The Witch Narratives: Reincarnation

by Belinda Vasquez Garcia

  http://magicprose.com

  The Witch Narratives

  Copyright © 2011 Belinda Vasquez Garcia

  All rights reserved.

  LCCN: 2011918651

  ISBN: 1-4664-2979-8

  ISBN-13: 9781466429796

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-61914-972-4

  The Witch Narratives

  Reincarnation

  Belinda Vasquez Garcia

  For Bobby, the love of my life, my soulmate and my hero.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Part One: Innocence

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part Two: Salia

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Part Three: Just A Working Girl

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Part Four: An Abomination

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Part Five: We Must Keep The Home Fires Burning

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Part Six: I Promise I Shall Return

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Part Seven: Ashes To Ashes

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Sneak peek at The Witch Narratives, Resurrection: Part One

  About the Author

  Part One

  Innocence

  Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Mud to mud.

  From earth, so a witch is fashioned.

  To beneath the earth, so shall she return.

  1

  New Mexico

  All Saints Day

  The year of Our Lord, 1923

  Her steps were leaden as though La Llorona rose from the dead, which indeed she had. This was not the first time she left her muddy grave to search for her children. She stood on the bank of the Rio Grande, holding her arms, rocking them gently, humming a lullaby.

  Small hands tugged on her gown, little fingers wrapping themselves in the homespun material.

  Ah, she thought, my children have returned to me.

  When she looked down, it was but the wind stirring her gown.

  It was but the wind blowing her temper back and forth across the New Mexico plains.

  Though it had been over 200 years since she was stood up at the altar, she still wore a spidery wedding veil. She cursed, untangling her veil from thorns of tumbleweeds fencing in the river like barbed wire.

  She was getting her bearings now. She walked, screaming and waving her arms about her.

  At times she tossed her head, hiding behind her veil, from prying eyes, from lips held close to ears, hiding from her wedding guests.

  But then the wind blew her wedding veil back, and she once more shrank back in horror from eyes staring back at her.

  Horrid eyes.

  Wicked eyes.

  Smirking eyes.

  Her mother’s I warned you eyes!

  If the mocking eyes of her wedding guests were in front of her, she knew what was behind her, the laughing eyes of Padre Duran who stood at the Chapel of San Miguel waiting for her groom to show up.

  Just as La Llorona still waited for her children to return.

  Waiting.

  Searching.

  Wailing.

  Into the black night she made her way east to Madrid, a remote village stuffed in a narrow canyon of the Ortiz Mountains. Madrid was some 45 miles south of the river but no great distance for the bruja who, like some witches from the Southwest, could travel with the speed of a fireball. Just last night, a spark of fire dashed across the sky like a falling star, lighting up the desert in Arizona near the banks of the Colorado River. The fire went out and La Llorona was spotted, teetering on the rim of the Grand Canyon with her spidery veil caught among the cactus needles.

  That was last night. Tonight, she chose to search in Madrid where the Hispanos still celebrated All Saints’ Day.

  If I had not burned down the church, I could have been a saint, she thought, scoffing. The pope does not look kindly upon destruction of church property.

  She approached the village of Madrid, growling at a wooden cross outlined against the sky. The cross was the tip of the adobe Church of San Cirilio. She remembered when this pile of dried mud had been part of the Mission of San Cirilio. If she thought hard enough, she could remember the face of Cirilio himself. She tried to seduce him once, when he had been but a man and not yet a saint. She smiled. Only she knew if the seduction had been a success. She had never been a kiss-and-tell woman. In fact, she carried her secrets to her own muddy grave at the bottom of the Rio Grande.

  The Mission of San Cirilio long ago crumbled to dust, but I am still here. Where are the Spaniards who built this church nestled between the mountains, as though it was stuffed into a crack between two worlds? Where are they now? Those good men who sentenced me.

  They thought her dead then, but she had shown them.

  She would show them all.

  It was she, forty years ago in 1879, who caused the coal mine to cave in, when the Cerrillos Coal Railroad Company began to commercially mine the black stuff in Madrid, and changed the pronunciation of the town to Madrid. A dozen lives were lost because of her. She always traveled with death. It was all she had now the life inside her was drowned by her own hand. Death thrived within her while without, the coal mine once again thrived in Madrid.

  She had not set foot in Madrid since 1879.

  It felt so good to be back.

  She stepped onto the main road named the Turquoise Trail because scattered about the hills and mountains were Indian turquoise mines, some more than nine centuries old but no longer active.

  At least there is something older than me in Madrid.

  At least there is light at the end of the mine tunnel.

  There, at the edge of the village was a beacon of light, the only home in Madrid which did not have blue doors or blue frames around the windows. Blue is the color of the Catholics’ Virgin’s robe and so, protects the Hispanos from a witch entering the home. A house with doors the natural color of the wood they were grown from, instead of painted the sickening color of the blue sky, put her in a good mood. She always kept her eyes down to the ground, not up to the heavens.

