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PRÓLOGO
Never say you know the last word about any human heart.
—HENRY JAMES
AUGUST 1884
A letter changed my life.
I’d waited for it all day hidden in the old potter’s shed, away from Tía Lorena and her two daughters, one I loved and the other who didn’t love me. My hideout barely stood up straight, being old and rickety; one strong wind might blow the whole thing over. Golden afternoon light forced itself in through the smudged window. I furrowed my brow, tapping my pencil against my bottom lip, and tried not to think about my parents.
Their letter wouldn’t arrive for another hour yet.
If it was coming at all.
I glanced at the sketch pad propped against my knees and made myself more comfortable in the ancient porcelain bathtub. The remnants of old magic shrouded my frame, but barely. The spell had been cast long ago, and too many hands had handled the tub for me to be completely hidden. That was the trouble with most magic-touched things. Any traces of the original spell cast were faint, fading slowly anytime it passed hands. But that didn’t stop my father from collecting as many magically tainted objects as he could. The manor was filled with worn shoes that grew flowers from the soles, and mirrors that sang as you walked by them, and chests that spewed bubbles whenever opened.
Outside, my younger cousin, Elvira, hollered my name. The unladylike shrill would almost certainly displease Tía Lorena. She encouraged moderate tones, unless, of course,shewas the one talking. Her voice could reach astonishing decibels.
Often aimed in my direction.
“Inez!” Elvira cried.
I was too much in a wretched mood for conversation.
I sank lower in the tub, the sound of my prima rustling outside the wooden building, yelling my name again as she searched the lush garden, under a bushy fern and behind the trunk of a lemon tree. But I kept quiet in case Elvira was with her older sister, Amaranta. My least favorite cousin who never had a stain on her gown or a curl out of place. Who never screeched or said anything in a shrill tone.
Through the slits of the wooden panels, I caught sight of Elvira trampling on innocent flowerbeds. I smothered a laugh when she stepped into a pot of lilies, yelling a curse I knew her mother also wouldn’t appreciate.
Moderate tonesandno cursing.
I really ought to reveal myself before she sullied yet another pair of her delicate leather shoes. But until the mailman arrived, I wouldn’t be fit company for anyone.
Any minute he’d arrive with the post.
Today mightfinallybe the day I’d have an answer from Mamá and Papá. Tía Lorena had wanted to take me into town, but I’d declined and stayed hidden all afternoon in case she forced me out of the house. My parents chose her and my two cousins to keep me company during their monthslong travels, and my aunt meant well, but sometimes her iron ways grated.
“Inez! ¿Dónde estás?” Elvira disappeared deeper into the garden, the sound of her voice getting lost between the palms.
I ignored her, my corset a lock around my rib cage, and clutched my pencil tighter. I squinted down at the illustration I’d finished. Mamá’s and Papá’s sketched faces stared up at me. I was a perfect blend of the two. Ihad my mother’s hazel eyes and freckles, her full lips and pointed chin. My father gave me his wild and curly black hair—now gone over to complete gray—and his tanned complexion, straight nose, and brows. He was older than Mamá, but he was the one who understood me the most.
Mamá was much harder to impress.
I hadn’t meant to draw them, hadn’t wanted to think of them at all. Because if I thought of them, I’d count the miles between us. If I thought of them, I’d remember they were a world away from where I sat hidden in a small corner of the manor grounds.
I’d remember they were in Egypt.
A country they adored, a place they called home for half the year. For as long as I could remember, their bags were always packed, their goodbyes as constant as the rising and setting of the sun. For seventeen years, I sent them off with a brave smile, but when their exploring eventually stretched into months, my smiles had turned brittle.
The trip was too dangerous for me, they said. The voyage long and arduous. For someone who had stayed in one place for most of her life, their yearly adventure sounded divine. Despite the troubles they’d faced, it never stopped them from buying another ticket on a steamship sailing from the port of Buenos Aires all the way to Alexandria. Mamá and Papá never invited me along.
Actually, theyforbademe from going.
I flipped the sheet with a scowl and stared down at a blank page. My fingers clutched the pencil as I drew familiar lines and shapes of Egyptian hieroglyphs. I practiced the glyphs whenever I could, forcing myself to remember as many as I could and their closest phonetic values to the Roman alphabet. Papá knew hundreds and I wanted to keep up. He always asked me if I’d learned any new ones and I hated disappointing him. I devoured the various volumes fromDescription de L’Egypteand Florence Nightingale’s journals while traveling through Egypt, to Samuel Birch’sHistory of Egypt.I knew the names of the pharaohs from the New Kingdom by heart and could identify numerous Egyptian gods and goddesses.
I dropped the pencil in my lap when I finished, and idly twisted the golden ring around my littlest finger. Papá had sent it in his last package back in July with no note, only his name and return address in Cairo labeled on the box. That was so like him to forget. The ring glinted in the soft light, and I remembered the first time I’d slipped it on. The moment I touched it, my fingers had tingled, a burning current had raced up my arm, and my mouth had filled with the taste of roses.
An image of a woman walked across my vision, disappearing when I blinked. In that breathless moment, I’d felt a keen sense of longing, the emotion acute, as if it weremeexperiencing it.
