The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (20)

He wielded the machete high over his head as he marched up to the door.

“Stop!” Marimar shouted, but Enrique did not listen, and he brought the machete down on the roots that kept the door shut. The vines rippled. The roots twisted. The house let loose a deep, guttural moan. But the machete was like a fist against solid brick. Enrique couldn’t stop now, so he kept hacking away at a root that petrified with every strike. Another thick root reached out and struck him across the face. He grunted and when he recovered there was the shadow of a perfect handprint on his cheek.

On the next strike, Enrique went for the gold laurel leaves on the glass windows and was pushed back with a great force. He turned to the worried faces of everyone around him and, for the first time, something like fear bolted across his eyes.

“Stop!” Marimar shouted again, and this time, even the mountains trembled with the sound of her cry.

“It’d be easier to burn it to the ground,” Rey said, looking down at his lighter. The cherry of his cigarette lit up the angles of his face from where he stood in the shadows. He didn’t mean what he said. He’d loved this house once. He wanted to hate it. He had hated it when he’d been far away. But now that he was here, now that he heard it crying, he wanted to make it stop.

Orquídea Divina had survived in a world that didn’t want her and she survived the magic that claimed the lives of her husbands and daughters. Enrique, though he was her son, didn’t understand her. Most of them didn’t. Not truly. If they had, they’d be inside the house.

Come and collect. Those were the exact words Orquídea had written. They were here to answer an invitation. All of them.

“That’s not how Orquídea works,” Tatinelly said.

Marimar nodded. Any other day, she would have laughed at Enrique getting punched in the face by magical roots, but they had somewhere to be. Someone waiting for them. She pulled out the invitation again. Come and collect. She thought of the way her grandmother hid things in the hollows of trees. How she spoke to the birds that brought seeds to her windowsills and sent them on errands.

“Remember that time my mom came home drunk,” Rey said, “And even though the locks hadn’t been changed, her key wouldn’t work? Orquídea was in the den and we had instructions to not let my mom in.”

“Yeah,” Marimar said. “I forgot how she finally got in.”

“She said she just apologized and asked nicely, but now I can’t remember if my mom had been talking about the house or Orquídea.”

“Maybe we should ask nicely,” Tatinelly suggested.

They scoffed and laughed at her, but Marimar held on to that thought. No one wanted to be summoned, no one truly wanted to be here. She was sure that not one of the other Montoyas had announced themselves. They’d seen the obstacle and gave up when the answer wasn’t obvious. But perhaps it was obvious.

Tatinelly got up, her belly nearly tipping her over. Rey held out a steadying hand since he was standing closest to her. She walked up the five porch steps and stood in front of the door.

“I’ve come to collect,” she said in her windchime voice.

Instantly, the roots gave way, relinquishing their hold on the doorknob. The house released a deep sigh that shook the entire structure. Dragonflies and lightning bugs flitted in the dark open hall, their hazy glow illuminating the foyer. Floorboards peeked beneath layers of dirt, which must’ve come in with the roots and vines that broke through like ripped stitches.

Marimar and Rey didn’t wait for the others. They were right behind Tatinelly, turning left into the living room, where Orquídea Divina liked to sit, facing the fireplace while drinking bourbon as the sun set behind the valley. Her valley.

The old bruja was right where she’d always been. Her warm brown skin was cracked like parched earth, and her hair, still ink-black despite the years, was braided into a crown around her head. Those black eyes crinkled at the corners, her mouth split into a dark smile.

Rey felt his own heart spike with relief and terror combined.

“Mamá?” Marimar gasped.

“Oh, my saints,” Tatinelly said, pressing where her baby kicked hard.

“Fuck me,” Rey said, reaching for a cigarette, but he was out.

“What did I tell you about staring?” Orquídea asked, her voice strong and raspy as ever.

“Do it?” Rey grinned.

Because how could they not stare? Orquídea Divina Montoya was the same as she’d always been from the waist up. It was the rest of her that needed some getting used to.

Thin green branches grew straight out of her wrists, her inner elbow, the divots between her finger tendons, like extensions of her veins. They wrapped around the high-backed upholstered chair with the laurel leaf embroidery. Flower buds the size of pearls bloomed from the branches sprouting out of her beautiful skin.

Her peacock-blue dress was pulled up to show her knees, where flesh and bone ended, and thick brown tree bark began. Most spectacular of all were her feet, now turned into roots. The same roots that tore through the floorboards and dug straight into the earth, searching and searching for a place to cling to.





7

THE GIRL AND THE RIVER MONSTER




Before she arrived in Four Rivers, before she came to steal her power, before her mother married, Orquídea was just an ordinary girl who spent most of her days by the river. Until one day, she had her first taste of the impossible. On the same day, she made a deal.