Jovita nodded and opened the door wide, letting them into a small, dark vestibule. A horseshoe and an image of San Martín Caballero hung above a doorway, along with crosses of ocote. They followed the woman down a hallway.
There were many shelves in this hallway, all crammed with jars and flasks. Some contained dried plants, herbs, and mushrooms; others seemed to be filled with the ground bones of coyotes, the wings of moths, desiccated toads, the skins of snakes, carefully ground obsidian, and powdered grasshoppers.
They walked into a room that smelled faintly of mint. A large window let in a good amount of light and this area looked less crowded than the hallway that they’d passed through. Still, little bundles of ocote sticks tied together with thread were tucked on shelves, boxes with neat labels and more jars arranged around them. Ribbons of different colors had been nailed under a niche with a plaster statue of the archangel Gabriel.
Alba and Valentín sat down at a table. The old woman wrapped her hands around the bottle and was looking at it with interest. She did not sit. Alba peeled off her riding gloves.
“This is the girl I told you about, Mrs. Jovita. We’ve come for your counsel,” Valentín said. He gestured to Alba.
She slid a pouch across the table. It contained the pocket money she possessed.
Jovita set the bottle down on the table, then shuffled out of the room. When she returned, she had a wooden bowl in one hand and an egg in the other. She sat down. With trembling fingers she cracked the egg and let its contents fall into the bowl. Then she took a sip from the bottle and smacked her lips, but she didn’t say anything as she stared at the bowl.
Alba began to wonder if the woman was capable of speech. She again questioned the excursion. There she was, shivering, doomed to catch a chill from the early-morning ride up the mountainside, and for what? Her uncle was right. She’d find no answers in this place.
“There’s a shadow upon you,” the woman said. “A teyolloquani haunts your family.”
Valentín must have mentioned the creature he believed afflicted the Quirogas, just as he had arranged this meeting, yet the word still filled her with dread.
Jovita took another sip from the bottle and looked down at the dish. All Alba could see was the egg yolk, but the woman seemed keenly interested in it.
“Such a witch is dangerous. No ordinary mischief interests a teyolloquani. You must watch your step. They can turn their enemies into animals, into things.”
“What things?” Alba asked.
“There once was a young man from a nearby village. He was handsome and all the women liked him, and he liked all the women. But he made a mistake when he angered a girl from our town. She hexed him, turned him into a stool, and sat on it. There she sat, on her stool, by the door of her house, smiling. She still does.”
Alba recalled the woman nearby, sitting on a weathered stool, mending her shirt. She clasped her hands tight.
“There have been deaths, haven’t there?” the woman asked. “Horses. Goats.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Folks are talking about it.”
Folks were indeed. She realized that even without Valentín, the woman would have guessed the purpose of her visit and easily rattled off a remedy.
“It’s a bewitchment. We’ll need to make a talisman. Something tough, something to keep you safe. It’ll cost you more than a bottle of rum and a few coins. Much more.”
“I see,” Alba said.
She was beginning to feel foolish, a country rube who was about to be duped by tricks learned from a carnival sideshow. She wondered what her mother would think if she could see her now. Her uncle would be appalled. At best, he’d laugh at her gullibility. At worst, he’d forbid her from ever seeing Valentín after this.
“How much?” Valentín asked.
“The ring on the lady’s finger,” Jovita said.
Alba looked at the ring with the green stone, the one her father had given her, and shook her head.
“This is nonsense,” she said, turning to Valentín. “They make up stories in places like this and fleece people who visit.”
“Alba, you must listen,” he urged her.
“No, I don’t want to. Take me home.”
“Please, she is a wisewoman.”
“Valentín, I do not want—”
