A Place at the Table

The monster had arranged six stones around a table.

He needed no seat: he rested with his knees against his chest, filling the cave entrance. The stones were for his visitors.

He'd never had one.

The table was a slab from the river. He cleaned it with moss, brushed away spiders, and covered its edges with leaves to prevent injuries. In the center, he placed yellow flowers.

He replaced the flowers when they wilted.

He did this for seven springs.

In Valdehonda, mothers closed the windows before telling how he swallowed men and had been born from a graveyard fire. The men claimed he enjoyed hearing bones break. Nobody knew whose bones they were.

His appearance made it believable.

He towered above the belfry. His dark skin was cracked, one shoulder larger than the other; fangs kept his mouth open. Charred branches seemed to sprout from his head. Air whistled between his teeth.

The monster had seen his reflection in the river.

He knew he was difficult to look at.

He couldn't understand how long he must wait before someone could look without picking up a stone.

His first attempt to approach them came during the harvest festival.

He followed a song from the forest. The villagers danced beside a bonfire, holding hands. Behind the mill, he learned the steps: two movements forward, one back.

He practiced alone.

Then he walked into the square and held out a hand.

The musicians stopped playing.

A woman fell to the ground. A man scooped up his son and shoved him inside a house. The monster bent down to help the woman, and someone drove a pitchfork into his arm.

He didn't strike him; he wouldn't know how without breaking him in two.

He backed away through the shouting, carrying an unfinished song and a new pain.

Crying was harder than breathing. Tears pooled in his cracks; he had to gather them with a finger to stop the stinging.

He wasn't crying over the wound, but over the hand no one had taken.

The next day, he went back into the forest.

For weeks, he kept practicing the dance.

He thought perhaps he'd done it wrong.

Then he tried bringing gifts.

He left firewood outside the houses in winter. He found a lost young goat and returned it to its pen. One night, he held the mill's broken waterwheel in place until the current subsided.

The villagers burned the firewood, saying it was cursed. They slaughtered the goat, fearing it had drunk something poisonous. When the miller saw the marks of the monster's fingers in the wood, he swore the creature was trying to destroy his livelihood.

The monster took a long time to learn this.

He watched from a distance and mistook preparations for the hunts for celebrations. The first torches looked like an invitation. He went out to greet them with flowers.

An arrow pierced his cheek.

Another lodged near his neck.

He fled to the ravine, beyond the dogs. For two days, he pulled out the arrowheads with hands that trembled far too much for their size.

When he returned, he found his table overturned.

They'd broken four seats and trampled the flowers.

He picked up the stems one by one.

He didn't rebuild the stone seats right away. For a while, he sat facing the gap they'd left, wondering whether this was a way of telling him he'd set too many places.

Eventually, he set out just one.

One visitor seemed a more reasonable hope.

Elvira found him in late autumn.

She was searching for an escaped hen. She carried a knife, a basket, and the irritation of someone working alone, given another task nobody would share.

She heard clucking inside the cave.

Then she saw the fangs.

She dropped the basket. Walnuts rolled among the roots. The monster, holding the hen in both hands, shrank against the wall.

Elvira drew her knife.

He closed his eyes.

That stopped her.

She'd seen animals ready to attack and animals waiting to be struck. They didn't hold themselves the same way.

“That hen is mine,” she said.

The monster opened his eyes. Slowly, he moved his hands and set the bird on the ground. The hen ran toward Elvira, indignant with everyone.

She could have left.

The path was clear, and her knife was still raised.

But she saw dried blood around the creature's neck. An arrow protruded from a crack that seemed to have closed around the shaft.

“Does it hurt?”

He hesitated. Nobody had asked him a question whose answer mattered.

He nodded.

Elvira put away the knife.

“I can't get it out like this. I'll need water and a pair of pincers.”

He lowered his eyes.

He knew this part: the person went away and came back with others.

“I'll come alone,” she added.

He stayed still until she disappeared among the trees.

Then he found the walnuts, gathered them, and put them in the basket.

Elvira returned before nightfall.

She tried to hide her shaking hands. She placed her tools on the slab and took the single seat.

The monster stayed motionless.

For the first time, someone was at his table.

Removing it took almost an hour. Elvira asked him to lower his head, breathe slowly, not pull away when it hurt. He obeyed, digging his fingers into the earth.

When she finished, her skirt was stained, her arm aching.

“I'll have to come back tomorrow.”

He raised his face so quickly Elvira stepped back.

He shrank away again.

“No,” he murmured.

His voice made the pincers vibrate.

Elvira looked at him.

“You don't want me to come back?”

The monster opened his hand, closed it, searched for a word.

“No run.”

Then she understood what he was asking.

“I'll try not to.”

Her first promise to him that wasn't a lie.

She returned the next day with broth and a makeshift bandage. After that, she brought bread. On her fourth visit, she brought an earthenware cup, though the monster could barely hold it between two fingers.

