“Pedro?”
And it was Pedro. I was certain. Pedro Terreros, the wavy-haired nobleman from Burgos. He was wearing Pedro’s clothes, he had Pedro’s coloring.
Yet something was off. Pedro’s hair had grown longer than before, and his eyebrows had mysteriously become thinner. And under the cabin boy’s tangled, fur-lined cape, his chest sloped up and down in a peculiar fashion.
A sudden whack sent stinging pain across my cheek. I fell backward and howled. Pedro Terreros, or whoever she was, had launched upright and slapped me across the face.
“You!” the girl snarled at me.
Fearing her words more than her fists, I scuttled back in the sand. “What? What did I do?”
The girl tripped backward, her brown eyes raging. “Oh, you know very well what you did! You tried to kiss me, you bastard!” She scooped up a rock from the sand and launched it directly at my head.
I ducked to avoid her stony weapon, although I didn’t really need to. The rock thumped a few paces in front of me and bounced harmlessly away. “I should have known!” the girl cried. “This is what I get for saving your life! Well, I’ll have you know now, Luis de Torres: I am not some . . . thing to be used as you desire! I am not your sleeping princess!”
“Sleeping princess?” I asked, lost in more ways than one.
The girl swept up a thick branch from the ground and brandished it in front of me. “Stand, de Torres. Face me like a man. You want me? Go ahead and try it. But be warned! I have killed men for less.”
Slowly I stood, trying to hold in my laughter. Oh, to think I had survived the Malleus Maleficarum, the Bahamut, and Amir al-Katib’s hameh only to be felled by a tree branch!
I said, “Look, Pedro, if you put that down for a second, I think we can work this out. I swear I didn’t touch you or even try to touch you. I swear to God, I was just looking at you.”
“Looking at me?” The girl cast her stick aside and pushed me back by the shoulders. “How dare you! How dare you!”
I flung her hands off me. Now I was getting annoyed. “How dare I what? How dare I look at you?” I threw an angry hand out toward the Atlantic. “I’m not sure if you were paying attention, Pedro, but I almost died back there! Then I wake up on an island in the middle of nowhere and I hear someone talking in their sleep. I think it’s Jinniyah, but no — it’s someone else. Someone who looks awfully like Pedro Terreros but is, you know, a girl! So, yes, Pedro, I did look at you, and I’d rather not die because of it, because I’ve had a really bad day, actually, and I’m really, really tired!”
I assumed that after that feat of rhetoric the girl would offer me some kind of reply. But she said nothing, only dropped onto the sand.
At length the girl grumbled, “You really are a Storyteller, aren’t you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you talk a lot.”
I couldn’t disagree with that, so I joined her on the sand. Like Pedro, the girl held herself like an aristocrat, like one of those snooty merchants who sometimes came to Palos from the north.
“Who’s Jinniyah?” the girl asked me.
I let a smile rest on the edge of my mouth. Too late to lie about this one. “Juan. She’s a girl too, and a genie. Or half-genie. It’s complicated.”
If my answer surprised this girl she didn’t show it. She simply leaned back on her hands and smirked. “A genie. Well! The crew isn’t going to like that. Assuming we ever see them again, of course.”
I leaned back on my hands, too, mirroring the girl. “Can you imagine what they’re saying now? They’re probably going crazy, knowing there was a sorcerer on the ship the whole time.”
The girl hmphed. “‘Sorcerer?’ Try ‘sorcerers,’ Luis. Plural. Unless you believe I don’t count as one.”
I knitted my brow, trying to pick apart her words. The eyes that swam through the waters of the Atlantic floated up to me then, and the silvery women’s faces. I had seen Pedro’s face there too, in the ocean, but at the same time it wasn’t his face at all.
“It was you,” I said, marveling at the thought. “You saved me.” They were mermaids, those silver-faced women, and Pedro — this girl — had conjured them. It was a miraculous idea, the most miraculous one I’d ever thought. Pedro Terreros, who hated me from the instant he saw me, had dived into the ocean and cast a spell to save my life.
