It had been the water that killed them all, but it had started with there being so little of it. There had been a drought that year, and summer had left the river low, braided with undercurrents her mother did not know about until they took Miel, and then Leandro, and then her. The roots and stones and contours of the riverbed made whirlpools and riptides that, in most years, more rain and greater depths smoothed out.
Her mother had thought the lower waterline would make the water safer, easier to wade through even in the dark. She had no idea that the drought had given what little water was left claws.
Her mother did not guess that water could be more dangerous when there was less of it.
The memory of her mother’s screaming rang through her head. It splintered into each trembling note, and then resolved into a clear, haunted sound. And the silence, the lack of her father’s voice, the wondering if maybe the water had taken him too, turned each of those sounds jagged.
Her mother had only done what the priests told her to, holding Miel in the river. But Miel fought so hard as her mother kept her underwater that her mother took it as proof that these roses had cursed her, that her daughter was pure and good and just needed to be saved. Whatever petaled demon made her grow them was leaving her body.
But Miel fought so hard she broke out of her mother’s hold, and the current, with its hands grown from the dust and cloudless skies of this drought, swept her out of reach. It took her down so far she lost the moon, and all its distant light.
The space between the stained glass panels turned dark as the river. It was swallowing her.
The memory of her mother holding her down forced away the feeling that she had her own body. She was turning to water.
Her mother’s voice echoed in her head, her insistence that all Miel had to do was stay still, give in, and she would be cured. Her mother had repeated the priest’s words. The difference between baptism and drowning is a few faithless breaths.
Miel threw her hands against the glass, banging her palms against the dyed stars and planets not just because she was trapped but because being among the blues and greens plunged her into that night years ago, that night that had made her water. The memory was floating back, a distant air bubble at the bottom of the river, making a slow ascent.
She was hitting the glass because her brother was gone, her brother was dead, and she could hear the echo of him calling her from the river, looking for her, realizing there was none of her left to find or save.
She was hitting the glass because, years ago, when Sam had first knelt in front of her, the rust-dirtied water soaking the knees and shins of his jeans, she had thought he was her brother.
Later, when Miel looked at Sam, she didn’t understand how she could have thought this. Sam looked so little like Leandro. He did not have Leandro’s arching eyebrows, and Sam’s lips, compared to Leandro’s, were thin and tinted almost purple. His hair fell in loose coils instead of half-straight and half-curly like Miel’s and Leandro’s.
But no matter how many years she put between her and that moment of mistaking him for someone else, it stayed.
She drove her hands hard into the top panel. The skin on her knuckles broke and bled, and the pain made her shut her eyes. But she still shoved her hands against the glass, because her mother was dead too, and Miel could hear her cry on the wind.
Her mother had died not just in the water, but in a way only a broken heart could kill. Not with the kind of lovesickness Aracely cured. Not longing for a lover. Her mother’s heart was the kind of broken caused by children, one who grew forbidden petals from her skin, and the other who lost his life trying to save her.
Miel’s roses had cost her both Leandro and her mother. And the memory, inside this small space that would not let her get away from it, drained away the daylight. The silver between the trees turned to gray and then deep blue.
She was screaming and sobbing even knowing that no matter how much noise she made, even if her voice could tear the gold leaves off the hornbeam trees, it would not bring back her mother and Leandro. Here, within this narrow space, covered in stained glass light, she could not forget. The air around her, hot as her skin, and the glass, cold as the river, would not let her go.
unknown sea
Sam watched Aracely pick through her store of eggs, all those colors she could get only from the Carlsons at the edge of town. Theirs was the only farm that had so many kinds of chickens their egg cartons held every shade from mint green to pink to dark brown.
Sam glanced toward the ceiling. “Is Miel gonna hear us?”