Wildalone (28 page)

“The last doctor they saw was in San Francisco. From there, a road winds like a serpent down the coast, high above the ocean cliffs. Archer laid
his wife next to him in one of those racing cars. And they flew, just as she had always wanted—all the way across the clouds . . .”

I wished I could say something. Anything, to comfort her. But nothing felt right after what she had told me. At that moment, all I wanted was to see Rhys. To be able to touch him and know he was well and breathing.

“Let's finish you up. I almost forgot why I'm here!” She jumped from the chair, the sadness now folded back in, deep into the locked drawers of her heart. “We will need more black around the eyes. And the hair . . . what shall we do with the hair?”

She rolled it up and pinned it in a simple low chignon. Sprayed a few drops of lavender over my shoulders. Took my chin and turned it—left, then right—pleased with her own creation.

“
¡Qué linda!
Do you like it?”

I told her I did, but I wasn't so sure. The makeup was too much (thank God it was Halloween), and the glamorous, sexy gypsy I expected to see in the mirror looked more like a tired ballerina under the glare of the bathroom lights.

While I was trying to get used to my Spanish face, she asked me to wait in the living room and promptly joined me, bringing a big red box.

“A present, from Señor Rhys. Go on, open it!”

Inside was a dress—an exquisitely layered white silk dress. In a heap next to it, a fringed black shawl exploded with flowers, all of them red poppies.

“This is your costume. A flamenco dress carries power. The fire of the gypsy blood, of Andalucían
brujas
.”

“What is a
bruja
?”

“Witch. One flip of the skirt”—she kicked back with her foot, pretending to catch a load of fabric in the air—“and you can do anything to a man.”

I slipped the dress on and the silk poured down to the floor: a one-shoulder gown, tracing the body to just above the knee, from where it spilled into a wild cascade of ruffles.

“My country has its own
brujas
, whose power lies in the dress too. Long white dress, a bit like this one.”

It was my favorite part of the
samodivi
tale (or “wildalones,” as Giles
would have called them). The lovestruck shepherd sneaks up to the lake for a closer look at Vylla. She hears steps. Turns. And the treacherous moon reveals the young man to her. But it also reveals what he has already found on the shore and taken: a dress made of pure silver, woven with moonthreads. The dress that keeps all of Vylla's power.

“
Claro, sí.”
Carmela listened and nodded, as if everything in that story was turning out the way she expected. “The man steals the dress and wins his
bruja
forever, no?”

“Well,
forever
is not exactly how it ends—our fairy tales don't always have happy endings. But yes, he does steal the dress and they are married for some time.”

“Something is telling me your man will steal
your
dress tonight!” She winked at me before glancing at the clock. “We have just enough time for one more drink, and then I can leave you to your Halloween night.
Noche de Brujas
, as we call it in España.”

We went outside, on the patio. She poured wine for both of us, lit two candles on the table, and handed me a few floating ones. “Here, take these to the pool.”

I dropped them in, one by one.

“Ay,
niña
, nothing like real fire when you need to warm the heart . . .”

“You said something about Rhys in there, about it being long since his heart got warmed.”

She remained quiet. A wind ran through the water and the entire pool started shivering in a web of light.

“Carmela, I need to know. Was he really in love?”

“Almost.”

“How can someone be almost in love?”

“Like that, like any one of these—” She kneeled down and reached for the nearest candle. “Such a small flame, not a fire yet. Push it even a little”—her thumb pressed, just enough to let the water seep in—“and it will drown. Leaving behind only smoke. Brief but poisonous smoke. Yet I told him—”

The past stole her again and took her far, through the darkness of the ocean in front of us.

“What did you tell him?”

I was worried that my questions might open the drawers of sadness again. But she turned to me and smiled:

“I told my boy that love will come to him one day. Beautiful, complete—just like the sun. And pure like the sun. That it will ask for nothing. Expect nothing. It will simply
exist
for him. I think he believes me now.”