“I guess your name isn’t really Pedro, is it?”
The girl pushed her lips together, seething out at the foamy blue shore. “You have no idea what you’ve done, do you?” she said in a low voice. I didn’t know how to answer. I opened my mouth, but before I could get out a word, the girl banged her fists against her thighs. “You can make dragons out of nothing — the size of mountains, that can fly and breathe fire! But can you save yourself from drowning? No, of course not! You had to make me do it!”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, rubbing the back of my neck. “I was, you know, drowning.”
Before I even finished the word, the girl shot up in her spot, sending sand flying in every direction. “You selfish, infantile . . . ! Do you have any idea what you’ve done? I suppose you don’t even realize that I had to remove my Jeanne d’Arc spell so I could summon my sirens and save your sorry life!”
I recoiled at her tone but said, “Look, Pedro —”
“And the crew! They saw everything! The Pinzóns! Colón!” The girl paced around the beach, pushing her fingers into her eyes. Shaking her head, she muttered under her breath. I think she was trying her damndest not to cry. “Oh, God. You idiot! You’ve ruined everything. Everything!”
I rose behind her. “Pedro.”
She shook her head and whispered, “You’ve ruined everything.”
Not knowing what to do or say to that, I stood there watching her, listening to the hush of the ocean and the frogs twittering in the forest.
“Thank me,” the girl said at last. “I think I deserve at least that much.”
I couldn’t bear to look at her when she said that. The way her voice shook shamed me. It broke my heart.
I didn’t know what else to do. So I did as she asked. “Thank you, Pedro. Thank you for saving my life.”
Huffily she dropped down in the sand next to me. “You’re welcome. And my name isn’t Pedro. It’s Catalina. Pedro is my brother.”
My mind slowly accepted this information as I sat down in the sand beside her. “So, Catalina Terreros. Is that right?” The girl shrugged in assent. “The whole time on the ship, I thought you hated me because you thought I was Jewish. But you were just avoiding me so I wouldn’t notice you’re a Storyteller.”
Catalina Terreros rolled her eyes. “Why should I hate Jews? Half the men at court are conversos.”
In my mind I was still back on the Santa María. “And tonight Jinni sensed magic coming from Colón’s cabin. But it wasn’t Colón she was sensing, or any magical item.”
“Yes, yes, it was me,” Catalina said, impatient. “I was trying to get some privacy so I could replenish my Jeanne d’Arc spell.” To my blank look she went on, “The spell that kept me in disguise. Honestly! Can you at least try to keep up?”
And here I’d thought that the whole point of being a Storyteller was making monsters come to life. “So you’re saying there are spells that can make girls look like boys?”
Catalina took my question as a personal assault. “Yes! In fact there are about a thousand stories that can do that. Because there are about a thousand stories about women dressing up as men to get the respect they deserve!”
When she was done I felt like I’d been chewed out by my Aunt Serena. I scratched the back of my neck and said, “Ah, sorry. I didn’t . . . I didn’t know that. But why did you need to disguise yourself in the first place?”
Catalina took her knotted hair in both hands and wrung it out over the sand. “To be frank, Luis, I don’t think that’s any of your concern.”
I laughed as I removed my soggy shoes. The Leviathan out of the bag, so to
speak, there was no more reason to keep the real Luis de Torres’s name hostage.
“It’s Baltasar,” I said.
“I beg your pardon?”
I pointed to my face. “Baltasar Infante. Pleased to meet you.”
The girl considered me as if for the first time. “Infante?” she said with an expression of disgust. “Well! Evidently you’ve some secrets of your own.”
Laughing, I rubbed my salt-encrusted head. “No, I’ll tell you. I’m a prince in disguise. I’ve escaped my evil stepparents and am on my way to start a new life in Cathay. I mean, they wanted me to get married, but I didn’t like the girl, so . . .”
“That’s impressive.”
“I know.”
“I mean it’s impressive that someone who is purportedly a Storyteller could come up with something so clichéd.”
“I like to call it ‘classic,’” I said.
