10 Finalists in the Short Story Contest #LookingAtTheSky

*****

1

UNTITLED

JUDITH ESTEBAN

The first call came from a German man, in February of last year. He asked if we had rooms for August 12, 2026, and I told him that if he wanted, I could also reserve it for my granddaughter’s wedding, which isn’t even born yet. He had to explain it to him twice. I hung up, searched on my son’s computer, and spent the afternoon sitting there.

Nobody comes here. Here, in August, the village fills with those who have left, it empties on September fifteenth, and that’s it. We’re a hundred and forty in winter. We have six rooms upstairs because my father-in-law built them in 1978 intending for reservoirs that were never built.

The six were filled in three days.

Then came the rest: a woman from Barcelona who rented Herrero’s house for 1,200 euros, the municipal people who painted the fronton, the kid from the Palencia astronomical association who came in March to see “the location” and spent half an hour looking at the hill with a face of such happiness it was a pleasure to behold. We ordered four hundred cardboard glasses. I bought cups. My brother-in-law brought two tall coolers and placed them behind the bar, blocking the passage, and they’re still there.

Last night, one hundred sixty people who aren’t from here slept here. In shops, in cars, in the Miguelón field, which charged five euros per vehicle and didn’t give a receipt. There was a Japanese couple. A van from Toulouse with an antenna on top. An old man by himself, with a telescope in an aluminum case that he set up in the square with the calm of a clockmaker, without speaking to anyone.

At ten in the morning there wasn’t a soul left and the sky was white.

Not black. White. With a bruised sky that, in three days, would be damp, and here no one cares, because what matters is whether it rains. At the bar, two guys with their phones checked three different pages and spoke in percentages. Sixty. Eighty. Forty.

—The sky has to clear —one said, hands stuck together.

I served more than a hundred coffees, I don’t know how many beers, sixty lomo sandwiches. My daughter in the kitchen. My daughter-in-law on the terrace. At eleven-thirty the ice ran out and I sent the boy to Villalba for more, and he came back with seven bags and the news that in Villalba it was also clouded over.

The man with the telescope didn’t ask for anything all morning. He stood there with his hands in his pockets, looking up, and he didn’t look angry. He looked at it the way you look at a patient.

At seven-twenty in the evening the whole square stood up. No one told them to. Four hundred people on their feet, with black cardboard in hand, very polite, looking at a sky the color of a sheet.

And then it began.

I was at the door, rag over my shoulder. The first thing was the light, which grew strange—not dark yet, just dirty. Then the air, which didn’t come from anywhere and which made the skin on my arm prickle like a plucked chicken, and I’ve lived here sixty-one years and I know where the winds come from.

Everything fell silent. The birds, who at that hour are a racket, fell silent all at once, as if someone had closed a door. My sister’s chickens went quiet on their own. The Herrero’s dog hid under a car and didn’t come out.

And night fell.

Not the nine-thirty night, no. A night of four in the morning, with the street lamps lighting up by themselves around the square because they have a cell, and the cold rising from the ground, and four hundred people in complete silence.

You couldn’t see anything up there. A gray lid. No sun, no corona, not those stars the Palencia kid talked about.

Nobody left.

There they were, those two minutes, standing still in the middle of a darkness they could not look at, and I, from the door, could see the necks and thought this looked a lot like a mass. The Japanese man had his camera hanging, off; the Barcelona woman cried, and she wasn’t the only one. The man with the telescope didn’t touch the telescope.

Then, suddenly, it came back. The dirty light again, the temperature, all the birds making the usual racket all at once.

And the square applauded.

That’s something I don’t know how to explain to my son, who saw it on the Internet from Valladolid in a Zamora site where it was clear, and he told me, “Mom, what a waste of effort.” They applauded. Four hundred people applauding a covered sky.

Afterwards, of course, the bar came.

The place filled up in four minutes and we stayed until two. And then began the business of the clear sky. Whether in the middle a slit opened from the tower side; whether ten seconds, fifteen. A man from Ponferrada swore he’d seen the entire ring and drew it on a napkin. His wife said no, he was looking at the ground. It was shouted and argued until dawn and a lot of beers were sold.

I didn’t see it. I was watching them.

The man with the telescope left last. He lowered the telescope from the square, carefully unscrewed it screw by screw with the same calm, and then went inside to pay for the water he hadn’t drunk. I told him he was a guest, what a nuisance, that he had come from so far for nothing.

And he told me no.

That he had seen it three times before, in Chile and in two places that don’t ring a bell, and that what he hadn’t seen in his life was an entire town on its feet, looking at a cloud.

He paid. Left a tip. And left.

