When the Moon was Ours(24)

All the colors would look like the rose moons he and Miel had found in the sky that summer. He’d hang it in the beech tree outside her window, and under its light she’d sleep. He wanted to give her every light that had ever hung in the night sky. He wanted to give her back what she thought she’d lost years ago.

Sam could stay with her. He could tell her what his grandmother had told him about the crocus fields, how they sometimes smelled like hay, and sometimes like leaves, and sometimes like the spice they held. He could tell her his favorite story his grandmother had told him. A prince and a fairy who fell in love, and could sometimes be seen over the water of Saif-ul-Malook on nights lit by the full moon.

But it took Aracely to get Miel home, to get her in bed, to get her to sleep. Aracely stood in the doorway of Miel’s room, watching her breathe, lips parted.

There was something proprietary in that look. Something possessive, both defensive and proud.

Sam had disregarded that moment of thinking he’d seen a resemblance between Aracely and Miel. He’d let it fall like a stone he picked up, turned over, and then decided not to keep. But now he looked for it again, like brushing his fingers through a carpet of leaves, finding it a second time.

He couldn’t ask Aracely, not now, with Miel settling into the space between those glass pumpkins and her own dreams. But he wouldn’t forget. This time he wasn’t letting it go.





lake of forgetfulness

Ms. Owens’ voice came up through the floorboards, her nervous laugh and her chatter to Aracely.

Miel opened her bedroom door. She heard Aracely answering back in her slow, calming voice, her aren’t-men-awful voice. Ms. Owens’ voice was unsteady, and Miel wondered what actuary, what mattress-franchise millionaire, had broken her heart this time.

And why Aracely hadn’t called Miel down to help her.

Aracely stood at the stove, boiling water for lavender and ginger tea. After the second time, Aracely always gave it to Ms. Owens, to relax her, to make sure the inside of her wasn’t becoming too stiff and brittle from so many lovesickness cures.

Miel leaned against the counter, her elbows on the tile. “Where is she?” Miel whispered.

“Just fixing her face,” Aracely said, giving Miel a pained look. “It’s a bad one this time. Mascara everywhere.”

“Why didn’t you call me?” Miel asked.

Aracely leaned in. “I think that’s the same thing she wants to ask the guy.”

Miel elbowed her, and Aracely pressed her lips together. Only Aracely could make those kinds of jokes without sounding cruel.

“I meant why didn’t you tell me to come down,” Miel said, her voice still low. “I always help you.”

Aracely’s eyelids pinched. “You had a long night last night. I thought you might be tired.”

Miel felt the unease of slipping from a place she’d claimed as hers. She always handed Aracely the eggs and the oranges. Aracely always signaled to Miel to open the window at just the right time to let the lovesickness out. They both carefully shooed the lovesickness out the window, watching so it wouldn’t fly back, or end up stuck in a bowl of fruit or a vase of flowers, the ceramic trembling like a wasp’s wings. Or worse, rush back into the body it came out of. To visitors, curing lovesickness seemed all instinct and flourish. But Aracely treated it as a craft that took as much patience and method as cutting raw opal.

And Miel had been part of that for almost as long as she’d lived with Aracely.

“I’m fine.” Miel stood up straight. “I can do this.”

The kettle sang, and Aracely took it off the burner. “Are you sure?”

“It was just bad dreams,” Miel said. “That’s all.”

“That’s not what I hear.”

The gossip had already bubbled through the town about the newest glass pumpkins in the Bonners’ fields, deep and bright as topaz and bloodstone.

“Are they saying I did it?” Miel asked.

“No.” Aracely poured the hot water. “Why would they?”

Miel felt the tension in her fingers pulling back toward her heart. No one but the Bonner sisters knew they had brought the stained glass coffin back from its distant place in their family’s stories. No one but the Bonner sisters knew they had locked Miel inside it.

No one but Miel saw those jewel-glass pumpkins as the threat they were.

Miel handed Aracely the hard cone of piloncillo she always grated into Ms. Owens’ tea.

“I can do this,” she said.

Aracely took the piloncillo. “Are you sure?”

“I always help you,” Miel said.

“I’ve cured her more times than I can count. I know her heart better than mine. If there’s one you had to miss, this isn’t a bad one.”

“But it’s important,” Miel said. “You’re always saying keep the repeat customers happy.”

Aracely eyed the door Ms. Owens was behind. The sound of the sink running came through.

“Fine,” Aracely said. “But take it slow. You don’t have to get me what I ask for so fast you throw it at me. I can wait. So can Emma. If it takes an hour, so what? I don’t want you handing me a pink egg when I want a green one.”

“Deal,” Miel said.

So they spread a sheet over the table in the indigo room, and Ms. Owens came in, clutching a pocket square that must have belonged to whatever man she had last fallen in love with. It looked like it cost more than any dress Miel owned. The candles turned the silk the color of Aracely’s Spanish rice.