my shirt, and I showed the men my breasts.
The moon lit the rounded shapes. It lit the fear on the men’s faces, the horror on Oropeza’s.
I gave them only that one second, just enough to let them wonder in the morning if they had imagined it, and then I let my shirt fall.
I reached for Léon. But it was not the men he was watching, or even me. He stood in the moon silver on the vestíbulo floor, looking out toward the hills. He lifted his face to the sky, breathing like he was taking a drink of the night itself.
And the wolves came. They came with their claws ticking against the ground and their muzzles stained with the blood of their last prey. They came with coats the same red gold as the hills they had run down from. They came with their backs streaked dark as the ink of the night sky.
I drew back from them, the wolves now crouching at the edges of Oropeza’s property. Then I caught Léon’s smile, slight but intent, telling me we had nothing to fear from them.
Léon took my hand, and we ran down the steps, the wolves filling the space behind us. They stood as guards, moving toward Oropeza’s men only when the men moved to pursue us. When the men lifted their heads to watch us run, the wolves showed their teeth. When they shouted curses at us, the wolves growled and snapped.
That was how Léon and I left them, both of us showing hearts so fierce these men considered them knives. We fled from the feigned cries of the men and women who worked for Oropeza but who loved us for defying him. We fled from the howls of men who wailed more for their pride than their bodies. We left them with the salt-sting memory of us, a brazen girl, and a boy with a heart so fearless wolves were his guardian saints.
Many stories found us after that night. Some said the French soldier known as El Lobo had called down from the hills a thousand wolves who not only scattered the men but ravaged Oropeza’s grapevines. Others said a girl known only as La Roja poisoned them all with her wicked heart, hiding the red of her hair so they would have no warning.
Some said El Lobo and La Roja were enemies, rivals, the girl capturing the French soldier just so she could have the pleasure of killing him herself. Others said La Roja stole El Lobo, only to fall in love with him the moment she first touched him.
When we hear word that every rich man who witnessed that night has died, I will tell the rest of the story. I will say what we have done since that night. What haciendas Léon has called wolves to destroy. What merciless hearts I have poisoned with the rage in my own. All that La Roja, the girl with the red hair and the red cape, and El Lobo, the boy as feared as wolves, have done.
But this is the part I will tell now. We rode off on Oropeza’s finest Andalusians, the wolves’ call at our backs. We vanished into the midnight trees faster than first light could reach us. We lived. We survived to whisper our names to each other even if we could not yet confess them to anyone else.
* * * * *
I grew up loving fairy tales. But as a Latina, I didn’t look much like the girls I saw in storybooks. Later, realizing I was queer, the loves I saw portrayed in those fairy tales felt even further away.
When I went looking to reclaim a fairy tale in a historical context, I could think of few better starting places than Leonarda Emilia. An outlaw in early 1870s Mexico, Leonarda had a short but infamous career that began when officials executed the French soldier she’d fallen in love with. Known to history as la Carambada, Leonarda wore men’s clothing, but became notorious for revealing her breasts to the powerful men she’d just robbed as she rode off.
Léon is a tribute to the many assigned-female-at-birth soldiers who have fought in wars throughout history; though in most cases history doesn’t give enough context for us to know what these soldiers might have claimed as their gender identity, Léon is imagined here as a transgender character. As this story’s interpretation of the Wolf, he, along with Emilia’s Red, are meant to embody the spirit of la Carambada. With much respect to the historical Leonarda, this story takes liberties in the spirit of reclaiming a well-loved fairy tale for the communities I’m proud to call mine.
For their thoughts, advice, and guidance, I owe much gratitude to Elliot Wake, Jayne Walters, Mackenzi Lee, Tehlor Kay Mejia, the trans boy I’m lucky to call my husband, and of course, editor Saundra Mitchell. Thank you for helping this story navigate the path between history and fairy tale.
Clara Elizabeth Byrd had been married twice by the age of sixteen and she had decided she had no taste for it.
Her first husband, Mr. John du Pont, being of Huguenot lineage with an estate on the James River, had been a kind man. Though nearly twenty years her senior, he had not laughed when Clara suggested he might make her a wedding gift of a sloop. Instead, he asked in what color he should commission the sails be dyed. Clara imagined that they’d have made good companions for one another had he not swallowed a chicken bone and died before the cake had been cut.
It was a tragic affair, resulting in Clara’s return to her family home farther down the river. The sloop came, too, in accordance with Mr. du Pont’s presumed final wishes. Clara was incandescently thankful. Never mind that she had not yet learned to sail it. She had read every novel on the subject and was certain she could manage without too much trouble.
Before she had occasion to try, her father selected a second husband for her. Mr. Frederick Earwood, as if the name weren’t bad enough, was a quiet young man with no humor about him. Upon learning of his betrothed’s sloop, he sat back in his chair, studied one corner of the ceiling so intently it seemed he’d quite forgotten there were others in the room and then said in a careful monotone, “We shall take the ship with us if only to dismantle it and use its parts for firewood this winter.”
In that moment Clara determined her second husband would be her last. She devised a plan, requesting to be wed in the Lower River Chapel on the bank of the James. From there, they would retreat to Mr. Earwood’s holdings near the Carolina border. Her sloop would be moored by the dock awaiting its miserable journey inland.
Which, of course, it would never take.
In all the tales of adventure Clara had ever heard, it was never young girls who were daring. It was always boys running off to rescue a friend or fetch much-needed medicine or stumble into good fortune. Clara knew girls would be daring if given half the chance. And she intended to take that chance, right from under the pale nose of Mr. Earwood.
And so it was that Clara Elizabeth Byrd took a second husband in order to have her first adventure.
She spent the weeks leading up to the wedding putting her scholarly knowledge to practice, sailing the sloop a little farther each day. She loved it every bit as much as she expected. The sun on her face and the wind in her hair, the horizon glinting with promise. She was meant for a life in full view of the sky.
Soon, the wedding was upon her. The vows were necessary, and so, unfortunately, was the moment
