If Father Delgado was here in the year 1706, then…“Wait. How old are you?”
“I came here in 1912.”
“You’re over a hundred years old? Holy cow! You’re really old!” Chrissie felt like her eyes might be bugging out and had to make a conscious effort to close her gaping mouth. “Did I know this before? Really, this is huge. That means that María and Arturo are even older. This explains why you’re still alive after being shot, and why María is so strong, she can carry me. If you had told me before, I would’ve thought you guys were all nuts, but seeing all this?” She opened her arms wide and turned around. “This, and actually starting to feel better, has convinced me.”
“The father was over two hundred years old. He passed the responsibility of the garden to me when I was about twenty. However, I didn’t actually drink any of the water until my thirtieth birthday, when I was sure I wanted to stay here forever.”
“Where is Father Delgado now?”
“Father Delgado just walked out into the jungle one afternoon and didn’t come back. I imagine he died a long time ago.”
“The water doesn’t make you live forever?” Chrissie reached down and dipped her fingertips into the pleasant water.
“It can if you keep on drinking it.” Brant shrugged. “It makes the old reverse their age by the amount and frequency they drink it, but once you’re away from it for very long, its effects wear off and you begin the aging process again. I drink the water every five years to keep me in the condition I’m in, and I don’t have any desire to look thirteen, either. María and Arturo only drink the water every twenty years so they age slowly. I don’t think I could’ve done this all these years without María and Arturo sharing the burden. They’ve cared for me like their own son and have been my closest friends. I never knew my father, and my mother died right before I turned fifteen. So you can see, we’re a pretty close-knit family.”
“Wouldn’t the townspeople be suspicious that you guys never age?”
“They would be, but they know about the water from ancient legends. They are very superstitious, and it is their tribal duty to keep it a secret. The young people don’t believe them, and usually leave to live in the larger cities anyway.”
“Did I drink the water?” Chrissie looked up from her crouched position into Brant’s eyes, searching for the answer.
“No. You were going to, though.” His eyes dimmed with sadness. “When a person decides to drink the water, they make a commitment to care for the garden. So you understood that and were going to do it after we got back from our trip.”
Chrissie gave him a questioning look. “A trip?”
“We went to Caracas one day for an overnight getaway. I left while you were sleeping to go order us some breakfast for the next morning. When I came back, the room was ransacked, and both your vials were gone. I found you lifeless in bed. I thought someone had murdered you. But you were alive, just very sick, burning up with fever.” Brant shuddered at the painful memory.
Chrissie had always felt like she was a nobody. Why would anyone want to harm her? She didn’t have any enemies that she could remember.
“For centuries, people believed in the fountain’s existence. It wasn’t until recently, when the largest drug cartel leader in the area was given information about it, that a new search began. He knows this village protects the valuable secret. The village will not speak of it to anyone. They don’t know exactly where it is, for their safety, but they get the benefits of the healing water in return for their silence. I bring them bottles of water when anyone is sick. They promise not to drink it, but to only bathe affected bodies with it.”
Brant sat down next to Chrissie on the water’s edge. “See, life has a natural progression, in most cases. We don’t want to mess with their lives like that. That is God’s job. We only drink the water to protect it. If you do drink it, there’s sort of a ceremony for the occasion because it’s so special. This is how it has gone on for hundreds of years. Only the people who directly care for the garden and the fountain drink the water. The drug cartel sees the water as a way to rule the world and make billions. If they gain control, they won’t need cocaine money anymore, and they could be invincible. Could you imagine if they never died and always had limitless time, money, and resources? That is unfathomable power.”
“I can see how the water would need to be protected. It could start wars.” Chrissie relaxed as the sun shining down the volcano crater warmed her back. Looking up, she saw a canopy of plants obscuring the view from airplanes. She pulled up her legs and rested her chin on her knees.
“The cartel knows that I am the Guardian now. It will only be a matter of time before they can attach my face to my name as the Guardian. I have a feeling Margarita tipped them off.” Brant shook his head. “She was acting too dodgy not to be involved.”
“I can understand that logic. Is that why you had Arturo babysit me?” Chrissie said sarcastically as she flicked water at Brant.
“Exactly! I’m glad you remembered him. It made it easier to convince you to come back.” Brant flicked water at Chrissie and smiled.
“So what am I supposed to do now?” Chrissie’s tone came out more serious than she had intended.
“Stay here and get better.” Brant’s expression softened. “After that, you may choose to leave, if you wish. But I can’t promise you the protection of the water and from anyone who thinks you might know about it. I also don’t have any guarantees that you are healed, either. But you haven’t done anything by the book from the very beginning. You might go back home just to have your symptoms return.”
“So, do I need to drink the water to get better?” Chrissie picked up a small white flower and twirled it between her fingers.
“I’m not sure. Just bathing in it should be enough.”
“Well, the skin is semi permeable, and the largest organ in the body. It would make sense that the water could penetrate enough for the body to use it to heal.”
“If you ingested the orange powder, you should have died. I don’t know how you’re still alive.” Brant grabbed Chrissie’s hand, stopping the flower from twirling, and gazed into her face.
