Odette
January 14, 1894—California
On the morning Trudchen Maria Grey entered the world, the eastern sky blazed with a magnificent orange light that made me believe someone had struck a match to the heavens. I dangled from the branch of an olive tree in front of our California ranch house, the thick bark scratching at my palms, the muscles of my arms straining to keep my hands attached to the crooked bough. The ground below my bare feet brightened to the color of flames, and I gasped in wonder at its grandeur. If I had peeked into one of the little protective mirrors that Mama hung by the windows and doors—her Hexenspiegels—I would have seen my face glowing orange, as well, and my eyes reflecting clouds made of streaks of molten lava.
I wasn't quite four years old yet. Mama lay in bed inside our house, her belly swollen, her mood foul. She had vomited all night, and the house reeked of a stench like spoiled milk that no amount of nose-pinching could hide. I had stolen outside as soon as the first rays of light nudged between my curtains.
On the back step, our white cat, Renoir, watched me hanging from the branch. His fur, too, reflected the conflagration of the sunrise, and his icy blue eyes latched upon me without blinking. No one else watched over me, so he seemed to take it upon himself to ensure I didn't fall and crack open my skull. Mama could not budge beneath that belly, and Papa rode about by the sea, selling his paintings to men with a taste for fine art and pockets bulging with money.
So, there I dangled, my muscles quivering, the sky shining in my eyes, Renoir flicking his tail, Mama hidden away inside our eggshell-brown farmhouse that also glowed bright orange ... when all of a sudden a scream ripped through the silence.
I dropped to the dirt below me. Every hair on my body stood on end, and the echo of the scream pulsated inside my head, right behind my eyeballs. Mama's collection of bells and charms tinkled from the eaves of the front porch.
A second shriek followed. An unholy howl. I thought of the diabolical Weeping Woman my father had warned me about—La Llorona— and my feet froze to the earth. My knees smarted from my sudden drop to the ground, and my heart shuddered in my chest. Renoir no longer sat on the back step. He had launched himself into the safety of the olive grove, far from that yowl of horror, and I did not blame him one bit.
I waited in a crouched position on the cold winter soil for what seemed like the rest of my life. The house stood still in front of me, and the bright wildfire sky dimmed to a muted peach, almost white. The only thing that caused me to move from that spot was another hideous cry.
"ODETTE!"
My mother.
I sprang off the ground and shot into the house and up the stairs. I found Mama in her bedroom, bent over her washbasin, panting, sweating, her eyes squeezed shut. The protruding stomach that held my sister drooped below her like the hump of a capital D, and she stood with her legs akimbo. The thin fabric of her nightgown failed to completely conceal her naked hip and backside beneath, which made her seem so exposed and fragile and alien to me.
She groaned and clutched the washbasin, her arms and legs shaking.
"Mama?" I asked.
"Go fetch Mrs. Alvarado!" she yelled through a curtain of brown hair slick with sweat. "NOW!"
I retraced my path through the house and bolted out the front door. The soles of my feet slammed across the dry dirt road, and I wished I had taken time to put on a pair of shoes. The skirt of my plaid dress and my long brown hair flapped into the air behind me like the sails of a ship, speeding me forward.
A movement to my right caught my eye. In a flash, the lean body of a coyote dashed through the canyon's scrubby bushes and disappeared beyond the live oaks that populated the pale green hills. The sky to the east now shone in an empty shade of blue, all the fire in the clouds snuffed out. The world looked faded and desolate and unfathomably huge.
Another mile down the road lived Mrs. Alvarado—mother of eight—who would help Mama push her baby into the world. Mrs. Alvarado's husband hailed from a family of rancheros who had owned the land beneath our feet when California belonged to Mexico. Mrs. Alvarado's family once owned a rancho to the west.
Halfway to the Alvarados' house, while imagining Mama fixing me a breakfast of toast and jam, I ran across something in the dirt so sharp, it made the sole of my left foot sing with pain.
"Nooooo!"
I screamed and hopped about on my good leg to slow myself down and then lifted the foot to investigate the gore. A dark red gash stretched across the wrinkly skin of my entire sole. Blood oozed to the surface and dripped to the ground as crimson raindrops.