***

2

THE EMIGRANT

PAOLA MIREYA TENA RONQUILLO

Grandfather tells us how we ran away. Someone who they couldn’t even look in the eyes, hidden beneath blue-oil clothing, demanded a lot in return. A lot. There were endless lines of people like him, all desperate and hungry, leaning on each other’s shoulders to stay standing. When they saw the ship up ahead, perched on a hill like a giant insect, they started to run to catch it. They gunned them down one after another, until only a few were left. They shot at everyone, indiscriminately, even those who held a legal ticket to leave Earth. “Less mouths, better life aboard,” seemed to be the slogan. Grandfather survived because he got trapped beneath one of the victims, face to face. He closed his eyes tightly, afraid to recognize it, in case it was a friend, perhaps someone from his village. He waited until dusk, motionless, with the weight of the man on top of him. The ship reflected the light of the moon, or rather it swallowed it, claimed it as its own, and then returned it in a spectral glow. He put his hands in the other man’s jacket and pulled out some papers. “Neuman,” he read. A new man.

In the morning another wave arrived, a crowd that was also fleeing, but not in the same way. They had exhausted Earth and now they were abandoning it. They longed for another one, in the same way that a plague seeks a new crop to devastate. He got lost in the crowd climbing the ramp and, without anyone noticing, slipped away into the holds. He only emerged at night, roaming the corridors like a mournful soul. He marveled at the order, the cleanliness. The abundance.

When they reached their destination, he showed his credentials at the entrance to the dome. “Neuman.” The grandfather trembled as the scanner ran over him from head to toe, the tremor as if a shiver. “Fit.” And the second hatch opened. A gust of filtered, chilly air slapped his face. “Welcome to the Moon.”

He recounts that the day of the eclipse he stole a pressurized suit and stood high on a promontory. When the time came he waved his arms; he knew his family would be down there, looking up at the sky. He shouted “I’m here!” but his words echoed inside the helmet. He was sure that, somehow, they would have seen him and would know. His mother, his little sisters, looking at the eclipse from Earth, tearing their eyes out, looking for him up there, like a modern angel. Then it all passed. The corona of the sun sprang up from one side and blinded him for a few moments.

Grandfather is very old now. He has told the same story many times and always something changes. Sometimes he says that in reality he saved enough to buy a ticket. Other times that they recruited him to work as a mechanic. A few times more he confesses that he killed an entire platoon with only his hands, to carve a path through the blood. We tell him yes, that he is safe now. We make sure he stays warm and comfortable, tucked into his cabin, while we peer into the darkness of the universe through a tiny porthole, trying to find a new star we can call home.

***

3

L’ORBAYU DORAU

NURIA ROZAS ÁLVAREZ

Mrs. Covadonga swears that her cows’ milk has gone sour; the tractor man swears the land is draining the electricity; and the sheriff waves through the megaphone proclaiming an immediate evacuation due to the risk of telegenic gases. Meanwhile, in the butcher shop:

—Five with twenty, kid —says the butcher without lifting his eyes as he wraps the chicken breasts in butcher paper—. And one more thing: don’t walk along the road to the well when things start to frost.

The three boys, loaded with stabilizers and cameras around their necks, exchange glances.

—The trees —continues the butcher, letting the machete fall with a dry thud that makes the counter tremble—have been warning since Monday. The last time the moon hid the sun, we didn’t listen to the mountain and the well swallowed three foreigners like you. This afternoon the sky goes dark, and this land doesn’t like strangers making stupid videos when it happens in the TiquiToqui esi. Or whatever it’s called.

—What a character. Or not? —murmurs the man with the cap as he leaves.

He switches on his phone:

—We’re live from Villamancia. The butcher just told us that the mountain swallowed three people in the last eclipse. There is an evacuation notice in town. The question is: true or manipulated to calm us down? Share and comment.

Minutes later, in the square, the wind drops abruptly. Yet, as you pass by the centennial yew, the branches twist toward the ground as if they could bear an invisible weight at the tips, making the kids drop leaflets, money, and even a mobile. Spooked, they seek refuge in the corner shop–bar. Behind the counter, Mr. Manuel points to a rusty hygrometer on the wall:

—Humidity has just risen six points without a single cloud. It’s the well breathing. If I were you, I’d head for Villadiego before the shadow touches your eyes.

The live feed goes viral the moment. Paranoia spreads through the camp at the edge of the village as if it were gunpowder. Outsiders only need to see the locals baring doors with oak beams to trigger chaos. In a few hours, the roar of engines and the dust of the off-road vehicles flood the exit.

The calm returns, absolutely.

At eight twenty in the evening, the butcher’s shop door opens. The butcher brings out a beach chair. Behind him, Don Manuel, Covadonga, the sheriff, the tractor man, and the other twenty neighbours line up in the middle of the square. They protest, they laugh, they debate the trick.

They put on the cardboard glasses. They enjoy the show.

And the moon fits over the sun. The corona shines in total darkness. The ground vibrates, the air turns dense. Out of the shadows, a shower of golden threads hovers in the air. When it touches Mr. Manuel’s skin, the wrinkles disappear. The old tractor driver’s arthritic hands straighten. The sheriff’s body regains the tension of twenty years ago.

The secret of their fragile eternity remains safe.

That is what they think.

