Page 41 of The Familiar

“Show her,” Hualit said.

Luzia turned. That was when she saw Santángel, his eyes glittering in the shadows beyond the doorway, sparks that didn’t burn, cold fire. She wasn’t sorry he was there. Maybe she wanted him to see something about her that wasn’t a dirty neck and a lack of manners.

“There’s so much of it!” Valentina exclaimed. “And it’s so very thick.”

“We could cut it,” said Hualit, her hands gripping Luzia’s shoulders. “Or shave it so she can wear a wig.”

Luzia’s gaze snapped to Hualit, who had twined one of Luzia’s curls idly around her finger. Why did Luzia care what they did to her hair? Because it looked like her mother’s hair? Because her vanity told her it was the one thing about her that might ever be called beautiful even if it couldn’t be considered fashionable? Or because she didn’t want to be handled this way, talked to this way, moved about like a doll? All she knew was that if they tried to take a razor to her head she would scream and she would not stop screaming. She would fill the house with pomegranate trees. She would cleave them all in two. She could feel the pull of that larger magic, dangerous, impossible. It was trying to offer you escape, to take you from this place. She wanted to let it.

“A wig would be easiest,” said Doña Valentina. “But—”

“No,” said Santángel. His voice was like a sudden change in temperature, the sign of bad weather to come.

Valentina and Hualit both startled.

“You shouldn’t be here,” said Valentina. “It isn’t decent.”

“I instruct her every day in this room.”

“It’s not the same. A man—”

Hualit’s laugh was forced. “Santángel is not a man. He doesn’t care for women or men or anything at all besides his books.”

Santángel’s face remained impassive. “A book may disappoint, but it is far easier to be rid of.”

“Always the wit,” said Hualit merrily, but Luzia didn’t miss the tightness of her mouth. She feared Santángel and she knew she was perilously close to overstepping. Was it because he held a position of privilege with her patron? Or did she share the same fears as Águeda in the kitchen? Did she say Santángel was not a man because he was something else entirely?

“Well, Santángel,” Hualit mused, “since you seem to have strong opinions on fashion, what do we do with her hair? If she is to look pious we cannot leave it wild this way, and I know nothing that can tame it. The king will take one look at her and seek to set her before his judges or tumble her in his bed.”

Valentina gasped.

But Hualit wouldn’t stop. “Then again, a man who wants to fuck is a useful thing.”

Luzia brought her foot down hard on the floor. “Señora, I beg you.”

“Beg her for nothing,” said Santángel. He remained in his spot among the shadows, and yet she could see him clearly, as if he were glowing. “No one will touch her hair, or it is my temper you will face.”

“This is my home,” sputtered Valentina. “Luzia lives under my roof—”

Now he moved forward and Luzia did feel the temperature of the room change, more than a sudden draft, a storm front. Valentina took a step back and Hualit froze, Luzia’s dark hair still curled around her finger. They’d felt it too.

“You will not touch her hair,” he repeated.

Valentina bobbed her head in a single nod.

Hualit released Luzia’s hair and wiped her hand on her skirts as if to forget its feel. “Not a strand of it.”

Santángel vanished soundlessly into the hall.

“The impertinence!” chirped Doña Valentina when he was gone, but her voice was too high.

“What was that?” Luzia asked, rubbing her arms.

Hualit seemed to shake free of whatever had kept her rooted to the spot. “Just do as you’re bid,” she said without looking at Luzia. “We’ll find a velvet cap or have Perucho’s plumajero concoct something with feathers and jewels. Let’s see to the other gowns. I don’t want to have to bother with another fitting.”

Perhaps they should have cut her hair that day. If Valentina had picked up the razor, or Hualit the shears, if Luzia had bent her head to their ministrations, maybe more than one of them would have returned to the shabby house on Calle de Dos Santos and lived to tell this story.

CHAPTER 21