Explore "The Nine Guardians" by Rosario Castellanos on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The air is clean when it wakes, just breathed from the mouth of God. Presently it fills with the clatter of day. In the stable the cows snuffle their warm vapour over the calves' flanks. In the fowl-run the turkeys prink their feathers while the ugly, sad females scratch for any little worm. The hen is sententiously laying eggs, sitting on her nest like a throne.
The beasts are saddled. We leave Bajucú early, for the journey is long. Leisurely we go, lulled by the even gait of the Indians and the horses. In the thickness of the trees the birds stir very slightly, as if they were the brightest and greenest of all the leaves. Soon one sound dominates all the rest and casts its spell over the spaces round. It's the river Jataté, announcing its presence from a long way off. It flows in spate, dragging lopped-off branches and dead cattle: thick with mud, slow in its lordship and power. The rope-bridge spanning it broke last night. There's not even a rough canoe to cross in.