A Tyranny of Petticoats (11 page)

I’d split open what mortals from lifetimes ago called the fate line. That was the funny thing about people. Didn’t matter when or where my sisters and I landed, whether we were giants who sat at the Tree of the World or three young girls abandoned in the desert, the people around us always liked to act as if their destinies could be found in the palms of their hands. I looked down, mesmerized by the line of red that bloomed in mine, a welcome reminder that I was as much human as I was immortal. Not one or the other, but both.

The boy strode across the kitchen and wordlessly inspected my injury for a moment. I admired the pleasant variance of his pale complexion against the rich terra cotta that was mine. Then, before I could even gasp in surprise, he lifted my hand to his mouth and sucked away the blood.

It was all so intimate. The quick touch of his tongue against my skin, his body so close I could see his blond eyelashes reflecting the sunlight. It was
too
intimate, far too human for my monstrous heart to bear, and before I knew it, I had fallen in love with him.

Then he met Rosa, who was eager to hide her monster behind perfectly plaited hair. Of course he would choose her over me. My monster wouldn’t be stifled; my unruly hair was forever unkempt. Plus, everyone knew she’d make a beautiful bride.

Our friends and family celebrate my sister’s happy union with a feast and, when one of the vaqueros brings out his guitar, an impromptu fandango that continues long into the night. Mamá sits along the side, looking the part of the contented mother of the bride, with sweet Maria Elena perched at her side, happily nibbling on a piece of caramelized
cajeta
candy. As our neighbors dance, I can smell the sweet scent of mint leaves and freshly picked wildflowers that sprinkle the ground at her feet.

I watch it all with a feigned detachment that I’ve perfected over so many lifetimes. The voices painted with joy and elation. The skirts arching high into the air like fans in multitudes of colors. James makes a show of asking Maria Elena to dance. He swings her easily onto his shoulder and she is all laughter and mirth. For a moment, my sisters have everyone fooled, perhaps even themselves. For a moment, Maria Elena is simply an ordinary young girl, and Rosa the quintessential blushing bride. James leans down in passing and kisses me drily on the cheek. It is brotherly and fleeting and utterly heartbreaking, and I hide my hands behind my back and wish I had claws.

Hours later, when I sneak off into the shadows, I can still hear the mellifluous notes of a solitary
guitarra.
For reasons of which even I’m unsure, I persuade Maria Elena to come with me, coaxing her out of the bed Mamá just tucked her into moments before. I carry her on my back, and though her grip remains tight around my neck, I can tell she’s half asleep. With each of my burdened steps, her head bounces heavily on my shoulder. I hoist her higher as I make the ascent up a neighboring hill. My skirt snags in the spines of a nearby cactus and I yank it free, leaving a piece of the fabric trapped among the prickles. Trudging upward, I feel as if I’m walking straight into the night, as if I’m climbing into a bucket of dark water.

When we reach the top, I swing Maria Elena to the ground as gently as I can, and as we settle into the dirt, the dust becomes a cloud of grit and sand that irritates our eyes and gets stuck in our teeth. We look down at the ongoing party. The distance makes the lights appear dim and opaque, and suddenly it all seems so inconsequential and I am yet again nostalgic for the days of isolation and seclusion. When my sisters were my only companions. Up here, it seems we have only the stars, but even they seem small in the midst of that terrifying night sky, and it is then that I realize the reason I brought Maria Elena with me. I suppose even monsters can be afraid of the dark.

We wait there for a long while, with Maria Elena shivering against me, until a familiar form makes its way up the hill.

Rosa, still dressed in her bridal gown, is running late for her evening duties, but it is her wedding night. Perhaps she deserves this one luxury.

“Sisters,” she says upon recognizing Maria Elena and me, the monsters hiding in the shadows. Her voice is a lilting song against the harsh garble I use in my reply. It is the tongue of a past life, one that we spoke long ago when we looked like the horrors we are. As I speak, I hold out my hand, where a thread lies curled in my palm like the discarded skin of the rattlesnake James saved only hours before. The thread is a withered, transparent thing that resembles nothing of the virile man whose life it embodies. Maria Elena gasps at the sight of it.

Lifetimes ago, when our place was at the foot of the Tree of the World, the mortals believed that a snake encircled the earth, its teeth clamped down at the end of its tail. They believed that if it let go, the world would end.

Rosa’s eyes widen and she backs away from me, stumbling over her silk-clad feet in her haste to get away, as if it is truly a snake that I hold cupped in my hand. As if it is that snake whose appetite for its own tail controlled the fate of the world.

“No.” It is a simple answer. One said in a voice not of fear or defiance but of resolution. I don’t know how to respond; suddenly I know what it feels like when a small pebble collides with a mountain.

Maria Elena takes the thread from me. She strokes it lightly with her finger, and when she begins to hum, her voice is as sweet as a lullaby.

“We have no choice,” I say, but my reply is weak, and my resolve even more so.