  There were two things which put her in a bad mood. First—the site of men marching merrily off to work with mining helmets on their heads and the hope of ever lasting employment. Second—the sound of music, merriment, and dancing, in othe
r words, a fiesta

  La Llorona was wrong. There was no great fiesta at the Rodríguez household, just family and friends celebrating a child’s birthday. Marcelina Rodríguez had reached the grand age of eleven.

  With dancing and merriment, it was much too hot and lovely a night to have the doors and windows closed. Claudio Rodríguez circled his partner around the floor to the front door. He was always a nimble dancer. As he moved in tune to the ranchero music, he flung open the door to let the breeze in, all without missing a beat.

  It takes but one turn to ruin a party.

  There on the steps wobbled La Llorona, her body bent like the branch of a tree. She was dressed in a black wedding gown. The light from the house was unkind to her. Her complexion had turned to dried, cracked mud by the wind and the fire. Her hair rioted her scalp like soggy weeds pulled from the embankment of the Rio Grande. She was truly a freak of nature, a mixture of the elements, of wind, earth, and water. A shawl of spidery lace, the color of dusty cobwebs, started at the tip of her head, wrapped around her face, and crept down to bare feet which spent at least one century in the bath.

  Claudio may have been the first to see her, but everyone heard her unearthly wail.

  The witch raised her arms, and screamed even louder.

  Claudio’s dance partner, a neighbor woman, fainted.

  His brother, Ramon, dropped his violin, the wooded instrument splitting in two halves.

  Everyone stepped back, covering their noses with their arms.

  The stench of a decomposing corpse, dragged from the river, swept through the doorway.

  The stink vaporized, like fog, rolling across the wooden floor, covering all with its stench.

  The fog crept up the walls, soaking into the adobe, dampening the dried mud walls with the smell of death.

  The witch nodded her head at the fear twisting their faces. Ah, these people knew of her and her search. They, also, feared for her little ones. They, too, looked as if they were about to cry. In fact, the women in the house were openly sobbing.

  She held out a comforting claw but was rejected. She looked rejected, standing there uninvited to the party, clothed more for a funeral, blanketed by the dusty cobwebs of her wedding veil. Combined with her black wedding gown, she resembled a black widow trapped in her own web. With the frustration of 200 years of searching and never finding her children, she shrieked, beating her breast with her fists. Her cries were so strong the windows burst from their frames. Glass flew about the partygoers. One piece even stabbed Claudio in the cheek.

  She looked at Claudio as if she was sorry. She reached out an earthen claw and stuck between her fingers was a black rose from her wedding bouquet. Yet, there was something else besides pity for Claudio in the witch’s eyes. Malice. Because even though he was a bachelor, he had eighteen children, while she had none.

  But what was that other crying she heard? The high-pitched sobs of the young? She turned her head, grinning at a shiny clean child with braided hair and crystal tears, clothed in a new ruffled dress, the birthday girl. Ah, the child’s stupid mother will choke her, squeezing her so tightly that hiccups blow from her lips. She opened her arms to the skinny, black-haired girl. “Mi hija,” the witch cackled. “My daughter.”

  “Don’t look at her, Marcelina,” Claudio yelled.

  “Marcelina,” she cooed, “My sweet child.”

  The girl turned her head into her mother’s shoulder, and the woman tightened her hold around the child’s neck. “She knows your name,” the mother sobbed into her braids. “She knows your name.”

  “Don’t look at her,” Claudio yelled again.

  The witch pierced Claudio with her eyes and he stepped back, clutching his chest because a visit from La Llorona meant death would visit the household. It was he who opened the door to invite death in.

  But death did not come in. She merely stood at the doorway crying, with her arms reaching out to Marcelina. Pain rose from her throat, shaking the adobe walls, chilling the blood of all the family and friends.

  Just as suddenly, she quit crying and her body swayed in a trance. She sang with a siren’s voice:

  “Marcelina. Marcelina, come to me.

  My Darling child, sit on my knee

  Precious sweetheart, I hold the key.

  Charming pretty girl, you will see.

  Delicious child, I shall set you free.

  Marcelina. Marcelina, Come to me.”

  She was so seductive that Marcelina pounded her fists against Mama’s chest, struggling to be free. She ran her fingernails down Mama’s cheek, scratching her, but both Mama and Papa held onto her tightly.

  If Marcelina would not come to the witch, then she would have to get her. She lifted a muddy foot but try as she might, she could not step across the salea, a sheepskin pelt placed at the entrance to keep the cold air out. She jumped up and down, trying to skip across, but an invisible force held her back from entering the home.

