The Legend of El Segador

“Just one more! Please!” they begged. “It’s not that late, and we’re not tired!”

I looked at their expectant, adolescent faces illuminated by the light of the campfire. The last rays of the sun had finally disappeared behind the granite sentinels standing to the West of us. The long shadows of pines and birches retreating, too, from the glow of the fire. “Okay, just one more,” I relented.

“Make it a scary one!” One of the older girls implored.

Nodding thoughtfully, I replied, “It’s not exactly a scary one, but it’s not exactly comforting either. I’m not sure what you’ll think about it.” With that, I had them hooked. A wry smile crept across my lips as I leaned forward, basking the radiant glow of the flames. “This,” I started regally, “is The Legend of El Segador.”

“Ooohhh,” they tittered with excitement. Two of the younger teens giggling as they tried to imitate my theatrical Spanish pronounciation. As they settled in, I readied to weave my yarn.

“Legend has it that not long ago in a pasture not all that far from here, lived a terrible, menacing Bull who could not be tamed. The people who knew him regarded him fearfully, naming him El Segador—the reaper. He gored, butted, trampled, bit, and kicked anyone who dared set eyes upon him.”

“That’s a stupid legend. People could just avoid his pasture. Boom! problem solved. Next story!” laughter followed the gloating boy’s obvious solution. He bumped his fists against those of his nearest companions.

“Ah, but it wasn’t so simple,” I said, luring them back to my narrative. You see he roamed wild, feral you might say, fenced in only by the mountains to the South and West and by river to the North and East. Along the East shore of the fearsomely clamorous river sat the village of Rioville. The people of the village were farmers and crops were plentiful. This was a blessing, as they were cut off from the world. The singular bridge that once spanned the river had been washed out by flood waters during the previous spring, bringing with it El Segador, who had climbed out of the river snorting and stamping with ferocity with each limb he pulled from the thunderous rapids.

"In retrospect, the people should have recognized the awesome might that any living thing would need to possess to survive the tumult from which he emerged. They had not then appreciated El Segador for what he was. From a distance, he was only a spectacle, but it didn’t take long for the villagers to realize the misfortune that had befallen them. This wrathful beast unleashed its seemingly bottomless well of fury upon the people of Rioville.

“Wherever people moved about the town, El Segador would watch them, his eyes cold and black. They would say that you could feel his malicious glare upon you, which would send shivers of fear and anxiety cascading through your body. He was fearsome; indeed, standing broadside as he did, one could see the stout musculature of the creature ripple and tense with each flexing step. Upon his head grew two fearsome horns, jutting outward, then curling inward, before veering to a point, as if a scope to aim these mighty sabers. The black hair between grew in unseemly tufts upon his head made him look as though he wore a crown. And as king, he ruled over the village with a cruel, if not indiscriminate ardor.”

“Why didn’t they just leave?” One of the children asked.

“Oh, some would if they could have. Or worked to contain his ferocity away from the village. But lumber was in short supply, the nearby forests having been torched by wildfire in recent years. They had nothing with which to rebuild the bridge that had been swept away in the torrents of the previous spring. Without lumber with which to build, neither bridge nor fence could be constructed. El Segador, for his part, was free to reign over them with impunity.

“I said a moment ago that his attacks were not indiscriminate. Those who resisted the temptation to look at the El Segador were graciously spared. If, however, he was to see the whites of your eyes, he would charge with surprising speed and stealth for so substantial a beast. Goring, trampling, and bludgeoning, there was little the villagers could do in the face of such a fearsome assault. Some lucky people survived these brutal attacks, but many did not. With such fierce and dreadful consequences, the village council ordered the people to stay indoors in all but the direst of circumstances. As they did the attacks waned. It was a lonely and boring existence, perhaps especially for the little ones. The toll of this isolation was steep enough that any thoughtful person could recognize that this was an untenable solution. But what was the alternative?

“Some called for a return to normalcy in the hopes that the people would learn to live with the bull, and the bull with them. Others were not ready to venture out. A few powerful voices even claimed that the bull was nothing more than an anxious figment of people’s imaginations. Again, the council met, having consulted with the villagers who had handled bulls in the past—though none quite like this one—and devised a simple plan that would be easy for all but perhaps the youngest among them to carry out. All people would have to do was to wear sunglasses that could shield their eyes from El Segador. It was well established by then that he would not charge if he could not see the whites of your eyes.”

“Boom, problem solved!” said the gloating teen once more.

“You might think so,” I intoned, raising my finger. But the story is not yet over. “The glasses worked, they worked very well actually. In fact, the bull even seemed contented for a time. There were few attacks of any kind. The villagers also discovered that the youngest of children, for whom keeping the glasses on was difficult were often ignored by the bull entirely, despite standing with eyes agog at his awesome visage. Those children that the bull turned his ire toward often escaped with only a scare. It was a mystery, but one for which the villagers were grateful.

“The bull was not so merciful with older villagers. And they were not so lucky. Bafflingly, some villagers refused to wear them outright, affronted by the thought that the council would be so oppressive as to dictate what they wore on their heads. Others worried that the glasses might damage their eyesight despite any evidence to suggest this was so. Instead, they refrained from shielding their eyes, hoping they might hide behind those that did. Some went so far as to taunt the bull out of spite for the council’s pronouncement; perhaps they believed themselves to be of robust enough stock to withstand the mighty beasts, as they had faced down other bulls in the past.

"Many were needlessly killed for their foolishness, learning firsthand—albeit too late—that El Segador was no ordinary bull. To be sure, not everyone who met with the bull died. Many more were injured, some temporarily though others permanently, becoming a burden on the village. Worse still, those who bared their eyed with such cavalier endangered those around them who donned their glasses faithfully. El Segador struck with such force, that it was often impossible to avoid being an unintended victim of these blows, their only offense being to associate with so careless another.

“El Segador’s greatest triumph, if it can be called that, was that he began to tear at the moral fabric of the village itself. Distrust and anger grew, smouldering at first, but growing as time passed. Divisions, once small and forgettable, became historic grievances. The council, themselves torn asunder by their disagreements about whether and what sort of threat El Segador posed to the village, did little but argue and grandstand before their chosen constituents. In the vacuum of their inability to act, the bull began to strike with vigor once more. Even children began to be hurt in greater numbers.

“The people divided, ceased to speak across differences, even ones having nothing to do with the bull. They were, for the first time, strangers to each other. And like many stories about strangers who do not trust or understand each other, tribal identities formed between the glassed and anti-glassers, the latter being increasingly cast out and ordered to stay away from the glassed, who were in the majority. This only intensified the angry and sometimes violent outbursts of anti-glassers. No longer was El Segador the only, or even the greatest threat to the people of Rioville.

“Then, one day, quite unexpectedly,” I paused for dramatic effect, “El Segador was no more.”

“Did the he die? The bull I mean.” asked the youngest of the group.

“Nobody knows for sure. People just slowly stopped being hurt, at least by the beast. The people could no longer find El Segador in the pasture, though they sought him out with furtive glances. As the glassers’ cautious skepticism began to wane, so, too, did their use of the glasses, which they left behind on mantles and shelves and in drawers, always available just in case he lurked somewhere out there still. Just as slowly, life returned to normal. Or rather, something that approximated normal. The illusion that they were one village had been shattered, and that’s not something that can be put back together in the same way.”

The children, whose rapt attention I had held through the entirety of the tale of El Segador, now stared dolefully into the dwindling flames, held as if entranced by the dancing tendrils of fire. A few of them glanced around to see if others might speak. No one did; the mournful silence of children speaking to me loudest of all.