I wanted to believe her too—that Rhys was in love and not just chasing the next college girl. But hearing it from her wasn't the same as hearing it from him. Not by a stretch.

When she left, it was already a quarter to six. I went back to blow out the candles, but didn't get to any of them. One glance at the pool, and I thought I was hallucinating. Too much wine. Too many witch stories. Unless, in an attempt to play a trick on me, water and sky had decided to switch places?

There was no sapphire blue this time. Only yellow—the fevered yellow of the burning flickers. I had lit them without keeping count, yet they had ended up exactly seven. And now, far from reach in the middle of the pool, was a figure I had last seen through a telescope: a triangle over a diamond, the seventh candle strangely mute (the one extinguished by Carmela), just as the youngest Pleiad had been barely shining, shamed for falling in love with a mortal man.

I ran back inside. Was I losing my mind? After all, anything was possible on the Night of Witches. Maybe the house was really haunted, with Carmela being one of its many ghosts?

Then I remembered the book I hadn't dared to open all week—the
Star Atlas
—and its index led me to the Pleiades in seconds:

The brightest stars in the cluster were named after the seven sisters who had nursed the infant Dionysus. Known also to the Celts, these stars were linked to funerals and mourning and remembrance of the dead. Because, as the border between the two worlds thinned on Samhain (the Irish word for Halloween or All Souls Day), the Seven Sisters rose in the northern sky, aligning themselves exactly overhead by midnight.

A car came to a stop outside. The
Atlas
slid back under the coffee table. The shawl of poppies swirled its fringes around my shoulders, and down.

Then I noticed a small envelope at the bottom of the dress box. Not a letter, something else. In a distinctive, exquisitely controlled handwriting:

Like concentric rings

on the water,

your words

in my heart.

Like a bird that collides

with the wind,

your kiss

on my lips.

Like fountains unleashed

on the night,

my eyes

on your skin.

“Federico García Lorca, the voice and heart of Andalucía.” Rhys had walked in, dressed in black, with a red bandanna around his neck. “You wanted to know my favorites.”

“Yes, but that was literally right before you left. How did you—”

“Shhh . . .” He pressed a finger to my lips. “I could tell you how. But what would be the magic in that?”

With his other hand, he was already pinning a poppy in my hair.

GETTING TO NEWBURY STREET ON
Halloween meant driving through half of Boston and then walking straight into the epicenter of madness—a pandemonium of creatures come back to life. Fluorescent skeletons. Coiffed zombies. Promiscuous corpse brides and debonair vampires. Even a mummy, flying on a skateboard past everybody else. By the time we arrived at the restaurant, my own head was ready to roll off on wheels.

“Welcome to Tapeo! Sorry, we are fully booked tonight.”

A ravishing buccaneer-hostess recited the greeting without lifting her eyes from the computer, but as soon as the name Estlin rippled through the air, she looked up, blushing. In an even higher falsetto, she apologized to Rhys for not recognizing him right away and instructed a nearby pirate to take us to our table.

The ground floor was a mishmash of costumes, noise, and food vapors. People had come for the carnival spirit as much as to eat or drink, and many of them had abandoned their tables, crammed in the tightly packed space—singing, shouting, sweating, yet somehow managing to balance a tapas plate or a wineglass or both.

We made our way through, and up a staircase.

“Welcome, Señor Estlin. Señorita.” The pirate took off his hat and bowed. “I hope everything is to your liking?”

By “your” he probably meant Rhys's, because I realized that the adventure had been planned in advance: the restaurant was fully booked, yet we were the only ones upstairs. Tables were lined up along the walls, already set for dinner but with no one sitting at them. In the middle waited a table for two.

“Why did you book the entire place?”

A kiss on my shoulder, the one not covered by the dress. “You'll see.”

We sat down. A waitress in matching pirate costume brought a tray with food and a large pitcher. Rhys explained each dish to me while pouring our drinks.

“Their sangria is out of this world. Can you taste the pomegranate? They throw it in fresh and crush it, to bring out the wine.”