"Oh, no! Mama!"
I plopped down on the dirt in the middle of the canyon and plunked my forehead against my left knee. Insects hummed near the oak trees that shadowed the road ahead of me, and their high-pitched buzzing made my foot throb all the more. Blood trickled into the cold, hard ground, beneath which rattlesnakes slumbered for the winter. I imagined them awakening, their tongues flicking, rattles shaking, while I sat above them on the road, alone, bleeding, sobbing.
I could cry all I wanted, but Mama wailed through her own throes of agony back at the house while Papa tried his darnedest to keep us warm and fed. Handsome Uncle Magnus, just nineteen years old at the time, slept in a saloon down in San Diego. My mama's mama lay dead in a cemetery in Oregon, gone since 1887. My mama's father rested beside her, also dead. Aunt Viktoria was eating breakfast with her husband on a nut farm more than a thousand miles away.
No one would help me.
So ... I helped myself.
I closed my eyes and told myself a tale of a girl who saved the world by running a mile on a foot that leaked a trail of blood behind her. Because of the girl's astounding bravery, her blood seeped through the pebbles and dirt of the bonehard ground and transformed into a garden of red, red roses that pushed their way out of the rocks and the soil. Blossoms bloomed for the child when she returned home on that same path, and not one single thorn protruded from the stems. She picked every last flower and carried a bouquet to her mother, who held a brand-new baby girl with the fuzzy blond hair of a duckling. Her mother thanked her and promised she would never be alone—never suffer any more pain—ever again.
And they lived happily ever after.
Mrs. Alvarado—a tall, sturdy woman with hair as dark as our canyon nights—tossed me a pair of one of her children's brown boots for the journey back home. She rushed about in a blur of black skirts and billowing white sleeves. She threw on her shoes and a coat, barked orders to the older children, and fetched a basket containing supplies such as cloth and scissors that would somehow be used for the birth. Her oldest daughter, Josefina, wrapped my bleeding foot in a rag and helped me stuff my toes into the left boot. The house smelled of frying eggs and peppers, and my stomach groaned with hunger.
"Are you excited about a baby coming in your house?" asked Josefina, her pretty brown eyes smiling.
I shrugged and wished I could simply stay in her house and eat their scrumptious eggs, which Mrs. Alvarado called huevos.
"You are a brave girl, running all this way by yourself," added Josefina.
With my tongue poking out of the right side of my mouth for added strength, I forced the rest of my left foot into the boot. "I saw a coyote," I said through my straining and squeezing, my voice creaking like an old man's.
Josefina grinned. "You did?"
"He wanted to eat me up like Red Riding Hood's wolf, but I kept running and running and running."
"Good girl." She patted my knee. "You are protecting your baby brother or sister already by ignoring trouble and coming straight here for help. Guarding your younger sibling is something you will need to do for the rest of your life."
"Vámonos, Odette!" cried her mother, and I jumped out of the chair and followed.
Mrs. Alvarado half walked, half jogged back home with me, her arms pumping, her shoulders and torso swinging from side to side as she huffed and puffed through the oaks and the scrub. The basket dangled off her left arm.
I spotted dots of blood from my foot, left behind like a trail of bread crumbs. I had to hop on my right foot most of the way. Mrs. Alvarado hissed her disapproval whenever I fell down from all the hopping.
We found Mama sitting on her bed, her legs bent and spread wide open, her hands clutching her knees, her knuckles white. She gritted her teeth and bellowed like our neighbor's old dairy cow when it broke its leg in a ditch and had to be shot.
Mrs. Alvarado threw her basket at me and ripped off her coat. "The baby's already crowning."
I caught a glimpse of the view between my mother's legs. Vomit charged up my throat.
Mama tipped her head back and roared with so much ground-shaking force, my father probably heard her all the way out by the ocean and stopped selling his paintings mid-sentence. Uncle Magnus probably awoke with a start and a belch in the saloon. Even Grandma and Grandpa Lowenherz probably heard her in their Oregon graves. I dropped the basket and covered my ears, but Mrs. Alvarado, unfazed by the ruckus, propped her left foot on the bed and yanked my sister out of my mother.
