Mexican Spanish Stories
Pies ligeros
Light Feet
142 stumps where the permit allows twenty. One witness, dead by morning.
Federal inspector Inés Larrañaga came to the sierra of Chihuahua to count trees. Now she carries the only proof of who sold the forest, a dead man's notebook under her shirt, and every road out of the mountains is watched. Her only way out is on foot, across the Copper Canyon, with Silvino Cruz: a Rarámuri schoolteacher and former ultramarathon champion who runs not fast, but far.
- 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 aserradero
Chapter 1: The Sawmill
Inés Larrañaga contó los tocones por tercera vez y el número no cambió: ciento cuarenta y dos en una hectárea donde el permiso hablaba de veinte. Eran las siete de la mañana en la sierra de Chihuahua, olía a resina y a lluvia de anoche, y el bosque de pinos, que en el papel seguía en pie, terminaba de golpe en una pared de luz.
Inés Larrañaga counted the stumps for the third time and the number didn’t change: a hundred and forty-two on one hectare where the permit said twenty. It was seven in the morning in the sierra of Chihuahua, it smelled of resin and last night’s rain, and the pine forest, which on paper was still standing, ended abruptly in a wall of light.
-Aquí había pinos de cien años -dijo don Nicolás Palma, el comisariado del ejido, y tocó con la bota un tocón tan ancho como una mesa-. Se los llevaron en tres meses. De noche, licenciada. Los camiones bajan de noche para que nadie los cuente.
“There were hundred-year-old pines here,” said don Nicolás Palma, the elected head of the ejido, the community that owned the forest, and he touched with his boot a stump as wide as a table. “They took them in three months. At night, licenciada. The trucks go down at night so nobody can count them.”
This is a short excerpt. The full novella has 12 chapters.
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