Marimar swallowed the scream that wanted to crawl out of her throat. She stepped in front of Rey and Rhiannon and willed her body to become a shield. She pulled out Quilca’s net, ready to ensnare him, but the Living Star didn’t move to defend himself. He stepped back in the shadows; head bent in sorrow.
It was then that she heard the rattle of chains at his feet, the strange color of the white metal.
“What’s wrong with him?” Rhiannon asked.
Marimar had no answers for them. How could this man, this being, have hunted them in this state? She shoved the net into her purse, then rummaged through it and drew out Orquídea’s old fishing knife.
She approached the Living Star with one palm held up to show she meant no harm. Not yet. “I’m going to cut your stitches, is that all right?”
He shut his eyes, and something shimmered down his face. Were those tears? He made a strangled sound she took for “yes.”
Marimar didn’t want to touch his skin, but she gripped his jaw. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected but he was just skin and bone, slightly cold to the touch.
“On three,” she said, but sliced after she counted, “one.”
The Living Star doubled over, trembling as he ripped the thread from his lips and slid against the wall. He kept looking at her with eerie galaxy eyes.
“I wish you had not come,” he said darkly. There was something strange about his voice. It wasn’t like the man who’d attacked them at the Buenasuerte house—gruff and demanding. This man sounded like torn vocal cords, a soft tortured plea. She realized it was the one she’d heard in Four Rivers. Open the door, Marimar.
“A thank you would do, too,” Rey muttered.
“Why?” she asked, acid crept up her tongue. “Who are you?”
His gaze cut to Rey and Marimar. “You must go. He is searching for you now, but he will come back to take more of my power. He will use me to hurt you.”
She glanced back, but they were still alone. “Tell me everything. Tell me the truth.”
“You are as stubborn as she was.”
“Orquídea?” Marimar asked, even though she knew. She knew.
He rubbed at the spot right over his heart, like there was a hollow there, one that matched her own. He shut his eyes and wiped at the blood trickling from the punctures around his lips, and when he smiled his mouth looked like a pomegranate split in half.
“No, you are as stubborn as Pena,” he said, glancing at the skylight like he was waiting for someone. He breathed deeply and spoke like he’d lose the words if he stopped. “My name is Lázaro. You are our daughter. This is not how I wanted you to know me. Forgive me. Forgive me. Now you must go.”
Rey placed a hand on Marimar’s shoulder, but she only stared at the broken creature at her feet. Her father. The shining light, the missing piece, the question she’d thought she needed an answer to. He was before her. She felt the thorns within her, the rage she didn’t know she possessed. Mostly, she felt like she was hovering at the edge of a chasm and the only way out of this was to jump.
“You’re my father,” she said, mostly because if it came from her lips, it would be true.
Lázaro winced and touched the ripped skin around his mouth. Rhiannon crouched on her knees and brought out a bottle of water from her backpack and offered it to him.
“Here,” she said.
Lázaro took it and his features twisted into a deep well of gratitude, like someone who had never been shown kindness. The Living Star gulped the water in a single breath, sloshing it down his chin and washing away the blood. “Thank you.”
“You killed her,” Marimar said. “You killed all of them. You hunted us and now we’re here.”
Lázaro staggered to his feet. He nodded, slow tears spilled over the mound of his cheekbones where they froze, crystalized, and fell in sharp clinks to the floor.
Marimar choked on her words and only managed a soft, “Why?”
“I did love her.”
“I didn’t ask if you loved her. I asked why you did it.”
“Is it not obvious?” Lázaro asked, stepping closer to Marimar. He tried to memorize the shape of her eyes, the color of her hair, her spirit so much like her mother’s. “Because he wished it. I do not want to hurt you, but I will if he makes me.”
The room rumbled. The four of them looked up at the ceiling. A shadow eclipsed the moon for a moment, and then it was gone.
“Marimar?” Rhiannon asked. She pulled out a tiny red ember from her pocket and hissed as it fell on the floor, turning black then white.
“Is that Isabela’s bone?” Marimar asked.
