Hammer of Witches (19 page)

The first thing I
was aware of was salt. I could feel it, gritty, on the back of my teeth, and it burned as it dried over my lips. Next came sand, crunchy bits stuck in my molars, between my toes, under my elbows. I opened my eyes. A sliver of a moon illuminated an empty blue shore. On one side the black ocean lapped gently against unspoiled sand. On the other hundreds of palm trees swayed in a balmy breeze.

“What the hell?” I said aloud to the ocean. No sooner had I started believing that I would never see land again, that I’d be stuck in that coffin of a ship till the end of time, than I washed up ashore on some empty beach in the middle of nowhere. I let my head sink back onto the sand.

At least I was still alive.

I didn’t have much time to wonder at the thought. Because just then a mumble — a human mumble — pushed its way over the hushed roar of the wind and waves.

I searched through the blue night to find the mumble’s
source. A figure was splayed on the sand behind me. I wiped the sand off my cheek and crawled over to it.

“Jin —” I started to whisper, then stopped. It was someone else. Even in the dark of night, I could see the reflective pallor of the person’s skin, the tawny wet hair. I reviewed the figure’s sharp chin, lightly-freckled nose, the barely-parted lips. And I had to come to an incredulous conclusion.

“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
S
LEEPING
P
RINCESS
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.