“And who is it that dictates that?” Rosa screeches. This time her words are formed by that ancient jargon, and it sounds like gravel, grating and rough, and for a moment I feel as though I have my sister back. That it is She Who Cannot Be Turned standing in front of me and not the good girl Mamá turned her into. The heavy pounding in my chest is slowed. But She Who Cannot Be Turned has never refused to cut before. No matter to whom the life was attached. She raises her arms to that sky. “Who’s out there? Do you know, sister? Because as far as I know, there is only us. For lifetimes, we have been both the judge and the jury, the creator and the executioner.” Rosa’s face contorts oddly, and then I realize: she is crying. She is crying, this merciless sister of mine, and I cannot think how to react. She is ugly when she cries, and for a moment, I am pleased to see her like this. To see there is a crack in the alabaster, a flaw in the perfection. To see the mask of humanity begin to slip and the monster begin to emerge.

A lamenting cry fills the air. The thread begins to sing, and it’s a mournful, heartrending elegy, full of regret and remorse and an unfinished life. And with it those shears, all glinting and huge and terrifying, appear in Rosa’s outstretched palm. She screams, wrenching her hand out from under them. And they fall, tumbling through the air until they land with the blades wedged in the ground a few feet away.

She falls to her knees in front of me. “Who says there will be repercussions, sister?” she pleads. “What could be the harm in sparing this one life?”

Strands of her hair, now loose and tangled, cling to her cheeks and underneath her nose, plastered there by tears and snot. “It is by our hands that the scales are balanced, sister,” I say, brushing Rosa’s hair off her face and smoothing it back into place as best I can. “And it is a power that cannot be abused. One that is too large for any one of us to try to manipulate. It is a beast that can never be tamed.”

I take a deep breath and say the words I’ve been rehearsing in my head since last night. “It is a duty that surpasses everything. Even love.”

I need her to say that I’m right, but instead she turns her back on me and cradles her knees with her arms. “I won’t do it,” she says petulantly.

I glance toward those shears so mercilessly stabbed into the earth. My whole body trembles as I pick them up, but my hands are hesitant and unsure and I drop them twice before I have a steady grasp on them. They are so heavy I need both hands to manage them.

I don’t know how I’m going to hold the thread in order to cut it until Maria Elena slides toward me. She leans her head down to the thread in her hand and whispers something. Perhaps it’s good-bye. Then she holds it out, one tiny hand on each side of that thread. Its mournful cry is so loud I want to cover my ears. I catch Maria Elena’s eye. She nods her head. And with trembling hands I raise those shears and cut the thread.

The world is suddenly silent. In the distance, a lone coyote howls, and his forlorn cry echoes across the valley. Hours later, when I finally allow myself to cry, I know I will sound as desperate and lonely as that coyote separated from his pack.

Behind me, Rosa whimpers quietly. Her cheek is pressed against the dirt and her tearstained face smeared with the deep-red clay that covers the ground. I crawl toward her, marking my skirt with the same red that stains her face. Grabbing her hand, I tie one end of the cut thread around her ring finger.

Maria Elena settles herself in my lap, and I consider wrapping the other end of the thread around my own finger. Instead, I hold it out to the wind and we watch as it flutters away and disappears into the dark night sky.

Folks around here call us
el destinos.
They like to say we came from the stars. And when I stare up at the infinite heavens stretched out above us like a shroud, it’s hard to imagine we came from anywhere else.

I place my hand over Rosa’s trembling one, and after a moment, she intertwines her fingers with mine. And it is like this, while sitting on the hill, that my sisters and I wait for the day to blossom like a flower over the desert plateau.

THE BLOOD SPATTERED ACROSS KLIO’S cheek and jaw had yet to dry. She drew a clean, delicately embroidered kerchief from her pocket and wiped her face, staining the white square scarlet. She tucked the kerchief away and surveyed the room.

This job had been too messy for her taste. For the most part, Klio fulfilled contracts in a quick, tidy manner. She went in, did her work, and left the target with little more than a startled expression forever written across his or her face.

The man sprawled half on the foot of the bed and half on the floor did not look startled. His face had gone slack, his eyes glassy. But the dark splotch just below the left breast pocket of his waistcoat piqued Klio’s annoyance. She rarely fell back on her dagger to finish a job.

The room bespoke of a haphazard kill: chairs overturned, papers strewn from the desk onto the floor, an overturned inkwell rolling along the desktop while its contents dripped over the edge to a widening black pool below, and feathers floating in the air above the pillows from which they’d erupted. Jagged shards of glass were scattered across the room.

So many still believe mirrors will make a difference.
Klio wondered how such misinformation managed to stay in circulation despite all the evidence to the contrary.

With one last disapproving look about the room, she pulled on her gloves and exited into the hall. The other doors in the boardinghouse remained shut. No curious eyes peeked out. No cries of alarm roused the house matron.

Some of Klio’s jobs would have necessitated finding another way out of the room, an escape by which she would not be seen. This boardinghouse, however, was home to those who were doing their best to remain unnoticed, and becoming curious about a neighbor’s business was a sure way to ruin their own anonymity . . . and possibly lead to their own demise.