The Witches of El Paso

Chapter 4

4

In the locked cell, Nena shivered, and not only because it was so cold she could see her breath. She’d made a mistake, and now she was trapped in this room, in this time. Nena had prayed to be taken away from her life of toil, but not like this. That smelly old nun had tricked her. That was what had happened. But that wasn’t the whole truth. Luna and Olga were always saying that Nena did things without thinking, that she was too headstrong. Nena had to admit that, in this case, they had a point.

Pobre winter sunlight shone through the one tiny window, falling on the tiled floor covered with wool jergas, a table with an earthenware jug and a basin, a carved wooden bed, and a darkly varnished armoire. Nena walked over to the bed and ran her hand over the mattress, or the place where the mattress should have been. The bed was nothing more than boards covered with blankets. Nena heard the movement of a key in the door again. The woman who’d let Nena and Sister Benedicta into the convent entered, carrying a tray. She set the tray on the bed and hurried out.

The tray held a taza of chocolate and a small basket of sweet rolls. Nena shoved an entire roll in her mouth, and she gulped the chocolate. The woman returned with a gray dress draped over her arm and pair of boots held between her fingers.

“Como se llama?” Nena asked.

“María,” the woman said.

Nena picked up another roll from the basket and tore it in half, offering it to the woman. Once you break bread you are under an obligation to your guests. Nena’s papá had been very clear about this when she was growing up.

María took the roll, chewing it fast.

“Sister Benedicta said I have to help you clean yourself. Turn around,” María said.

She pulled Nena’s nightgown over her head, then helped her out of her underwear. Nena heard María mutter as she took a rag and wet it in a basin, running it over Nena’s face, down her neck. María dressed Nena in the shapeless gray wool dress, much like a nun’s habit but without a veil. María knelt in front of Nena, guiding her feet into boots that she laced up with a tool that looked like a crochet hook. It was strange to be undressed and dressed like she was a child again, and Nena didn’t mind being cared for in this way.

Right as María was finishing pinning Nena’s hair back with a small wooden comb, Sister Benedicta entered the room. She had changed out of her black dress and into a habit with a black veil. The cloth of Sister Benedicta’s habit was a beautiful, rich-looking serge. It would have cost a lot of money back home, if that kind of fabric could even be found these days. Sister Benedicta ran her eyes up and down Nena’s body, like she was looking for flaws.

“Madre Inocenta is ready to see you,” Sister Benedicta said.

“There’s been a mistake,” Nena said. “I have to go home.”

“You called for us, and Madre Inocenta sent me to get you.”

“But I’m not from this time. I live in 1943, and you said that this is the year 1792.”

“It is not possible to move in time,” Sister Benedicta said, her tone firm.

“Yet here I am.”

“You’re confused. It’s good I found you when I did, so we can guide you out of your delusions. Come with me,” Sister Benedicta said, hurrying Nena out the door and through the convent.

Sister Benedicta opened a door to a big room with a long, heavy wood table in the center. At the back of the room, behind a delicate desk, sat a middle-aged woman who Nena took to be Madre Inocenta. On the wall above her head, a huge painting loomed, a dark oil of a bejeweled nun, an escudo on her chest and a crown of flowers on her head. Unlike the nun in the portrait, Madre Inocenta was dressed simply, in a habit made of much rougher stuff than Sister Benedicta’s. She wore a plain wooden cross.

Nena could feel Madre Inocenta’s eyes on her, but she gave off none of Sister Benedicta’s high-handed impatience. Nena was hopeful that Madre Inocenta was someone who could be reasoned with.

“I need to return home. My sisters will be worried about me if I’m not back before the babies wake up,” Nena said, though she was surely already too late for that.

“Sit,” Madre Inocenta said, nodding at the two backless chairs in front of her desk. Nena eased herself down on one, and Sister Benedicta perched on the other, keeping her eyes fixed on Nena, as if she were afraid that Nena would run out the door. But where could Nena go?

“I tried to tell Sister Benedicta that I must have traveled through time, but she—”

“Nonsense,” Sister Benedicta said.

Madre Inocenta leaned forward, squinting at Nena. “How, pray tell, do you know you traveled through time?”

“I just do,” Nena said, and then because Madre Inocenta was staring at Nena in a way that made her want to be a good student, Nena said, “This time smells different.”

“Come here,” Madre Inocenta said, and Nena walked to the desk. “Give me your hand.”

Madre Inocenta took Nena’s right hand in her own, lowering her face until her breath tickled Nena’s palm. Nena fought the urge to snatch her hand back. Madre Inocenta straightened up, and she smiled at Nena.

“Yes, I see what you mean. Or I smell what you mean, rather.”

“What? How?” Sister Benedicta said, apparently angry at Nena, as if it was Nena’s fault time had been altered.

