The Witch Narratives: Reincarnation (16 page)

“You know what the townsfolk call me? I am known as El Esperanza, out of respect or fear, it matters not which. What is important is that I am respected. And who will respect you, Girl?”

She knew better to remain silent.

Mother grabbed a handful of her hair, dragging her upstairs to her bedroom. She threw Salia’s things about, searching under the bed and in the drawers until she found what she was looking for. She held the wooden statue of Saint Jude over her head and brought it down hard on Salia’s head.

A lump grew on Salia’s head. This time, she could not hold back her tears.

“So much for your Saint Jude protecting you. He has made you sick with the headache. It is because of this ridiculous idol that you have not been able to harness the spell’s magic.”

“Are you admitting the Saint has such power?” she said, sniffling.

“It does over you, idiot Girl.” She set the statue upright on the floor, snapping her fingers and a flame burst from her hand, onto the statue. “See, your Saint is like a tree without roots, powerless to save itself from my power.”

Salia stared at the floor, her eyes burning with anger. The statue had been a gift from her friend, Marcelina. Her mother had no right.
No right.

She dismissed her with a wave of her hand. “We will try again tomorrow with your flying lesson.”

The statue burned, the wood crackling. Mother was right. There was no power in the Saint. She merely touched it with her hand, and Saint Jude went up in flames. “I shall try harder. I swear I’ll get the spell right,” she said, winded because she was having difficulty breathing. She favored her right side. “I shall get it right. Even if it kills me.”

“Good. Though I doubt we shall have to kill you,” she said.

15

S
alia and Marcelina were picking wild herbs in the mountains.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Marcelina said, wiping the sweat from her forehead.

“A little flower called ardor, used in a love potion. There are love potions for cheating lovers, which will win back a man’s devotion and make him lose interest in another. Ah, but ardor is used in the most powerful of love potions. Ardor is the flower that causes love to take seed and grow in the first place. The flower is red and blooms at the base of a cactus. This is like love, no? Love is prickly and cuts you when you try to pluck it. Many have bled to death from love.”

“You have a very hard view of love.”

“Love is a weakness that makes you vulnerable. Love is an open wound. I will never love any man. I swear it.”

“I believe in love,” Marcelina said with a dreamy look in her eyes.

“You, my dear romantic, are a lost cause,” she said scornfully.

“I am soon to be married,” she said, excitedly.

“You are only sixteen! Why would you want to be owned by a man? So he can hit you like your stepfather beat your mama? So he can treat you like a breeding cow, filling your belly with babies, until you are worn out and old before your time?”

She thinks you’re not good enough for Juan,
the voice whispered to Marcelina.

“Juan Martinez is my chosen husband,” she said with a stubborn lift to her chin. “Both our families have agreed. Juan is not from Madrid but from Cerrillos.”

“Cerrillos?” Salia scoffed. “Why then has this secret lover never visited you? Cerrillos is just ten miles north of here.”

She thinks no man will ever love you.

“Juan and his family are to visit tomorrow. He has gotten a job with the mine because he is good at baseball, which the owner, Patrón Stuwart, has a passion for. If Juan proves to be an asset for the Madrid Miners baseball
team, he will not have to break his back in the coal mine but will have lighter duties. He will be in no danger if the mine collapses.”

Salia scowled. “I have heard of this Samuel Stuwart, this trouble-maker mine owner, who is making Juan move to Madrid. I hear Madrid is not good enough for Señor Stuwart.”

“He does not live here because he has tuberculosis. I saw him once, when he came to Madrid. Diego pointed him out to me.”

“Since he is too sick to come to the mountains of Madrid very often to see to his mine, then what does he want with a baseball team here?”

“The teams play all over the state but mostly Albuquerque, which is where he lives in a grand casa. My mother has planned a picnic in the woods for Juan’s visit. Come, Salia. Don’t be so angry with me.”

She threw her basket on the ground, scattering her herbs.

Marcelina knelt, picking up the spilled herbs, placing them back in her basket.

“Leave it,” Salia hissed, scuffing her shoe against the ground, kicking dust in her face.

“You know we have to marry. We are young women, and there is nothing else for us but marriage. There is no other life,” she said, tiredly.

“For you maybe, but I shall never belong to any boy. My heart is my own, and no man will ever own it,” she said, haughtily tossing her head.

“The more you show your disdain of them, the more boys seem to like you.”

“Liar.”

“They follow you, no matter how much you discourage them.”

“Fibber.”

“The men are like dogs, following a bitch in heat, the way they chase after you.”

“Deceiver.”

“One day, a boy will corner you and trap you like the wild thing you are.”

“You sound like my mother, cursing me,” Salia said.

“There’s not a boy our age or young man in Madrid who wouldn’t like to…”

“Finish what you were going to say, Marcelina Rodríguez. What is it those pigs would like to do to me because I’m a wild thing, as you put it?”

“I know you are not like that, Salia, though everyone else in Madrid…”

“The villagers have always gossiped about me.”

“You can’t help what you are,” she said, patting her shoulder.

She stiffened. “What am I?”

“There’s something about you. Perhaps, the coyote in you gives off an animalistic sexuality men find attractive, not just the boys our age. I’ve seen how most men look at you. They find you irresistible.”

“Like your stepfather found you irresistible? Does that make you a puta?”

“I never mentioned the word, puta. You misunderstand.”

“I’m not experienced like that,” Salia said in a hurt voice because no boy had even held her hand, much less kissed her. “I want none of them. Do you hear me? None of them,” she said, wiping the tears from her eyes.

“Well, I must marry. My family expects it. Just because I marry does not mean I shall love you any less. We shall always be friends.”