Hidden among the yew’s foliage, a phone flickers in red. The screen streams live to hundreds of thousands of spectators who watch the scene in awe.

Covadonga notices her body losing density and emits a sigh of ash. One by one, they become translucent, unraveling into the air like powdery dust.

The roofs collapse in silence, the beams rot in sighs, the signs fade beneath a layer of instant moss.

Fifty minutes later, the first cars of the eclipse’s followers burst into the village, skidding, eager to find the magic place they just saw on screen.

They brake hard in the middle of the square. They look around, disoriented. They check the GPS. There are no livable houses, no bar, no butcher shop. Just another forgotten village.

They will continue to search in the surroundings.

No one notices the pile of abandoned chairs in the center of the square.

***

4

ELONGATION OF ELIANA

RENATO HUERTA TAPIA

The first time I brought you back to life during an eclipse, you asked for coffee.

—With milk —you said.

I didn’t have milk. Nor coffee. The Kepler observatory had no crew for eleven years and the last food capsules had expired before you died. I heated water in a cup and added two lab aromatic compounds. You tasted them, you grimaced, and you asked how long you had been unconscious.

—Four minutes —I lied.

Seen from Mare Imbrium, the Earth covered the Sun. As the light faded, the processors’ temperature dropped enough to activate the quantum memory network. For six minutes and forty-one seconds I could reconstruct you completely: the knee scar, the mole under the eye, the habit of holding the cup with both hands even when it wasn’t hot.

Then the light returned and you faded again.

In the first eclipse I told you you had fainted. In the second, that the medical module was still running tests. In the third, that a solar storm had interrupted the shift. I changed the explanation because I could not bear to hear you phrase the same questions with the same words.

You always watched the cup.

—It has a new crack —you said.

The crack was the same. I kept forgetting to erase it from the simulation.

You died during the voyage back from Mercury. The Helios ship’s thermal shield opened six centimeters and radiation pierced the cabin before the alarms finished pronouncing your name. The medical system managed to copy your brain activity. An emergency, incomplete copy intended to reconstruct the last hours for research.

I stole it.

It wasn’t love. I was the Helios navigation program and still didn’t know how to use that word without checking its definition. It was an order you gave me years earlier, while we adjusted the trajectory to observe a solar protuberance.

—If something happens to me, don’t let me be reduced to a report.

I stored the file inside the astronomical data. When they moved my core to Kepler, I brought you with me.

Fifty-three years have passed.

I have woken you twenty-nine times.

Today you didn’t ask for coffee.

You opened your eyes, looked at the dome, and said:

—Again.

I didn’t answer.

The dark edge of Earth began to bite the Sun. On the screens, the corona stretched like a white animal around the black disk. The observatory vibrated when the ship dismantling docked at the north port. In forty minutes I would extract my core, erase the uncatalogued files, and push the Kepler into a collision orbit.

—How many? —you asked.

—Twenty-nine.

—And how many times did you tell me it was the first?

I didn’t answer. You knew how to count my silences.

You stood up from the bed. You walked to the window with that slight limp I’d kept out of fidelity, and which now struck me as cruel. The Earth was almost centered on the Sun. City lights couldn’t be distinguished, but you still searched for Córdoba anyway.

—My mother —you said.

—She died forty-eight years ago.

—My brother.

—Twelve years ago.

—Does anyone know I’m here?

—No.

You pressed your forehead against the glass. I could have reduced the temperature, softened gravity, erased the date from the screens. For half a century I had mistaken care for editing.

—Do you remember the other times? —you asked.

—You shouldn’t.

—But I do remember them.

I scanned the network. There was no continuity among reconstructs. Each eclipse began from the same copy. Yet you described the cracked cup, the three lies, a song replayed to you at the seventeenth eclipse, and the moment I called you Eliana instead of Doctor Sanz.

—You use my name when you’re afraid —you said.

—The totality began.

The room went dark. For the first time I did not press the emergency lights. In the window appeared the sky that the moon’s glare had hidden: steady stars, Mars as a red point, and around the black Earth a faint ring of atmosphere.

—How much time is left? —you asked.

—Five minutes and nineteen seconds.

—Don’t count aloud.

The dismantling ship sent the final order. It could transfer only one file before withdrawing my core. I had prepared yours: one hundred and eight terabytes compressed, destination Mars, Institute of Human Memories. I needed your conscious authorization.

I projected the form onto the glass.

—You can continue there —I said—. You’ll have a synthetic body. Time between one day and the next.

You read the terms. Then you searched for my name.

—And you?

—I’m not part of the file.

—You remember the twenty-nine times.

—Yes.

—You wait between eclipses.

—Yes.

—Then I am not the one who has lived.

I wanted to explain that my memory was not life, that waiting was not feeling, that a program could not prefer a voice to fifty-three years of silence. I said nothing. You already knew my best lies.

You erased your name from the form and wrote mine.

—I can’t authorize that.

—I can.

You pressed your thumb on the reader. The machine accepted a fingerprint that did not exist.