Trudchen Maria Grey sprang into the world as a purple, slimy, blood-covered creature with trembling hands and a face scrunched up with fury. She let out a cry that sounded like the bleating of an angry goat, and she looked as if she wanted to get put straight back into my mother, which I wouldn't have minded one bit. Mama collapsed against the pillows. Mrs. Alvarado chuckled from deep within her chest and said, "You have another feisty little girl, Maria." I puked all over Mrs. Alvarado's daughter's boots.
It was not love at first sight.
Four days after the birth, my uncle Magnus came to visit us. Mama, Tru, and I had been sleeping in the front room, and we missed the telltale clip-clops of the dappled horse, Glancer, that he rented from a livery down in San Diego in order to reach us every couple of months. The front door blew open, and Mama sat up on the sofa, clutching Tru to her chest.
"Louis?" she asked, hope ringing in her voice.
"No, it's me," said my uncle, and he rounded the corner with a yellow-haired rag doll tucked beneath one arm and a crocheted green and blue blanket nestled under the other. His hair—reddish brown like mine and Mama's—looked damp and mussed from the hat he must have left hanging on a hook on the front porch, and his face needed a shave. Prickly-looking whiskers sprouted all over his chin and above his upper lip, even though he couldn't yet grow a mustache even half as thick as Papa's.
"Uncle Magnus!" I cried, and I flew across the room and attached myself to his left leg. The rich scents of his horse and leather saddle flooded my nose.
"Hello, darling." He rubbed his hand through the hair on the top of my head, which hadn't been brushed in four days. The blanket he carried slipped down to my face with the harsh stink of a flowery perfume. "What have we got here?"
I thought he meant the baby sleeping against my mother, but he reached down and pulled a shiny copper penny out from behind my right ear. As always, I slapped my hand against the place from which the coin had materialized, looking for the mysterious slot in my skin that produced money—and sometimes even candy—whenever Uncle Magnus came around. He smiled and rubbed my head again, although his expression soured when his fingers became ensnared in one of my tangles.
"So ..." He wrestled his hand out of the knot and swaggered over to my mother and sister. "I think introductions are in order."
Mama sighed and pulled back the white blanket shielding my sister's face. "I had another girl. Four days ago. Trudchen. Trudchen Maria."
Uncle Magnus straightened his neck. "You ... you named her after Mama?"
My mother nodded, and a moment later her bottom lip trembled and she burst into tears. She'd cried at least three times every hour ever since my sister came screeching into the world.
I crept over to my uncle's side and grabbed hold of his warm left hand. He peeked down at me with concern in his eyes and gave my palm a squeeze.
"Well"—he swallowed and cleared his throat—"I've got presents for both children. A new doll for you, Od." He lifted his left elbow, which allowed the doll to fall straight into my arms. "And a blanket for little Tru."
"Trudchen," said Mama. "Don't start calling her nicknames, the way you make Odette sound like she's odd. Who made the blanket?"
"A kind lady."
"What type of lady?"
Uncle Magnus loosened his fingers from mine. "One who wanted to make a blanket for my new niece or nephew."
Mama grabbed the blanket and sniffed it. Her hair hung over her face like seaweed—like the ratty locks of a sea witch. Bruise-colored bags bulged beneath her red-rimmed eyes, and the long black nightgown she wore didn't help her frightful appearance. "It smells of cheap perfume, Magnus." She threw the blanket at my uncle's stomach. "Get it out of here."
"I was just trying to be nice." He glanced over his shoulder. "Where's Louis?"
Mama pressed her cheek against Tru's cheek and cried again.
Uncle Magnus stepped forward. "Are you all right, Maria?"
"Go take a bath!" she screamed. "You smell like whores!"
He jumped back, and I clung fast to my doll.
"Go!" She pointed toward the kitchen. "Clean that filthy stink off you, and take Odette with you. I can't stand looking at the two of you anymore, always wanting something from me."
"Come on!" Uncle Magnus steered me away by my shoulders.
"You're always wanting something from me!" cried Mama again, and her words slapped me in the back and pushed me forward.