He broke it.

The sound made him cover his head.

Elvira picked up the pieces.

“We'll have to find a bigger one.”

The creature lowered his hands very slowly.

He'd broken something, and nobody had hit him.

He learned to speak softly. Words felt like stones he had to arrange before releasing them. He listened to conversations from the forest but knew few words for himself.

He knew beast, danger, out.

Elvira asked his name.

He pointed toward the valley.

“Monster.”

“That's what they call you. I'm asking what you'd like to be called.”

He looked at a crooked tree beside the cave, clinging to the rock, where birds slept even in winter.

Elvira followed his gaze.

“That's an elm. An olmo.”

He repeated the word.

Olmo.

He repeated it until it no longer felt borrowed.

Afterward, he repeated that word that didn't make him run away.

One afternoon, it rained so hard that Elvira stayed longer than she'd planned. Olmo watched the path, worried that darkness would catch her in the forest.

“Don't worry,” she said. “Darío can look after himself.”

He pointed to the basket, then to the woman's tired hands.

“Who look after you?”

Elvira opened her mouth to answer, then closed it.

Since she was widowed, that question had faded from conversations. Everyone assumed she managed well. She said so herself when people asked before requesting something.

“Usually, I do,” she replied.

Olmo moved a stone closer so she could rest her feet on it. Then he sat in front of the entrance, letting in the light and blocking the damp wind with his back.

Elvira rested without explaining how much work she still had to do.

He didn't need to speak either.

When the rain stopped, she told him she liked plums and couldn't stand the miller's songs. Olmo remembered both things. On her next visit, there were plums on the table.

Elvira promised to bring a vessel for the flowers. They had small plans, things neither knew how to do alone.

Their friendship had small difficulties nobody in the village would have imagined.

Olmo interrupted, afraid silence meant goodbye. Elvira spoke quickly. He brought beautiful stones she couldn't carry. She forgot how loud her laughter sounded in a cave.

They argued when Olmo confessed he'd taken a blanket from a clothesline.

“Was cold,” he explained.

“I know. But it belonged to someone.”

He lowered his head.

“Now no come back?”

Elvira took a while to answer, busy folding the blanket.

Then she stopped.

“I can be angry with you and still come back tomorrow.”

Olmo watched her as though she'd just explained a law he'd never known.

That afternoon, they returned the blanket. Elvira left it in its owner's animal pen and added one of the stones he'd chosen as an apology.

The woman threw the stone into the river.

Elvira didn't tell him.

Darío discovered the visits a week later.

Her son, a hunter, recognized the ointment on her coat and followed her into the forest.

When he saw Olmo beside her, he raised his crossbow.

“Get away!”

Olmo heard the words, saw the weapon, and covered his neck.

Elvira stepped in front of him.

“Lower it.”

“He's going to kill you.”

“I've been coming here for twelve days.”

Darío looked at the table, the pieces of bread, the bandage.

He didn't lower the crossbow.

“He's tricking you.”

Elvira picked up her basket. Olmo thought she was leaving forever and reached a hand toward her. The bowstring snapped.

The arrow pierced his palm.

His cry shook the leaves.

Darío dropped to his knees and reached for another arrow. Elvira caught his arm. Behind her, Olmo crawled toward the back of the cave, trying to hide a body that never fit into any hiding place.

“Look at him!” she said.

Her son saw the blood and thought he'd struck true.

He looked no further.

Back in Valdehonda, he announced that the creature had learned to lure people.

The news spread before Elvira reached her house.

Nobody would sell her flour: she'd endangered them all. A neighbor said Olmo would take the children. Another remembered a missing cow and decided he'd always known where it ended up.

Elvira spoke of the hen, the broth, the seats.

People listened for a pause so they could repeat what they already believed.

That night, she gathered bandages, bread, and her thickest blanket.

Darío was waiting by the door.

“You're not going back.”

“You wounded his hand.”

“I was trying to save you.”

She looked at him for a long time.

“You can come with me tomorrow. Bring clean water.”

Darío didn't answer.

He stayed by the door until his mother went to bed. He'd heard her bandaging her fingers in the kitchen. Tomorrow, there would be red marks where the basket's cord rubbed against her skin.

Those hands had cleaned his knees and cracked walnuts for him. He couldn't imagine them doing the same for that creature unless they were bewitched.

That explanation let him go on believing he was right.

He sought out the mayor and told him about the cave. When he described its size, the men asked about the entrances, the dry wood, the direction of the wind. Nobody asked what his mother did there for so many hours.

Darío hadn't asked either.

In the small hours, he sharpened a point he wouldn't need. He wanted the sound of metal to keep him from remembering how Olmo had hidden his head after the arrow struck.

At some point, he stopped sharpening.

When they came for him, he went with them. He couldn't stay alone with his doubts.

At dawn, twelve men set out with him for the cave.

Elvira arrived first.

The table was cleared, the flowers set aside, the seat against the wall. Olmo had tidied up like someone putting things away after a party.

