A Fierce and Subtle Poison (17 page)

Twenty-five

CELIA STARTED SCREAMING.
Red-orange flames clawed the walls, and near-white flecks of ash drifted in front of my face and landed on my hands.
Moths
, I thought.
They look like moths.
Dry wood and paper crackled and turned black. Windowpanes groaned from the extreme heat and pressure until, finally, they shattered. Glowing embers hit the beds and singed the blankets. Smoke rose and rolled across the beams of the ceiling. The oil lantern next to Celia’s bed exploded, causing the little girl to toss off her covers and run toward me. She clung to my legs and let out another ear-splitting wail. She clung tight, burying her face into wet denim.

Isabel was gone, disappeared.

I scooped up Celia with my good arm and carried her out into the relentless rain.

I was grateful for the warm, fat drops that fell on my face as I slogged through the mud toward Dr. Ford’s Mercedes. They were soothing and helped to wash the sting from my eyes. When we reached the car, I put Celia down. Her bare feet sank several inches into the spongy earth.

I fumbled with the unfamiliar keys for a few seconds before managing to unlock the back door. I held it open, but the girl didn’t move. I shouted her name, but she just stood there, as if having been absorbed by the ground, staring in silent horror at the cabin.

“Get in the car!”

Still nothing.

It was only after I’d lifted her up and placed her into the backseat that I realized I hadn’t wrapped her in a blanket. Amid the chaos of the fire, it had slipped my mind.

I recoiled, holding my arms up to my eyes to search my skin for blisters.

Celia chose to break her silence with a question I couldn’t begin to answer: “What’s wrong?”

I braced my good hand against the doorframe, bowed my head, and waited for the wave of nausea to come. It didn’t. Celia touched my arm and repeated her question.

“Lucas? What’s wrong?”

I stared at her small hand against my skin.

“The plants don’t make you sick?” I asked.

Celia shook her head. “I don’t get sick.”

“What about when you touched the doctor? Did he get sick?”

“No.” She dropped her hand into her lap. “Why would he?”

“Wait right here!”

I slammed the door shut, and went back to the burning cabin. Even before I reached the door, I could see that most of the interior was engulfed in flames. The scattered pages of Dr. Ford’s books were curling and crisp around the edges, and the air was almost completely full of ash and burning paper. Behind the smell of smoke was the bitter stench of leaves releasing their poison.

Covering my nose and mouth with Rico’s jacket, I plowed into the dense smoke in the direction of Dr. Ford’s cot at the back of the cabin. I found it when my shins collided with the metal frame.

I gathered up the smoldering blanket, caught sight of the photograph Isabel had looked at earlier, and snatched that, too. Bundling the frame in the folds of the blanket, I swung around toward the door, and stopped.

There was no door. Only a curtain of smoke and fire.

I collected all the blessings, prayers, superstitions, luck, and enchantments I knew, held the wadded-up blanket in front of my face, and charged forward into the hot, smoking void.

A belt of pain whipped against my right shoulder as I burst through the front door, but beyond that I came out mercifully intact. I trudged through the mud and collapsed into the driver’s seat of Dr. Ford’s Mercedes.

“Is the doctor’s daughter coming with us?” Celia asked as I slammed the door closed and threw the blanket into the passenger seat.

Wiping the smoke-induced tears from my eyes, I pretended to not hear her. Then I craned my head so that I could look at my shoulder. A ragged hole had burned through layers of fabric, revealing an oozing flesh wound. Smoke rose from its edges; it stunk. My stomach kicked with nausea, and I had to turn away. Remembering the photograph, I reached across the seat with my left hand and pulled it from the still-warm folds of the blanket.

The glass of the frame was cracked, either from the heat or from Isabel’s having slammed it down. The picture behind the fractured glass, though, was perfectly clear.

