The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina
Zoraida Córdova
Para Ruth Alejandrina Guerrero Gordillo
Yo quiero luz de luna
para mi noche triste,
para sentir divina
la ilusión que me trajiste,
para sentirte mía, mía tú
como ninguna,
pues desde que te fuiste
no he tenido luz de luna.
—FROM “LUZ DE LUNA” BY áLVARO CARRILLO
Part I
INVITATION TO WITNESS A DEATH
0
THE INVITATION
You are invited to my home on May 14, the Year of the Hummingbird. Please begin to arrive no earlier than 1:04 p.m., as I have many matters to settle before the event. The stars have shifted. The earth has turned. The time is here. I am dying. Come and collect your inheritance.
Eternally,
Orquídea Divina Montoya
1
THE WOMAN AND THE HOUSE THAT HAD NEVER BEEN
For many mornings, there had been nothing but barren land. Then one day, there was a house, a woman, her husband, and a rooster. The Montoyas arrived in the town of Four Rivers in the middle of the night without fanfare or welcome wagons or cheesy, limp green bean dishes or flaky apple pies offered in an attempt to get to know the new neighbors. Though in truth, before their arrival, the townspeople had stopped paying much attention to who came and went anymore.
Finding Four Rivers on a map was nearly impossible, as the roads were still mostly gravel, and the memory of the place lived only in the minds of those who remained on purpose. Yes, there had been railroads once, great iron veins hammered into the rocky ground connecting the dusty heart of a country with an identity that changed depending on where lines were drawn.
If a traveler took a wrong turn on a highway, they used the Four Rivers gas station and old diner. When any visitor asked what four rivers intersected to give the town its name, the locals would scratch their heads and say something like, “Why, all the rivers have been dried out since 1892.”
Other than Garret’s Pump Station and the Sunshine diner—offering bottomless coffee for $1.25—Four Rivers could claim a population of 748 people, a farmer’s market, a stationery store, the world’s eighth largest meteor hole, the site of a mass dinosaur grave (which was debunked by furious paleontologists who had nothing nice to say in their journal about the prank pulled by the graduating class of ’87), the only video rental store for miles, Four Rivers High School (winners of the 1977 regional football championship), and the smallest post office in the country, which was the only thing preventing them from becoming a ghost town.
Four Rivers was special for reasons the living population had all but forgotten. It was, in the most general sense, magic-adjacent. There are locations all over the world where power is so concentrated that it becomes the meeting ground for good and evil. Call them nexuses. Call them lay lines. Call them Eden. Over the centuries, as Four Rivers lost its water sources, its magic faded, too, leaving only a weak pulse beneath its dry mountains and plains.
That pulse was enough.
In the dip of the valley where the four rivers had once intersected, Orquídea Montoya built her house in 1960.
“Built” was a bit of a stretch since the house appeared as if from the ether. No one was there when the skeletal foundation was laid or the shutters were screwed in, and not a single local could remember having seen tractors and bulldozers or construction workers. But there it was. Five bedrooms, an open living room with a fireplace, two and a half bathrooms, a kitchen with well-loved appliances, and a wraparound porch with a little swing where Orquídea could watch the land around her change. The most ordinary part of that house was the attic, which only contained the things the Montoyas no longer had use for—and Orquídea’s troubles. The entire place would become the thing of nightmares and ghost stories for the people who drove to the top of the hill, on the only road in or out, and stopped, watching and waiting for a peek at the strange family living within.
Once they realized they had a new permanent neighbor, the people of Four Rivers decided to start paying attention again to who came and went.
Who exactly were these Montoyas? Where did they come from? Why don’t they come to mass? And who, in God’s grasshopper-green earth, painted their shutters such a dark color?
Orquídea’s favorite color was the blue of twilight—just light enough that the sky no longer appeared black, but before pinks and purples bled into it. She thought that color captured the moment the world held its breath, and she’d been holding hers for a long time. That was the blue that accented the shutters and the large front door. A few months after her arrival, on her first venture into town to buy a car, she learned that all the ranch-style houses were painted in tame, watery pastels.
Nothing about Orquídea’s house was accidental. She’d dreamt of a place of her very own since she’d been a little girl, and when she’d finally acquired it, the most important things were the colors and the protections. For someone like Orquídea Divina Montoya, who had attained everything through stubborn will and a bit of thievery, it was not just important to protect it, but to hold on to it. That is why every windowpane and every door had a gold laurel leaf pressed seamlessly into the surface. Not just to keep the magic in, but to keep danger out.