The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (77)

Marimar and Rhiannon screamed. Marimar felt a pulsing sensation within her heart. It was like being split in half, her flesh being turned inside out like skinned game. She tried to move her arms to fight back but the sensation was numbing her down to her bones. She saw the tree back home. Her valley. Clouds rolling in black and gray, punching fists of thunder into the ground. Orquídea’s tree bleeding from its heart.

The Living Star screamed and let them go. Behind him, Rey’s eyes were manic as he released the kitchen knife he drove through their attacker’s shoulder. The Living Star fell to his knees, the light within him was a fading pulse. He reached over and removed the blade from his body.

“I will never stop hunting you,” he said, then almost sadly, he added, “It was not supposed to be this way.”

Marimar took up Rhiannon in her arms, thin traces of blood running from her forehead and into her eyes. They needed to get out of the house one way or another. But her mind was numb, her body ached from her hair follicles to her marrow.

Then, Tatinelly made her way down the stairs.



* * *



Mike Sullivan died in the middle of the night. He felt no pain, only a deep warmth, the gentle caress of his Tatinelly, and then he was gone. The moment of his passing, his every pustule, which had served as gestation pods for the hundreds of grasshopper eggs embedded in his skin, split open. The grasshoppers molted, and shimmering green creatures bounced across every surface.

It was their frenzied song that woke Tatinelly. She kissed her husband, but she did not have time to mourn him. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. She had work to do. The living needed her still. She’d seen glimpses of Rhiannon, her sweet Rhiannon, running from a figure in her dreams. She found that the vines that filled the house felt familiar as they wrapped around her legs and arms like armor and gave her strength. Her fever broke, her eyes cleared. Tatinelly, who had believed she was ordinary her whole life, walked out of her quarantine room.

What no one—except Rhiannon and Mike—knew was that Tatinelly had never truly shed the gift Orquídea had given her seven years ago. After giving birth to Rhiannon, a branch remained, and a single golden laurel leaf sprouted out of her belly button. She took strength from it every day. Tatinelly would never be a painter, a writer, a celebrity, a scientist. She didn’t want to be any of those things, and that was okay. Some people were meant for great, lasting legacies. Others were meant for small moments of goodness, tiny but that rippled and grew in big, wide waves. Tatinelly might have been ordinary, but she was not weak. And she’d been saving the gift Orquídea had given her for a moment that mattered.

“Leave my family in peace,” Tatinelly told the monster hunting her family.

Using the very last of her power, Tatinelly called the vines to her. More and more, there was infinite life within her. Vines broke the skin of her belly button and wrapped around the Living Star, choking him until he began to fade. She felt the fire of his light, fighting against her. Grasshoppers leaped down the stairs. Hundreds of them descended on him, a cloud of locusts.

“This is not over,” the Living Star hissed and vanished in a breathless wave of darkness.

After, there was the crunch of glass, the panting of breaths, the crackle of locusts. Tatinelly Sullivan Montoya staggered into the arms of her cousins and her daughter. They brushed her hair back.

“I want to stay here.” And with her final breath, she said, “This is a lovely place to rest.”





25

ORQUíDEA DIVINA’S VOW




The Living Star shone brighter within his iron cage. He turned away from Orquídea. “I will show you my face when we have a deal.”

Orquídea pulled her robe tighter. It was a flimsy armor, but she would work on finding a better one, a stronger one. “Fine, stay in that cage for another decade. What do I care?”

The air chimed in that celestial way of his. “Wait. Wait. Wait, please!”

She froze. Please, Orquídea, please. That’s how Bolívar had begged her, too. She shut her eyes against the onslaught of tears. But she didn’t turn around. Didn’t let him see.

He extinguished his glow, so the only source was a phosphorescent bulb overhead and the strange gleam of his manacles. They had blended into the brightness, except at certain angles where she saw color, the streak of a rainbow. The sheen of water on an oil slick.

Orquídea blinked until her eyes adjusted to the shadows. She was surrounded by sleeping beasts, by the flap of restless caged birds, the stench of animal shit, and the hay and cedarwood shavings that could never quite cover it up.

Then, she faced him.

The most surprising thing was that the Living Star was a man almost like any other. His hair was as dark as the longest night, with thick waves that tumbled down his pale, naked shoulders. His hooked nose was proportionate for his rectangular face, like every imperfection was tailored to make it impossible to look away. Orquídea took another step closer and was able to see the pearlescent beauty marks on his pectorals, his abdomen.

“Do you have a name?”

“Lázaro.”

She stepped closer yet. Her fear giving way to curiosity. “What are you?”

“What are you?” His mouth tugged with a smile. “Flower. Mermaid. It seems you have to be anything, other than yourself.”