Desolate (Desolation) (33 page)

“Artemis is rising,” Eva whispered.

“It’s time,” Mãe said. She bowed her head and held up to the light her most prized possession, her moonstone pendant. She never told Eva where it had come from, but she never let it out of her sight. “Close your eyes and fix your thoughts on Artemis’s light as it fills the circle, as it fills the moonstone, giving it power.”

With her eyes shut tight, Eva’s other senses were heightened. She smelled the warm smoke of the candle flame, touched the grit of the boulder’s rough surface, pictured Artemis’s light descending on their small circle like a cataract. The beam poured into the moonstone, and when Eva felt the Goddess’s pale touch on her face, she wondered how she could ever have doubted. She need only turn toward this palpable light and let go of her fear. She did so, knowing that within this circle she was safe. She was home.

A touch on her arm.

“Do you hear that?” Mãe whispered.

A rustling in the corn stalks came from the direction of the farmhouse. Eva’s breath came quick.

Pai.

No, her father would be at the shipyard in New Bedford for hours yet, drowning another day in a pitcher of beer.

“It’s nothing. Just a vole or a red fox,” Eva reassured her.

“No,
querida
,” Mãe said, glancing toward the corn stalks. “It’s him.”

“Mãe, he wouldn’t be—” Eva began. Then she heard them. Footsteps. Through the garden. The angry thump-thump of heavy boots resounded in the soil.

The candlelight was dim, but it couldn’t mask the dread passing over her mother’s tense face. Eva prayed for the Goddess to surround her mother with protection. She knew Pai had long held his suspicions, but when he saw the candlelit circle and the ritual objects of incense, rose, water, moonstone, and salt, when he saw them kneeling before the moon in the deep of night, he would know beyond doubt that the rumors were true.

“Stay quiet,” Mãe whispered. “Promise me: no matter what happens, you will not interfere.”

Eva shook her head, tried to speak, tried to tell her mother that she would somehow protect her, but her tongue felt like lead. She had nowhere to hide, no way to run. The familiar fear made her mouth go dry and her breath come in hollow bursts, as if her ribcage would fall right through her chest.

Her father burst through the last of the garden’s corn stalks. Eva jumped to her feet. She smelled the workday sweat on his body as he advanced. The rising shadow at his back threw his thick muscles into relief against the corn stalks. The moonlight encased him in silver, but the candlelight exposed the horror in his eyes and the saddle latigo swinging at his side. When his wild gaze swept the circle, a flash of alarm crossed his face. But Eva knew his anger would master him soon. It always did.

“A witch.” His voice cracked as the word filled his mouth. “A pagan. Is that why your father gave you to me? So he wouldn’t have to live with the shame?” He shook his head, closed his eyes, and breathed in heavy gasps. When he opened his eyes again, the horror had passed into accusation. “And all the rumors around town... I would have loved you, Maria, but you’ve betrayed me—” He broke off into a cry of frustration and turned away. It was then that he noticed Eva in the shadows.

“You poisoned my daughter with this”—he stepped back, jabbed a finger in the air toward the circle—“this witchcraft. The priests will excommunicate her. The people will shun her. You would sentence your own flesh and blood to hell?”

Mãe said nothing, only stared at him, unblinking. But Eva listened to his words. The words hell and excommunicate hung thick in the smoky air of Artemis’s circle, reminding her again of her buried doubts.

“Get up,” Pai said to her mother, his voice low like the growl of a dog. When she did not, he touched the latigo at his belt loop. Eva’s breath caught as she eyed the wide leather strap. He cracked it against his leg. “I’ll not say it again.”

Still, Mãe did not move.

He narrowed his eyes and stamped around the circle, taking care not to step inside the light. “I’ll not harbor a witch in my house. And you won’t be making one of my child. You’ll sail with us to Terceira, Maria, just as we planned. Do you hear me? You’ll sail, but you won’t be coming back. Eva will stay with me. She will be a Catholic, Maria. Do you hear?”

When his voice rose with the last words, her mother’s eyes flared with fury. Yet when she spoke, every word was slow and deliberate.

“Take my daughter from me, and you’ll not live out the year. I swear it by the Goddess. I swear it on my own life.”

Her father fumbled for the latigo at his waist and lunged across the circle for Mãe. He pushed her up against the altar, knocking over the bowls of salt and water, sticking the rose’s thorns deep into her elbow. Her mother cried out, as much in pain as in anger. Eva saw the pain, the humiliation crossing her mother’s face. She remembered her mother’s words.
You will not interfere.

And if he kills you, Mãe, what then?
she wanted to say. No, she would not—could not stand by and watch. Eva stretched out a hand to grasp the latigo as he reached back to strike. The strap pulled tight, jerking Eva off her feet.

Pai leaned back, caught off-guard. He did not seem to see her at first. He and Mãe had always had an unspoken rule that she should not come between them. And she never had. Until now.

When his eyes cleared, she saw the workings of his mind playing out on his face. He saw her now as he saw her mother: evil, pagan, to be feared, to be shunned.

Without a word, he made a fist and struck her across the cheek. She saw a flash of light in a whirl of darkness, and, when next she could see and feel, she was staring up at him from the dirt, ears ringing, his image blurring into two. The fire of pain swept over the left side of her face, and the realization of her father’s violence overtook her in an uncontrollable tremor. She had never known true hatred for him until this moment. The revulsion that rocked her body was mirrored in his eyes.

“You are no daughter of mine,” he said, spitting out the words like a curse.

Then he turned back to her mother and showed her the meaning of obedience.