina didn’t answer. She hugged them tightly, very tightly, and for the first time in months let her tears flow freely. But these weren’t tears of pain—they were tears of something that felt like hope. What Catalina didn’t yet know was that this hidden treasure hadn’t appeared by chance. By touching it, by discovering it, she had opened a door closed for decades.
A door sealed long ago with blood, secrets, and a lingering curse shadowing the mountain. Catalina spent the morning on the grotto floor, staring at the silver coins she had tucked in her shawl. She cleaned them with the hem of her skirt until they gleamed in the sunlight streaming through the cave. Five coins—heavy, cold, real.
She counted them over and over, as if touching them could reveal their origin, their purpose, and whether she had the right to keep them. The children watched quietly. Tomás, with his old-man seriousness, asked if this meant they could finally eat. Lupita, still innocent, asked if they were rich now. Carlitos simply held out his hands, wanting to touch the coins their mother clutched.
Catalina didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know if the coins were cursed, if they belonged to someone, or if someone would come searching. But she knew her children hadn’t eaten in two days, that Tomás’s lips were cracked with thirst, and that Lupita shivered even in the morning sun. She made a decision. She tucked four coins into her shawl and placed one in Tomás’s hand.
She told them to go down to the village together and buy what they needed: bread, beans, corn, dried meat if they could afford it—but not to tell anyone where they had found the money. Tomás nodded, as serious as ever, helping carry Carlitos while Lupita walked beside Catalina, holding her skirt. The path down was long, rocky, and bramble-choked. By the time they reached the village, the sun beat down like molten lead.
People watched them with the same mixture of pity and disdain. Catalina entered the shop, head held high, though her heart raced and hands sweated. Don Roque, a fat man with a gray mustache, scowled at her annoyance. When she placed the silver coin on the counter, his expression changed. He held the coin to the light, bit it, and frowned.