“Why would I take the powder?” Chrissie whispered, perplexed.
“I assume it was to protect the secret.”
“Well, I promise to keep the secret. But I can’t promise I’ll stay forever.”
“Fair enough,” Brant said sadly.
Chapter 13
Brant and Chrissie climbed to the top of the stairs and entered the library.
“Thanks, Brant, for telling me the truth.” Chrissie smiled.
“How did it go?” María asked. “She came back. She must be pure of heart.”
Brant shot a stern look over to María. “Well enough. She now knows everything and can decide for herself what she wants to do. She promised to keep the secret.”
Arturo let out a sigh of relief. “That’s good.”
“Her color looked a little off, so I brought her back. It might be time for another bath, María.” Brant was worried.
“I feel fine,” Chrissie said, but Brant could tell she was lying by the way she bit her bottom lip and looked away.
“Tell the truth,” Brant said sternly. “You’re completely worn out.”
“I hate being high-maintenance,” Chrissie admitted. “To tell the truth, I think a nice long soak might do me some good.” She paused, and Brant could see the wheels in her head turning by the way she furrowed her brow. “Why wouldn’t I have come back from the garden?”
“It’s nothing. Just an old native legend that the garden protects itself by letting in only the pure of heart.” Brant brushed off his statement like it didn’t matter much. “I’ve never actually seen anyone try to get into the garden, though. I just chalk it up to being a story.”
“Mija went through a lot today. It will be hard for her to adjust to it all in one afternoon. Let’s not give her more. Un poco a la vez.” Arturo patted Chrissie on the back
comfortingly.
“I’ll get her bath ready.” María hugged Brant before she left. “Give her some time,” she said as she put her arm around Chrissie and guided her out of the library. “It’ll come back.”
Arturo and Brant began looking over the books scattered liberally upon the expansive desk. Some of the books were so old that the pages were brown and brittle. Most were hand-sewn by Father Delgado himself. His seal was branded into the leather on the back.
“I’ve spent hours every day poring over Father Delgado’s journals, and I haven’t found anything about people living after ingesting the orange powder,” Brant said.
“When I was a small boy, the people in my village would lace their arrows and spears with the powder to make a quicker kill during war.” Arturo started to close the journals and stack them.
A thought occurred to Brant, “Has anyone who has drunk the fountain water ever had the powder as well?”
“The Guardian before Father Delgado took the powder to die. He was three hundred years old and wanted to leave this earth. It took him a week to die, but he finally did.” Arturo scratched his head. “But he stopped drinking the water long before that, and I never actually saw him after he took the powder. Mis padres just told me about it.”
Brant sat down on his chair and propped his boots up on the desk. “Something doesn’t make sense.”
He raked his fingers through his hair as he mulled over the facts. “One question remains the same. Why isn’t she getting better? She has two more symptoms—excessive eating, and sleeping for days at a time. The water should’ve made her better after the first bath.”
Arturo stared at the bookcase for a moment. “Have you ever read that one?” he said, pointing to the only book that didn’t have a title on the spine.
“No, I haven’t. It’s written in an ancient Egyptian/ Hebrew hybrid. I sent a copy of a page to a professor in the States and that’s what he told me it was. I can’t read it though.” Brant walked to the bookcase, retrieved the book, and carefully opened it. The edges of the pages seemed to crumble under his fingertips. He studied the page that had the image of a large orange Delphne blossom. “I’m sure this is it, but I don’t know how it works in Chrissie’s case.” He sat down and quietly looked over it. Arturo sat patiently while Brant pored over the ancient book. A piece of paper slipped out and floated to the ground. Brant stooped down to pick it up. “Hey, this is Father Delgado’s handwriting. It looks like some sort of a decoder.” Brant began scribbling on a piece of scratch paper as he read from the book. “It says something like, ‘it rapidly ages someone to death.’”
“The exact opposite of the water.”
“Have you ever seen it work on anybody?” Brant asked.
“No, I’ve never been in any of the battles or around any of the Guardians who ingested it. But I vaguely remember my father telling my mother that it turns the poisoned person’s hair stark white, and they die instantly.”
“I don’t see an antidote here,” Brant said glumly.
“Everything has its opposite. Good or evil. Happy and sad. The water is its opposite,” Arturo said. Brant knew that Arturo was his wisest and truest friend, and that he was right.
* * *
Chrissie’s feet once again moved like she wore lead boots. Her body was always tired. Exhaustion loomed around the corner, and found her more frequently than she would like.
“It’s time to take another dip in the pool of weird.” She sighed. “Whatever . . . at this point, nothing would surprise me.” Chrissie walked into the large room, and the smell of the water instantly comforted her. It was becoming her drug of choice. She was dependent on it. One day she’d ask Brant to show her the path the water took from the garden into the pool in the mansion.
María stood at the pool’s edge, sprinkling rose petals across the water and pouring oil into it. “Rose, gardenia, and sandalwood are magnificent for the skin. I hoped I would be gone before you came for your bath. I wanted to give you time to think about things.”