The buzz was just getting to my head when voices rolled up the staircase. At first I thought people from downstairs had assumed the second floor was open. But Rhys greeted the newcomers—hugs, handshakes. It was a fascinating bunch. A guitarist. A younger man wearing a black velvet suit. And two women. One still a girl, in a red ruffled dress. The other so old she could pass for everyone's grandmother.

“They are gypsies, from Granada.” He sat back down next to me. “I
wanted you to experience flamenco at its best: authentic and in private.”

The old woman approached our table. I noticed only now the clusters of jewelry, the heavy black eyeliner, the beaded pins trying to tame her thick white hair. She sank to the floor, spreading her skirt over the tiles in front of me, and lifted her hand—palm up, as if expecting money.

“Go ahead.” Rhys pointed with his glass. “She is the most trusted palm reader one can get these days in all of Spain.”

Everyone was looking at me, and I realized he wasn't joking. “I don't think that's a good idea, Rhys.”

The woman flashed a gold-toothed smile at me. “I can tell you things. Things you have been dying to find out.”

I didn't want a stranger poking around my life, pretending to know anything about the future. But there was no polite way to refuse, so I went along with it.

“Which hand do I give you?”

“The dominant one always reveals more.” She took my hands, flipped them up, and stared. “Strange . . . They both dominate with you.”

Of course they did, otherwise how would I play the piano? I wondered what else Rhys had told her.

“The line of your heart is deep . . .” Her nail traced a horizontal trajectory that curved up toward the index finger. “But you tread a path not entirely your own. An old path. More than a decade.”

I pulled my hand back. How could she possibly know this? Even Rhys had no idea about my family, or the “old path” that had led me to Princeton.

“You make your own fate, child, so don't be afraid of it.” She reached for my hand again. Big metal rings clasped each of her fingers. “I see you with him, in front of a mirror—vast, dark mirror, like a sea of night. But only one reflection in it: his. The man is double, the girl is only one. And the two are looking at you. Same face, same heart.”

She lifted her eyes, waiting for me to say something.
Palm reading is a scam
, I reminded myself.
She can't be “seeing” things, least of all about Jake or Elza.
Still, I felt anxious. There had to be a logical explanation. The woman
obviously knew Rhys, and that he had a brother. The rest was just bluffing, a job she had been paid for: to throw “clairvoyant” guesses at me and take clues from my reaction.

“This has been very . . . interesting. Thank you.” I tried to pull my hand out again, but she wouldn't let me.

“You wanted to ask me something. About the choice waiting for you down that path.”

“Actually, it sounds like I've made my choice already.” I looked at Rhys and smiled. “Two identical men—that's just another way of saying I'm dealing with one very complicated guy. A guy with a dual nature.”

“Not so fast, child; don't dismiss my words so fast.” Her finger touched the middle of my hand, drawing two lines away from it in opposite directions. “I see a white path spilling one way, while a red path spills another. Love will walk away from you, unless you make a choice. The hardest choice of all. It may require—”

“I think Thea is right, that's enough future revealed for now.” Rhys jumped in, probably sensing my unease, and helped the woman off the floor. “If there's more, we can find out by living it.”

He gave the guitarist a nod and the music began. A few quick chords. Heavy silences in between, each wave of sound broken by syncopated handclaps. The woman who had read my fortune opened her mouth to sing. Sudden, desolate agony crept out of her throat and through the room. It ignited everything. I had never heard a woman's voice so deep, deeper than the howl of a man after years of drinking and sorrow. Angry, her heart thundered up and sobbed—words that could open wounds just with their wail, magnified by the guitar's anguish.

The man in the velvet suit stepped forward. His heels slammed the floor. He glided in a semicircle, facing us—slowly, as if taking his time before a bullfight. His arms flashed through the air. His body froze, arched like the sinew of a bow. Then the guitar brought him back to life: fingers first, then wrists, then arms—chest—hips—until the music swept him and he stormed across the floor, stomping the beat with fury.