“Everything I know I learned when I was a young girl, younger than you, before my father stole me from El Carmín. Mi mamá, who taught me, said there was a moment in time when valcos and nozariels and even the extinct yares tried to uncover other kinds of geomancia spells from metals, but the Segoleans and their church put a swift end to that. Everything we know has been passed down from parent to child, when the Penitents weren’t looking.”
“Why?” Eva couldn’t imagine how someone could gaze at the vast unknown of geomancia and decide to shut it out forever.
“I don’t know, but I like to think humans recognized the threat in geomancia. I mean, they exterminated yares out of fear. They saw valcos and nozariels as the superior species that we are and cowered at the idea of seeing our strength multiplied by a mere invocation.”
The thought brought Eva great satisfaction. She smirked.
“You’ve heard of Do?a Feleva ?guila, right?”
Eva nodded. “The valco caudilla. Her fortune came from the iridio mines.” She remembered her mother, Dulce, with the sweet smiles of her namesake painted on crimson lips, and how she used to reassure Eva with stories about Feleva. She would say, “See? She is great and admired. There is nothing wrong with her, just like there is nothing wrong with you.” Of course, Eva was sure her mom hadn’t known what she was talking about, because everyone in Galeno treated her differently than her older sister, Pura, and her cousins. Fear of her lived in their eyes.
“Iridio is a conduit like the others. You can use it for spells that are stronger and more abstract. Iridio is the rarest because no one’s found it outside of Feleva ?guila’s mines.”
Eva squinted. “Just because they haven’t found more doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
Do?a Rosa chuckled. “That’s exactly what it means, child. The iridio the ?guilas mine is a fallen star that landed when Rahmagut was alive.”
Eva straightened out, the back of her neck prickling.
“It came from the sky. It doesn’t exist in this world,” Do?a Rosa added.
“But it’s a mine. It’s deep in the earth.”
Do?a Rosa laughed at Eva’s wide-eyed look. “It’s buried in the earth because it landed thousands and millions of years ago. Do you really think Rahmagut was prancing about with your Serrano ancestors, putting up with nuns and bishops shoving their Penitent ideology down his throat? He is older than this city—older than the Segoleans—arguably older than this land. He found the star, harnessed its power, and used it to ascend.” She gestured at the icon behind her. “I keep his image in my house because I know he was real, and I have to respect that he was the discoverer of this magic.”
Her grandmother’s admonishing warning jumped into Eva’s thoughts, calling Rahmagut a demon.
Do?a Rosa no doubt knew she had Eva’s attention, so she leaned forward and said, “According to the legend of Rahmagut, if you gain his favor, he’s capable of giving you the world, if you ask for it.”
“How do you gain his favor?” Eva said softly.
“I don’t know exactly how, other than it requires an offering of great malice… but I do know it’s happened before.”
Despite the danger in the answer, it was reassuring. It meant Eva couldn’t simply accidentally commune with him, like Do?a Antonia bemoaned time and time again. It had to be deliberate.
“When? How?”
“Mi mamá told me.” Do?a Rosa pointed at the icon. “It used to belong to her. She told me that years before I was born, the icon pulsed with magic on the night a star ripped through the sky. How else would you explain that?” Do?a Rosa nodded to herself. “If that was him giving his favor, then it means it’s only a matter of time before he returns.”
Silence engulfed them as Eva held Do?a Rosa’s dark gaze. Her devotion radiated from her eyes—her belief in Rahmagut.
“So you know how to use iridio?” Eva asked.
Do?a Rosa shrugged with a shameless tilt of her head. “Why should I limit myself to the three geomancias?
“Will you teach me?”
She barked a laugh. “I cannot teach it because we don’t have iridio. There’s a reason why the ?guilas are so filthy rich. Iridio is finite, and therefore, it is expensive.”
Eva beamed with the new information as she climbed into the carriage behind Néstor. Her tongue was still sweet from the mistela, of which she’d had several more servings. Do?a Rosa claimed it opened up the mind, and at this moment, Eva wanted to feel magic.
Her uncle was silent, until he said, “Your face says everything.”
“What?” Her voice creaked guiltily.
“You look much too satisfied for your own good. They’re going to suspect you, at home,” he said, pointing at her.
Eva tugged on his index and said with emphasis, “I’m not a fool. I’m not saying a thing about anything.”
“If mi mamá finds out what you’re up to, she’ll never let me come back to the Contadors’。” He crossed his arms and turned to the carriage window, where raindrops mercilessly drilled down on the glass.
“And she’ll never let me go back if she finds out what you’re up to,” she pointed out in return.
Eva followed his gaze to the scenery, watching as the carriage turned from the cobbled roads of Galeno to the bumpy dirt road leading to their family’s land. The fields of the Llanos were bare and flat, going on forever until heat mirages blurred out the horizon. Large rain trees stood like lone sentinels, their wide canopies providing the cattle with a reprieve from the downpour. Herds of cows dotted the fields of every landowner in Galeno. They made up the commerce and livelihood of the people in the region.
“So… what did you and Don Jerónimo do?” She had never asked before, which made her a bad friend. “Did you talk about anything?”
He turned to her. Sometimes Néstor looked at Eva in a way that reminded her of her mom, resurfacing the ache of loss. It was unavoidable—Néstor was Dulce’s youngest brother. They had the same hair, the same eyes, even the same height. Usually Eva ignored the similarities—it was a necessity all the Serranos had to adopt, to move on in a home that could never be whole again. Until Néstor’s brown-red eyes softened. Until he offered her a caress or an embrace, or when he uttered words a little too mature and sensible for his nature. And they caused the memories to flood back and punch Eva across the face.
“Jerónimo and I are talking about leaving Galeno together.”
A piece of her heart traveled down to her belly. “Why?” she said.
“Mamá keeps insisting I marry, if I ever want to claim my inheritance. She says it’s the only way I’ll give her grandchildren. I think I’m going to turn it down. And Jerónimo will, too, even though you know his family’s a lot stingier about who gets what. We were talking about starting over on our own, somewhere far from here, like proper partners.”
Eva reached forward to squeeze his hands. “You’re a Serrano! You don’t start over. You take all the escudos under your name, you move to your own hacienda, and you come visit me every once in a while. You two can still be together.”