Rhiannon kissed the tiny blister on the palm of her hand. “It was Isabela’s bone.”
Rey raised his brows and examined the digit his great-grandmother had gifted him. “She did say it would protect us.”
Lázaro gave a cracked, rumbling laugh. “You are keeping him out.”
“Who is he? What is this place?” Rey asked.
“I cannot tell you,” Lázaro said. “He forbade me.”
“Did he forbid you from telling me, or just Marimar?”
Lázaro sucked in a tiny breath of realization. His eyes grew bright for the first time in so long, like the stars had returned to the black skies of his irises. “Just her.”
“Then, look at me,” Rey said. “Direct your answers at me or Rhiannon.”
Lázaro nodded. “There is too much to say.”
“Who locked you in here?”
“Bolívar Londoño,” he said.
Rey and Marimar exchanged terrified glances. Rey shook his head. “He didn’t die in the fire. How?”
Lázaro shook his head. “Everything went wrong that night. Orquídea and I had a bargain. I would share my power with her in exchange for my freedom. But she arrived too early, distraught. When I opened my soul to her, she did not stop. I felt her fear, pain, and anger. Overwhelmed me with them. And then she left. She did leave me the key to my chains, and my ring. But I was weak. She took too much. The circus was engulfed in smoke and flames. A beam fell on me, pinned me down, and who should find me but Bolívar.”
Lázaro shivered. Rhiannon dug through her backpack until she found her shawl, the one her mother always kept because she got cold wherever she went, even in the tropics. He accepted the offering.
“Then you went after her,” Marimar said. She rubbed her hands over her eyes, as if the movement would wake her from the terrible lucid nightmare this reality was becoming. “You’re the reason she never left that house.”
“Mari, let me,” Rey reminded her softly. “Did you go after her?”
“Orquídea’s first wish severed my connection with her. She never wanted to see me, hear me, speak to me ever again. The next was to ruin Bolívar, and the way to do that was to destroy the circus. I warned her that there would be a cost to her wishes.”
“Pedrito,” Marimar said.
“He was the first price Orquídea paid,” Lázaro lamented. “I wish I had known what troubled her that day. I wish we could have both escaped.”
The room shook again. The reflective walls undulated like molten steel. Rey drew Lázaro’s attention. “What happened next?”
“Bolívar locked me up once again. He controls me with my signet ring. He drains my power, but it burns through him. I heal, and he returns for more. He has corrupted my power and in turn my power has corrupted him. And still, Orquídea’s will was so strong. I could not get near her.”
“That’s why she couldn’t tell us about your bargain,” Marimar said and the relief felt like a cruel thing. She wanted to scream but felt the rumble of the room once again, like a battering ram at the door. She met her father’s eyes. “And that’s why you got close to her daughter instead.”
“No. It was not my intention—” Lázaro stopped, frustrated. He glanced at Marimar again, and that seemed to ground him. “I got free, once. I searched for her name. I scoured the world for her, trying to find the link between us. All I found was a name in a newspaper. T
he list of graduates from the Four Rivers Gazette. Pena Montoya. A girl whose name meant sorrow and shared a likeness to my friend. She was only protected from me when she was on Orquídea’s lands. When I traveled to her, I fell on the road in front of her car. I loved her from the moment she asked me if I was lost.” Lázaro licked the blood pooling on his bottom lip. “I could not tell her everything, but I did tell her my name, that I was a fallen star, and when Orquídea heard it she forbade Pena from seeing me but, because of our deal, she could not explain why.” Lazaro shut his eyes tightly, sighed with regret. “She must have thought I wanted to hurt them both for what Orquídea did to me. I never wanted that…”
“That’s when my mom ran away,” Marimar said.
Lázaro nodded. “For six months I lived like a human, with her. I thought if she knew me, my heart, I could tell her the truth and free us all. Then, Bolívar’s pull was too strong. Fighting him, even though I had my ring was impossible. He had bound us. It feels like… thousands of constant cuts in my soul.”
