Chapter 12
Minerva
Sunlight shone into the second-floor sitting room through freshly cleaned glass. The dark green tones of the upholstery and rugs paled in comparison to the gardens outside. As Senora Encarnación read, I turned my face to the side. I let my eyelids fall.
I craved the feeling of sunlight on my skin without the glass cutting half its warmth.
Today, dawn broke to gloriously clear blue skies.
After breakfast, Filomena followed Eugenia into the garden holding a parasol.
Likewise, Cosme shadowed Octaviana as she strolled around the property.
Even gloomy Leoncio has left the house and vanished into some corner of the gardens.
Servants threw open windows and flitted in and out of doors, carrying silver trays of aguas frescas in tall crystal glasses and trays of spiced and salted fruit.
I watched them through the window, my gaze lingering on the glittering crystal and papaya and jícama and wedges of lime.
It was difficult not to be envious. I didn’t have the energy to fight the feeling.
“You’re slouching, Senorita Trevino.”
I adjusted my hold on the magnifying glass between Senora Encarnación’s face and the fine print of the newspaper before her.
It had been Senorita Trevino and not Minerva for several days now.
I had not been forgiven for suggesting a move to a suite on the ground floor. I would suggest it again, though.
On my left wrist was a second thread with seven knots, flush against the first.
What little sleep I got in the last three nights happened right at the cusp of dawn, when the bells that rang to summon the liveried servants to their daily duties were barely an hour away.
My chispa lamp burned low. I ignored the looks I received from the maids who saw me take double the usual amount from the storage cupboard.
“La senora is often up late reading,” I lied, and took it to Senora Encarnación’s suite.
In fact, the only thing la senora liked to read was the papers, especially now that the press had been taken over by the Viceroy’s regime. She asked after them repeatedly since arriving at la Casa de las Gardenias, and at last, stacks of them were delivered at dawn alongside the usual post.
A letter was attached to the top of the stack. Octaviana immediately took it when the post and the papers were delivered to the breakfast table. She broke the seal and let the page fall open, then she froze. The only movement in her face was brows lifting toward her hairline.
“ ‘For my esteemed cousin Encarnación,’ ” she read. She looked up. “Fernando.”
Every head around the table—the servants’ as well—swiveled to Senora Encarnación. The eyes of the family glittered with avarice.
“Oh, my dear Fernando thinks of everything,” Senora Encarnación said, a hand lifting bashfully to her brooch, as Cosme brought the papers to her side of the table. Then she added, breathless with excitement: “And the light is perfect for reading today.”
And so I sat inside, in a room so stuffy it strangled me, holding a magnifying glass instead of being trounced by Senora Encarnación in our usual mid-morning bout of Mice and Hounds. A maid had left the window open to air out the room when we entered; Senora Encarnación ordered me to shut it.
“It’s far too drafty,” she complained. “The breeze disturbs my papers.”
The footman called Antonio entered, holding a silver tray.
Instead of glasses of ice bobbing in cold agua fresca, he carried Senora Encarnación’s customary merienda, hot tea and a piloncillo-sweetened pan dulce.
He blinked—perhaps adjusting to the bright light spilling into the otherwise dark room from the window.
He brought the tea to the table to Senora Encarnación’s left and retreated when she waved him away curtly.
The door shut, its hinges releasing an agonized complaint.
For the last few days, my imagination had spun frantic at the slightest creak in the floorboards or moan of an opening door. It felt as if the very walls were watching me. Every room buzzed with awareness. My body was exhausted by spikes of terror and dogged vigilance.
“You’re slouching again,” Senora Encarnación said. “Good posture is good virtue.”
I straightened my spine, but my eyelids remained heavy as Senora Encarnación turned the pages of the paper, peering down her nose at news of Valbuenistas and loyalists alike being shot in the boulevards of the city.
A new battle had erupted over the mine north of the Capital.
She scanned the lists of the loyalists’ dead.
“Hm.” She sniffed delicately as she set this section of the paper aside. “Margarita Veléz lost Memo. Her grandson. I wonder who will run Palacio Las Palmas now.” She looked at me sharply. “Don’t just sit there, senorita, my tea is growing cold.”
I fumbled the magnifying glass as I set it down in my lap and nearly dropped the lid of the sugar bowl as I prepared her tea. Senora Encarnación’s customary two teaspoons of sugar dissolved into the dark liquid. As she sipped, coughed, and sipped again, my attention drifted.
