The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (90)

The Montoyas formed their own cluster, turning and turning in the direction of the winds in hopes of hearing that voice.

“What about that place?” Rhiannon asked, pointing at the lighthouse.

The lighthouse would be the highest point of the hill. But it was decorative. Visitors spilled in and out to get a sight of its views.

Marimar knew in her gut that the Living Star was not up there. This was the hill that the indigenous peoples had called Loninchao, and the Spanish invaders had called Cerrito Verde, the Little Green Hill. Where a treasure hunter, near his death, invoked the name of a saint to save him from death. Santa Ana.

Isn’t that what the locals had called her, and her cousins? Saints. Marimar knew that she wasn’t any of those things. But Orquídea might have been. The girl who spoke to the river, the girl who made something out of nothing. The woman who transformed herself time and time again when the world refused her.

“The chapel,” Marimar said, and this time she was certain.

They ran across the stone plaza bathed in sunset golds. The stained-glass depicting Santa Ana pulsed with light. The chapel itself was small, with five or six rows on each side. A couple of old women were kneeling in the front pews. Despite the noise of the intrusion, they did not open their eyes, only kept rubbing rosary beads between wrinkled fingers.

Marimar palmed her stomach. Sharp pain tugged at her belly button. She stepped closer to the stained glass windows depicting the stations of the cross.

“There’s nothing here,” Rey said, his whisper amplified by the acoustics.

“Wait—” Marimar couldn’t quite explain the sensation that pulled at her. She heard a faint chime, like the prolonged note of a church organ. It was distant, but there. The Living Star was hiding within these walls and she would rip out the wallpaper, the boards. She’d break everything apart the way Orquídea had destroyed her own house. Then the pulling sensation grew stronger. She counted each window and found the oddity.

At the other end of the chapel was a fifteenth window that did not belong—a figure standing at the top of a green hill overlooking a river. Above him, stars fell in a torrent, but one was the brightest. An eight-pointed star right over his heart like a compass rose.

“It’s him,” Marimar said. Her throat ached, and this time it spread, like thorns were growing inside of her chest. She wove between the pews until she stood in front of the glass window. Her abdomen cramped where her power tugged, and for a breath of a moment, she wasn’t certain if it wanted her to go forward or turn back. She heard Rey and Rhiannon hurrying to her side.

When she touched the glass, vertigo spun her up and down, left and right, here and there. Marimar closed her eyes and breathed through the nausea that slammed into her. The temperature dropped and, when she opened her eyes, she was no longer in the chapel.

Rey and Rhiannon leaped into the stain glass window a breath after her. Rey had never felt as cold, not even when he did the polar bear plunge on New Year’s Day in Coney Island. Rhiannon thought of the ice that had frozen her hair into icicles when her parents took her sledding, and she didn’t mind as much.

The room was empty, dark, with a circular skylight that let in a single shaft of moonglow. She took a step forward. The thick plumes of incense and the sweet, humid air of the city was replaced by a stench that assaulted her—waste and decay. The same rot she’d smelled in Four Rivers, but older still. Something was dead and it was in this room with her.

“What is that?” Rhiannon asked beside her, pinching her little nose. “I don’t see anything.”

“It’s another trick,” Rey said. He walked into the moonglow spotlight. Up above, he could see the moon, like it had been lassoed closer to the earth. His steps echoed in the cold stillness, as he made his way to the far wall and stopped at his reflection. He spun in every direction but there were no doors, not even to mark their entry point.

Rhiannon touched her reflection. “Why are the walls all liquid mirrors?”

“I don’t know,” Marimar said. Every instinct within screamed for her to run. But to where? There was no place that was safe for them. Not until she confronted the Living Star. She pressed her hand against the wall, but this time it was solid. She saw herself multiplied over and over again, an infinite version of herself and her cousins, and then, right behind her, a man appeared where there hadn’t been one before.

The Living Star’s halo of light flickered, then darkened, until he was the layer beneath, a man with long black hair, milky skin dotted with pearlescent scars. His black eyes flared wide and a deep moan echoed in the room. Thick stitches formed crude exes over his lips, the skin red and raw at the puncture wounds.

Marimar swallowed the scream that wanted to crawl out of her throat. She stepped in front of Rey and Rhiannon and willed her body to become a shield. She pulled out Quilca’s net, ready to ensnare him, but the Living Star didn’t move to defend himself. He stepped back in the shadows; head bent in sorrow.

It was then that she heard the rattle of chains at his feet, the strange color of the white metal.

“What’s wrong with him?” Rhiannon asked.

Marimar had no answers for them. How could this man, this being, have hunted them in this state? She shoved the net into her purse, then rummaged through it and drew out Orquídea’s old fishing knife.

She approached the Living Star with one palm held up to show she meant no harm. Not yet. “I’m going to cut your stitches, is that all right?”