LIMOUX—TWO SUMMERS AGO
As he walked from the hotel to the starting corral, Gabriel Sarabias retreated into the mental space where only the race existed. He had ridden the roads and trails of the route between Limoux and Arques several times in the past weeks, until his body responded to each curve, incline, and descent with a memory born of intense training.
Placing in the top tier of the Tour d’Arques would guarantee him a spot in September’s Trans-Pyrénées—the most prestigious multistage race in the competitive mountain biking circuit. He’d won the Trans-P three years in a row in the mid-2000s; now he was an elder statesman in the sport. Simply being among the hundred riders in the race had secured his sponsorships until he declared his retirement. But none of that mattered now. He rehearsed each mile in his mind.
At the corral, race volunteers yawned and smoked and sipped from water bottles; some paced importantly in front of the early bystanders who were filling the sidewalks on either side of the starting line. Molten and pulsing, the Languedoc sun rose in a deep blue sky. It would be hot and dry on the trail, the altitude offering no relief, but Gabriel thought nothing of the breathless air. He’d trained all spring and early summer in the tinder-dry Sierras and southern Cascades—the conditions were second nature. He was prepared; his heart was calm, his mind clear.
His manager caught up with him as the corral began to fill with other riders. Together, he and Colin conducted the final gear checks in a silence punctuated by their athlete-and-trainer shorthand—one-word questions answered by nods or numbers. They would be in radio contact during the race, but Colin wouldn’t see him until the finish line.
The route would take the riders along shepherds’ trails paralleling the D118, dipping through villages on single-track dirt roads and deeper into the hills as they dropped southeast toward Arques. A few miles before the ruins of Château d’Arques, the packed-earth trail crossed the D613 and briefly reentered the forest before concluding in the village. Twenty-five miles of hard mountain road under the pounding summer sun.
In the moments before the starting horn blasted, a gasp rippled through the crowd of onlookers. Even Gabriel, so intent on the challenge before him, followed the hands raised to the sky. He peered into the cobalt, seeing nothing at first. Then, emerging from the top of the densely packed oak and gorse, two great birds swooped and screeched. They passed so closely overhead that he could see the black-and-white pinstripes of a peregrine falcon’s underbelly and a flash of white and brown-gold of his pursuer—another bird of prey he couldn’t identify. Gabriel smiled and tightened the strap of his helmet. The fighting birds seemed a good omen.
• • •
Gabriel let the pack pull away early, glad to be clear of the whirling legs and extended elbows of riders fighting for space. There would be time to regain ground as the sun and altitude climbed. He passed rider after rider as the race left the highway and began ascending into the hills. A few south-facing slopes were terraced into neat rows of vines. The trails were pockmarked by dislodged stones and eroded by runoff from the streams that erupted from underground caverns. He anticipated the places where he could surge, others where he knew to hold back, picking carefully from the map ingrained in his mind.
Fifteen miles in, surrounded by forest, Gabriel opened up. He ground past the final riders, barely registering the sheer drop of the cliff face to his left as he squeezed by, every sense in tune and in control. The forest swallowed the trail again, and he was thrown into shadows. Movement ahead alerted him to a cyclist stopped off to the side in a small patch of sunlight. Blood ran from a gash in the rider’s knee.
“Ça va?” Gabriel shouted without slowing his approach. He recognized Iban Arroyo from Spain, who waved him on and continued changing a tire, likely blown by landing hard on the spike of a stone’s edge.
“La course c’est à toi, Gabe. Vas-y!” Iban shouted his encouragement as Gabriel flew by.
He was in the lead. Colin’s contact was infrequent, but he tracked Gabriel’s progress via their two-way radio. When he did make contact, Colin spoke quietly as Gabriel passed rider after rider, holding him back until it was time to tap into those calibrated reserves. The final two miles of the trail before it met the road leading into Arques descended steeply, from granite hills studded with cedar and pine into meadows crowded with vibrant wildflowers and ecstatic bees.