“If you must.”
The girl paced along the shore, rubbing one palm angrily. She unlaced her boots, pulled them from her feet, and hurled them across the sand.
I wondered if I’d accidentally touched on something I shouldn’t have. Prince in disguise, evil parents, fleeing from an arranged marriage . . .
That’s when it hit me. I knew exactly who this girl was. She was the sister Rodrigo Sanchez was talking about the first day on the ship. Pedro Terreros’s sister Catalina. The one set to marry the Duke of Alba’s son.
But the look on the girl’s face told me she didn’t want to talk about it, so I decided to change the subject. “What’s this sleeping princess you were going on about earlier?” I asked, yawning.
The girl sagged down in the sand, softening under the weight of the exhaustion she must have been feeling. “Just a children’s tale.”
Ready to hear it, I reclined on my side, propping myself up on an elbow. Catalina sighed and went on, “There’s not much to tell, and I’m not sure if I’m telling you the right version, since I’ve heard maybe a dozen over the years. It’s about a witch who puts a princess under a spell so she sleeps for a hundred years. The only thing that can wake her is a kiss of true love. So along comes a dashing prince, who fights his way into the castle and kisses the sleeping princess, waking her and the rest of the court. Then they get married and live happily till the end of their days.” As Catalina spoke her brown eyes grew wearier and wearier.
“You don’t seem to like it,” I noted.
“Your powers of observation are astounding.”
“But it doesn’t sound that bad, your story. It’s like, you’re not even awake if you haven’t found your true love.”
To my surprise a warm pink light formed between us, and the salty ocean air grew flowery in my nostrils. The words SLEEPING PRINCESS bloomed pink in French before us, and a summoned prince and princess glowed up over the sand. A red, red rose formed between them.
“I release you,” I said, shocked by what I’d done. The ghostly couple brought their hands together on the rose and dissolved into nothing.
Catalina exhaled a quiet laugh. “A boy’s way of looking at it. To me, the princess is trapped, and she stays trapped. The witch traps her and her castle with a spell, and then the prince comes and does the same thing. Happily ever after.”
As she spoke the summoned princess reappeared in front of us, but now she appeared haggard and drawn. Another rose grew in front of her, but as it grew its stem desiccated and coiled around itself, and its petals wilted to black. Thorny vines grew from the tip of the rose’s stem and snaked around the princess’s wrists and over her mouth, tight like ropes. Her phantom eyes darted back and forth with terror.
I turned away. Skin taut across her body, the princess writhed against the constraints. Worse were the eyes. They look like hers. I swallowed the thought whole.
“You’re looking ill, Señor Infante. Don’t you want to hear any more stories? Like the one about that flower girl you’re so fond of. Dirty Mary, was it?”
Though Catalina’s voice was soft, it cut me like a hameh’s claws. The tale of the flower girl Dirty Mary: the girl who sold herself along with her flowers. I hadn’t realized when I’d told that story on the ship that a girl other than Jinniyah had been listening to it. I said, “If I’d known you were there, I wouldn’t have —”
“Oh, wouldn’t you?” Catalina cut me off. “But whyever not, Señor Infante? That story was so funny. It must have been, or you wouldn’t have told it so many times!”
I looked down at my feet, trying to avoid looking at the haggard princess she had summoned. Why had my story been so funny, anyway? When the flower girl had been trapped like the sleeping beauty of fairy tale, the grotesque creature writhing in front of me.
“And I can take a joke!” Catalina flew to her feet. Black rose vines whipped out from the summoned princess’s wrists and sliced through the air at me. I had no way to stop them. They snapped around my arms, my legs, my chest. Every time I breathed the vines constricted tighter around my body and bit harder into my skin.
“What are you doing?” I choked out. With every breath I was suffocating. “Catalina! Stop it!”
“Once upon a time, there was a girl named Dirty Mary. Well? Go on, Infante! Go on and tell that one again!”
The vines pulled themselves tighter around me. “Please!” I managed to gasp as the black vines crept around my throat. Tears of pain were forming in my eyes. “I’m sorry. Please. Let me go. Catalina.”
