She rested by the river, on a bed of green, for an endless expanse of time, staring at the dappled sunlight streaming through the branches of trees. She lay there, racked with shivering sighs, and closed her eyes.
Her thoughts strayed, wild and unfettered, back to Valentín. She remembered his kiss and the pressure of his rough hands against her cheek. She had not imagined herself fancying a man like him. She had always wanted a refined man, a cultured man, a man who was more like…well, more like Uncle Arturo.
For one second, she imagined that she had recklessly tipped her head forward when they’d been at the piano and kissed him.
She opened her eyes wide.
She propped herself up on her elbows and anxiously looked in the direction of Piedras Quebradas.
She ought to run back to the kitchen. Her mother would be angry if she didn’t. But she feared Luisa would look into her eyes and discern her sinful nature. The grass had stained her dress and the sun had begun to drift low.
With a flutter of skirts, she rushed into the sitting room, where her mother was bent over a piece of cloth, needle in hand. Her sister Magdalena was also busy stitching something. By their mother’s feet, Lola and Moisés played quietly with a pair of wooden horses. On the piano, the twins practiced their scales.
It was a charming show of domesticity. Quickly she sat down and began to embroider the handkerchief Valentín had given her. She had thought to gift it back to him, monogrammed. The steady work of the needle soothed her, and she was able to keep her eyes down, busy with her work, so that her mother had no chance to look into them.
“Where did you go earlier?” her mother asked.
“For a walk, by the river,” Alba said simply.
“You were out for a long time.”
“Was I?”
She sensed her mother’s heavy gaze, but Alba did not look up. She felt that if they’d been alone, she might have been questioned more thoroughly. But surrounded by her siblings, Alba was able to shield herself with silence.
She had trouble going to sleep that night. She tossed and turned in bed, rearranging the pillows, hugging them tight and thenshoving them away. She lay on her back in the dark. A beam of moonlight slipped in between the curtains and Alba turned her head toward the window.
The light filtering into her room, however, was odd. It had a greenish tinge that made her frown. She stepped toward the window and tugged at the curtains, looking out.
The light did not come from the moon. It seemed to drift down from one of the peppercorn trees as if someone had hung a lantern among its branches. Unlike the light of a lantern, this greenish glow had no source—it was diffused, as hard to pinpoint as mist. It was, in fact, so faint you could hardly see it, and for one moment Alba thought it was an optical illusion.
Yet as Alba looked at it, the mist seemed to coalesce, its color growing stronger, from a faint green to a brighter hue closer to the shade of an emerald. It looked now like a sphere, trembling in the tree branches and burning like an ember.
The phantasmagoric light made Alba think of diseased flesh, of rot and decomposition. She stepped back from the window, recognizing this strange light. She’d never seen it herself, though she’d heard about it enough times growing up to name it: it was the glow of a witch, outside her window, like a hideous, gigantic firefly.
The ball of light let out a long, doleful cry, an ululation that resembled that of an owl. Except she’d heard owls all her life, knew their hoots and the noise of their wings, and this was different.
The branches of the peppercorn tree drooped, as if pressed down by a great weight.
She backed away from the window, one hand wrapped tight around the medallion that hung from her neck. The glow seemed to strengthen, bathing her room with tones of emerald that crept upon the floor, like long fingers stretching in her direction.
Alba felt fear like she had never felt before. Terror clawed at her throat as fiercely as a tiger, stopping her from uttering the softest of cries, and her heart beat so quickly, her breathing accelerated with such violence, that she felt dizzy and almost faint.
She managed to stumble against her door and with clumsy hands pawed the doorknob. For a second her eyes were awashwith such bright green that it was like staring into the sun or a searing flame.
Alba managed to pry the door open and stumbled into the hallway. Flecks of green danced before her eyes and she hurried toward her mother’s room, slamming her hands against the door.
“What is it?”
“There’s something outside,” she said.
Alba’s mother opened the door. She held up a brass chamberstick in her right hand with a half-burned candle.
“You must come with me,” Alba said before her mother could ask another question.
She pulled her by the arm, and they went as quickly as they could, but when they stood at the doorway of Alba’s room, it was all in shadows.
“It was here,” Alba said, and pointed at the window. “In the trees. It was floating there. It woke me. It screamed.”
