Minerva and the House of Gardenias

Chapter 1

Ygnacio

I watch as a girl and two women—one with gray hair, one with white—pass through the outer gates and into the embrace of the grand, ancient house. As they enter the bosom of the inner courtyard, air heavy with the scent of gardenias curls around their necks.

Thick emerald vines droop lazily over the stone courtyard walls, sinuous and heavy from the rainy season’s storms. Gnarled trees line the path to the door of the house, their branches low-slung and mossed over with age.

The walls watch. The trees watch. The house watches.

We all watch, breathing as one, seeing as one, our interest piqued by this girl, this stranger who pushes the old woman in a wheeled chair.

For the girl hesitates.

“Hurry up,” the gray-haired woman snaps, the muscles of her neck tense beneath the gardenia brooch at her throat.

The girl lowers her chin, sweat beading on her forehead as she pushes the old woman’s chair, but oh, she knows.

She knows—even if she could not put it into words—that something lingers in the cracks between the stones, like dried blood beneath fingernails. Something dark hangs on the air. Something that is too sweet to be foul, too coy to be clean.

Something aware.

We know why the women are here. Well, I do—the house and the trees and the walls have their own concerns, their own slow preoccupations, their ancient thoughts. Their curiosity slackens; their attention drifts.

But I watch on.

Long have I watched the Viceroyalty burgeon and burn from la Casa de las Gardenias, perched on an imperious mountain above the valley. I watched it quake with rebellion and pretend to settle. Its restless heartbeat never slowed as men changed seats and silver changed hands.

I know the Viceroyalty is at war again. It turns on itself, devouring its own limbs to destroy an insurgency.

I know the women return to la Casa de las Gardenias as a safe haven in times of unrest. They came from the city in a black, unmarked carriage.

They wound through the mist toward jungled mountains that stand as starkly from the valley floor as cones of dark sugar.

Up a path as sheer as the faces of primeval pyramids, up to these impenetrable walls, to wake the regal house from sleep.

Here they will weather the storm as they would any other, as they have the privilege to do: stitching in richly decorated drawing rooms, needles flashing in lamplight, lips and shoulders held firm as thunder crashes and rain sluices the valley floor below like blood.

But the girl?

When she stepped into the courtyard, I thought I knew what to make of her. I measured her swiftly: underfed, submissive as a kicked dog. Overshadowed by the approaching storm. An afterthought unlucky enough to get caught in the hem of dangerous affairs.

But then she cast her gaze high, chispa-bright and sharp. Those, I realized, were eyes that saw too much. Those were the eyes of a girl whose fate was to be consumed by la Casa de las Gardenias from the moment she crossed the threshold.

And that was where the story changed.

But that wasn’t where the story began. No, this wasn’t where it began at all.