A Rude Awakening

The two small cells were dark inside, lit only by the same soft torchlight that illuminated Magaña’s chapel.  But when Zorro’s own caped outline blotted out the striped shadows that fell across the floor of the first cell, he already knew it was empty.  His father was gone.  A moment later, he had picked the lock of the second cell door.  Then, cautiously, he pushed it open.

The girl was still unconscious, lying slumped on the cot against the wall near the rear window where Magaña had left the wine carafe.  She still wore the same dingy clothing they had given her in jail, and her hair fell in tangled curls across her face.  Slipping off his gloves, he knelt to brush the curls aside, but she didn’t stir.  Her cheek felt cool to the touch, and so did her body.  Then an icy thought occurred to him.

Quickly he grabbed the woolen blanket from the end of the cot and covered her with it, trying to keep his voice soft and steady as he called her name and felt her throat for a heartbeat.  Then, putting an ear to her back, he listened hard until finally, in desperation, he gathered her into his arms and held her limp form tightly against him, willing his own body heat into her . At last, after a few long moments, he felt her start to shiver and brought his lips to her ear.  

"Oreana . . . ."

"Diego."  Her arms slipped around him and her fingers clutched weakly at his shoulders.  Then her eyes fluttered open, and she gasped like a child awakened from a nightmare.

"Shhh."  He brought a finger to his lips.

"Oh, but Don Alejandro— "

"He is gone."

"Where have they taken him?  When did you— "  Shivering harder, she struggled to sit up as he continued to wrap the blanket around her.

"I was hoping you could tell me," he said.

Drawing the blanket a little tighter, she glanced from his face to the windowsill just behind him, up to where the empty wine carafe still sat on a tray.  "You followed me," she said.  "You took a terrible risk."

Zorro studied her carefully.  "So did you," he said noncommittally, still not ready to assume that his memory of what had happened would necessarily match hers.

She brought her fists up to her mouth to breathe on them, then winced as she said, "Oh, but I left you no choice, did I.  After what I did to you with Señor Endicott."

"I understand why you did that," he said, folding his own hand over both of hers, feeling a little awkward, now, that she knew his motives hadn’t been entirely selfless.  "I know you were only trying to help."

"Twice I almost got you killed," she added ruefully, folding a hand over his.  "I should have trusted you."

"I have no room to criticize," he said, keenly aware of the irony of that remark.  He was at least mildly relieved that she seemed to remember the same conversation he did, and he was glad she still regretted not trusting him.  But he also felt at least potentially embarrassed that he still didn’t entirely trust her now.  More than anything, he wanted to ask her about del Valle.  But he didn’t dare—partly for fear she would lie, and partly for fear she wouldn’t, and partly for fear he might not be able to catch her in a lie if he let her find out too soon how much he had overheard.

"How long has it been?" she asked.

"Don’t you know?"

She shrugged.  "Time does funny things in that realm, just as it does between the worlds."

"Well . . . ."  He pursed his lips and glanced up into his own recollections.  "We went to the dance Monday night, then spent five days getting here.  This should be Sunday, but it isn’t."

"How do you know?"

"Listen."

"For what?"

"Up there.  The church.  It’s empty."

"Ah, so we are inside the mission, then."

He nodded, realizing that since she came here through the tunnel, she wouldn’t necessarily know where they were.

"But we cannot have lost more than a day," she said, tilting her head and raising her hand as if to touch the side of his face.  "Or perhaps you never need to shave?"  With a sudden smile, he rubbed his jaw, a little surprised that it still felt as smooth as it did.

"So our bodies didn’t just—disappear from this world?"

"No more than they do when we dream."

"And we couldn’t just come back, say, in some other place?"

Her eyes narrowed.  "Why do you ask me this?"

He shrugged, deciding once more to fish for information rather than provide it.  "Well, it is just that, that other world—it seemed so real, and yet things shifted around so easily.  If somehow you did wake up somewhere else, you might wonder if someone had moved you or if you just . . . appeared there by magic, eh?  But as you said, I guess that would be pretty crazy."

"Well, I didn’t say it was impossible," said Oreana, "I mean, such things—they do take a lot of skill, but—"  As she continued to study him, he wondered if she really was all that puzzled.  Did she really expect him to believe something so silly—something she herself had scoffed at—or was it just that she didn’t want him to think someone had arranged to have him wake up so near her cell door, and so near the mouth of the cave?

He laughed.  "So you couldn’t actually do it yourself?"

She shivered and chuckled all at once.  "If I could, do you think I would wake up here?"

"No, I guess not," he grinned, trying to seem even more amused, but at the same time keenly aware that she had answered his question with a question.