“We’ve never had to travel so far for a ni?a who was calling for help. I thought I was sending Sister Benedicta to an estancia across the river, not centuries into the future. How were you able to open the door from your time to ours?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Nena said, remembering her prayer in bed. “I mean, I didn’t intend to. It just happened.”

“I believe we have been given a gift from God,” Madre Inocenta said to Sister Benedicta.

“This is no gift. This is the work of the devil. We must send her back with haste,” Sister Benedicta said.

“We don’t know how,” Madre Inocenta said.

“Then she shall find her own way. She doesn’t belong here. She has broken a rule of nature, and there will be consequences. You know that as well as I do.”

“The difference between us, Sister Benedicta, is that you believe that the consequences are inevitably bad. The manner in which young Elena traveled here and the reason why is a mystery that shall be revealed to us by God alone,” Madre Inocenta said, turning to Nena. “Sister Benedicta and I may disagree on some matters, but we’re of one mind about the purpose of this convent. We have, each and every one of us here, been afflicted by visions and other unwelcome gifts thanks to La Vista. This is why we meet, to put all of our energy into La Vista in a controlled way, to expend it in a healthy manner without bringing ourselves harm.”

“How do you do that?” Nena asked.

“We begin our meetings by singing the song of the aquelarre. The encanto lulls the rest of the nuns to sleep and it calls La Vista into the room. During our sessions we let La Vista work its way through us so that we’re not taken unaware by it the rest of the week. At the session’s end, the song of the aquelarre sends La Vista away.”

“What’s La Vista?” Nena asked.

“Another word for God,” Madre Inocenta said. “When you have your visions, La Vista is in you, and you are one with the spirit.”

“What Madre Inocenta means to say is that La Vista is one aspect of God,” Sister Benedicta said. “La Vista is chaos and nature, and if we don’t work to control it, to channel it, we’ll be destroyed by it. La Vista is to be feared, not venerated. That’s why we have rules here, and that’s why if you’ve already broken the rules, you don’t belong.” She was looking at Nena, although Nena got the sense that the message was intended for Madre Inocenta.

“As I said, Sister Benedicta and I disagree at times. We brought you here to take care of you and that’s what we’ll do, even if you arrived from farther away than we imagined. What a journey! And for it to be worth such effort, you must have brought us something very special.”

Sister Benedicta’s expression all but made a hiss. One thing had become clear from this conversation—Madre Inocenta was in charge, in name and in reality, and it didn’t really matter what Sister Benedicta thought of Nena. And Madre Inocenta considered Nena special, which pleased her.

“You said you can you make La Vista go away? How?” Nena asked. That didn’t seem possible. All of Nena’s previous efforts had failed. La Vista—if that was what it was—came for her at the worst possible times, squeezing her in its grip until it was done with her.

“We’ll teach you how to calm La Vista later,” Madre Inocenta said, standing. “We have other work to do first. Once the others are here, we’ll begin the meeting of the aquelarre, and we’ll call La Vista to us.”

The door opened and three women entered; two wore black veils, and the one in a white veil wore her wimple tight around her chubby face. She was closer to Nena’s age than the other two, and she smiled at Nena in a friendly way.

“I present to you Sister Francisca, Sister Paloma, and our novice, Sister Carmela,” Madre Inocenta said. Sisters Francisca and Paloma trained their eyes on the floor. Timid women, Nena thought, taking note of how close they stood to Sister Benedicta. Carmela positioned herself right next to Nena, still smiling. As the other nuns began to hum, Carmela tugged at Nena’s elbow, a signal for her to join them.

The nuns sang a long note, ahh, a short one, hmm, and then the order of the notes changed, the women singing loud, long vowel sounds that jumped up and down the scale, eh, eh, ah, ah, ooh, ooh, ya, the sounds not forming words exactly, but still seeming to have a precise meaning. Nena sang along with Carmela, surprised at how she knew what to sing next, but then she realized that the melody of the song was a familiar one: it had been hidden in the hum she’d been hearing all summer.

As Nena sang, a buzz grew in the bones behind her ears, and the hairs on her arms stood up, the electricity of the song flowing through her, jumping from Carmela to Nena to Sister Paloma, and so on, moving through the circle of women in a counterclockwise motion. Nena was dizzy and scared, not from fear of passing out, but from an excitement that threatened to shiver her out of her skin.

Madre Inocenta held up her hand, and the nuns stopped singing.

“La Vista is with us now,” Madre Inocenta said to Nena. “Do you feel its power in the air? Close your eyes, and La Vista will sing through you. We’ll see what encantos live within you.”

Nena considered the word “encanto.” It contained the word “cantar,” to sing. She must have just sung a spell, but it was the only spell she had ever chanted. She didn’t think she had any others inside her.

Carmela again put a hand on Nena’s elbow, whispering, “You can do it.”