My uncle led me into a room just off the front door that served as my father's art studio whenever Papa came home to create his work. Paint-spattered tarps blanketed the floor, and an easel bearing a portrait of a redheaded woman with bushy eyebrows stood in one corner, below a crinkled old poster for P. T. Barnum's famous elephant, Jumbo.
Uncle Magnus perched himself on Papa's work stool and hoisted me onto his lap. The stool's legs squeaked against the floor with a hiccup sort of sound, and the wood creaked and sagged beneath our shared weight. I buried my face against my uncle's scratchy coat and tried not to cry like Mama. Tears and snotty sniffles erupted, nonetheless.
My uncle cupped a warm hand around the back of my head. "Has she been like that since the birth?"
I nodded against him.
"And your father hasn't been here?"
I shook my head.
"Has she been feeding you?"
"No."
"She hasn't?"
"I hate Mama right now. And I hate Trudchen. Everything's ruined. I almost got eaten by a coyote."
"When?"
"When I ran to tell Mrs. Alvarado the baby was coming. I saw him running through the bushes. Snakes tried to get me, too."
My uncle nestled his whiskery chin against the top of my head and pulled me close against him. "Your mama would never let anything eat you or steal you away. I don't know if she's ever told you her secret, Od ..."
I kept my face smashed against his coat, but I lifted my eyes toward his when he didn't say anything more. "What secret?"
"Your mother, just like her mama before her"—he brushed his fingers through my tangled hair—"hunts monsters."
I gasped. Oh, heavens! I had always wondered about all those bells and amulets made of various metals that jangled above the doors and windows ... and Mama's rule that we put our shoes next to our beds with the toes facing the bedroom door every night, her insistence that I wear my special Hexenspiegel necklace—a copper flower with a mirror the size of a half-dollar positioned in the center. Any evil entity who saw himself in such a mirror would have his evilness reflected three times back at him.
"Have you ever seen the leather case she keeps hidden under her bed?" asked Uncle Magnus.
My eyes expanded. "No."
"It's a special case from Germany that once belonged to our mother—your grandmother, who, as a young woman, protected her village from Alps and werewolves and all sorts of other nefarious beasts."
I wrapped my fingers around the lapel of his coat. "What is an Alp?"
"If you don't know what it is, darling"—Uncle Magnus grinned—"then that must mean your mother has kept those nasty nightmares away from you."
Tru wailed again in the other room. My shoulders jerked from the suddenness of her cry.
"Mama can't fight monsters anymore," I said in a whisper. "Tru broke her."
"No, give her time. She's simply exhausted from having the baby. We all need to be nice and quiet and very, very helpful, and she'll be back to protecting you and your sister soon."
I lifted my face and saw the reflection of myself in my uncle's dark irises and pupils. He had deep brown eyes that made women and men alike turn their heads when he walked down streets, or so Mama said. She didn't like to think of him alone in the wild city of San Diego and always spoke of people wanting to devour him. She loved him more than anything. Uncle Magnus always told me that she'd saved his life by moving him to California when he was a sickly boy who couldn't breathe. Now I imagined monsters sitting on his chest when he was little, squashing the air from his lungs while he slept.
"I'm going to marry you when I'm older, Uncle Magnus," I said.
He smiled. "Well, that's very sweet of you, but you can't marry me, Od. I'm your uncle."
"Papa says I can't marry you because you're a jackass."
At that, Uncle Magnus laughed, and his cheeks flushed pink.
I snickered, but I didn't actually understand the reason behind his laughter. Papa was always calling Uncle Magnus a "jackass" and a "ne'er-do-well" whenever he wasn't around. Uncle Magnus played piano and took odd jobs to earn his keep, and when he was eighteen he'd spent a night in jail for wandering around drunk in public. Papa predicted he would soon get something called "the clap," and when I asked what that meant, my father said, "Well, it certainly doesn't mean people will be applauding him."
My uncle reached behind my right ear and pulled out some sort of object that rustled against my hair.