He touched the finger where the eight-pointed star belonged. “It would have been my greatest joy to have known you, Marimar.”
She looked at him then, this strange being who was the reason for her mother’s death. “Am I—what you are?”
Rhiannon repeated the question and Lázaro shed his crystal tears once again, because he wished he could look at his own daughter’s eyes and tell her that she was made of the sigh of the universe. Just as he’d explained his origins to Orquídea all those years ago, he told her descendants.
“I did not know if I could spawn my own progeny,” Lázaro said.
Rey raised his brows and murmured, “Romantic.”
“Does this mean you’re part alien?” Rhiannon whispered to Marimar.
Marimar’s laugh turned into a sob.
“Pena tried to call me down, but I could not go to her out of fear Bolívar would uncover what I had done. Still, she broke through and made a door at the bottom of the lake in Four Rivers. My shining, beautiful Pena. She tried to swim to me and I knew if I answered her, Bolívar would hurt you, hurt all of you.”
“You still failed,” Marimar snapped.
“I have tried to fight against him,” Lázaro said. “I have been trapped here for forty-eight years, but he held me captive long before that. I am so very weary.”
“What do we do?” Rhiannon asked.
“We leave,” Rey said as the room shook harder. The bone in his fist caught fire and he let it fall to the ground.
“Leave,” Lázaro agreed.
Marimar pressed her hands against the wall she’d fallen through but it was solid. She closed her eyes and wished for a way out. The ground rumbled beneath her and she had the sensation of falling from great heights. The battering ram sound returned, closer apart than before.
She felt heat in her pocket where Isabela’s last bone was.
“There is a way,” Lázaro said, his eyes locking with Marimar, then the shaft of light pouring in from the ceiling. “You can make a path using your magic.”
“I’m trying, it’s not working,” she said.
Lázaro extended his forearms. The pearl marks along his skin formed a pattern of constellations so far away, the human eye couldn’t see them. She brushed her own skin, tracing the same pattern in brown beauty marks.
“Not the gift Orquídea gave you. Mine. You are still my child. You have your own power, Marimar.”
“How?” she asked.
The third and final bone from Isabela Buenasuerte’s finger erupted in flames. The room went still. Rhiannon clung to her cousins as the sharp click of boots on stone rang, the rhythmic thump of a cane approached. Bolívar Londoño III was alive and he wanted them to know he was coming.
“Show yourself,” Marimar demanded.
An old man dressed in a midnight velvet suit stepped out of the wall in front of Marimar. The skin at his jaw gave the effect of a melted candle, but Bolívar flashed a wicked grin. The blue of his eyes too bright, something about the Devil in them.
“So eager, my dear, for our family reunion,” said a deep, disembodied voice. “I thought for so long that this trap would be for my Orquídea, but the three of you will do for now.”
He lashed his hand out like a viper. Marimar was aware of the screaming around her, the people she loved trying to come to her aid, her father, failing yet again to save her.
Bolívar’s fist closed around the flower bud at her throat and he pulled it out by the root.
32
THE MAN MADE OF BRITTLE THINGS
There was one memory of her mother that Marimar always thought back to. It wasn’t particularly special or magical, just another cold October day in the valley filled with tall tales, which was a different type of magic she supposed. Pena Montoya loved the fall because the fruit born from the orchards tasted sweeter. Marimar thought it tasted the same as always, but perhaps her mother knew differently somehow. In that memory, Pena was more beautiful each time, more ethereal as she continued Orquídea’s tradition of stories. The dragonflies were their protectors. The trees were their guardians. Even Jameson, neé Gabo, watched over the house and the Montoyas, and that is why he could never die. All of that Marimar had taken at face value, the legend of her family.
But when her mother told her the story of a secret door at the bottom of the lake that led to other lands, Marimar shook her head. Still, her mother stood by it.
“It’s there,” Pena had said. “Beneath the mucky ground, the clusters of silver fish, past the cave of eels, there’s a door that leads to other lands, even deep into the reaches of space.”
