Do?a Antonia didn’t miss the cue, so she said, “And Eva Kesaré came because she was meeting with Don Alberto.”
Eva said, “We’re courting. But Néstor and I are now leaving.”
Indeed, Néstor and Don Jerónimo led the walk to the stables, but they practically left her behind to be absorbed into the archbishop and Do?a Antonia’s stroll. The traitors. The last thing Eva wanted was to be caught in conversation with the holy man. Almost as if in reaction to this very thought, the archbishop became very interested in her. He regarded her with his cloying smile and said, “I have noticed you making yourself scarce after Mass, Se?orita Eva.”
Eva cleared her throat, counting the steps until the archway to the stables, where a team of workers had set up a scaffolding to repair the red clay tiles of the roof. Why did they have to walk in the same direction?
“Eva Kesaré is one of my quiet ones.” Do?a Antonia rescued her, likely because every thought and judgment on her children and grandchildren was only a reflection on her as a matriarch. “She makes herself scarce in most social outings.”
Heat bloomed in Eva’s cheeks, but she kept her gaze fixed on the stables. In truth, Eva would avoid going to the cathedral if she had a choice—which, of course, she didn’t. Instead, she swallowed the bitter nausea crawling up her throat anytime she went to Mass. When she was inside the confining walls of the cathedral, a heaviness always weighed on her, suffocating her. A stifling multiplied by a congregation of people all covered from head to toe in their best attire. She was drowned by a desire to flee the cathedral’s wooden doors and never return, because she feared the Virgin saw the truth in her. She saw the icons of saints standing like sentinels on either side of the entrance and altar and couldn’t help but feel their judging eyes seeing what she was.
“In my experience, I’ve always found nozariels and valcos to be the most reluctant in accepting the Virgin into their lives, with their dangerous inclinations to believe in that geomancia. But the Virgin is good, and Her answers to this chaotic world are more than enough.” He shot a sideways glance at what hid beneath Eva’s curly bangs. “I hope it’s not because of your inheritance that you’re so eager to leave, Se?orita Eva, for you are most welcome in Her house.”
“I don’t touch geomancia.” Eva’s lie came quickly to her lips, rehearsed.
“Is that so?”
“You know how young women are these days: more concerned about their dresses and their gossip than about being devout. But it’ll come soon enough,” Do?a Antonia added in Eva’s defense. Though her eyes told a different story—one saying Eva better prepare herself for a swift and much-deserved tongue-lashing as soon as they were back home, for no reason other than sparking doubt in the archbishop. “My family and I are very dedicated to the church. I adore the work you do.”
So dedicated, in fact, that Eva felt she had to wear someone else’s skin in her own home. She was forced to look away from the rifts of light that banded around trees or antique objects like a heat mirage, to ignore how the air charged with a spark when the rains rolled in. For her family’s sake, she had to constantly convince herself the sorrowful calls in the middle of the night were merely fragments of her nightmares and not something that should be called magic.
Eva lived in a constant ache for those things humans couldn’t see. She survived from morsel to morsel, sneaking attempts at geomancia behind closed doors and seeking answers to her parentage in the city records, even though she knew they would only yield more questions. After all, Do?a Antonia kept the identity of Eva’s father a secret but not the nature of how her mother, the gentle Do?a Dulce, had come to have her. No, Do?a Antonia and the biggest gossipers of Galeno never held back in whispering about the ravishing of Do?a Dulce. How her father’s dark magic had coerced false love in the devout Dulce, steering her from the right path and shattering her sanity. Not only robbing her of her dignity but, as Do?a Antonia shamelessly put it, planting the seed of a devil in her.
Finally they reached the shade under the scaffolding where the workmen exchanged roof tiles. A honeysuckle vine hugged the stone archway, sweetening the air.
“Your family may need the church more than any other,” the archbishop said. “It is no secret that valcos struggle with a certain inclination…”
He left the words unsaid, but Eva knew he meant to call valcos monsters, lured to darkness. It was the same opinion nearly every human of Galeno had.
“Only the Virgin can protect you from such thoughts.”
The afternoon was sweltering, but Eva scorched hotter. He thought he was being magnanimous when, in fact, he only made her nauseous.
Do?a Antonia had a nervous look about her at the insolent way Eva’s eyes met the archbishop’s. Eva’s jaw rippled in indignation.
“If you fully accept the Virgin, then you won’t have space in your mind for the darkness that inevitably consumes your lot—for you, it is only a matter of time. And you have a lot of praying to do, to atone for the actions of the monster who sired you.”
“That makes absolutely no sense!” Eva growled, and the air around her cheeks crackled and sparked. “I am not responsible for what he did.”
With a resounding crack, the scaffolding gave beneath the workers’ combined weights. The wood groaned, rapidly toppling onto itself. Eva watched with wide eyes as the men screamed, throwing themselves to the adjoined balcony to flee the cave-in. A quick thinker—Néstor—yanked Eva and Do?a Antonia by their dresses away from the wood and splinters raining over the cobbles. The yard burst with the sounds of the destruction. Eva could taste the detritus in the air.
Once the dust and the exclamations of concern settled, the archbishop and Do?a Antonia watched Eva with shocked expressions. Eva, too, stood speechless as her heart thrummed a dissonant tune. She could see in their eyes that they wanted to accuse her of smiting the scaffolding with her anger. As ridiculous as it sounded, Eva wasn’t sure they were entirely wrong.
The rest happened in a blur. Néstor made excuses for her and pulled her to Don Jerónimo’s carriage, where Don Jerónimo also watched her with a gaping mouth. Néstor practically shoved her down on the velvet-cushioned seat and barked at the driver to get a move on, securing their escape. For that, Eva was endlessly grateful.
3
The Curandera
Silence reigned between Eva, Néstor, and Don Jerónimo as the carriage passed Galeno’s plaza, where at its center stood a statue of a man in military uniform riding a galloping horse. People strolled through the cobbled roads, dodging the few carriages and using embroidered umbrellas for shade. The carriage passed houses painted in alabaster, ocher, cerulean, or any other alternative bright enough to reflect the spicy, unforgiving sunlight that was signature to the Llanos.
It was Néstor who shattered the quiet, saying softly, “That was not your fault.”
Eva peeled her eyes from the row of yellow-blooming cassia trees flanking the plaza. Behind them was the cathedral, the tallest structure in the city.
Don Jerónimo raised his eyebrows at him. Their hands were linked over Néstor’s lap, their fingers intertwined.