"This is a tarot card, Od." He handed me a card illustrated with the image of a woman in a red robe with her hair wrapped in a white headdress. She sat in a fancy, high-backed chair, and a lion lay at her feet like a regal pet cat.
I pinched the card between my fingers. My breath fluttered against the thick paper, making it tremble.
"How do you play?" I asked.
"It's not a game. The tarot predicts your future." He tapped the back of the card with the ball of his left index finger. "This one is La Force, which foretells that you'll become a woman of great strength and courage. You yourself will be able to conquer dangerous creatures. And this"—with a swish of his hand, he pulled another card from the enchanted spot behind my ear—"is the Two of Cups, which may mean you'll fall in love, or it may mean you will find yourself with another type of powerful partnership. You will be at your strongest when you are with someone else. Seek the company of loved ones who can help you."
I took the card and studied the image of two yellow chalices. The cups were not half as exciting as the woman with the pet lion. I peeked back up at my uncle and squeezed my lips together.
"What is it?" He cocked his head. "Do you want another card?"
I nodded. "Show me one that says I'll be a magician like you."
Uncle Magnus grinned with a spark in his eye and withdrew a third card from behind my right ear. He regarded the picture for a few silent moments and then turned the image my way. The card showed a funny fellow in an outfit that looked like pajamas with stripes of red, yellow, and green. He wore a floppy hat with bells on the ends and pointy black shoes, and he covered his eyes with both hands.
I wrinkled my nose, unimpressed. "That doesn't look like a magician."
"It's Folie, or the fool, but he is not always as foolish as he seems. He embarks upon grand adventures. He's a dreamer, but he carries the lessons of his journeys around with him."
"Am I going to have grand adventures?"
"Yes." He arched a dark eyebrow. "Numerous adventures. You will be exactly what your mother and I always wanted to be. You will be a hero."
I smiled and again buried my forehead against his chest.
Uncle Magnus bathed and shaved in a copper tub in the middle of our kitchen. I waited outside the entrance of the room on a small stepstool and pored over the beautiful black-and-white illustrations in our copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales, the only book we owned aside from a musty old Bible written in German. I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and huddled under its fuzzy warmth, for I had turned ever so cold since the day my sister was born.
My uncle usually sang for me as he scrubbed, but on this particular day, he kept quiet. I heard the sloshing of his bathwater and the whooshing of the scrub brush as he scoured his back, but no boisterous refrains of "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay" or "The Cat Came Back" echoed through the house. In the other room, Mama nursed Tru, but the endeavor somehow was not going well and involved much huffing and growling on my mother's part.
Tru cried. Again.
Mama cried. Again.
The idea of a special case—one potentially packed full of monster-hunting weapons, a case hiding somewhere inside our very house—distracted me from the Grimms' tales of woodsmen and princesses, and it even drew my attention away from all the caterwauling in the parlor. Without a sound, I lowered the book to the floor and tiptoed up the staircase.
At the top of the steps, the plain wooden door to my parents' bedroom rose before me: a gateway to a forbidden fortress. I pushed it open with the tips of my fingers and stole inside the sun-bathed quarters, which now held a wooden cradle and a foul-smelling pail for soiled diapers. In the center of the room stood Mama and Papa's bed, covered in a burgundy bedspread embroidered with swirls of gold that always made me think of curled-up mermaids. I lowered myself to my knees and peeked beneath the dust ruffle.
The bottom edge of a mahogany-brown case made of leather caught my eye. I lifted the ruffle and came face-to-face with the thick handle, a silver lock, and a peculiar word, engraved on a metal plate, positioned next to the lock.
MarViLUs
I could not yet read, but I could sound out four or five letters, thanks to Mama teaching me the alphabet when she read to me each night. I pressed my lips together and produced a deep and quite impressive "Mmm" that thrummed inside the middle of my throat. The rest of the word remained a mystery. That tall L in the middle made the name resemble no other word I had seen.
I stroked the letters with the tips of my fingers, finding the metal cold, the engraving bumpy. The trunk revealed no secrets to me, but just from touching it, breathing on it, the utter weight of its importance sank deep into my bones.