Marimar had tried to write down her mother and grandmother’s stories, but the words never made sense when she put them to paper. Was it because she had stopped believing in them? Had she given up on them or her own potential? After all, belief was like glass—once broken it could be pieced back together but the fissures would always be there.
Now, in the hidden room within the chapel of Santa Ana, Marimar was a broken thing in body and soul. She knew she was bleeding. She was aware that her throat was raw from screaming. She couldn’t feel anything, not her own limbs, or the floor beneath her, or the connection that had sparked when she dug her fingers into the worm-filled earth. Orquídea’s gift was gone. Rey and Rhiannon would be next. Her cousins were the only thing that forced her mind to cut through the pain, and she focused on a bright, white light behind her eyelids.
Marimar opened her eyes. The skin of her chest was sticky, and her insides felt like she’d swallowed a fist-full of nails. A gutting, ripping sensation, followed by a scream that left her hollowed out.
Rey and Rhiannon came into view. The Living Star stood between them and Bolívar Londoño III. The decrepit old man held the long stem covered in dozens of thorns dripping blood. He caught a droplet with his fingertip and brought it to his lips.
“You’re stronger than you look,” Bolívar told her. “I suppose it’s your father’s blood, too. You’ll do, once he’s spent.”
“Go back to the circus hell you came from,” Marimar spit.
Bolívar chuckled, then held up the green flower bud to his lips and ate it, thorns and all. The green chlorophyl pulsed with the light of the magic within. It made him younger, sagging skin tightening, silver hair peppered with black, giving him back at least twenty years.
“There,” he said, turning his eyes to Rey and Rhiannon, who hadn’t moved. “Now for the others.”
She blinked through the spell of dizziness that slammed into her, and realized they were frozen in place. In Rhiannon’s fist was Orquídea’s fishing knife, and Rey held the fishing net. They were ready to defend her, but vulnerable. Always too vulnerable.
“I’m going to kill you,” Marimar promised. “Why couldn’t you just leave my grandmother alone?”
That seemed to catch his attention. He walked through the shaft of light from the skylight, casting his features in hideous shadows.
“Please,” Lázar
o begged. “You have what you’ve always wanted. Finish it. Finish it and let this all end.”
Marimar looked at her father, the Living Star. She’d seen his name printed on that poster in magnificent letters like he was the ultimate marvel to behold. But it was a lie. There was no marvel, nothing spectacular. He was just a man who had fallen, and in doing so, he’d become as weak as anyone else. Hadn’t she wanted to know him? She knew in that moment—it hadn’t been a father that she’d wanted, but the truth. Lies carve out holes until they make one big enough to escape through.
“Let this end,” Lázaro begged.
Bolívar’s eye blazed an unnatural blue. “You’re wrong, old friend. It’s been decades and I still don’t have what I’ve always wanted. But I will, when I see Orquídea again.”
Marimar laughed, and when she saw it drew his ire, she laughed harder. “She’s dead, you fucking corpse. You’ll never see her. Never.”
“Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong,” Bolívar said, waving a wrinkled finger in the air. He walked around the beam of moonglow with ease, like he’d never left that stage. “My Orquídea isn’t dead. She’s a survivor. She’s eternal. She’s simply in a different form, and she will be mine again.”
Marimar glanced at her cousins. Rey’s eyes moved, his form inching at a glacial pace, like they were wading against time.
“Control the girl,” Bolívar warned Lázaro. “I have spared her life as she’s your child and I owe at least one mercy after all these years.”
“Marimar,” her father said. His curtain of black hair fell over the side of his face as he turned to her. “Leave this place.”
Tears burned down her face. “How? Where?”
“Bolívar was right. My blood runs through your veins. We are celestial beings, made from the spark of the world’s dawn. No one can take that from you. Your mother knew that, remember?”
Bolívar stopped pacing.
Lázaro’s words came fast and heavy with meaning. “Remember the door.”
Bolívar raised his fist and twisted the signet ring on his index finger. “Traitorous until the very end.”
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina Page 28