Nervous, Nena shut her eyelids, and was surprised when she discovered that she could still see the room, not with human eyes, but with La Vista. The brujas, she could see now, were collections of energy, colorful knots of waves. Carmela and Madre Inocenta glowed in front of her, bright indigo with flickering edges. Sister Benedicta was maroon, and both Paloma and Francisca were pink. Nena squinted with La Vista, picking up something else running through the room, another wave.

She lifted her hand and saw, or rather, recognized, the thing she was supposed to catch, a wild spell, like yeast in the air. When she held her hand higher, the wave entered her through her fingers, running up her arm, into her lungs. A wild song emerged from her mouth, the notes bubbling out, and the room filled with the scent of roses.

“Perfecto!” Carmela said, laughing, as Nena opened her eyes.

“A child’s trick,” Sister Benedicta said.

Eighteen-year-old Nena didn’t enjoy being called a child by Sister Benedicta. She had opened a doorway through time. Could Sister Benedicta do that? No. Sister Benedicta was so stupid, she’d been unaware that Nena had pulled her to her future. Sister Benedicta was a blind, jealous, and not very nice nun. Nena was already tired of dealing with her. If she had been envious of Nena’s gifts before, wait until Nena really showed her. Nena was determined to find a more impressive spell in the room.

She kept her eyes open, using La Vista to distinguish between the layers of energy in the air. The candles flickered as a draft wound through the room. She knew what an odor spell looked like now. She needed something stronger, and though she didn’t know how to recognize it or call it to her, Nena had a hunch that if she opened herself to it, the encanto would find her.

And she was right. Nena spotted a shadow snaking along the floor, darting up to the ceiling, shooting across a beam. She called it to her, and it dove down into her mouth. Nena started to gag, the thing sticking in her throat. She coughed, hacking so hard she bent over, falling to her knees. The familiar buzzing filled her ears, and the dark curtain of La Vista draped over her.

Nena came to, finding herself on the hard ground, the nuns peering down at her. She had fainted, like almost every other time La Vista had entered her body. Angry and embarrassed, she struggled to her feet, irritated at herself for losing control in front of Sister Benedicta. Nena coughed again, and then felt something on her tongue.

She reached into her mouth and pulled out a tooth, not one of hers, but the tooth of an animal, long and sharp.

“A coyote’s fang,” Madre Inocenta said with wonder, her eyes glittering.

Sister Benedicta glared at Nena. The other three nuns had backed away from Nena, even Carmela, who wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“A coyote?” Nena asked, scared and angry at herself for wanting to show off.

“I suspect the rest of the coyote will be with us soon,” Madre Inocenta said, sounding pleased instead of afraid.

“Am I going to turn into a coyote?” Nena asked.

“Unlikely. Allow me to reflect on what this means, and what we should do with the tooth. At our next meeting we’ll see if we can purge the rest of the coyote from you so that it doesn’t engage in any mischief.”

Nena didn’t like the sound of that. “Why do we have to wait? I don’t want a coyote in me. When does the aquelarre meet next?”

“Patience. You’ve gone through enough tonight. You must rest. We need you ready for the regular meeting of the aquelarre on Saturday night.”

Nena couldn’t wait that long. By then Luna and Olga would have gone to the police. They’d already lost their parents. How would they feel if they lost their sister? And how would they be able to keep their jobs if Nena wasn’t there to take care of the babies?

“I did what you wanted, but now I have to go home,” Nena said.

“You’ll go home when La Vista is done with you,” Madre Inocenta said.

“I refuse to wait.”

“I’m afraid you have no other choice. Do you know how you moved yourself through time?”

“No.”

“Before you came to us, did you experience anything unusual?”

“I saw ladybugs. I heard a hum.”

“And do you hear the hum now?”

“No,” Nena said. “Now I know that the hum was the song of the aquelarre.”

“I see. You must have followed the sound of our aquelarre to us, in the convent. But there’s nothing for you to follow back. One could say that a once-open door is closed, and you must wait for it to open again,” Madre Inocenta said.

“So what do I do?”

“You’ve arrived with a magic in you that we haven’t seen before, and, for your sake and the safety of the aquelarre, it’s our duty to understand what this magic is. Once we know what we’re dealing with, we will help you find your way back to your time. Until then, the convent will be your home.”

“I have to be a nun?”

“A ni?a. We will explain to the other sisters that you’re a new ni?a.”

Nena knew all too well what the word meant. Girl. Servant. “You want me to be your maid?”

“No, no. You’ll be a student. My student,” Madre Inocenta said. “You’ll keep the uniform you’re wearing. Sister Benedicta is the vicaria. She is in charge of the schedule and of discipline. She’ll explain the schedule to you. Our days begin with early-morning prayers.”

Madre Inocenta may have said that she would be Nena’s teacher, but it was Sister Benedicta who moved toward the door and motioned for Nena to follow.