His hand was swollen.

“No come anymore,” he said.

Elvira set down the basket.

“Do you want me to leave?”

He opened his mouth. He looked at his wounded fingers, then at the path.

“You with me. They hurt you.”

The woman sat on the ground.

“I didn't come here because it was easy.”

Olmo watched, unable to understand choosing to stay when you could leave.

Then he heard the dogs.

His back struck the rock.

Elvira stepped out to the entrance. The men spread among the trees. Darío avoided her eyes. The mayor carried a torch, though sunlight already filled the ravine.

“Come out of there,” he ordered.

“No.”

“We're going to burn the lair.”

Olmo rose behind her.

The light revealed his fangs, his bandaged neck, his fingers twisted around the arrow. The dogs crouched. One man stepped back and tripped over a root.

Elvira was afraid. Loving Olmo hadn't made her stop being afraid.

But she stayed.

“I'm in here,” she said.

The mayor looked at Darío.

“Get your mother out.”

The young man advanced. Olmo raised his uninjured hand to push him away, then stopped when he saw Elvira stepping back too.

He lowered his fingers.

That gesture cost him more than lifting the slab from the river.

He could break their weapons, tear up the trees, crush the people who'd hunted him. He could make sure they never came back.

But Elvira would have to hide from him.

He knelt.

The ground trembled beneath the hunters.

Olmo rested his forehead on the earth and left his hands open, far from the woman.

He waited for the blow.

Darío had him before him: exposed neck, enormous back, the wound he himself had inflicted.

Behind the creature, he saw a broken cup, a folded blanket, and a dried bouquet beside a small stone.

His mother had told the truth.

He could go on refusing to believe her. All he had to do was not look.

The mayor brought the torch toward a pile of branches.

Darío took it from him.

“No.”

“Stand aside, boy.”

“I'm not burning her in there.”

Elvira tried to speak, but Olmo began to cry.

It wasn't a roar.

It was a broken sound, interrupted whenever he tried to breathe. Tears ran down his cracks and fell onto the earth. Darío watched him trying to gather them with his fingers, like a child who couldn't wipe his own face.

The mayor swore.

Two hunters lowered their spears.

Elvira approached Olmo. This time, he drew back.

“Enough,” he murmured.

She stopped.

“All right.”

She didn't try to touch him.

The men left slowly. Darío remained at the end of the path with the extinguished torch, unsure what to do with a victory he no longer wanted.

Elvira waited until Olmo raised his head.

“Would you like me to come back tomorrow?”

He didn't answer immediately.

For the first time, he could choose how much distance he needed.

At last, he pointed to the basket.

“Tomorrow bread.”

Elvira nodded.

It took Darío four days to come up.

He left the water well away from the entrance and waited among the trees. Olmo didn't come out. The young man waited until nightfall and left the bucket when he went.

He returned the next day.

And the day after.

When the creature let him approach, Darío didn't ask him to forget the arrow. He helped him remove it. Then he cleaned the wound while Elvira held a lamp.

Olmo withdrew his hand before he finished.

Darío put the cloth on the ground.

“Does it hurt?”

The creature nodded but didn't point to the wound. He was looking at the crossbow the young man had left leaning against a tree outside the entrance.

Darío had thought hiding it would be enough. Then he understood that Olmo knew where it was even without seeing it.

He took it home.

When he returned, he found the hand extended on the table.

He received no hug. He didn't expect to deserve one. He learned to announce himself from the path, wait for an answer, and leave when Olmo wanted solitude.

Once, he asked whether he could come back with friends. The creature shook his head.

Darío said that was all right.

Olmo watched him leave without anger, and the next day he set out two seats. The young man didn't touch the second. He understood that an invitation might need time too.

Change came more slowly to Valdehonda.

The miller discovered that the wheel had been held in place, not broken. A little girl asked why they'd burned the firewood when the winter had been so cold. The blanket's owner found the stone in the river and took it home.

Others kept closing their windows.

Olmo learned not to mistake that for everyone's judgment.

Elvira ordered a table for her yard, near the path, away from the roof, with one end clear and a bench that could bear great weight.

The carpenter wanted to know how much.

She took him into the forest to show him.

The first meal brought together six people and a creature who didn't know where to put his hands. Olmo arrived with yellow flowers. Darío accepted the bouquet without making a joke.

Someone served broth in a pot.

For a while, everyone spoke too much or too little.

Elvira dropped a spoon, and Olmo startled. She picked it up, wiped the handle, and went on eating.

So did he.

When it was time to leave, he looked at the bench, the table, and the open windows.

“Save place?” he asked.

Elvira brushed a crumb off her plate.

“Of course. We're eating here again on Sunday.”

Olmo walked toward the forest without hiding from the last light.

When he reached the cave, he cleared the wilted flowers from the slab.

Then he arranged six stones around it.

This time, he knew who he was waiting for.