The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (89)

With Pedrito safely against her chest in his sling, she ran. While the fireworks went off, she approached the tent. Lucho frowned when he saw her, but she blew a handful of the angel’s-trumpet powder in his face. All eight feet and four hundred and sixty pounds of him fell like a great bear in the woods.

Lázaro paced in his iron cage. Orquídea dropped her bag and rested a protective hand over Pedrito’s soft curls.

“You are early,” Lázaro said, taking in her agitated state. “What happened?”

“We have to do this now. Bolívar came back early, and I don’t know how long the angel’s-trumpet will last.”

Orquídea thought of her father shoving money in her hands and then asking her not to look for him. How arrogant had he been in thinking she’d wanted to know him in the first place?

“The key,” Lázaro said, and held up his manacles.

Orquídea thought of her mother marrying Wilhelm Buenasuerte and telling her to wait upstairs on the balcony, out of sight.

“And the ring?”

She thought of Bolívar’s serpent tongue. She thought of the broken pieces within her.

“Here.” She cupped it in her palm like a pearl.

She thought of how Lázaro trusted her. But he knew the darkness in the heart of humans, and he should’ve known better.

As he shut his eyes and became the Living Star, Orquídea did as he’d instructed. She placed her hand against his chest. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. She felt like she’d fallen into the Guayas River. She’d stepped into the hollow space of the galaxy he said he’d come from. The world was all color and light. Then all darkness and stars. Was this what he felt like every time he used his power, like the world couldn’t touch him?

Orquídea thought again of her mother and Bolívar. The two people she loved the most once again had split open her wounds. She never wanted to feel that way again. What would she do when Lázaro’s power faded? What would she do when she was alone again? Why should she not have the power of the stars forever? The universe had conspired against her, Ni?a Mala Suerte, Bastard Daughter of the Waves, and she was evening the score.

Overcome with grief and anger, when the moment came to let go, she held on. She took and took as others had taken from her. She heard Lázaro’s heartbeat, his pulse within her, slower, racing against her own and losing. She heard him scream her name.

Only then did she snap awake. Pedrito was crying and Lázaro had passed out.

Orquídea kept her end of the bargain, however. She left the key and the ring in his hand.

She felt his starlight coursing through her. It was deep in her marrow, in the composition of her blood, her sinew. Orquídea Divina made her first wish.

I wish Lázaro never finds me, she said. Never sees me, never hears my voice, never comes near me.

Then she picked up her bag and left. She made it across the fairgrounds before she smelled the smoke. The others did, too.

“No,” she gasped.

Orquídea tried to run back but there were several explosions. Animals and people trying to escape all at once. She dropped her bag and tripped over a net. Later on, she remembered thinking how ironic it was. The very thing that had sustained her as a child would be her undoing.

She heard Bolívar’s voice somewhere in the distance calling her name. He was awake. She had done this, played a part in the destruction of everything he had built, and she knew, she knew he’d want to hurt her.

Freeing herself from the tangled net, Orquídea held her baby close. She thought she must have hit herself when she fell, because, as she stood, there was a piercing pain cutting from her heart to her core, deep within her uterus. She began to glow, her insides radiating with light, hot and blinding.

She didn’t remember fainting from the pain, but she came around to the wail of ambulance sirens. Heard the screams. Then, a terrible realization claimed her. Pedrito was pressed against her, but he wasn’t moving. Wasn’t flesh or bone. He was calcified, unbreakable moonstone.





31

THE LIVING STAR & THE GIRL WITH A HOLE IN HER HEART




The city of Guayaquil was born on a hill. Nearly five hundred years later, three cousins raced up 444 steps of the same hill to reach the summit of the cerro Santa Ana. They passed vendors whistling for their attention, girls selling candy and cigarettes out of boxes that hung from their necks like parlor girls from the 1920s. Buskers and pickpockets. Young and old couples out for a stroll, families dining in at local favorites. Families so much like the Montoyas and families worlds apart.

As they reached the very top, Marimar felt that familiar pain behind her belly button. She wondered if she’d been wrong when she’d equated that feeling with Four Rivers, with Orquídea. The plaza at the top of the hill was lined with visitors who wanted to watch the sun set over the city. Not one of them was aware that she’d buried her cousin that morning, that she’d spoken to the bones of her great-grandmother moments later. None of them knew how many times her world had shattered and how she’d put it back bit by bit. All because some circus oddity had a vendetta against her grandmother. They’d take the fight to the Living Star. This ended with her, with them.

“Fuck, I need to quit smoking,” Rey muttered as they reached the top of the hill, winded, but alert.