I’d assumed that what Isabel had seen on that shelf was a photograph of herself—younger, happier, and without the weight of all the disappeared girls on her shoulders. Instead, the photo had captured a younger version of her dad, next to a beautiful woman with long dark hair who must have been Isabel’s mother. They were standing together in the courtyard of their house at the end of Calle Sol. They were surrounded by plants. He was in a brown suit; she was in a white sundress with the slightly bulging midsection of an expectant mother. They were holding each other’s hands, and a large gray bird was perched on Dr. Ford’s shoulder. Zabana’s free hand rested on her belly. While both the Fords were smiling, Isabel’s mother’s gaze was directed to some point off in the distance, as if at the very last second before the shutter snapped, something had caught her attention.

I’d known little about Dr. Ford’s life aside from the sad stories patched together from Isabel and the señoras of San Juan. Those stories all existed in that magical space between truth and fiction, where most of the stories about Puerto Rico existed. That magical space was what the photograph had captured: two people, one happy about his impending child, the other distracted by something from either the past or the future—something there, but not there.

I tossed the frame down and with a single twist of the key, brought the engine of the old car rumbling to life. I clicked on the headlights and the windshield wipers, pulled the column shifter down into reverse, and pressed gently on the gas.

Miraculously, the tires found traction, and the car slowly started going backward. That miracle, however, was short-lived. The car lurched and stopped. I took my foot off the gas and gave myself to the count of ten before pressing down on the accelerator again. While counting, I listened to the rain pelt the roof and tried to ignore the pain that swelled throughout my body. Each raindrop sounded like an individual ball bearing striking a sheet of metal. Together, they sounded like a sky determined to crush us to death.

A single mosquito had found its way into the car with us. I assumed most of its comrades had been kicked off the island by the hurricane. It flew in dizzy circles before landing on my arm. After I slapped it away, it changed course, flying in a series of even dizzier circles toward Celia in the backseat. It approached her arm, backtracked, approached her face, backtracked. Eventually it settled on the seat beside her. It avoided her—the way the mosquitoes all avoided Isabel.

Celia pulled the smoke-tinged blanket around her shoulders. She was shivering.

“You’re sick,” I said.

She shook her head, and tiny droplets of water sprayed across the interior of the car.

“Just cold.”

I didn’t know if I believed her. I needed to get her out of here and to a doctor. I checked everything again—that I was in the right gear, that the parking brake was off—before applying slight pressure to the gas pedal. Over the sound of the rain on the roof, I could hear the back wheels spinning as they struggled to find traction.

Again, I eased off. “Not now. Not now.” I slammed my eyes shut, opened them, and started counting again. “One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . ”

The little girl’s voice came from over my shoulder: “What’s wrong?”

That question.

I clenched the steering wheel in an effort to hide my frustration. The wiper blades skirted across the windshield, revealing the orange glow of the still-burning structure several yards in front of us.

“Five . . . six . . .”

What was wrong? It wasn’t that I was worried about us being consumed by the fire. The car was too far away and the rain was too heavy for the blaze to skip across a large swath of muddy ground. Even if the car never started, the rain would eventually stop, and Celia and I could walk together to Isabela and find help.

What was wrong was that Isabel was gone. Isabel’s mother was gone
.
Marisol was gone. Sara Fikes and Lina Gutierrez were gone.

“Seven . . . eight.”

I slammed my foot down on the accelerator. The tires spun furiously. I knew it wouldn’t do any good, but I kept my weight on the pedal until the inside of the car started to fill up with the stench of burning oil.

I let off the gas and sat back hard in my seat, crying out in pain from my shoulder. I balled my bad hand into a fist and slammed it down on the steering wheel in sharp, successive whacks. When the pain got unbearable, I collapsed forward, pressed my forehead against the steering wheel, and tried to take deep breaths. They were more like gasps: uncontrolled and uncontrollable.

“We’ll have to walk,” I gasped. “To Isabela.”

“We can’t leave,” Celia replied. “The doctor’s daughter will get lost.”

“That’s what she wants, Celia! She wants us to leave her here.”

Celia grew quiet. My eyes flickered up to the rearview mirror. She was at the brink of tears, and I feared beyond anything else the words that were about to come out of her mouth.

