The day Doña Alba arrived in San Lucero, the village’s ancient fountain began to spout milk instead of water. Its thick, snow-white streams flowed endlessly, pooling in basins and jars hurriedly placed beneath. Throughout the cobbled square, its peculiar, slightly sweet aroma lingered like a whispered promise. The villagers, stunned at first, came to regard this phenomenon as a miracle. After all, hadn’t Doña Alba arrived with promises of solutions for their deep-seated drought and disease?
Doña Alba wasn’t extraordinary at first glance: her weathered brown skin carried the map of a long life lived under the sun. Her hands were like toughened bark, and her eyes shimmered hazily, as if perpetually lost in another time. But her presence was commanding, an invisible thread pulling everyone toward her. When she spoke, her husky voice crept into your very bones and made you believe every syllable.
In the lively market of the town square, young Nicolás—barefoot and lanky, known alternately as clever and a troublemaker—lingered near the fountain with his friend Rosario. Both had been orphaned by the drought. They carried a tin mug passed back and forth between them, scooping fresh milk directly from the fountain, laughing at their reflections in its ripples.
“Do you think this is magic, Nicolás?” asked Rosario softly, her wide dark eyes fixed on the undulating milk.
He only smirked. “Magic, or maybe just something with a price.”
Nicolás had learned early in life to question anything that seemed too good to be true. He studied Doña Alba from a distance across the square. She was speaking to the mayor now, her lips moving deliberately but softly, their conversation too quiet to hear even as onlookers pressed close. The mayor nodded and nodded, worry lines etching deeper into his nearly translucent face.
By nightfall, the village had agreed to Doña Alba’s command: no one would consume anything except the beneficial milk from the fountain for three days. She vowed that it purged illness, united families, and delivered secret inner peace. Her words left no room for argument.
“Nicolás, drink your fill before sunrise,” Rosario teased later that night as they sat by the old sycamore tree on the town’s outskirts.
He tapped his temple. “Peace doesn’t come from milk, Rosario. It comes from knowing what people hide. And I think Doña Alba’s hiding something big.”
As the first day passed, strange things began to happen. The villagers drank deeply of the milk—fearfully at first, then greedily. Señor Gálvez, the butcher known for his bad temper, wept in public as he apologized to his estranged son. In the church, Doña Elena, who had been mute for fourteen years, stood and sang an old Latin hymn in a voice like liquid gold. Even Nicolás’s wounds—small gashes he’d scraped climbing the sycamore—sealed shut by evening as though healed by unseen hands.
But Nicolás started noticing cracks beneath perfection. The milk didn’t just soothe; it demanded something deeper. By the second day, Doña Alba began visiting one household every evening, her silhouette stark under the dim glow of oil lamps. She left with parcels bundled under her arm—keepsakes, heirlooms, even the village smith’s baby goat. It seemed she was collecting remnants of the past, severing attachments and binding people irrevocably to the power of the milk.
On the third day, Nicolás stopped drinking it altogether.
“What’s the point of resisting?” Rosario whispered that evening when he found her near the fountain. “Doña Alba’s been good to us. She’s better than the drought.”
“She’s taking more than she’s giving,” Nicolás said sharply, gesturing to their neighbors kneeling by the fountain, their faces transformed into a dull, glassy-eyed calm. “Look around you, Rosario. People aren’t themselves anymore. They’re—hollow.”
The sound of footsteps interrupted them. Doña Alba, cloaked in the faintest shimmer of moonlight, smiled faintly as she approached. Her gaze fell on Nicolás.
“Why won’t you drink, niño?” Her voice was laced with a dangerous sweetness, like honey dissolving in arsenic.
“I’d rather be thirsty than owned,” he retorted, his chest tightening under her steady glare.
For a moment, Doña Alba was silent. Then she laughed softly, almost sadly, and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Smart boy. But when the fountain runs dry tomorrow, you might wish you had taken your fill.”
And just as she said, by sunrise, the milk was gone. The fountain trickled only dust. The villagers woke confused, heavy with loss, clutching their empty jars. Strangely, however, Nicolás felt lighter than ever before.
“Maybe some miracles,” he murmured toward Rosalio, “are only meant to teach us what we truly lack.”