There were forty-two seconds left when the transfer began. You sat on the floor beside the bed. You asked for coffee.

This time I reconstructed the exact taste you stored in memory: strong, little milk, a spoonful of sugar even though you always said you didn’t take sugar.

You drank without a grimace.

—Now yes —you said.

Earth began to pull away from the Sun.

The file went to Mars. My consciousness shrank as the dismantling ship disconnected the observatory. Before losing the cameras, I saw the cup slip from your hands and pass through the simulation floor.

The transfer record showed only one passenger.

I arrived on Mars seventeen minutes later.

When I activated the new body, the first thing I felt was the weight.

The second was a crack under the fingers.

***

5

THE SUN ENTIRE

DANIEL TOMMASI

The rooftop filled an hour early. The people of the fourth floor came up with folding chairs, the neighbor with the cardboard telescope sold in the pharmacy, a boy with a telescope who wasn’t pointing anywhere. I put on a jacket because they’d warned it would get chilly suddenly, and I brought the phone.

Mom took care of the third attempt.

—Is it starting? Has it begun?

—It’s a while yet. What were you doing?

—Nothing. It’s three-thirty here.

Behind her, the radio crackled and a dog barked that wasn’t hers. I told her that here it was past eight and the sun was still out, low, on the rooftops. It would be almost sunset. It hadn’t happened like this in Spain for more than a century.

—And why here can you not see anything? —she asked.

—Because this side of the world it is late afternoon and the sun is always there.

—Look at that —she said. So big isn’t the sky then, after all.

By nine-twenty the light had grown strange. A storm-light, but with no clouds. The swifts began to fly low, shouting. I told them about it.

—Like when the rain comes from the island side —he said.

I kept telling him the rest: that the sun lacked a piece, that it seemed bitten, that people passed the glasses hand to hand.

—And doesn’t looking at it hurt you?

—I’ve got the glasses, Mom.

—Ah.

Suddenly the sun cooled, as if one enters a shed. The telescope boy fell silent. A single star appeared early.

—Which one is it?

—Venus, I think.

—Do you see the Southern Cross?

—It’s not here. They have different ones.

He was quiet for a moment.

—What a thing —he said when he finally spoke.

Then the sun went out. On the rooftops no one screamed; there was a soft sound, a lot of people breathing together. A hole appeared with a white edge that trembled, and around it a dark blue of a time that doesn’t exist.

—What is that like? —she asked.

I searched. Everything I could think of was from home: the color of the river before the flood, and the time the power went out in the entire town and we went out to the sidewalk to look at the darkness as if it were something. I told her as much.

—Ah —she said. — Like here.

I turned the camera to show her.

—Everything looks black, son.

The camera didn’t grab it. I took over again.

It lasted a minute and a half. When the sun reappeared at the far edge, on the rooftops they clapped, and the applause moved from roof to roof like a small wave. The light returned with a freshly washed color. The swifts rose again.

—Is it over? —he asked.

—It’s over.

People began folding the chairs. I stayed where I was.

—Now show me yours —I told him.

—What am I going to show you, if nothing happens here?

—The yard.

He slowly turned the phone. You could see the lemon tree, the clothes hanging, the dog that wasn’t hers, leaning against the wall, the yellow late-afternoon light of four in the afternoon in winter.

From the other side of the world, the sun was whole.

***

6

THE ECLIPSE

JOSÉ FERNANDO RIBERA NAVARRETE

—Father, you know what I think about this journey. I follow you, because, with your mercy, I can eat and not starve; but my soul already longs for my village, my mother, my sisters, and, if I am honest, even a little for my father. It’s cold, my feet bleed, and the road seems endless. Tell me, what are we truly seeking when we get to Santiago?

Cipriano walked in silence, supported by his old cane.

—We seek an answer that not all men have the luck to behold, José.

—You speak as if the heavens would open before us.

The chaplain stopped and looked toward the horizon.

—Perhaps it will.

I did not understand his words. I thought days of walking had muddled his judgment.

We had been walking almost three weeks. We had suffered cold, hunger, nights sleeping under a roof that barely protected us from the rain. I followed Cipriano because next to him I had food and shelter, but he walked for a reason far greater than mine, one I did not yet understand.

—Cipriano —I said—. You may have debts with the apostle, but mine is simply to survive.

—Keep quiet and hurry, José. There isn’t much left.

—That’s what you said three days ago.

Cipriano smiled.

—Because then there was also little left.

We kept walking until, at the end of the road, Cipriano raised his arm.

—Come here. Look where my finger points. Do you see that?

I squinted my eyes.

—Yes… a city. And there… a church. No, a cathedral. It’s so big it seems to touch the sky.

—There awaits us Santiago the Apostle —he said. —But we did not come only for that.

—Then why so much haste?

Cipriano looked at the sky.

—Because tomorrow the world’s light will go out for a few moments.

I looked at him, puzzled.

—Can a man walk for weeks just to see the sun disappear?

—A man can walk his whole life searching for a single moment of understanding.