"I would wake up in Veracruz," she added, trying maybe just a little too hard to be amusing as, still shivering, she draped the blanket around her shoulders and got to her feet.  He stood up to shove open the cell door ahead of her, then decided to change the subject.

"Do you think Magaña may already have come back to this world?"

"I think this is likely," she nodded.  "That drug he gave us—it can kill.  But over time one can grow more resistant to its effects.  He has probably taken a lot of it."

"What is in it?"

"Snake venom."  She looked up, knowing full well the effect this announcement would have, then added, "Well—among other things."

Zorro could only chuckle incredulously.  "It is probably just as well you didn’t tell me this before," he said.  "But as you said, you seem to have even less resistance to it than I.  Are you . . . all right?"

Her eyes met his, and he could tell she knew it was at least potentially a bigger question than it seemed.  She nodded, pursing her lips into a firm line, and suddenly it occurred to him that he really wasn’t being fair.  She had risked her life for him, given him her body, offered him her soul.  Did he really believe she would betray him so easily now?  Finally, something inside him began once more to melt and thaw.

"So where do we go from here?" she whispered.  "If we could get inside the church, I could probably just walk out the mission gates unnoticed.  But you . . . ."

"I don’t exactly blend in."

"Maybe we could find you a cassock."

"No.  Even if we got outside the gates, there would still be far too much open ground to cross on foot in broad daylight.  Magaña has probably posted extra men around the blacksmith’s shop.  Even if we found the horses, we could never get past the guards."

"You sound as if you have a plan."

He nodded, then smiled and shrugged as he pulled on his gloves again.  "Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it a plan.  But a change of strategy, perhaps."  Checking to make sure that his whip and his sword were both still securely belted to his waist, he retrieved the torch from the sconce on the wall where he had left it and nodded toward the tunnel.

"Magaña may be expecting you to go that way," she said.  "It could be a trap."

"I am tired of trying to thwart his expectations," said Zorro, his eyes narrowing toward the cavern.  "That is what got us where we are.  This time I intend to walk right into his trap.  And then I intend to smash it."

"It isn’t very pleasant in there," she said.  "The timbers are rotting.  Magaña could easily have rigged it to collapse."

"It won’t collapse."

"Are you certain?"

"Yes."

She nodded and set the blanket aside, still shivering a little as he held out his hand to her.  But then, taking it, she hesitated.  "Are you certain you want me to go with you?"

"Quite certain," he smiled, tracing the line of her jaw.  But as she squeezed his hand, then turned to step carefully into the cavern ahead of him, his smile faded and he felt another twinge of guilt, for he knew even now that his certainty was based at least in part on the knowledge that Magaña wouldn’t do anything to him as long as he was with her.

Catching up to her, Zorro shoved the torch into the gloom, then ducked to slip his arm around her and cover her hair as a few bats flew out past them.

"There are rats also," she said earnestly.  "Big ones."

"No doubt."  He glanced down at the flimsy slippers she was wearing, thinking he might wind up carrying her.  But the farther into the tunnel they went, the more its walls closed in on them, until he knew that that would soon be impossible.  The air got stale and hard to breathe.

"Watch out," she said, tugging his arm.  "Here it starts to get bad."

Glancing back to see if he could tell whether the faint trace of mischief he had heard in her voice would be mirrored on her face, he rolled his eyes and chuckled wryly.  But then, as he saw how the floor of the tunnel began to crack open beneath his feet, descending in a jagged series of steps into a deeper passage below, he realized there wasn’t much else to do but laugh—and climb down.

"I don’t think they use this passage much," said Oreana.

"Señorita, you have a real gift for understatement," he said.  Handing her the torch, he turned around and eased down into the cavern.  Soon he was standing in water that came almost to the tops of his boots, and he realized that during high tide, this stretch of the tunnel might well be completely flooded.  It had been reinforced with timbers, but, as she had said, the bottoms were almost completely rotted away.  Helping her down into the cold water, he noticed the torch start to flicker as well.  If they didn’t get out of here soon, they might easily have to feel their way out in total darkness.  They might not even get out at all if they took a wrong turn, or if the air ran out, or went bad.

For a while they sloshed through the passage in silence.  Then, finally, he thought he could feel the faintest trace of fresh air coming from somewhere up ahead.

"Diego— "

As he turned to help her climb up a shaft that took them out of the water again, something in her voice told him he might not want to hear what she was about to say.  She took his hand but paused, then added, "There is something I must tell you."

"No there isn’t," he said.  "You do not owe me any explanations."

"Nor do you owe it to me to hear them.  Still, I ask you.  Please."

