Most people who share the story of the old Monterrubio mine will tell you that Alba Díaz de Bolanos stumbled down the steps of the cathedral alone that day, drenched in blood like a calf at slaughter.

The wind carried her shrieks through all of the town, sending the people of Zacatecas fleeing inside to hide from her wrath.

They say that she walked the whole way back to Mina San Gabriel, propelled by the strength of the demon she had sold her soul to.

By the time she reached the mine, her feet were bare and shredded and as bloodied as her wedding gown.

It took her all night, and when the sun rose, she was spotted at the mouth of the mine: drenched in blood, thin enough to be a skeleton, her skin stark and pale against the dark, gore stiffening on her cheeks and against the black of her hair.

Sunlight glinted on the silver of her dress as she turned. She vanished into the mountain, never to be seen again—but often felt on nights when the moon is new and the mine is dark.

That’s the better version of the tale, if you ask me.

—

But this one has Elías facing me at the altar of the Zacatecas cathedral as a groom might his bride, his hands twisting in my hair, his mouth on mine. This one has us swept away in a burning reunion until the screech of the jar of mercury shuddering on the marble altar shocked us to attention.

Then there was a groan from the floor—whether it belonged to Bartolomé or another priest, I will never know.

For this version of the tale has Elías casting his sarape over my shoulders and spiriting me out of the cathedral. What sits on the altar and what lies before it, drenched in blood, are no longer our concern.

He leads me to a ramshackle hotel in the seedy outskirts of the city, where the single mattress is lumpy and thin, but a tub steams hot.

This one has him wipe the salt of blood and tears from my face with an ineffably gentle hand and cut me free of the confines of my dress.

It falls to the floor with a clatter of blood-encrusted silver.

My skin is left alight, bare and brilliant, my own . No longer a cage but a home.

“I promised I would touch you,” he whispers, his voice hoarse and warm against my skin. And, with a reverence that could write the holy books of a new religion, he lowers me into the bath and holds true to his oath.

—

And that is the faithful version. I understand why it’s less popular. A sorcerer who flaunted the priest’s murderous knife and walked again? A woman who sought revenge and death but found, in the end, both freedom and belonging? It’s fanciful.

But that is how it went: The sorcerer who had brought mercury to Nueva Espana left with me instead of with silver. After all, love was all San Cipriano had spun spells for, and love was what Elías had won, even as he, too, left the occult behind and fixed his sights on a new horizon.

Hand in hand, Elías and I board a galleon in Acapulco, our passage bought with bloodstained silver pried from my dress—the last we ever touch from Mina San Gabriel. We sail west, and farther west still, toward the final resting place of the sun.

There, this legend ends.

There, another begins.