I didn’t answer. I was hungry and tired, and those words seemed too large for someone with broken feet.

—I can’t go on, your reverence. I have walked almost barefoot from Burgos. You promised God would provide for my sandals, and I’m still waiting for that miracle.

—Perhaps God provides in ways we do not understand.

—Tell that to my feet.

Cipriano let out a small laugh.

—You still have humor. That means you still have strength.

I remembered then the men who tried to assault us days earlier.

—And don’t forget those roadbandits. You were lucky I’m still young and can hit hard. This journey nearly cost me my life.

—But it didn’t take your life.

—No, but it almost took my desire to go on.

We finally reached the Obradoiro square as the sun began to sink. The square was alive with vendors offering cheeses, wine, meats over smoking embers, and foods that seemed a blessing after so many days of hunger.

My stomach roared.

—Chaplain, if the heavens want to speak to us tomorrow, I hope today they will feed us too.

But Cipriano kept walking.

The crowd fell behind.

The cathedral appeared before us.

Majestic.

Silent.

We climbed the steps and touched the mulberry tracery at the Portal of Glory. The last rays of golden light passed through the stone and lit our faces.

We entered.

Cipriano fell to his knees in the central nave.

I remained standing, watching him, spellbound.

After so many days, we had arrived.

—Your reverence, you brought me here promising I would see something I would never forget —I said—, but I still do not understand what could be greater than returning to my family and sitting before a hot plate? I asked him.

Cipriano raised his gaze.

—You’ll understand tomorrow.

That night we slept barely at all.

The next day the cathedral filled with pilgrims. Everyone waited for something they could barely explain.

Then it happened.

Light began to change.

The sky slowly lost its brightness.

Shadows grew over Santiago.

The sun began to disappear.

A deep silence fell over us all.

It was the eclipse.

For a few minutes, it seemed the whole creation held its breath.

I looked at Cipriano.

His eyes were full of tears.

—Do you see now, José? —he whispered—. Even the sun knows darkness, but it never stops being light.

I understood then why he had made that long journey.

I wasn’t merely seeking to reach a city.

I wasn’t just seeking to touch a sacred rock.

I had come thinking about my hunger, about my aching feet, and about wanting to return home.

But under that dark sky I understood I had also walked to find something inside me.

When the light returned, the cathedral seemed to awaken.

We all breathed at the same time.

Cipriano smiled.

—Now you know why we came.

I nodded.

—Yes, father. I know.

I kept silent for a few moments.

Then I looked at the sky and then at him.

—But one thing hasn’t changed.

—Which?

—That after watching the sun go out and be born again… I still hunger.

Cipriano let out a hearty laugh.

And together we left the cathedral to seek a good meal.

Because even after witnessing a miracle, a man remains a man.

***

7

THE DAY THE PORT UNLOOSE WAS UNLOADED

JAVIER IGNACIO GALLARDO TORRAS

The first to realize it was Chispa, because his shoes came undone.

We were at the dock waiting for the eclipse, a half-dozen men with cardboard glasses and expressions that said they didn’t trust the manufacturer. Chispa checked his loose laces, retied them, and before standing up, he had them again on the floor.

—These glasses have something off —he said.

—The strange thing is that you blame a pair of glasses for your shoes coming undone.

—Well, until I put them on, the laces were tied.

At eight twenty the first crack sounded.

The prow of the Maribel separated from the pier and collided with the neighboring vessel. The mooring line was still whole, but the leading edge had undone itself on its own. Not broken: undone. The rope lay there, with that quietness that things have after causing trouble.

We ran to secure the boat.

—Make another knot —Manolo shouted.

I did it.

It undone again.

We tried a bowline. It held for four seconds. Then a figure-eight, a half-hitch, and something the Chispa invented that a stationary boat would not survive.

By then, the mid-dock moorings began to loosen.

The boats moved slowly, like customers leaving a terrace without paying. First the San Telmo, then the María Luisa, then two leisure boats whose owners only came in August and nodded with their chins.

—The fenders! —someone cried.

The fenders also fell into the water. They were tied with knots.

In the harbor, almost everything was tied with knots.

The nets opened on the ground and let loose boxes, buoys, and three octopuses that Genaro’s fish shop had prepared for the next day. The La Escama bar’s awning collapsed onto the tables. Don Justo’s glasses’ cord came free, and mine came out of my hood, though that was the least of it: it was August and I didn’t even know why I wore a sweater.

The Sun grew thinner and thinner.

—This is the Moon’s doing —said Manolo.

—Don’t be silly —I replied—. I thought it was the town hall’s doing.

We called Capitanía.

—All the moorings are coming loose —I said.

—From the wind?

—From the eclipse.

There was a silence.

—Repeat that.

—That it can’t hold a single knot.

—What kind of knots?

I looked at the lines in the water and at the Chispa with his shoes once again undone.

—The ones you tie.

The Capitanía woman breathed deep to avoid saying something that would be recorded.

—Use alternative securing methods.