Her small lips trembled. “But I dreamed about her.”

As if my heart couldn’t break any more. “Everyone dreams about her, Celia.”

“She told me that she grants wishes. I wished to go home. I think she’s an angel.”

“She’s
not
an angel.” The windshield wipers swished back and forth in a futile gesture. “She’s just a girl.”

“Why did we dream about her then?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, exasperated. “But I’m not going to just leave you here while I go try to find her.”

Celia sat on the edge of her seat, and leaned in to whisper in my ear. “She must be a ciguapa.”

I spun around in my seat. “What?”

“My grandmother told me they were drawn to the water, and that their eyes were sad, and that they were the prettiest girls you’d ever see.” She paused. “The doctor’s daughter is like that.”

The magical ciguapas could also be ugly
, my mother had said.
They left tracks that faced backward and lured foolish, hopeful men into thinking they would receive a kiss. Then they would suck the breath out of those foolish men’s bodies. They could bewitch you with a glance. They were monsters, vengeful and sad.

“She’s just a girl,” I lied.

Celia pointed in the direction of the front window. “I bet she went to the beach. I can show you how to get there. The doctor took me there to hunt for shells.”

I turned to look at the fingers of my right hand. They were swollen, no doubt broken, and pulsing with pain. I lifted my head and peered up again into the rearview mirror.

“You’re sure you can show me the way?”

The little girl nodded.

“Let’s go.”

Twenty-six

I HELD CELIA
tight against my chest and ran through the trees. My feet plunged deep into pockets of mud and wet sand. My ankles buckled. The rain beat against my face. My soaked clothes, Celia, and the drenched cotton blanket I’d wrapped her in were like iron weights across my chest.

A large, high branch from one of the trees gave in to the relentless wind and rain and crashed to the ground not ten feet in front of us. Water splashed across my eyes and lips. Celia shrieked, buried her head into the crook of my neck, and gripped at my clothes. I peered up to where the branch had fallen, half expecting to see bodies of Taínos swaying from the trees. There were none. I listened for the voices of their spirits to tell me that I was lost and to keep back and out of their business. Those voices never came. I wouldn’t have listened to them anyway.

We pressed on. Wind ripped through the trees with such force that my molars rattled and the earth shook. It threw me sideways to the ground and Celia out of my arms. I landed on my burned shoulder and screamed, sure that the island was going to crack in half and that I would fall right in.

If that were the case, I, too, like the spirits in the trees, would never leave. I’d merge with the forest. I’d be the rustle in the leaves. I’d be the rain.

Celia climbed back into my arms, wiped my wet hair away from my eyes and some of the grit from my lips. I trembled at her touch and closed my eyes. She pried my eyelids apart, forcing me to look at her mud-speckled face. She was afraid of the water. I’d forgotten that she couldn’t swim.

“We can go back!” I shouted.

That wasn’t what Celia wanted. She pointed to the left. There, in a break of the trees, was the furious ocean and a dark, menacing sky that appeared to be continually folding in on itself.

I hauled myself to my feet and regained a good grip on Celia. Stumbling a few more yards through the fallen branches and palm fronds, we finally broke through the trees. The line where sea and sky met was nonexistent. Even from where I was standing, a good forty feet from what should have been the water’s edge, the surf crashed around my ankles and calves, at times rising nearly to my knees. The ground beneath me shifted and slipped.

Through the rain that cut down from the sky, I saw the white crests of waves beating their way toward me. I scanned the water for the pale limbs or puffed-up clothing of a little girl named Lina, floating all alone because I’d thrown notes and jumped over a wall. But there was no color, nothing out of the ordinary in this out-of-the-ordinary scene, just the hungry waves that gathered everything they could take back with them into the ocean.

I knew Lina was gone, lost to those greedy waters.

Celia pointed again, this time to a spot several yards down the beach. Isabel and her dad were standing apart, facing one another, in water that nearly reached their waists. Isabel was holding her father’s sleeve. Her mouth was up near his ear, her lips relaying a message. Her wet hair flew around both their heads.

