Page 107 of The Familiar

Luzia coughed and sputtered. She vomited water over her face and neck. The cloth was gone. The room had returned. She bucked against the ropes that bound her to the table. The men were talking.

“You used too much.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“Another jar?”

Luzia couldn’t speak. She knew she was weeping and she hated them for making her weep. She could crack them open. She could set this room ablaze, if only she could find the words. But they were gone. They’d all been drowned, taken out by the tide. She was dead and they were dead too. Where is my mother? she wanted to cry out. Where is God?

“How did you create your illusions?”

“I don’t know—” she began.

The cloth was laid back over her face, her bridal veil.

“A magic lantern!” she screamed. “A special mirror!”

“How would a scullion know of such things?”

“The devil whispered to me how to do it!”

“Go on,” he said, and she sobbed with relief.

When it was over, she didn’t remember what she said. She talked of bellows and curtains and smoke and tricks with special lenses imported from Sweden. She said she was a witch and that the devil met her daily at the market. He told her she would be his bride and put his tongue in her mouth. He had the face of a serpent, of Martin Luther, of Antonio Pérez.

Only when she was back in her cell, her shift soaked, her body still shivering and shaking, did she realize she was bleeding. The ropes had cut into her wrists and ankles and hips when she’d struggled on the table.

“Luzia?” Teoda asked, but Luzia didn’t want to speak. She didn’t know how anymore.

Sometime in the night she woke, uncertain of how long she’d slept. Teoda brought her water heated over the coals.

“The widow is dead, isn’t she? Catalina de Castro de Oro?”

“Your aunt Hualit,” Teoda said. “My angel told me her name.”

“She drowned, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” Teoda admitted. “My angel saw her die.”

Luzia already knew it was true, just as she knew a shipwreck or some accident hadn’t ended her aunt’s life. Víctor had struck Hualit from the earth as if she’d never been. Santángel had called her the widow. Maybe he hadn’t known.

Did it matter who held the power? Whether it was Pérez or the king or Víctor de Paredes or a man with a funnel in your mouth? What difference did it make if the person with the power wasn’t you?

Luzia tumbled back into the dark water, where Hualit was waiting, her lipless mouth whispering in the cold. The sea is vast and can endure anything, she said. Her hands were full of jewels.

When Luzia woke, she didn’t know what time it was or what day.

Neva was asleep, snoring on her pallet. Luzia gestured for Teoda to come closer.

“Are you hungry?”

“No,” Luzia rasped. Her throat hurt. She glanced at Neva’s snoring body. “We need to leave this place.”

“You want to try to escape?”

“This power must be good for something. I can open the locks. I can kill a guard if I have to. But I have no money, no friends on the outside.”

“Valentina—”