Juan returned, but Tali didn’t see him come from the beach; he’d taken a detour to come up from behind. He dropped down beside her on the towel, and was so out of breath that after a few minutes Tali grew alarmed.
“You do realize it’ll be a disaster if you have an attack here, right? Do you know what they could do to me? We’d have to go to Corrientes to find to a doctor. Nde tavy, you can be a real dumbass.”
Juan couldn’t answer for a while, and Tali looked at him in disapproval until he got his breath back.
“Don’t make a big deal of it,” said Juan, and he gulped 7up straight from the bottle.
“Gaspar is playing nicely with some boys.”
“I know. We have to talk.”
“We’ve needed to talk since you got here, I can tell.”
“I need your help.”
Juan sat up cross-legged, and suddenly he was no longer her friend or her lover, not even the man who made her so angry and whom she loved so much. He was the medium. Tali knew the people around them couldn’t hear what he was saying, or if they did, they would hear something different, or believe they were listening to a foreign language. She knew it when the air around them seemed to tremble and the soft hairs on her arms stood up, as if instead of the sun on her skin there was ice.
Is this necessary? You’re already in secret and there’s no one near us.
I don’t trust anyone. I don’t trust myself. Gaspar is trapped. They want him to be my heir. Either he inherited my ability to summon the Darkness or I’m going to transport my consciousness into his body when the moment comes. And then, I’ll still be trapped.
We already know all that. Why are you telling me again?
To collect my thoughts. And to ask you for something. I’m sure they killed Rosario. She had a fight with her mother and Florence. It was when I was in the hospital. Rosario asked them to leave us alone. She told them they couldn’t keep using me, that I didn’t want to summon anymore and that I would never hand over Gaspar and let them use his body.
Tali felt dizzy. What she was hearing was impossible.
My sister was crazy. Angá, how did I not stop her?
It’s inconceivable to them that I could refuse to use Gaspar’s body. I told them I would, of course. Rosario told me about the fight not long before her accident. She was furious because the Ceremonial had pushed me to the edge, but she put Gaspar in danger. They will test him to see if he’s a medium, as always, but this time the result will be positive.
Are you sure about that? You don’t think he’s just sensitive?
I’m sure. If we can keep them from realizing, make the test negative as usual, then the only option is to wait for him to come of age so I can take over his body, and I know that in the intervening years I can figure out how to get him away from them. It’s taking a long time and it’s maddening, but I will do it.
Why didn’t Rosario tell you sooner?
I spent months in and out of the hospital before they could operate on me. She didn’t dare. I don’t know.
Don’t blame her.
I do blame her. I blame her and I also forgive her.
Can you refuse to summon?
No, they’ll force me. The same way they did years ago, the time I refused because they were using prisoners as sacrifices. Sacrifices no one was asking for.
Tali looked down at her hands. She couldn’t forget about that either, or about her own complicity.
They still use the hostages.
I know, but I can’t confront them. They threatened to break the pact and take Gaspar, to raise Gaspar in the rites, train him, destroy him. They believe in what the Darkness tells them. They listen, and they obey. And they have no one else who can summon it. Mercedes is always looking for other mediums. She is the priestess of a god who ignores her, just as all clerics of any denomination are, and have always been, ignored by their gods. But her god speaks to me. For her, it was always a kind of curse to have such an untrustworthy oracle. I believe in the Darkness. How could I not, when it’s my body? When it’s my body that it enters? But to believe is not always to obey. The things the Darkness tells them cannot be interpreted on this plane. The Darkness is demented, it’s a savage god, a mad god.
What I want to know is if you could refuse. If you wanted.
Of course not, I’m a slave. I am the mouth. The Darkness can find me, it’s a lost battle. Tali, I need to ask you for something. I need you to work with Stephen to block Gaspar. I’m doing what I can but it’s not enough, not anymore, now that I’m alone. He saw a presence yesterday, and not just any presence. I suppose it will only grow now. I need you to protect him from them in Puerto Reyes, I need you to hide him, with Stephen’s help.
They’ll still want you to use his body.
We’ll have years before that happens. I have time and the ability to deceive them. The hardest part will be staying alive. I need time. Time to raise Gaspar and figure out how to get him away from the Order. I’m going to do the Ceremonial like I always have. I am the open door and it cannot close, but I have to protect Gasper. They already took Rosario, and they did it for many reasons, but above all to weaken me. “We will take your companion so she can’t help you abandon us, so she can’t help you quit and betray us.” I’ll never be able to stop.
And as he said that, Juan dropped the insulation that had allowed them to speak almost without moving their lips. Tali felt a kind of small whirlwind around her, and she saw sun, lake, and people all grow blurry with a golden halo around them, like mirages on the highway. Juan put a hand to her forehead and right away she could see better, and the headache, which had threatened to be intense, became a weak throb.
“Stop it!” she cried, pushing Juan’s hand away from her. People turned to look and she smiled, pretending they were just playing. Juan was pale. So it was true, then. Years ago, she well remembered, it had taken him almost no effort to generate the energy to speak in secret. Now he was using his last bit of strength to make her feel better, and she could not allow it. Tali admonished herself because she had never learned to invoke secrecy too, and he’d had to exert himself alone. She put her arms around him so he wouldn’t fall over. Tali didn’t want Gaspar to see them touching, but now she had no choice.
“Easy now. What do you need? Tell me what to do.”
“Lay me down,” said Juan, very softly.
Tali obeyed and placed the bag under his head as a pillow. He brought two fingers to his neck and massaged it gently. He was no longer wet with lake water: he was soaked instead with sweat and panting as though he’d just run a race. Tali looked at Gaspar, who was busy building something with the dirty sand, a structure without a clear shape. The other boys were decorating it with sticks and feathers. She used a towel to wipe Juan’s sweat away, at least from his face and chest.
“Open your eyes if you can,” she told him.
Juan looked at her and shifted his head on the bag. He still couldn’t sit up, and his pupils were dilated.
“Call Gaspar over.”
“He’ll get scared if he sees you like this.”
“Call him.”
Gaspar came running over, dirty from the water and sand: he knelt down beside his father and asked what he wanted. Nothing, said Juan, just a hug. Dummy, said Gaspar, and he wrapped his arms around Juan’s neck and lay against his shoulder a while, telling him about the castle they were building near the water. Can we read stories about castles later, can we? Before bed, said Juan. I’m going back with those guys now. They’re really bad at making sandcastles. I bet. I want some 7up. Take the bottle, share with them. Their names are Sebastián and Gonzalo. Okay, give them some plastic cups so you don’t all drink from the bottle, that’s gross.