I woke with a start. The room was silent, its dark the soft charcoal of safe places, but—
Behind me, the lock rattled. I pushed myself sharply up on my elbows, lurching away from the door. Andrés and Paloma were asleep, unaware.
Something was behind it. Something that caused a buzzing to build in the ground beneath my blankets, a persistent hum, like a far-off swarm of wasps drawing inevitably closer, closer . . .
I seized the copal censer, holding it in both hands between me and the door like a weapon.
Still the door groaned against its hinges, the whine of aging wood against a powerful winter storm. Cold seeped through cracks, reaching toward my blanket, shifting over my feet and legs like a physical weight.
“Don’t you dare come in here,” I hissed through gritted teeth. “Get out.”
For the length of several heartbeats, nothing happened. I could not breathe.
Then the door settled in its frame. The cold drew back. The humming slowed. Then it, too, faded, until I could hear nothing but Andrés’s and Paloma’s steady breathing behind me.
I don’t know how long I sat at attention, the censer in my hands, my focus honed on the door. My heart beating thickly in my throat.
Peace filled the room, settled, complete, disturbed only by the frantic pounding of my heart. It was so quiet.
Had I imagined it all?
* * *
*
IT WAS STILL GRAY the next morning when Paloma insisted that she fetch José Mendoza to come to the house and fix the door of the green parlor.
“The patrón is on his way, and we’ve wasted enough time already,” she said, her tone of voice brushing Andrés’s concern away as sharply as a gesture. “The house is a disaster. We have no menu. How long is he staying? Only God seems to know, and now I have to plan for everything.”
She stepped outside, tying her apron strings with staccato gestures. Fingers of pale mist shrank away from her as she turned toward the village.
Andrés crossed the room in two steps and called after her from the doorway. “Do not go inside until I get there, do you understand?”
Paloma waved a hand dismissively. “You don’t have to tell me twice,” she said dryly over one shoulder. “But hurry up. I’m hungry and I won’t wait forever to get into the kitchen.”
Andrés sighed deeply as he watched his cousin’s retreating back. A full night of sleep brought life back to his face; the look of constant pain that creased it yesterday had softened. A new look of concern settled in the line of his mouth as he looked at me pulling my shawl over my shoulders.
That concern was echoed in my own posture.
The patrón was returning tomorrow.
RODOLFO RODOLFO RODOLFO
“I’ve been thinking about that dream,” Andrés said softly. “The one you told me about yesterday.”
Flesh-colored claws, eyes burning, burning, burning . . .
“And?”
He clicked his tongue. “I should have thought of it yesterday. I need to see something before we return to the house. You don’t have to accompany me, if you don’t wish . . .”
“Tell me.”
“The grave of Do?a María Catalina.”
I inhaled sharply. I had never liked graveyards. Even before I knew what it felt like to be watched by something beyond the veil of earthly creation, my skin crawled among the headstones. Long before I ever set foot on Hacienda San Isidro, I had hated the trailing sensation of being watched. I was always worried that something might follow me, tangled in my hair like smoke or stray leaves, as I walked home.
But this time, I straightened. Curled my fingers tightly around my shawl. I was battered, exhausted, and frightened, but I was the daughter of a general, and I would not back down. I would not sit in the priest’s rooms alone, waiting for my fate to come to me. If Andrés thought visiting a grave could give us answers, I was ready to accompany him. “Let’s be quick about it, then.”
A thick carpet of dead leaves blanketed the graveyard behind the capilla. Though the mist had lifted, and the promise of sun teased warm over my face, the walk through the headstones left a cold feeling of rot in my bones.
Marble angels reached for the dying mist, their faces chipped or yellowed with age; thick lines of dust settled into the halo of statues and engravings of la Virgen. I followed a few paces behind Andrés as we wove through the statues; our shoes sank into earth still soft from the night’s rain when we paused to check names, searching for the correct grave.
Seven generations of Solórzanos were interred in the shadow of the slim bell tower of the chapel. You’ll die here like the rest of us. Would I, too, become another layer in this cemetery, rotting forever under the weight of the name Solórzano?
For every name on every stone was that of a don or do?a Solórzano. Each date on the headstone a solemn reminder of how long the walls of Hacienda San Isidro had stood. 1785. 1703. 1690. 1643 . . .
“Where are your people?” I asked Andrés.
He rose from where he crouched by one of the markers, brushing away leaves to check the name. He shielded his eyes, then pointed at the low stone wall that marked the northern edge of the cemetery.
“Over there.”
And he returned to his task.
Beyond the wall were more graves. No marble angels marked the earth, no grand statues of la Virgen. The divide between hacendados and the villagers extended beyond life.
“Beatriz.”
I turned.
Andrés stood before a tasteful white headstone. I stopped next to him, averting my gaze from the stone until my arm brushed his, as if merely looking at the name I knew was carved there could harm me.
Do?a María Catalina Solórzano de Iturrigaray y Velazco, d. 1821.
My fingers trembled as I made the sign of the cross and pressed my thumb to my lips.
Andrés cursed under his breath.
I looked up at him in surprise, hand dropping from my mouth. “What?”
He lifted a foot as if to stamp it on the grave.
“Andrés!” I gasped, seizing his arm to stop him. “Are you crazy?”
“She did this to my home. She did this to my family,” he spat. But he set his foot down beside the grave. “Besides, it’s empty earth. I can sense it,” he added. A dark tremor of feeling underscored the words. “She’s not here.”
Her body.
It wasn’t here.
The plaster crumbling and slipping beneath my fingernails. The skull grinning at me from the wall. A glint of gold in the darkness. My heartbeat throbbed in my ears. “Does that mean . . .”
“Yes.”
María Catalina’s body was interred in the walls of San Isidro. But—
“Who put her there?” I cried, voice pitching high. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Andrés said quietly. “But now that I know for certain she’s behind everything, I think I know what to do to close the circle.”
* * *
*