“Defy your family then.”

“I want to marry Juan, more than anything. I went to Golden once, when I was ten, and he was thirteen. Juan kissed me behind the bushes, and I have loved him ever since.”

Salia stared at her, tight lipped.

“What do you want of me?”

“What do you want of me? Perhaps, I shall make up a love potion for you, so this Juan of yours,” she said with a sneer, “Will fall passionately in love with you.”

“I may not have your power over men, but I’m sure I can manage to make my intended fall in love with me. It was, after all, he who kissed me and thought me rather pretty.”

“But that was before you became so fat,” Salia said. She plopped on the ground, yanking the grass from its roots.

Marcelina dropped the basket and marched away.
I warned you. She thinks no man can ever love you,
the voice hissed.

There is a ritual among single women on Midsummer’s Eve: if she walks backwards and picks a rose the color of the heart, she will discover twelve months later who her husband will be. Exactly one year ago, Marcelina picked such a red rose and with loving care, sewed it up in a bag. She then put it aside in darkness. She now opened the bag and reached in.

“It can’t be!” she screamed. The rose had turned black in color, was whole and fresh with dew upon the leaves. She ripped the rose to pieces.

The stem repaired itself, the petals reattaching and forming a fresh black rose.

She chopped up the rose with a knife, but again, the rose restored itself.

She tore off a petal, but the petal fluttered in the air and reattached to the rose.

With trembling fingers, she stuffed the black rose back in the sack and sewed the opening shut. She buried it in the back yard.

She recalled Salia saying that there were three ways of becoming a witch: (1) inheriting the propensity for magic (2) dark powers coming unbidden to those Tezcatlipoca recruits (3) seeking out a witch to apprentice with.

Salia had said, “I inherited the black rose, but the black rose cultivates others, discriminately choosing where to plant its seed. Still, there are those who purposefully pluck the black rose for wealth, power or vengeance and if they’re lucky, the rose thrives and does not wilt.”

Marcelina knew not what the black rose was trying to tell her, but Juan was hers, and would be her husband. She did not need confirmation or tricks from a flower.

16

M
arcelina and Juan were walking in the woods and bumped into a barefoot Salia. Juan stared, transfixed, at Salia sauntering towards them with her hips swaying. She looked like a gypsy, with her blouse tied in a knot, exposing an inch of bare midriff. One side of her skirt was tucked into her waist because it was a hot day. Her copper-red hair cascaded to her waist in unruly curls.

“This must be the intended, Juan Martinez,” she said, glaring at Marcelina. She whispered in her ear, “Your fiancé is not much to look at, not overly tall. He looks like a peasant. Like most young men, he is full of himself.”

His eyes traveled from her big luminous eyes down to her exposed, long, shapely leg.

She yanked her skirt down, but she did not seem embarrassed, rather, she stared back at Juan with a defiant look in her flashing eyes.

“Isn’t she something? Who is she?” he said in a dumbfounded voice.

“She is my friend. Salia,” she said in a small voice.

Juan held out a hand to her, but she shoved her hands in her skirt pockets. She ignored him and turned to Marcelina. “It’s hotter than yesterday.”

“Yes,” Juan answered. He looked at Salia, his eyes filled with yearning.

Salia raised an eyebrow at him. “You have not known my friend long, have you?”

He shook his head, no.

“Or, perhaps, I am mistaken and you shared the same cradle when you were infants?”

“Salia…” Marcelina warned.

“What? Did I say something wrong? It was a joke.”

Nobody was laughing, except for the voice, heckling Marcelina, whispering dirty jokes in her ear, images of Juan and Salia together, naked. Marcelina flicked at her ear, trying to quiet the voice.

“I have only met Marcelina twice before. She is nothing to me,” he said in a flustered tone, ignoring the stricken Marcelina and smiling at Salia, like they shared a secret. “Will you join us?”

“I am rather lonely walking by myself,” she drawled, linking her arm through Marcelina’s arm.

The three paced their steps, Marcelina with one arm held stiffly by Salia, and her other arm held loosely by Juan, as if she was a fish he caught and was now thinking about throwing back in the river. She rolled her eyes at him, like a drowning tuna.
Leave them,
the voice whispered.
Let them fornicate in the grass. He wants her. He’s never looked at you that way. He never will.

Salia grinned mischievously at her. “Do you think my friend would make a good breeding cow?” she asked Juan.

See what she thinks of you.

“What about you? You, ah, have no boyfriend then?” he asked Salia.

“There is no one. I do not wish to be a mother. Ever,” she snorted.

He looked intensely at Salia. The muscle in his jaw was tight, held back with barely constrained excitement.

Salia stared straight ahead, her own jaw muscle tight, her eyes narrowed, her full lips a thin line on her face.

There, to the right. Poisoned mushrooms. Feed them to her,
the voice hissed.

“There is no one for Salia because she is a bruja,” she blurted out.

“I believe you are an old fashioned girl,” he said, grinning sheepishly at Salia.

“She is no girl! She’s experienced,” she screeched.

“The path forks here. I must go,” she said, shoving Marcelina’s arm from her.

“Wait,” he said, stooping to pick a wild flower. He placed the flower in Salia’s ear. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Witch,” he said with love-sick cow eyes.

She tore the flower from her hair and flung it in his face. “Fool!” She disappeared into the woods.

Marcelina tugged at his sleeve to gain his attention. “You must forgive Salia. She has always been a rude girl, brought up to be wild. She is an alley cat and not a lady like me.”

“What did you say?” he said absent-mindedly. He strained his neck towards the forest, searching for her. He picked up the wild flower, caressing the petals.