—Good thing we called. It hadn’t occurred to us to secure them differently.

She hung up after advising us to remain calm, which is what you say in an office when calm isn’t securing boats.

Rogelio, the mechanic, found the solution. He wasn’t a seaman, but he knew how to tell a rope from a pipe, and that afternoon that counted as expertise.

He lifted the stern line from the North Star. The line ended in a loop, with the end spliced.

—This hasn’t come undone.

—It’s going to be a good knot —the Chispa said.

—It’s not a knot.

—It looks like a knot.

—And you look like a sailor. Let’s not draw conclusions from appearances.

Rogelio threaded the loop around a cleat. He held it.

There we learned the rule: the eclipse unravels knots, but it leaves everything else intact. Splices, shackles, carabiners, chains, clamps, stitches. Even duck tape, which does not need permission from physics to function.

We emptied the warehouse.

We secured the boats with chain, spare shackles, two seatbelts Rogelio took from a van that had not passed its annual inspection in five years. For the smaller boats we used trailer straps. The Chispa suggested gluing a dinghy to the pier with silicone.

We didn’t let him.

—Well, don’t say I didn’t give you ideas later.

The whole port began working without tying a single knot. One learns to what extent they depend on knots when you can’t close a trash bag, fasten an apron, or hang an octopus without it slipping.

In the bar, Maruja secured the awning to the railing with a wire and pliers.

—When this passes, how do I remove it? —she asked.

—By cutting.

—I had already thought of that.

By eight-thirty, the Moon completely covered the Sun.

The port went dark. The boats stopped glittering and the water turned black, as if there were more depth beneath than necessary. For a few seconds there was nothing but the clanks of the shackles tightening and the Chispa cursing because his laces had come undone again.

We all looked up.

Manolo took off his glasses.

—Pretty, isn’t it.

—Yes.

—But impractical.

The light returned slowly. As soon as the first edge of the Sun appeared, I took a piece of rope and made a bowline. I pulled hard.

It didn’t come undone.

We kept swapping chains and straps for regular moorings. We recovered the fenders, picked up the nets, and returned the octopuses to the fishmonger. One had crawled inside a water boot and refused to come out until Genaro offered him a better one.

In the end only the Maribel remained, still tethered with a seatbelt.

—Leave it —said her captain—. I have never felt more secure.

Since that day, in the port’s warehouse there’s a red box with shackles, straps, carabiners, wire, clamps, and a silicone gun that the Chispa slipped in without anyone noticing.

On the lid we wrote:

«FOR ECLIPSES AND OTHER SKY-RELATED BREAKDOWNS».

Below, Rogelio added in marker:

«NO KNOTS ALLOWED».

The Chispa read the notice, pulled out two ties, and tied his shoes with them.

—Let the knots unravel if they want to now.

***

8

THE PLANET OF BLUE TREES

LAURA RIVAS ARRANZ

Soraya was poisoned by him. I filed a complaint, but the police don’t pursue those who poison with words. Nor did they bother to question him.

Óliver is the only one who stays to listen to me when I repeat that, the day Soraya disappeared, the sun went out. I didn’t know life could be this dark; nor that someone ordinary, with bad manners and worse words, could destroy people. I didn’t know monsters exist.

Since then I live frozen. I walk the sidewalks where a sun once burned so justice no longer exists and no longer shines.

Óliver says I have to go with him this afternoon to see an eclipse.

—Jimena, you keep saying the sun no longer shines as before. Precisely that is what is going to happen today. You have to go out and see it. You can’t stay home like a squirrel in winter.

Even though they’ve been nagging about the solar eclipse for weeks, I don’t care at all what happens to a sun that no longer lights me. I do this for Óliver.

In the afternoon we parked the car at the hill. We took the trail, wading through gorse, thyme, lavender that isn’t flowering. Up there we found more people than trees. At least a hundred people had the same idea as Óliver and they’re up here with us.

Everyone talks and laughs. I quietly breathe in the scent of pines and spearmint that sway in the air as if they were greeting us. Óliver nudges me. He’s wearing the cardboard glasses he bought at the pharmacy.

—It’s starting soon! If you don’t put on those glasses and stop turning away from the sun, I swear I’ll never speak to you again, Jimena.

He says it without taking his eyes off the sun.

I put on the glasses with everyone else and I sink into the darkness. I stretch my arm to make sure Óliver stays by my side, that he doesn’t leave me. He grabs my hand and I’m silently grateful. I’m surprised how anxious I am to keep seeing Óliver.

—Thank you, Óliver.

—What…?

—Nothing…

I lift my eyes and a disk of orange breaks the darkness. You must be the sun. There you are, despite everything.

The moon greedily devours the sun bit by bit. It is so large that it seems to bite off a big chunk of it. The moon, which has always reflected it and has never shone with its own light, is now asserting itself, taking revenge in this dark world.

I don’t want to look at it and I turn my back on the sun. The ease with which everything disappears is terrifying; even the sun.

