Mexican Spanish Stories
Donde respira la piedra
Where the Stone Breathes
Six miners trapped. The water is rising. The only way out was sealed six days ago.
Mariana Solís, a mine ventilation engineer, comes back to Sombrerete, in the silver country of Zacatecas, eighteen years after her father died inside the Refugio Mine. On the morning of her inspection, a blast traps six workers on a level the company swears is empty. The official plan has been pasted over. Her father's old notebooks show a ventilation chimney, the C-17, that someone sealed only days ago. With Tomás Elizondo, the former rescuer who brought her father's body out of the mine, she climbs into the storm-lashed Sierra de Órganos to open the mine's last lung before the air runs out.
- Languages
- Spanish & English
- Reading level
- B1-B2
- Length
- 12 chapters
Publication in preparation. Store link coming when available.
A short sample from the opening
Capítulo 1: El golpe bajo la sierra
Chapter 1: The Blow Under the Sierra
El primer golpe no fue un trueno, sino una sacudida seca que subió por las botas de Nando y le dobló las rodillas. Después llegó el polvo, espeso y caliente, y la lámpara de su casco se convirtió en una mancha amarilla dentro de una noche más negra que la noche. A sus espaldas, alguien gritó que se venía el techo. Nando alcanzó a empujar a Lupe hacia un nicho de la pared antes de que la segunda sacudida apagara todas las voces. Cuando el aire volvió a moverse, el túnel por donde habían entrado ya no existía.
The first blow wasn’t thunder but a dry jolt that came up through Nando’s boots and buckled his knees. Then came the dust, thick and hot, and the lamp on his helmet became a yellow smudge inside a night blacker than night. Behind him, someone shouted that the roof was coming down. Nando managed to push Lupe into a niche in the wall before the second jolt silenced every voice. When the air moved again, the tunnel they had come in through no longer existed.
A trescientos metros sobre ellos, Mariana Solís estaba midiendo el viento entre las rocas de la Sierra de Órganos. Sostenía un anemómetro sobre la cabeza y anotaba las cifras en una libreta, por costumbre, aunque ya no necesitaba demostrarle nada a nadie. Era ingeniera de ventilación de minas y había aprendido que el aire, igual que la gente, siempre deja señales antes de traicionar. Había vuelto a Sombrerete la noche anterior para revisar la Mina del Refugio. Dieciocho años antes, su padre había muerto allí dentro.
Three hundred meters above them, Mariana Solís was measuring the wind among the rocks of the Sierra de Órganos. She held an anemometer above her head and noted the figures in a notebook, out of habit, even though she no longer needed to prove anything to anyone. She was a mine ventilation engineer and had learned that air, like people, always gives signs before it betrays you. She had come back to Sombrerete the night before to inspect the Refugio Mine. Eighteen years earlier, her father had died inside it.
This is a short excerpt. The full novella has 12 chapters.
Explore the other books