Page 10 of The Familiar

“Can any of us expect more?”

“How philosophical you’ve become in your new fame.” Hualit dropped the earring into her pocket. “I’ll sell it and I’ll get you a good price for it, but no more milagritos.”

Luzia said nothing. She wasn’t going to lie with the Virgin and all those saints staring down at her.

Hualit sighed. “Embrace me, Luzia. Quickly now, before anyone sees. And don’t look so grim. That will age you before any amount of toil.”

Luzia let herself be swept into her aunt’s arms. Her hair smelled of almonds, and when she drew back, she expected to see Hualit smiling. But the look on her aunt’s face was one Luzia couldn’t quite make sense of. Her eyes were slightly narrowed, as if she were fretting over the household budget or dissatisfied with the cut of a gown.

“No more milagritos,” Hualit repeated.

Only a few, Luzia bargained silently. Enough for another pearl, a chance to secure employment with Vitoria Olmeda. She was allowed to want more for herself. And even if she wasn’t, she would find a way to get it.

Later Luzia would understand that when it came to anything worth having, there was no end to more. She would reflect on the path she’d seen before her and how wrong she’d been about where it would lead.

But on this day she only smiled at her aunt and said, “They will tire of my tricks eventually and then I will return to my sad servant life.”

“If you’re lucky,” Hualit said. She gave Luzia a little shove through the gate. “And our family has never been lucky.”

CHAPTER 6

Back at the house, Luzia helped Águeda remove balls of lead from the game birds. She tucked cloves beneath their skin, stuffed their soft insides full of currants and bits of pork, tied their legs together with string, and slid them onto an iron spit, the rod so heavy she and Águeda had to lift it together. While Águeda strained a sticky syrup of pomegranates for the sauce, Luzia turned the spit slowly, high enough above the flames that the birds would cook without burning, her face pink and shiny from the heat. Soon she would baste them with honey and wine so that they might turn golden and become pleasing.

The birds didn’t care if they were cooked or raw, their bodies soft and cold or charred and ready to burst with juices. They were past caring what the fire might do. She had heard of heretics and witches being burned alive alongside Jews and Muslims suspected of keeping to their laws after being baptized. Her own great-grandfather had ended that way, or so her father had told her. They too had been transformed by the fire, and their burning had transformed those who watched, the crowds who gathered to pray and be purified by the purging of dark forces from their midst. Luzia didn’t want to end in misery, but as she contemplated her soot-stained hem and her feet rough as hooves, she had to admit she was well acquainted with ash and sorrow both.

Too much ambition, her mother had warned, telling the story of Luzia’s birth and how the city had wept for a queen. Too much wanting. Luzia did long for things—a soft bed, fine clothes, a full belly, a chance to rest, and some things that were harder to name. When she was with Hualit, her mind felt different, as if a dam had burst and the mire of routine gave way, the water racing along, turning clear and lively, her tongue free to get her into trouble without really getting her into trouble. She wanted to live that way always.

When the roasted birds had been served on rosemary beds, tucked between split pomegranates, when the pears soaked in wine had been nibbled on in their bowls, Luzia climbed the stairs and watched the goblet shatter in the candlelit room. The happy gasps were like honey spread on her skin, turning her golden in the warmth from the fire.

Maybe these pleasures wouldn’t last. Maybe her aunt was right to warn her. What had she really accomplished? She hadn’t so much climbed a mountain as a low hill, but she might as well enjoy the view while she could. And if she was going to throw herself into the flames, why not do it with some decision?

She lifted her eyes from her shoes and met the gazes of the guests. “You all must clap.”

“But you haven’t yet performed,” protested Don Marius, frowning.

“One feeds the goat before one takes the milk,” she replied.

“How coarse!” the woman beside her shrieked happily. She nearly knocked her own goblet over as she struck up the clapping, and the others joined in. The laughter felt good this time, maybe because she was the one who made the joke.

Luzia ignored Valentina’s worried expression and let the clapping mask her words as she sang her spell a bit more loudly, the magic leaping up to do her bidding, at play with her. It liked the rhythm of those clapping hands. A change of scene. A change of fortune.

When the glass came together it made a sweet ping as though someone had struck it gently. It filled the room and was then washed away by a tide of applause. But as the clapping tapered off, the man sitting in the corner, at Don Marius’s right hand, leaned forward.

“And?” The word landed like a finger snuffing out a candle.

Valentina laughed nervously.

The man had a short beard that he’d used some kind of dye to burnish red. It made him look like he had blood on his chin. His eyes were heavy-lidded, as if the dullness of the evening’s entertainment had lulled him into an early sleep.

“We have all heard about your little trick with the cup,” he drawled. “What else can you do?”

It was as if Hualit had conjured this man to set her back on the proper path. Here was her opportunity to take her punishment, to slide down to the bottom of the hill and burrow beneath it once more.

Maybe if she’d been born on a different day, or even at a different hour, without the prayers for a queen’s soul echoing in her ears, she might have done just that. But she could be no one but herself.

On that very first night, when she had repaired the cup, to save Valentina from her husband’s contempt, to save herself from the tiresome weight of humility, she had felt herself rise into the night. She had seen Madrid from above, its crooked streets, the dark gap of the Prado. What might she see if she ventured higher? The old apartment where her mother had pushed a pen into her hand, the slums where her father once sold rags, the cursed bridge where he had died. Roads carved into the countryside, the torchlit walls of El Escorial far beyond, meadows and fields and farmland, and somewhere in the distance, the black nothingness of the sea, the faint glimmer of an island in the darkness, a hopeful lantern swaying from a ship’s mast. How big might the world become?

Or she could remain here, in this room, in this house. She could return to her dirt floor and take root like some kind of turnip. She could shuffle her feet and play the oaf. Valentina would beat her. Marius would join in. But they could all put their delusions aside and go back to what they’d been. All would be as it was, the goblet restored and placed back on the shelf to gather dust after its brief moment of incandescence.