"Can it not wait?  This is hardly the time or the place to— "

"Señor Magaña . . . when I met him in my grandmother’s garden, he wanted me to—to heal that young man using a technique that would involve . . . a certain degree of intimacy that— "

"Oreana, you do not have to— "

"I couldn’t do it," she winced, "I couldn’t do it."  Her shoulders began to shake.  He felt guilty at how relieved he was as he reached for her, knowing that now it would be just that much harder to rescue del Valle.  They might even be forced to leave him behind—a possibility el Zorro didn’t relish.  But Diego de la Vega didn’t care.

"Some priestess, eh?" she added.

"You—cannot save the world," he said as evenly as he could, holding her tightly.  "Perhaps you were not meant to pursue this—calling after all.  Perhaps la Señora has another use for your life.  With me."

She nodded silently, then whispered, "I wish I could make time stand still."  And it was such a non sequitur that later he would tell himself he should have heard the warning it contained.  But as it was, he only laughed.

"Perhaps not right in this very place, Señorita."

Laughing through her tears, she kissed him, then turned quickly to climb up into what he soon realized was the darkest end of the cave below the tannery.  The soft sea air tasted fresh and cool and, breathing deeply, he followed it, keeping the girl a little behind him, wondering if there was any way now to get out of here without confronting the guards.  Perhaps they could go up through the trap door in the floor of the tannery.  He could see by the light coming down from the shaft in the roof of the cave that it was still open, and even if the outer door was still locked, they might find a window.  The only problem then would be del Valle.  If Oreana couldn’t get him to come quietly, he might have to be knocked out and carried.

When Zorro reached the iron bars at the mouth of the cave, he had begun to believe things were actually going better than he could have hoped.  At the moment, there were no guards on the beach below.  If he could just get the girl and del Valle to the stables, then he would be left with only his father to worry about.  And maybe it wouldn’t even be so hard to get del Valle to go along, he thought as he turned back toward the young man’s cell.  Not only was his cell door still unlocked, but now del Valle seemed to be sitting up on the pile of hides, and while he still looked terrified, at least he was reacting to what was going on outside himself.

The reality of the situation didn’t fully sink in until after the young man got to his feet and, despite his fear, started walking toward the cell door.  The lancer standing behind him, pointing a pistol at his head, stepped into view about the same time Zorro heard the cell door on the other side of the cave creak open.  Backing up, he saw six more soldiers emerging from the shadows where they had been lying in wait beneath piles of hides.  At least half of them carried pistols too.

Thinking to shield the girl, he put his arms out at his sides and wondered if she might have already ducked back into the tunnel.  If so, maybe he could still leap up into the shaft, grab the ladder and climb into the tannery before the pistoleros reacted.  They weren’t likely to be all that accurate anyway, and they were still more than four or five steps away.  Then, glancing behind him, he saw that Oreana herself was now flanked by two soldiers, one on each side of her, each holding one of her arms, though she was making no attempt to struggle.  They had probably come down through the shaft from the tannery, where he figured more of their cohorts would now be waiting.  So that was that.

For an instant, recalling his threat to smash Magaña’s trap, he thought about pretending to surrender, getting the soldiers to lower their pistols with him in their midst, just as he had before, then making a break out the front.  Once he leaped straight down onto the beach, they would have an even harder time taking aim.  But then that exit, too, was blocked by the silhouette of a man in a grey top hat and tailcoat, his close fitting trousers cut after the fashion of the English.

"Well, Señor Zorro," he said cheerfully.  "How nice to see you again."

"Señor Endicott."  Zorro nodded politely without looking down, still keeping careful track of where every soldier was standing.

Endicott sighed.  "Oh, please don’t make me have to shoot you," he said, waving the breech loading pistol in his left hand.  "At this distance, I guarantee you I wouldn’t miss, and I really don’t want to kill you—at least, not now.  Not like this."

He nodded at the soldiers on either side of him, commanding them with a glance.  Some of them came forward cautiously, being careful not to move into the line of fire.  As Zorro felt the ropes going around his neck and chest, his arms being tied tightly at the wrists, he continued to look for any chance to break free.  But these men had been carefully trained to expect just such a move.  In a moment, they had taken his sword and tied his ankles together as well.  Then, one on either side of him, they grabbed him roughly and dragged him forward, letting him fall hard onto the rocky floor of the cave at Endicott’s feet.

As he caught a glimpse of the girl and the two soldiers who were escorting her past him, he almost thought that, rather than have to watch what would happen to her now, he might have preferred that she betray him.  Then he noticed the look she got from Endicott—sullen, amused, deferential.  And as she let her eyes meet Zorro’s, just for an instant, he realized that she had.