The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (81)

“You have to focus all of your energy on that connection every family has. It’s in our bones, our blood. More than that, it’s in the questions we need answered. The secrets, traumas, and legacies that we don’t know we’ve inherited, even if we don’t want them.”

Jefita’s dark eyes fell to Rey’s hand. Another petal fell. In seven years, it had never shed a single one. After the other night’s attack, he’d shed four.

“A seance would be less smelly,” Rey muttered.

Jefita lightly smacked the back of his head. “This is real. Usually, the ingredients to call on the dead involve a blood sacrifice. Your family is still brushed by so much recent death and that is enough. Now, focus. You’ve never met your great-grandmother, but blood is like a tether, even when the tether is frayed. The connection is there, deep down, hasta la raíz.”

Down to the root.

Rey thought of the boy he’d been once, reserved and quiet. He’d wanted to hide in stacks of papers and numbers that added up to neat solutions. He’d never expected to be this person who dug up his ancestor’s bones. Though, to be fair, he hadn’t had to actually dig, in the literal sense. He tried to clear his mind again. Concentrated on what he wanted. Every other time he’d focused this power, gift, curse—whatever it actually was—his desire had been simple. To make art. So, he had. He envisioned Orquídea’s tree. The three of them had been trying to talk to their grandmother before the Living Star attacked. They’d heard Orquídea’s warning, too late. He explored the spark of his power, his gift. Rhiannon had said that Marimar and Rey hadn’t really been listening before, but where were they supposed to learn how to communicate having been raised in a house of secrets?

Rhiannon closed her eyes and felt the skin around her rose burn as it changed back to the blush pink that reminded her of her mother. Her beautiful, patient mother who had protected her. She didn’t want to cry anymore. She wanted to help her cousins listen and see. Somewhere in the shadows of the mausoleum came a breeze, a deep groan.

Marimar thought of the pictures she’d seen of Isabela Belén Montoya Buenasuerte. She’d already had opinions of her great-grandmother and they weren’t kind, even if she wore the woman’s face. She felt her frantic pulse at the center of her throat and focused on that. How far within her did the bud grow? When they’d taken Tatinelly away, Marimar had noticed the golden laurel leaf on her belly button. Is that what was inside of Marimar, too? Was she made up of roots and vines? Were there flowers in her lungs? Thorns around her heart? Jefita had said to focus deep down, hasta la raíz, down to the root. Tía Parcha was buried in New York. Her mother, Tía Florecida, Penny, and her grandfather Luis were in Four Rivers with Orquídea’s tree. Tío Félix was here in the river that surrounded them, and now Tatinelly was in this room with their great-grandmother. Where would she be buried when the time came? And who would care?

A single tear ran down her cheek.

Then, the bones rattled. They aligned, gathering into the semblance of a person.

Isabela Belén Montoya Buenasuerte’s skeleton sat up.





27

LOS HUESOS DE ISABELA BELéN MONTOYA BUENASUERTE




“What have you done to me?” Isabela asked in a clear, haughty voice. There was the faintest imprint of the woman she’d been layered over the bones, like transparent skin. A ghost. A true and honest ghost. “Who are you?”

“It’s me, se?ora Isabela! Jefita Rumi—”

“I know you, Jefita, of course. But who are they?” The bony finger pointed at Rey, Marimar, and Rhiannon.

“I’m Marimar, and this is Rhiannon and Rey.”

“Rey?” Isabela’s bones asked. “?Rey de qué?”

Marimar snorted. His mother had changed the usual Ray to Rey. “Rey,” the Spanish word for “king.” She would always call out to him and say, “my little king of the earth.” Sure, that was cute when he was five. But clearly, his great-grandmother didn’t think so.

“It’s short for Reymundo,” he said and took a long drag of his cigarette.

“I’d say I’m pleased to meet you but, who are you to me that you would wake me? How long have I been dead, Jefita?”

“Almost a decade, se?ora,” she said, and crossed herself.

“We’re your great-grandchildren from your Montoya side,” Rhiannon explained.

“Montoya? Whose Montoyas? My brother or sisters’?”

“Neither.” Marimar said the word like a bite. “We are the progeny of Orquídea Divina. And we have questions.”

“Orquídea lived,” she said with joyful sorrow. She repeated the name, until the sad spell was gone, and Isabela’s bones rattled with the Montoya temper. “She lived, and she didn’t tell me. I don’t want your questions. I don’t have answers. Let me rest in peace.”

Marimar and Rey exchanged a knowing look. She said, “Well, at least we know where Orquídea got her stubbornness from.”

Isabela’s bones made a choking sound, if bones could choke. “How dare you talk to me that way? The nerve. It served Orquídea right that she should have such insolent grandchildren. And what is that on your skin?”