“Asleep, finally.” Pura scooped herself servings of supper and attacked the food without ceremony. “What kind of attention is she bringing to the family?”
Décima didn’t miss the cue to spill the chisme about Do?a Rosa.
“You’re doing what?” Pura said.
Eva lied: “I’ve been having these weird thoughts lately, and I wanted to see if she could give me a remedy.”
When Pura’s eyes doubled in alarm, she looked a lot like Do?a Antonia. “What weird thoughts?”
“About… Don Alberto,” Eva whispered as she wrung her hands beneath the table. Pura watched her patiently, waiting for Eva to formulate the words, her concern almost palpable. Eva’s sister cared for her. Pura believed her above anyone else, even when Eva lied. For this, Eva felt filthy. “About marrying him. I just wish everyone weren’t so obsessed with finding me a match.”
Pura frowned. “But having a match is your duty.”
The back of Eva’s neck grew hot. She loathed this topic, of the children she birthed giving her life value.
Pura shot her husband a glance. “I fulfilled this duty, and I’m bringing love and honor to our family. You marry so you can have cute little babies and more love in your life.” She put a deep emphasis on the word love, as if insinuating it was something Eva lacked.
“You know, maybe you’re right. I clearly don’t have enough love in my life, if my own family only sees me as some birth-giver and is offering me up to a man twice my age just to get rid of me.”
Décima tittered. “You’d be more desirable if you stopped associating yourself with that curandera. Is it true that she conspires with Rahmagut?”
“Décima!” Pura hissed. They were all afraid of his name.
Décima grimaced. “I’m not the one who’s summoning him to our house.”
“That is not what I’m doing!” Eva nearly cried out, then lowered herself on her seat when Do?a Antonia shot her a brief questioning look. Eva glared at her empty plate while Pura told her one thing through her right ear and, through the left, Décima told her another.
Eva replied in nods or grunts of agreement, even if on the inside, she burned with disagreement. For all her good intentions, nothing Pura said was reassuring. Eva didn’t want to be handed off to Don Alberto. She knew his only interest stemmed from the novelty of what she was: the last of a dying bloodline.
The world thundered outside when Do?a Antonia finally dismissed the family. Eva and Pura retreated arm in arm to the east wing of the hacienda. Their bedchambers were next to each other, connected to the central courtyard. The rain cooled off the evening, the air wafting in the scent of mud and manure.
Eva left her door to the courtyard open before getting in bed, her mind swirling with too many conflicting ideas. She thought about the icon sitting in the corner of Do?a Rosa’s house. Do?a Rosa wasn’t the malevolent witch everyone accused her of being. She healed, and she listened, and most importantly, she didn’t judge Eva for being born the way she was.
Eva could never be devout or motherly. The humans lived with ease in a world they’d built for themselves. Perhaps Do?a Rosa was correct, seeking solace in a god who didn’t bother with prejudice.
Eva tossed and turned in her bed, until the sounds of the rain lulled her into another fitful dream. In this one, she was a snake. Like the great tigra mariposa feared by the ranchers working her grandfather’s cattle. She was discolored, because color could only be obtained with magic, and she was cold, curling over the branches of the araguaney in the courtyard as raindrops pattered on her scaly back. She was desperate for warmth and for color, so she slithered down the tree and into the first room with the courtyard door open. The room was warmer than the rain, but still her chill was unbearable. She was a creature of darkness, unable to exist without heat. Eva coiled on the tiled floor, in a corner, as a man rose from a bed made for two. He stumbled. Eva could smell the fermentation of alcohol wafting from his lips. He had the warmth she sought, but the anise smell was repulsive. So she waited until he left the room before slithering to the bed.
Eva found herself beneath the covers. She met a small body first—a babe. It smelled of milk and, faintly, of blood. That scent of milk seduced her. She moved by instinct as she drew closer to the sleeping woman swaddling the baby. She was warmest, with her smell of milk driving Eva over the edge. Eva’s mouth closed around the woman’s breast, biting, milk and blood squirting into her mouth, heat and color drawn at the same time.
The woman screamed.
Eva awoke suddenly. Around her, the room burst with desperate yells. She found herself facing the thundering courtyard.
“Get it out of here!” Pura screamed behind her.
Eva whirled around, realizing she wasn’t in her room but standing under the doorway connecting Pura’s bedroom to the courtyard.
Pura’s newborn wailed at being roused, and his mother screamed, too, taken by a different kind of terror. Her sister flung the covers off, discovering a sickly white snake hanging from her right breast. It clung to her with its ravenous fangs.
Eva froze as the memory of the dream rammed into her mind. She stared in horror, Pura’s screams chilling her very heart.
One by one the rooms along the courtyard came alive with candlelight. Horrified aunts and cousins rushed into Pura’s room, while Eva only watched with her mouth hanging open.
Décima arrived after Néstor. She turned to Eva as Néstor beat the snake with a broom. Her brown-red eyes went round and wild, and she yelled with a pointed hand, “You witch!”
Eva’s hand shot out to grasp her cousin’s finger. But it was too late. The Serranos watched her.
“Eva did it!” Décima repeated, “She’s bringing demons into the house!”
Do?a Antonia burst into the room a second later, her ivory sleeping robes sweeping the floor. She took in the scene: her granddaughter, attacked by an animal reserved only for nightmares, and her other granddaughter standing at the foot of the bed with guilt written all over her face. The matriarch collapsed to her knees and wailed to the Virgin.
Pura looked up once the pale tigra mariposa had been beaten into unlatching. Tears streamed down her face, the betrayal in them shattering Eva’s heart. Eva took a deep breath, breaking her stupor. She flung herself to her sister, despite Décima’s and Do?a Antonia’s hysterics. Eva took Pura’s hands in hers and begged for forgiveness. She cried, too. Because she knew she had caused this. She’d gone to sleep thinking of Rahmagut, high on the mistela drink, and a milk snake on her sister had been her reward.
“Please, forgive me.”
The dream replayed like a wicked reminder of what she was. She didn’t need to deny anything. Her dream had shown her all. Eva covered Pura with the sheets and grasped her hands. Her sister was too horrified to object.
Forehead to forehead, Eva told Pura, like the hypocrite that she was, her own tears welling in the corners of her eyes, “Pray with me, please.”
Eva understood this was her punishment, for straying from the Virgin. For welcoming a wicked god into her life.
9
Mineral Veins Underfoot
Reina joined the swordsmanship and fencing lessons in the yard behind ?guila Manor every day for several months. The sword master who trained Celeste and Javier couldn’t deny her without contradicting Do?a Ursulina. Instead, he worked Reina twice as hard, giving her a dull sword and putting her in charge of clearing the yard, washing their sweaty rags, and reassembling the training dummies that she smacked at least a hundred times a day to memorize the motions.