“Oh, María. I’m not mad at anyone. Just very sad. I’m grieving.” Chrissie’s eyes filled with unshed tears.
“Why?” María’s face softened with sympathy.
Chrissie slipped her clothes off to enter the pool. The water felt a little warmer tonight. “I’m sure Brant was the perfect boyfriend. As kind and handsome as he is, I’m sure all it took was one look before I was head over heels for him. I just wish I remembered it. How do I know he loved me?”
“Let me tell you what happened after he found you, mija.” María put away all the oils, sat in the wicker rocking chair, and picked up some knitting, “When he came back to the hotel and found you seemingly muerta across the bed, he thought he had lost you forever. When he found out that you were still alive, he carried you down to the street and hailed a cab to take you to the hospital. They took you in right away and began trying to bring you back to us. He never left your side from the moment you were there until just before your padres came. Arturo met your parents at the hospital as Brant waited out in the parking lot to catch one last glimpse of you.” María paused, “How was he to explain himself to your parents? It would’ve put them in danger as well, knowing of his existence.”
“My dad would’ve flipped if he found out about a secret romance with a guy over a hundred years old.” Chrissie smiled. Dad was protective when it came to his little girl. He would’ve been dressed in his mossy-oak camo, staking out Brant’s place.
“So … Arturo took his place, and Brant came back to the mansion distraught. He didn’t eat or sleep for week. Poor chico.” María´s knitting needles flew. ”For weeks, we didn’t hear anything, so he sent Arturo to check on you. Arturo found you in a state he couldn’t ignore. As soon as Arturo called, Brant jumped into action, making the necessary arrangements to bring you back and save you.” María’s eyes darted up to Chrissie’s. “And don’t think you’re off the hook for almost ending your life,” she scolded.
“Arturo told you.” Chrissie looked down at her wrinkling fingers cupped under the water; such a difference between the pills and the water. Pills had horrible side effects and only did so much for short amounts of time, but the water made her feel almost new without the heavy price of side effects. “Sorry,” she whispered. “I was desperate to stop the suffering.”
“We would’ve lost you forever. Then we would all be suffering.” María returned to her knitting.
“Why didn’t he just bring me back from the hotel and give me a dunk in the pool?” Chrissie floated in the water, enjoying the release of tension.
“Our village is an hour and a half from Caracas. He didn’t think you would live through the trip, and once you were in the hospital, he wouldn’t have been able to get you out. Whatever happened to you affected your whole body.” María looked up from the soft blanket she was knitting. María liked to knit blankets. When one was finished, she would start another. How many had she made in her two-hundred-plus years? “Arturo and I made the decision a while back to taper down our water intake and age slowly. We take an occasional dip in the pool to save our body from the effects of arthritis and disease. It is good to have the water for first aid purposes.” The click of the knitting needles was still rapid.
“Why haven’t I gotten better? One moment, I think I’m completely healed, and another moment, I think I haven’t made any progress at all.” Chrissie scrubbed the bottoms of her feet with the soapy loofa, then her back, which felt so good it gave her goose bumps along her arms.
“You are a puzzle to all of us.” María put down her knitting. “Now, let’s let the subject rest for a bit, yes? Rinse the soap from your hair and we’ll call it a night.”
Chrissie dipped her head back in the water, and a memory came to her. It was of dancing to the song Adorro at a carnival in the streets with Brant before she got sick. “María! I remember Brant!” It wasn’t a dream, she realized. It was a full-fledged memory. The familiarity of it comforted her.
“Good.
Let’s go tell him.” María offered Chrissie a white fluffy robe at the water’s edge.
When Chrissie headed out the door from the bath and into the hall, she saw Brant looking up at her from the plaza. She waved with a bright, cheery smile. “I remember Adorro at the carnival.”
Brant smiled. “Yes!” He fist-pumped the air.
She walked into her room and closed the door behind her.
* * *
Chrissie went to bed early that night. The day had been emotionally and physically draining. María had sent Chrissie’s dinner up to her room, and she only managed to eat half of it before almost nodding off into her plate.
The mansion lay dark and quiet in the late night hours. Chrissie rolled over in a half-awake, half-asleep state to see a man in her doorway. He wore a dark suit, and his hair was slicked back. He charged over to the bed with a mean sneer on his face, made even more wicked by the nasty scar that ran over the corner of his bottom lip. His black leather gloved hand reached toward her as she held up her hands to block his advance. She had to keep her glass rose safe.
She began screaming while she tried clawing at his face. Her fingernails couldn’t rip his skin. His mustache twitched as he tried to hold back his smile. She screamed until her lungs burned.
* * *
Brant heard Chrissie’s screaming. It jolted him awake. He didn’t bother to pull clothes over his boxers. He didn’t have time. He ran from his room at the opposite end of the house and threw the door open to see Chrissie thrashing on her bed in a fit. He ran to her side and pulled her to him. Sweat matted her hair down to her face. She shook from the nightmare. Her chest heaved up and down in panicked breaths. He worried that the stress of the nightmare would make her sick.
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