I cried out to Celia to hang on as I began to stomp farther out into the water.

I watched as Dr. Ford lifted his free hand and placed it on the back of his daughter’s head in the effort to try to control the fluttering strands of her hair. Isabel dodged away from his touch. As she stumbled back, her head turned. It was obvious from her expression—collapsed, gray like the roaring storm clouds—that my coming after her had broken her heart. But she had to have known that’s what I’d do. She’d watched me. She’d known that ever since I was a kid, I’d been drawn to her house—to
her
. I wanted in, desperately. I wanted to make things right, bring light to her shadowed rooms, and pry her loose from the grip of an old curse.

And yet if I tried to save Isabel Ford—pulled her off this beach against her will and then went running through the forest gathering plants for her until I was ranting and covered in blisters—I would merely be one more person who controlled the curve of her life.

Isabel didn’t need a hero. She was saving herself, lifting her own curse, atoning for the Saras and the Marisols and the Linas, and all the other nameless disappeared girls.

Still, I took a step forward, toward Isabel, always toward Isabel, but my foot never found the ocean floor. I was under water; Celia was under water, panicked and thrashing.

The tides kicked and spun both of us, but I managed to fight back and break the surface. Gasping, I pulled Celia up by the armpits. Her head flew back and slammed against my chin. The impact stunned me, and Celia again slipped from my arms and fell back under the churning water. I plunged my hands into the chop and found fabric. I pulled and pulled, frenzied and desperate, but it was just the blanket. I’d lost Celia to the water. After all this, I’d let her fall right out of my hands.

Just then: a head broke the surface. Celia’s. It was followed by another. Isabel’s. Isabel was holding up Celia while her chin rested on top of the little girl’s head. Her forever-melancholy eyes closed slowly, opened slowly, with great effort. She wheezed, sucking strands of her hair, both black and chalk white, into her open mouth.

A sob broke from my chest—not just because Isabel was dying, but also because, out here in the great, wide ocean, she was so small. There needed to be more of her.
She had the soul of a giant, and no one would ever know.

“Go!” Isabel tossed Celia to me and then turned. She took a gasping breath before half wading, half swimming back to her father.

This time, I did as Isabel commanded. I paddled back far enough to find semisolid footing and was able to lurch back toward the tree line with Celia in my trembling arms.

“I’m sorry,” I sputtered. “Celia, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

Celia wasn’t listening. Her eyes were focused on the girl who had saved her.

I turned. Dr. Ford and Isabel were again facing one another. Isabel could hardly stand, her weight shifting on failing legs. Dr. Ford reached for her again, this time for her hand. Again, she dodged away, but instead of merely stumbling, she fell, sideways into the sea. Dr. Ford was quick. He caught his daughter’s wrist with both his hands and strained to pull her limp body from the hungry water. His mouth gaped open as he brought her against his chest and held her there. He buried his face into her hair. His shoulders began to shake. His fingers clung desperately to Isabel’s unmoving arms.

“See?” Celia released one of her hands from my shoulders. Again, she brushed the wet hair out of my eyes. “The doctor loves her very much.”

“He loves her very much,” I echoed.

I watched the doctor’s strength dissolve. It happened first in his legs. Then his head lolled. But even as they both dropped like stones into the swirling water, the doctor’s arms remained around his daughter.

I waited, desperately scanning the surface. Isabel was in there, somewhere. The water was tossing her around as if she were nothing. It was carrying her and her father out into its cold heart.

I thought of how, just a few hours ago, the sun had shone on Isabel’s face. She’d smiled her sad smile and told me it had been years since she’d been on a beach. She’d gazed out into the ocean like it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, like it was waiting for her.

I waited, but the ocean never gave Isabel back. Eventually, I picked up Celia and started back through the rain and muck and trees in the direction of the cabin and the car. Celia’s hands rested gently on my wet clothes. She was speaking, but it was in that made-up language of hers, the private one, the one she used to talk to her dolls, the one that sounded like water.