  She squeezed her arms to the sides of her body and spat on the salea. She ripped a black rose from her hair, flinging it.

  The black rose landed in the middle of the floor with its petals still intact.

  Everyone in the house took a step back.

  The widow, the childless mother, the jilted bride, the orphaned daughter turned and walked away with the thorn of that other black rose still stuck to her hand. She sobbed, dragging the train of her wedding veil behind her. Her veil had dragged the river yet still, La Llorona looked for her children beneath the murky waters of the Rio Grande. She looked for any sign her children survived, any bubble of air to give her hope and rescue her soul from the fires of hell.

  The house was silent, all eyes on the black velvety rose on the floor, untouched by the chilly fall season. The thorns of the rose protruded from its long green stem, like razors. Sprinkles of brown water muddied the petals of the rose, polluting its dark beauty.

  Finally, Lupe Rodríguez, the mother who held the birthday girl so tightly in her arms, handed her child to Ramon, her husband. She swept up the black rose, tossing it into the black night.

  Lupe then very carefully lifted up the salea, exposing two sewing needles crossed in the shape of a crucifix. She knelt, making the sign of the cross to this symbol which had kept the witch out.

  Behind Lupe, all dropped to their knees.

  The silence of the house was replaced by clicking of rosary beads.

  “Ava. Ava, Maria,” they all sang, muttering the rosary beneath their breath.

  When their novenas were prayed, the guests trailed from the house, swinging their lanterns in one hand and their rosary beads with the other hand.

  Lupe once more covered the cross of sewing needles with the salea, protecting the entrance to the home.

  Throughout the long night, Lupe and Ramon kept watch over Marcelina. La Llorona had been known to steal children from their beds.

  The next morning the sun rose East over the mountains. Marcelina skipped from her bedroom to eat her breakfast, her braids bouncing against her back and her butt cheek wobbling through a hole in her nightgown. She wrinkled her nose with disgust. It smells as if we are having fish for breakfast, she thought. Spoiled fish.

  She stopped abruptly at the entrance to the kitchen. In place of her usual wooden bowl of sweetened cornmeal, there on the kitchen table, lay her Tío Claudio, spread-eagle. Her uncle’s fingers were clenched in the air, as though clawing at something. His fingernails were ragged and worn. His bare feet were muddied, his ankles bloodied. His big toe was shriveled like the bark of a tree, ashen grey in color.

  She reached out a finger to waken him and his leg bounced. It was as if, like a fish, he had been deboned and there was no skeleton holding his muscle in place.

  She climbed on a chair, moving her nose closer to his face so that his moustache tickled her nose. She sniffed at the black rose stuffed in his mouth.

  This was how her parents found her. Marcelina lay limp, her face buried in the black rose.

  She had
fainted.

  2

  Pine trees and coal. Black death and cold religion. These were the riches of the village of Madrid. It did not take long for the stench of death to blow out the broken windows of the Rodríguez house, the stink fanning across the Turquoise Trail. The smell of death spun like a web of spiders, crept up the stucco walls of neighbors’ houses, swept down their chimneys, and covered their breakfast tables with a tablecloth of fine, black lace. Within the hour the hungry Marcelina was found slumped over her uncle, death was digested for breakfast everywhere in Madrid.

  By the next hour, a wagon wobbled towards the Rodríguez house, the bed filled with lumber cut from trees growing in abundance in the Ortiz Mountains. Atop the lumber lay a skeleton, its bones rattling with each movement of the wagon along the dirt road.

  Two harsh looking men, their faces blackened by coal dust, walked beside the wagon. The men were members of the Penitentes, a religious fraternal society which always arranged for the burial of the dead, their main focus being the death of Jesus Christ. Every Easter the Penitentes re-enacted the crucifixion, even going so far as to nail one of their own members to the cross.

  Behind the wagon followed a procession of wailing women, dressed in black capes, billowing in the wind, making them look like crows, come to feast on the dead. The leader of the women waved a bell in front of her.

  Pacheco Sandoval, the driver, jumped down and tied the horse to a post. He stood bow-legged on short legs, with his fists on his hips, surveying the Rodríguez property with a sneer of revulsion on his face. He may have been small in stature, but he was a giant when it came to self-righteousness because he was the Brother Mayor of the Penitentes, selected for life, the most powerful Hispano in Madrid.

  Marcelina peeked out from the living room at death’s arrival at her door. She was not so well hid. Pacheco raised his black sombrero to her and bowed mockingly, as if she was a grand lady and not just an eleven year-old girl with breasts promising early womanhood.

  To Pacheco, big breasts in such a young girl were the mark of the devil. Women were given breasts but for one reason—to tempt men. He narrowed his eyes at the curtains and the sweaty fingers of the girl pinching at the material.