The sun from the window warmed my back. Please, let it stay until the siesta. Once Senora Encarnación fell asleep, I could slip outside. I would lie on my back on the bench beneath the jasmine trellis, hands behind my head, and fall asleep listening to the birds.
Senora Encarnación’s coughing grew stronger.
“Are you all right, senora?” I took the cup from her as she pawed for a handkerchief.
Her back shuddered. She sucked in air, but her wheezing sounded tinny and weak.
I put the cup down and ran across the room to the small cords by the parlor door that summoned servants from the kitchens and other places in the house.
I yanked the kitchen cord twice, again, urgently, knowing that others would come running when the attached bell rang shrilly in the kitchen.
I wished I could tell them to bring water.
I returned to Senora Encarnación’s side. “Can you breathe?”
She lowered her handkerchief. It came away from her lips splattered with bright, garish red.
Her eyes widened, thin white lashes reaching toward crepey skin. She looked up at me, as if in surprise, then her eyes opened wider. Wider still. They bulged out of her face, bloodshot and reddening by the second.
“Senora?” She was not breathing. She wasn’t choking, but she was not breathing.
I stood and leaned her forward, hitting her back to dislodge anything that might be in her throat. “Senora, open your mouth! Breathe!”
Her body shook each time I struck her back. The loose skin of her cheeks and jowls trembled; her eyes might pop out and fall against her spectacles.
“Help!” I shrieked. Damn the thick walls of the house. “Someone get help! Help!”
Her skin was graying. Her lips purpled. She bowed forward.
I held up her shoulders with my hands. “Senora, look at me.”
Her bloodshot eyeballs swiveled and focused on me. Though her pupils were fixed on my face, they seemed to stare through me, past me.
“Senora, breathe. Breathe.”
She parted her lips; blood dribbled onto her chin. It dripped on the crisp fabric of her dress.
“Help!” I shouted again, directing my voice to the door. “La senora needs help!”
Holding her upright did nothing. Her shoulders twitched and convulsed under my hands.
Blood smeared her teeth and reddened her tongue.
It mixed with spit and slicked her chin with pink foam.
Her throat worked, making the motions of gasping, but she made no sound.
She was a fish on land, eyes bulging and searching the room and then swiveling madly to the ceiling.
Her body’s twitches strengthened and flung her back into the armchair.
Her chin yanked up. The blood would be pouring into her throat now.
I pulled her forward to prevent this, bracing us both against each violent convulsion.
Her body stiffened beneath my hands. Her chin thrust toward the ceiling; her eyeballs swiveled to the left and fixed there. Blood dripped down her chin.
A motion caught the corner of my eye. A sweep of relief; help had arrived at last.
“Call a doc—” I turned, but my voice died in my throat.
I saw what Senora Encarnación’s eyes were fixed on.
The shadows on the far side of the room coalesced and thickened. They writhed like beheaded snakes, tangling into each other, growing darker and more muscular. Moving as one, they ripped away from the wall. They became a single black, writhing cloud, many-limbed and gaping-mouthed.
The cloud pounced at us.
I flung myself back from Senora Encarnación, scrambling away from that cloud, that thing.
I expected Senora Encarnación to fall forward without me supporting her, but instead she went rigid, her face upturned.
The gray of her face darkened to purple; her tongue lolled out of her mouth as the thing descended on her and seized her skull in its embrace.
A serpentine limb reached for her and poured smoke into her nose, into her throat.
Then it yanked.
Senora Encarnación gave a final, shuddering convulsion as the limb withdrew.
Screaming. I heard screaming. My throat burned; my eyes watered.
It was me. I was screaming. And I could not stop, not even when a golden glow began to emanate from Senora Encarnación’s purple lips. She retched, an airless, desperate spasm. There was a fluttering in the glow, a shifting, and then—
Butterflies, hundreds of butterflies poured forth from her open mouth. They heaved from her throat in waves, their glimmering wings filling the room with a brilliant, profane glory.
The cloud—that dark, monstrous thing—tossed Senora Encarnación aside. Her body collapsed on the side of the armchair, white hair falling loose from its knot and spilling over her face.
The cloud turned its attention on the golden butterflies.
And it devoured them.