somewhere in the darkness , a tenfin was calling mournfully , a `` bird '' that was really a flying lizard , and sounded uncannily like a woman sobbing in misery and despair , something that had led the superstitious mexican peasants who made up a large percentage of the colony 's population to say that la llorona , the crying woman , had crossed the stars with them from mexico and now wandered the night of this new planet , crying not only for all the children who 'd been lost and left behind on earth , but for all the ones who would die on this hard new world .