After Uncle Magnus dressed himself, I trailed him back into Papa's studio, where he combed his hair before swiveling toward me and battling the knots in my own hair. I cried out "Ow!" with each stroke of the comb, but he told me to stay as quiet as a mouse for the sake of my mother and sister. He did not smell of horses any longer. He smelled like my father's shaving soap—a spicy, citrusy scent that made me hungry for fresh fruit. My stomach growled.
"I saw the case," I told him.
"Did you, now?"
I nodded, a movement that made the brushing twice as painful. I clutched my temples and squeezed my eyes shut and yet managed to say, "It had a word on it."
"Ah, yes," said my uncle. "I know that word."
"What does it say?"
"'Marvelous,' although it's spelled a little differently than the regular way."
"Why does it say that?"
"MarViLUs, dear Od, was the name of an old and highly secret club."
"Who was in it?"
Uncle Magnus stopped brushing and answered in a deep voice, "Monster-wranglers. Amulet-makers. Diviners of the future."
My lips parted. "Was Mama a part of it?"
"Yes, and so was I."
I shivered, due to awe of this fantastical secret society but also because of that achy, oozing old foot of mine.
"There's a scratch on my foot that hurts and itches," I said, and I lifted the injured sole and showed Uncle Magnus the angry red stripe running across it.
"Oh, God, Od!" He dropped the comb. "When did that happen?"
"The day Trudchen came, when I ran to Mrs. Alvarado's."
"Four whole days ago?"
I wrinkled my nose at the gash's unfathomable stink. "Something yellow keeps coming out of it. And I'm so, so cold." Again, I shivered, but this time I couldn't stop. My teeth chattered so much, I bit the tip of my tongue and tasted blood.
"Damn!" My uncle raked a hand through his hair. "Damn! Damn! Damn!" He scooped me up and hurried me to the kitchen. "Maria!" he called out to my mother in the front room. "Odette's walking around with an infected foot. Did you know that?"
"Leave me alone!" called Mama, and she sobbed yet again, which, of course, made Tru sob, too. My sister's lungs had grown so fierce in four short days that her cries tore straight through the walls and smacked against my ears.
Uncle Magnus sat me down in a chair in the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of Papa's brandy, and poured some of the contents onto a dishcloth. "This is going to hurt, Od. Close your eyes and think of something happy."
I squeezed my eyes shut and imagined Papa galloping our way on his black stallion, Vulcan, which he'd named after a Roman god.
Uncle Magnus then kneeled down on one knee and set the bottom of my foot on fire.
"Nooooooo!" I hollered, louder than even Tru's wails from the other room. "Damn! Damn! Damn!"
Uncle Magnus's mouth fell open.
The house went silent. Even Tru stopped squalling.
"What did Odette just say?" called Mama—now, indeed, sounding like a warrior who could slay a thousand vile beasts.
Uncle Magnus stood to his full height, and his face blanched to the color of his button-down shirt. Footsteps thundered toward us from the front room, and the entire house shook so hard, the copper bathtub rattled against the floor.
Mama stopped in the kitchen doorway and glared at her brother. She cradled Tru in her right arm like a loaf of bread, and the front of her nightgown hung open, exposing a shockingly large right breast.
Uncle Magnus turned his head away, but I gaped at my mother, who just stood there, exposed and horrifying, her hair still witchy and wild, my sister tucked against her side.
"What did you say, Odette?" she asked.
I pinched my lips together and shook my head, refusing to speak. I did not know what that word meant, but I knew it contained power if it had prompted Mama to finally leave the sofa.
"Take her out of this house, Magnus."
"Her foot's badly infected, Maria. She looks malnourished, too."
"Take her out! Take them both out." Mama forced Tru upon my uncle and yanked me by my right arm to the back door. "Get out. All of you!" She shoved me onto the back step, and Renoir scrambled away with a yowl. "You want too much from me. I'm done protecting everyone. Do you hear me? I'm done!" She slammed the door behind us.
With Tru bawling in his arms, Uncle Magnus stumbled off the last step beside me. We both staggered more than walked, he from the shock of his half-naked sister throwing an infant into his arms, me from the foot that burned from the brandy. We collapsed to the ground in the shade of the leathery leaves of one of the nearest olive trees and sat with our legs stretched in front of us. A bitter chill rose from the sparse grass.
