The first morning I worked alone after Eulogio helped repair the collapsed section, I stood beside the kitchen opening longer than I wanted to admit.
The lantern was ready.
The shovel was clean.
The bell rope lay where I could reach it.
Everything had been checked.
Still, I hesitated.
I had told Eulogio that I could continue carefully.
I had promised myself I would never again let impatience decide how far I dug.
But promises made in daylight were easier than crawling into the dark.
I looked at the floor.
The opening was no longer something strange in my kitchen.
I had lived around it for weeks.
I knew which stone to avoid when carrying a bucket.
I knew where to set my feet when climbing out.
I knew the smell of damp earth rising from below.
But I also knew what it felt like when that earth fell.
That knowledge had become part of me.
I picked up the lantern.
Then I lowered myself into the passage.
My knees touched the packed floor.
I waited.
Nothing moved.
I crawled past the first support.
Then another.
The kitchen light faded behind me.
I followed the route I had made, including the awkward turn around the great stone that had delayed me for nine days.
At the repaired section, I stopped.
The oak beams stood firmly against the soil.
Eulogio and I had fitted them with care.
I touched one.
It did not shift.
I checked the roof.
There was no loose earth falling from it.
The passage was safe as far as I could determine.
Still, I remembered the sound of that crack.
I could hear it whenever I closed my eyes.
I stayed there until my breathing settled.
Then I moved forward.
At the working end of the tunnel, I placed the lantern where I could see the earth clearly.
I tested the ground with my shovel.
I examined the roof.
I made sure the next wooden frame was ready.
Only then did I begin digging.
The first bucket took longer than usual.
I stopped several times.
I listened.
I checked the roof again.
By the time I filled it, my shoulders were already aching.
But I felt something I had missed.
I was working again.
Not pretending.
Not sitting in the kitchen imagining the passage.
Actually moving earth.
I carried the bucket back and lifted it through the opening.
The pulley creaked.
Soil rose into the kitchen.
I emptied it outside.
Then I returned.
A second bucket.
A third.
Each one was small.
Each one mattered.
When Eulogio arrived later, he found me sorting timber.
He looked at the fresh earth behind the house.
Then he looked at me.
"You've been working."
I nodded.
"Carefully?"
"More carefully than before."
He did not congratulate me.
He asked to examine the new section.
That was better.
We went underground together.
He checked the support I had fitted.
He tested the contact between the wood and the soil.
Then he looked at the place where I had stopped.
"Why there?"
"The ground changed."
He brought the lantern closer.
The soil was slightly looser near one side.
He examined it.
"You noticed."
"I nearly kept going."
"But you didn't."
I looked at him.
He nodded once.
"That's the part that matters."
I thought about those words for the rest of the day.
I had been measuring myself by the distance I covered.
Eulogio was measuring something else.
Whether I could recognize danger.
Whether I could stop.
Whether I could make a sound decision when I was tired.
My father had valued those things, too.
I had simply been too young to understand why.
Outside, autumn was becoming colder.
The morning air hurt my fingers when I opened the door.
The grass near the fence was sometimes white with frost.
I could feel winter approaching even when the sky was clear.
Every evening, I looked toward the mountain.
I studied the clouds.
I watched how long the light remained on the upper slopes.
The villagers had begun gathering supplies.
Smoke rose from their chimneys earlier in the day.
People carried wood into sheds.
Doors closed sooner after sunset.
Those ordinary preparations troubled me.
They reminded me how little time I had.
But I no longer allowed myself to hurry simply because I was afraid.
When I felt that temptation, I looked at the supports.
I remembered the collapse.
Then I worked at the pace the ground permitted.
One afternoon, while carrying earth behind the house, I noticed children watching from below the fence.
They were making the same digging gestures I had seen before.
One of them called me a mole.
The others laughed.
I stopped.
For a moment, I wanted to shout.
I wanted to ask whether they thought it amusing that I had nearly died.
But they knew nothing about the collapse.
They knew only what adults had told them.
I lifted the empty bucket and went inside.
The laughter followed me for a few moments.
Then it faded.
I had begun to understand something about the village.
People could become comfortable with another person's suffering when they believed it was deserved.
They thought I was foolish.
That made every difficulty I faced seem like proof.
If I struggled, I had been warned.
If I was hungry, I should have sold the land.
If I was injured, I had brought it on myself.
There was no room in that story for the possibility that I might succeed.
I could not make them see anything differently.
Not with explanations.
Not with anger.
Only the finished tunnel might change their minds.
And even then, I was not certain.
That evening, Eulogio helped me examine the route.
We used my measurements to estimate the remaining distance.
The well was still ahead.
Not impossibly far.
But far enough that every delay mattered.
I asked whether he believed we could reach it before the snow.
He looked at the marks.
Then he looked toward the kitchen window.
"I don't know."
I appreciated that answer.
Everyone else had seemed certain.
Certain I would fail.
Certain I would sell.
Certain I would never finish.
Eulogio did not pretend to know what the earth would allow.
"We can keep working safely," he said.
"That's what we can do."
I nodded.
I wanted more reassurance.
But I knew he was telling me the truth.
The next days passed through repeated work.
I cut supports.
I fitted beams.
I dug.
I carried soil.
I checked the bell rope.
I crawled back and forth through the passage until my clothes were permanently marked by earth.
Sometimes Eulogio remained in the kitchen while I worked underground.
He would ask for a signal.
I pulled once.