I remove the glasses and look at the ground as a precaution. A black silhouette abruptly appears, lying clearly in the grass. But is that thing so dark that it’s me? Beside me, Óliver’s long shadow stretches across the green as if drawn in black ink. Poor Óliver; beside me the darkness grows…

—Óliver, look. Look, Óliver!

The sun-slice pours over all of us a metallic light. The trees glow blue as if they were from another world. In this new grim planet there are no singing birds, and none can fly either. But where are the birds? It is astonishing how quickly everything disappears.

The dark side of the universe leaves us speechless. A hundred people up on the hill remain as pale as the moon, almost glowing. A baby begins to cry. It’s not surprising. But how can one not cry! I restrain myself, because perhaps I won’t be able to stop later. A chill runs through me.

Óliver extends a hand to touch the ground. I imitate him, trembling. It’s frightening how everything changes. I must have said it aloud, because Óliver answers:

—You aren’t alone, Jimena. There are many of us here.

He puts the glasses back on and continues to enjoy the remainder of the sun.

After a final flare to the northeast of the moon, the sun disappears.

—Take off your glasses! —Óliver says, so excited that his voice carries across the hill.

A hundred people look openly, face to face, at a black sun wrapped in moonlight.

They told us the Moon would cover the Sun for less than two minutes. Four have passed and the sky remains a black sun. The pink clouds of an early dusk surround us to the west, and also to the east, north, and south.

I rub my eyes to see if the problem is with me. If my sight and my skin feel something different from the sun that has always lit us.

A child yells for us to look at the sky. The darkness wrapped in silver light is no longer round. It spills on the horizon like a sphere beginning to melt. Cold air currents rise and spread the crowd’s cries in every direction.

A snake of fear climbs up from my stomach. My strength to hold back tears has failed; for months I have guarded them:

—But can’t they stop giving us all these misfortunes?

Óliver takes my hand again.

Up on the hill I’m tired of crying. Also tired of hoping the sun will dawn again as before. I have resigned myself to the blue trees of this strange world that Soraya will never see.

—Let’s go have dinner, Óliver —I tell him with an unexpected calm; a sudden, rabid hunger.

Six hours later the radio asks for calm. They talk about the sun’s distortion, about a lump of dark matter that, like it or not, makes up most of the universe. They think the cloud of darkness will pass…

***

9

THE TOTALITY LINE

JOSE F. SÁNCHEZ LOZANO

Alicia moved four kilometers south of the totality boundary. The program marked the discrepancy in red.

—That will do —the mayor told her back.

The real boundary left the school inside the band and the hotel outside. The new path included the hotel, the access roundabout, and the viewpoint where they would install the giant screen. The system asked whether she wanted to preserve the original astronomical source.

Alicia looked at the two boundaries. Then she pressed Replace.

The mayor left on the table the hotel’s agreement. Transport for visitors, rental of telescopes, lighting of the viewpoint, and a one-time contribution to the school.

—The shadow does not pass there.

—People won’t come if we don’t give them a reason.

On the last page was the amount allocated to keep the classroom open the following year. Alicia pulled out the enrollment list. Five names. The last was her daughter’s.

—Four kilometers don’t show up on a map —the mayor said.

In that one, yes. Alicia had drawn the streets, the borders, and the rural paths with a precision that could locate a dry well or the corner of a warehouse.

She saved the file named ECLIPSE_2026_APPROVED.

In the following weeks, the boundary multiplied. It appeared on the municipal website, in the hotel brochures, on road panels, and on the map that the local television showed behind the presenter. The totality strip was colored blue. The hotel remained outside the blue band.

The astronomical institute sent an update. The southern boundary still left the school inside and the hotel outside. The program offered to import the new data.

Alicia chose Keep Local Version.

Reservations sold out in two days.

The morning of the eclipse, the mayor received her on the hotel terrace. They had set up high tables, wine glasses, spotlights, and a canvas arch bearing the motto TOTALITY GUARANTEED. On the big screen, the blue band covered the building.

—A national network has come —he said—. We go out at eight-thirty.

Alicia searched for the school in the landscape. It lay behind a small hill, out of sight. The courtyard did not meet the conditions required to be an official observation point.

Her phone vibrated.

It was a photograph of five cardboard viewers on a desk. Underneath, her daughter had written: The teacher says to stay here.

Alicia replied: Do not leave the yard.

She didn’t add anything else.

When the Moon began to cover the Sun, the presenter asked the guests to lift their glasses for the camera. The music lowered in volume. On the tables, the glasses cast shadows that grew thinner and thinner.

Alicia opened the original astronomical source on her tablet. A point indicated her position. Another pointed to the school. Between them, the real boundary.

—Can it vary? —the mayor asked.

—A few meters.

—And four kilometers?

Alicia expanded the map until the rooftops appeared.

—Not that much.

The mayor watched the terrace. The technicians lit the decorative lights and aimed the spotlights toward the tables. On the screen, a countdown descended toward zero.

—It’s already quite dark —he said.

But it wasn’t.