My uncle bounced Tru in his arms and tried to shush her, but my sister shook her fists and squealed like a piglet with her eyes shut tightly. She didn't produce any tears when she cried, I noticed, but her face turned a purplish red and reminded me of my own fists when I squeezed them with all my might. I smelled our mother's milk and a dirty diaper, as well as my stinky old foot, and pinched my nose to block the stenches.
Uncle Magnus huffed. "Your father should be here, not me."
"When is he coming home?"
"How am I supposed to know? I'm not his private secretary." He shot me a glare that made my blood run cold. "Don't ever swear again. Do you hear me?"
"You said that word first."
"I know, and that's why I'm in trouble, too." He turned toward the house, still bouncing Tru. "Just look at this place. Look what he's done to your mother. I'm going to kill him one day. I swear to God, I'll kill him."
I dropped my hand to my lap and stared at my uncle with narrowed eyes. He knitted his eyebrows and tightened his jaw, and I believed he might, indeed, kill my father, a man twenty-five years older than he, a man with gray hair and a beard and colorful coats who looked as if he could have stepped out of one of the tarot cards.
Tru cried and shook her arms until she turned as purple as the day she was born. I reached out and maneuvered her out of my uncle's arms.
"Be careful of her, Od."
"Of course I will. She's my sister." I laid the baby in the folds of my skirt and leaned down to kiss her cheek, which felt rubbery and soft and tasted like tears, even though she couldn't make any. "I'll take care of you, Tru. There's no need to cry, little one."
She shuddered and drew a deep breath, reining in her need to squeal. To my surprise, her purple face even relaxed into a doughy shade of white, and her little lips soon closed and made a sucking movement. I tickled the dimpled knuckles of her left hand, and she squeezed her fingers around my right index finger and looked me in the eye with her large gray irises.
A hush fell over the canyon. A mockingbird trilled from a branch in the crooked olive tree across from us, and Uncle Magnus sighed and leaned back against the trunk behind him. My foot still screamed in pain, but I couldn't help but smile down at Tru, who peered up at me with fascinated eyes, as though she had just discovered I existed.
"If you stay quiet, I'll tell you a story," I told her. "Do you want to hear a story?"
She wiggled her legs in her blanket and continued to stare at my face with a dazed expression of wonder.
"Once upon a time," I said, and I bent my head close to hers, "on a cold January morning, a girl named Trudchen Maria Grey came into the world in a castle ..."
Mama slept for hours that day. While she rested and recovered, Uncle Magnus took my sister and me to downtown Fallbrook and stocked up on food with some of the money Papa had left us. That evening, my uncle miraculously figured out how to roast a chicken for supper, even though I'd never seen him cook before.
While he bustled about in the kitchen, trying not to burn the house down, I again swung from the branch of one of the olive trees out front, licking the taste of lemon from the corners of my mouth from a stick of candy Uncle Magnus had bought me at the general store. I scanned the road for signs of dust stirred up by an approaching horse, for I believed Papa would charge home that night to meet his brand-new baby girl. Three crows landed on the road, and they cawed and laughed and pecked at the ground. They felt me foolish for wishing for my father; I heard the skepticism in their cackles and saw the teasing way they cocked their heads at me. My father's adventures mattered to him more than we did. The crows knew it. I knew it. Mama knew it. But only the crows voiced the ridiculousness of my waiting for him.
"Suppertime, Od," called Uncle Magnus from the back door. "Come inside."
I jumped to the ground, and the crows flapped away with one last round of chuckles.
Uncle Magnus gathered us all around the dining room table, which was topped with a platter of carved chicken and bowls of fresh vegetables and fruit. He poured Mama and himself glasses of a white wine that smelled vinegary.
"I'm taking care of a baby, Magnus," said Mama, waving the bottle away. "I shouldn't."
"Oh, come now." He filled her glass a little higher and rested a hand on her left shoulder. "After all you've been through, I should think you deserve at least one glass."