The bell sounded above.
I imagined him listening.
Then I returned to digging.
That small exchange changed how I felt about the darkness.
I still respected it.
I still knew how quickly a tunnel could become dangerous.
But I no longer felt completely forgotten beneath the ground.
There was someone who knew where I was.
Someone who would listen if I needed help.
I had spent so long thinking independence meant doing everything alone.
Now I wondered whether that belief had been another kind of foolishness.
My father had worked alone often.
But he had never pretended that asking for assistance was shameful.
He had accepted help carrying timber.
He had consulted people who knew the land.
He had listened when someone noticed something he had missed.
I remembered those moments differently now.
At nineteen, I had confused being capable with never needing anyone.
I was beginning to understand the difference.
One evening, Eulogio stayed until the daylight began fading.
We had spent hours strengthening a section where the soil changed texture.
I was frustrated by how little new distance we had gained.
He noticed.
"You think we lost the day."
I looked at the tunnel.
"We barely moved."
He touched the support nearest him.
"Will it stand?"
"I believe so."
"Then we didn't lose the day."
I wanted to argue.
Winter was coming.
The well was still ahead.
But I knew he was right.
A tunnel that reached the water and collapsed afterward would not save me.
It would only become another danger.
We returned to the kitchen.
I washed my hands.
Eulogio checked the rope and bell.
Then he left with the promise to return the next morning.
I stood at the window after he was gone.
The well was visible in the fading light.
I thought about my father walking home through the snow.
I had imagined that journey so many times.
Sometimes I pictured him turning toward the wrong part of the fence.
Sometimes I imagined him calling for me.
Sometimes I wondered whether he had seen the house for one final moment before falling.
I would never know.
That uncertainty hurt.
But something else had begun to change.
For months, the memory had been a reason to fear those forty paces.
Now it was becoming a reason to understand them.
The danger had not been the well itself.
The water had been there.
The danger was the exposed distance between the water and the house.
I was not trying to prove that I could defeat winter.
I was trying to remove one unnecessary risk from our lives.
That was a smaller ambition than the villagers imagined.
And a more important one.
The following morning, I found another patch of stubborn ground.
The shovel would not enter easily.
I stopped and examined it.
There were stones embedded in the soil.
I tested around them with the iron bar.
Then I removed them individually.
It took much longer than digging through soft earth.
But the roof remained firm.
I fitted the support.
Then I advanced.
By midday, I had made only a short stretch of progress.
I climbed into the kitchen and ate bread with a little of the food Eulogio had brought.
I rested before going back underground.
That was new for me.
Earlier, I would have eaten standing beside the opening and returned immediately.
Now I allowed my body time to recover.
I had learned that exhaustion could make an ordinary task dangerous.
My father's death had taught me what the mountain could do.
The collapse had taught me what my own impatience could do.
I did not want another lesson like either of those.
Later that afternoon, Jacinta appeared near the fence.
I saw her while carrying an empty bucket outside.
She looked at the pile of earth.
Then at me.
"Are you still digging?"
"Yes."
"Did you get closer?"
"A little."
She smiled.
"I knew you would."
I felt something tighten in my throat.
She was seven.
She had never been inside the tunnel.
She did not understand all the dangers.
But she had offered me belief before I could offer it to myself.
I thanked her.
She looked toward the kitchen.
"Will you really be able to get water without going outside?"
"That's what I'm trying to do."
She considered that.
"Then you'll be warm when it snows."
I looked at the house.
"Warmer than I would be outside."
She seemed satisfied.
Then she ran back down the path.
I watched her go.
I thought about how easily she had understood the reason for my work.
No question about whether I was behaving like a proper young woman.
No lecture about selling the property.
No amusement at the idea of crawling underground.
She had simply understood that carrying water through a blizzard was dangerous.
And that I was trying to make it safer.
The next time I entered the tunnel, I carried that conversation with me.
I did not work faster.
I did not ignore the roof.
I did not take unnecessary risks.
But I felt steadier.
The passage had become longer.
The repaired section held.
The ventilation kept the lantern burning properly.
The bell rope remained within reach.
Each small improvement made the work more dependable.
I still had difficult days.
Sometimes I woke with aching knees and dreaded climbing underground.
Sometimes I looked at the remaining distance and wondered whether I had attempted too much.
Sometimes I imagined Don Baltazar returning with his bag of coins.
But those thoughts no longer stopped me.
I had learned to let fear speak without allowing it to make every decision.
Near the end of one afternoon, I reached a section where the earth felt cooler beneath my fingers.
I stopped.
The difference was slight.
I examined the soil.
It was still firm enough to work.
There was no sudden opening.
No sound of water.
Nothing that proved I was close.
But I remembered something my father used to notice when he dug wells.
The ground sometimes changed before the water itself appeared.
I held a small handful of soil.
I rubbed it between my fingers.
Then I set it aside.
I would not allow hope to make me careless.
I fitted another support before moving forward.
When I returned to the kitchen, I marked the day's progress.
Then I looked toward the well.
I did not know exactly how much work remained.
But the tunnel was no longer just an idea beneath my floor.
It was a passage I had measured, supported, repaired, and extended with my own hands.
I had nearly lost my life inside it.
I had learned to return carefully.
And I had stopped trying to prove that I needed nobody.
The next morning, I would go back underground.
Not because I was certain of success.
Because I understood the work in front of me.
And because I was finally learning how to do it without sacrificing the safety I hoped to gain.