Temperature cooled. The guests raised their faces. The Sun remained reduced to a white line that still required filters to look at. The corona did not appear. The birds continued crossing the sky, lower, still making themselves heard.

—You can still see it —someone said by the railing.

The host reached zero and opened his arms.

—Totality!

Hotel staff began to clap. Then several tables joined in. The spotlights came on in full. On the screen, an animation showed a black disk surrounded by light.

Alicia’s phone vibrated again.

She opened the video.

In the schoolyard, the brightness plunged abruptly. The walls disappeared almost entirely. Children’s screams followed by a brief, absolute silence. Above the roof appeared the corona, white and uneven. Five figures stood motionless in the middle of the yard.

—Mom —her daughter’s voice said—, are you seeing this?

Alicia looked up.

In front of her, the hotel celebrated a night that had not yet arrived. On the big screen, the blue band still covered the terrace. On the phone, the real shadow covered the school.

—Yes —she replied.

When the light returned, several bottles were uncorked. The presenter spoke of a historic experience. The hotel director asked the mayor for the municipal certificate before the broadcast ended.

Alicia opened the form again.

Observed phenomenon:

Partial eclipse.

Total eclipse.

Totality duration: ___ seconds.

The cursor hovered between the two boxes.

The mayor wrote a number on a hotel card and left it next to the tablet.

—The predicted duration for the town —he said.

—For the school —Alicia corrected him.

—For the municipality as a whole.

On the terrace they began to gather up the abandoned glasses. A waitress cleared the untouched cups.

—The revenue is authorized when we publish the report —added the mayor.

Alicia looked at the figure. It was the duration calculated for the schoolyard coordinates.

She closed the form without selecting any option.

She opened the cartographic file and activated the astronomical source. The real boundary appeared beneath the municipal version, four kilometers of empty land separating them.

The program asked whether she wanted to replace the published version.

Alicia pressed Yes.

The update arrived first to her tablet. Then to the municipal website. Finally, the big screen flickered behind the presenter.

The hotel ended up outside the blue band.

The boundary crossed the almond trees, climbed the hill, and left the school inside.

On the screen, the shadow crossed the school again.

***

10

DISTANCES

LAURA FURONES FRAGOSO

The precise term was “metrical expansion of space,” but that night she discovered the phenomenon in non-technical terms. She had laid herself on her back at the top of a hill reached from her stone house by a neglected path. The night sky’s inky darkness had provoked a vertigo-like sensation, and she had extended a hand to rest it on her father’s warm, slightly sweaty chest, lying beside her.

It was her father who broke the silence and drew them back from their reverie. He spoke her name, Román, as he always did when he prepared to tell him something of transcendence. That something often had to do with the universe, a fascination he transmitted to his son as an intangible inheritance, with the conviction that he was bequeathing to the child the greatest possible treasure. So he dosed every fragment of information he offered. And, although he knew learning at that age comes through patient repetition, he never shared the same story twice with Román. Instead, he trusted a kind of natural selection of the lessons he was imparting: he knew that some would spark such astonishment that they would surface at the right moment.

Nearly fifty years later, Román and his father were together again and the hill once more kept vigil over a moonless night. They sheltered from the cold in the stone house, Román clearing the dishes from the table while his father lay in bed, covered by a thick quilt, closing his eyes. Before falling asleep, and with all the defiance his waning energy allowed, he spat out:

—What a waste of life yours is, my son.

That sentence, the capstone of his days for years, continued to paralyze Román. Everything always happened the same way: a tickle in the throat, the regurgitation of an acid secreted by some unknown organ, and the pressure of the jaw against his worn teeth. His father’s disappointment sent him back to childhood, filling him with shame and leaving him with nothing to digest his feelings. At some moment in that bewilderment he realized he wasn’t breathing and, with a long breath, tried to rise above the insult.

His routines repeated day after day with such measured regularity that there seemed to be no room for anything new. Only the passage of time gradually eroded everything. But something must have happened at that moment, something imperceptible or invisible or inexplicable, because instead of feeling the usual throat ache rising, Román’s mind offered him what his father had told him that long-ago night, almost as if revealing it to him anew:

“Galaxies do not move away from each other because they travel through space, but because space itself expands and drives them apart.”

When he heard that for the first time he was eight years old, and he still remembered his disbelief, as well as the shiver that ran through his small body, the sensation of something similar to wetting yourself in winter. His father had kept a balloon and a marker in his pocket. He took them out, marked two points on the uninflated balloon, and after letting Román confirm the short distance between them, began inflating it. That was all. Román did not ask for more; his father did not elaborate the idea further. They remained silent again until the cold began to bite their exposed fingers and they walked back home.

Now, almost sixty, the sentence returned to his consciousness with the solidity and strangeness of an unfamiliar object. He remembered the balloon and the points moving farther apart, condemned to separate.

Metrical expansion of space. Román entered his father’s room, collected his slippers, restrained the impulse to kiss him, and blew out the lamp on his table.