The girl blinked as if coming out of a dream. “I release you,” she said, and the vines around me went slack. I fell backward, gasping and rubbing my arms and throat, now bruised from the vines and flecked with shallow thorn-gashes. The eyes of the haggard princess darted back and forth as the specter dissolved into nothing.
“Are you all right?” Catalina said. Worry creased into her face, contrition. She sank to the sand. “I shouldn’t have done that. I was tired and upset. Sometimes I let the spells get away from me. I shouldn’t have. I . . .”
But I took her hands and squeezed them. “Are you kidding?” I exclaimed. “I didn’t know you could summon things to strangle people! That was amazing!”
“Th-thank you?”
“How long have you been Storytelling?”
“I — I don’t . . . My whole life, almost. My wetnurse taught me and my brother. I was about six —”
Six! “So you must know loads of spells!”
“Well, yes, but —”
“Then you’re going to teach me.”
Catalina threw herself to her feet. “Now wait! You wait a second! You sit here, pelting me with demands, yet I know next to nothing about you. Now tell me! Earlier this evening you accused me of working for the Malleus Maleficarum. Why?”
I lounged back on my elbows. “Because they’re after me. I’m a fugitive, you know.”
“And what about that black hawk we saw? The one that attacked you!”
“A demon my father sent to kill me.”
“And that black sea-beast! I suppose you know why it attacked us too!” Catalina crossed her arms over her jerkin and shook her head at the ocean. “No, you’re going to have to tell me everything. From the very beginning, if you please.”
I pinched both of my lips, amused. “Why, Doña Terreros!” I said. “It sounds like you want me to tell you a story!”
The girl pursed her own lips but said, “Yes, Señor Infante. That is exactly what I want you to do.”
An hour or so later I had finished telling Catalina my tale. As she braided her knotty hair over her shoulder, the icy moonlight gave her an otherworldly splendor. “That was a long story, Señor Infante,” she said. “Would you like some water? I’m deathly thirsty.”
The watery words FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH appeared in the air, and a marble pool of water shimmered into existence on the beach. Catalina picked up a large clamshell from nearby, blew the sand out of it, and used it to scoop out some water out of the fountain.
She passed me the shell and explained, “It won’t make us youthful, s
ince we’re already young. And even when it works it only keeps a person young for about an hour. But the water is fresh — certainly better than the little we had left on the Santa María.”
I sipped at the shell. Indeed, the water tasted sweet and was refreshingly cool. “I guess Martín didn’t have to worry about us dying of thirst after all. In the end we could have summoned this fountain for the crew.”
Catalina took the shell from me and refilled it. “Yes. Right before they hanged us for witchcraft.”
After we had had our fill of the water, Catalina dismissed the fountain and sat next to me in the sand. “So you have absolutely no idea why your father keeps trying to kill you?”
I wiped the extra liquid from the corners of my mouth. “No. Why? Should I?”
“To be blunt, yes. Consider. The Baba Yaga sends your father to kill an evil being with the potential to destroy the world. Then your father tries to kill you.”
“So?”
“So evidently he thinks you’re the evil being foretold in the prophecy! He thinks you’re the one who will destroy the world!”
“Me?” I said with amusement. “Come on. That’s crazy.”
“Is it?”
“You’re saying that, when Amir came to my house that night in the summer, he didn’t come because he wanted me to help him. You’re saying he came to my house to kill me!”
“Well, no. That’s not exactly —” Catalina started, but I cut her off, overwhelmed by dark laughter.
“Sure, why not? A great power travels west, who will destroy the world as we know it. What if my father knew something the Baba Yaga didn’t? What if he knew the evil power was me?”
Catalina smirked at the idea. “I don’t mean to offend, Señor Infante, but you don’t seem the world-destroying type.”
“Oh, no?” I said, manic from exhaustion. “You saw what I just did to the Bahamut! That Leviathan I summoned could have destroyed a whole city!”
Hammer of Witches Page 14