He sensed the creature before he saw or heard it. His neck and cheek tingled as the falcon’s wings sliced the air next to him. An eagle, screeching in fury, tore out from behind, and both raptors ascended like rockets. Gabriel snapped his attention away from the great birds and scanned for the slim break in the wall where the trail connected on the other side of the road. The gap was nowhere to be seen. The trail rounded an unfamiliar bend, and in that instant, Gabriel realized he’d ridden off course.
Cursing at being forced to slow, cursing Colin for not alerting him to his error, cursing the birds for distracting his attention, Gabriel coasted to the edge of the cliff. The black ribbon of tarmac came into view, and in the distance, he could see a break in the rock wall lining the road. The road was empty; it was not where he was supposed to emerge, but he estimated he was less than half a mile south of the race route. He’d take a chance that his error wouldn’t disqualify him rather than give up his solid lead to find the correct course. He tried to reach Colin, but the radio was dead. In his adrenaline-fueled anger, he ripped out his earpiece and tore off the radio clipped to his jersey. He tossed the unit over the ledge and retook the trail.
Gabriel nailed his gaze to the yards just beyond his front wheel as he leaned into a series of hairpin turns and continued whipping down the mountainside. His eyes locked on the gap, and he prepared to launch over a drainage ditch, onto the road, and across to the trail.
A scream shot out of the hill above him just as his tires went airborne over the ditch. A second shriek followed in the echo of the first. His tires found the road, but the direction of his wheels was out of sync with his body. His torso pulled away from the turn. The bike worked against him, tearing away from the grip of his muscles; his cycling cleats snapped out of their pedal locks. Weightless, his mind flew free. Man separated from machine.
In the moments before the pavement claimed his body, the scene unfolded before Gabriel in stuttered slow motion. He saw streaks of black, russet, and gold as two birds descended with the force of bullets. They fell as one, locked in battle, indistinguishable and doomed. In the heartbeat between light and dark, his wife’s face rose, her eyes the dark green of the Mediterranean in winter, full of sorrow and love. He whispered her name: “Lia.”
The screech of car tires blended with the screaming of birds. Gleaming black steel collided with featherlight aluminum. The Mercedes tossed the bike high into the air. It flew across the road and landed, twisted and broken, against the base of a cedar tree. For a moment, nothing moved but a single spinning wheel.
The birds had disappeared into the hills beyond. The memory of their screams was all the driver could hear beyond the pounding of his own heart. He left the engine running but stepped out of the car, his legs jerking with adrenaline.
Inches from the car’s front tires lay a cyclist on his back, his eyes closed, his face turned away. With difficulty, the driver sank onto his thick haunches. He could see no blood. He felt for a pulse.
The front grille of his Mercedes was unmarred, but the driver failed to notice a shattered headlight. He crossed himself and braced a hand on the fender to hoist up his short, stout body. His bulk cast a shadow over Gabriel.
He drove the short distance back to Arques, where he stopped at a pay phone and made a brief call. As he circled through a roundabout on the other side of town, he heard the wail of approaching sirens. He pulled in close to the car in front, and both drivers waited as a police car, followed by an ambulance, flew past.
He drove onward without a plan. When it was time to stop for fuel, he saw the damage to the headlight. He took the small highways south, circling through the Aude Valley, until he arrived well after dark just outside Limoux.
The porch light clicked on as he coasted into the drive of his old mas, three miles outside town. He stopped in front of the wooden double doors of a shed behind the house. He labored to open the doors, rusty on their hinges, but at last, he pulled them wide enough to allow the car to pass through.
The next morning, he walked into Limoux and boarded a regional bus for Narbonne. No one at the cathedral knew he owned a Mercedes—he stored it in the garage behind his house outside Limoux and never drove it in the city. His one concession to worldly vanity gathered dust and spiderwebs, locked in a stone shed, its broken light a scar that would not fade with time.
LANGUEDOC—1209
Paloma returned one last time to her home in Lagrasse. There, she buried her husband in his vineyards, barren and shaking in the icy Cers wind—that winter assault from the faraway ocean. She took her children to Catalunya, carrying no possession from her old life but the necklace that had slipped from Raoul’s hand when he’d died alone in a cave beyond Minerve.