He seated himself in my father's chair, and we dove into the food while Tru slept in a little basket by the fireplace. Uncle Magnus coaxed Mama into chatting, even laughing, about the olden days, when they were little children in Philadelphia, fresh from Germany, as well as their ride across the country on the rails to live on a dairy farm near cousins already established in Oregon. They spoke of the past as if it were a time so far away, it had evolved into a tale they'd merely imagined. Mama insisted Uncle Magnus had made up half of his memories, or at least embellished them, and my favorite part was when he described witnessing magnificent green dragons flying over the prairie during their westward travels on the steaming locomotive.
Sometimes their eyes grew dark and haunted when they mentioned the house where they had lived in the Oregon hills, but they drank more wine, and their moods again lightened.
After Mama fed Tru, my sister fell sound asleep in her cradle. I planned to enjoy some rest without the usual ruckus of Tru crying in my parents' bedroom, but my mother and uncle laughed with such a commotion, I still couldn't manage to sleep. I tiptoed down the staircase with small sighs gasping from the steps below my feet and spied on the two of them through the wooden spindles of the banister. Mama lay against the back cushions of the sofa, positioned on her right side, her left thumb tucked inside my uncle's shirt between two of the buttons, her left leg resting over both his knees. Uncle Magnus reclined on his back, his right arm bent behind his head, his left hand stroking Mama's long brown hair. They snickered and spoke of a girl named Amelia whom Uncle Magnus used to love, long ago. A fire crackled on the hearth and turned both of their faces golden.
Watching them that night, seeing the way they clung to each other, as though they braved unfamiliar waters while rocking about in a lifeboat, I understood that Uncle Magnus was Mama's Tru.
I climbed back up the staircase—the arches of my feet straining to remain silent, my toes stretched out in front of me—and I peeked in on my sister, who slept in the moonlight with her hands folded into tiny fists by her head, as if she imagined holding on to my fingers ... as if we, too, bobbed about together on choppy seas.
Two nights after Uncle Magnus arrived to take care of Mama, Tru, and me, a pack of coyotes howled in the hills surrounding our house. I clutched my new rag doll to my chest and tasted the yarn of her yellow hair, smelling the perfume Mama hated. At first the howls—so strange, so of another world—resembled the cackling of witches, but soon the sounds merged into one long and keening cry that froze me to my sheets. Those cries no longer belonged to coyotes, I realized, but to a woman, wailing from the depths of her belly, down by the creek that flowed just beyond our olive trees. I turned my head toward the window to ensure that Mama's copper hand mirror stood in place, wedged between the frame and the sill. She'd never told me why she insisted on placing it there, but a twitchy feeling in my gut now made me understand that the mirror belonged to the world of MarViLUs and monsters—just like all the charms and bells tinkling around the house, attached to the eaves with red ribbons and silver strings.
"Please protect Tru and me from La Llorona," I called to the mirror in a whisper. "Please, please, please, don't let her come any closer."
That past December, when Papa had spent a Christmastime evening with us, painting his pictures, rubbing Mama's swollen belly, he had plopped me down in his lap by the fireplace.
"When I was a lad in England, Odette"—he fluffed his gray beard, as coarse and as thick as sheepskin—"my father told us ghost stories every Christmas Eve. You're almost four years old now." He bounced me on his knee. "Are you brave enough for a story that will make the little hairs on the back of your neck stand on end?"
Mama shook her head from where she lay on the sofa, half in darkness, half in the flickering light of a candle's flame wavering by her side, and she smoothed her hand over the curve of her stomach. "Don't scare the poor girl, Louis."
"Bah. I was younger than she when people filled my head with stories of Spring-heeled Jack and London ghosties." Papa drew me closer against him, radiating a brandy-infused heat. His sky-blue eyes twinkled down at me. "You're a courageous one, aren't you, little monkey?"
"Yes," I said, and I folded my hands in my lap, ignoring the shadows crouching behind the furniture, as well as the breeze ringing the bells outside. "Please, tell me the tale."
"It's a story told to me by a chap I know from Mexico." Papa's voice went as rumbly and rich as the lowest string of the violin he often played for us in the evenings. "He said that if you reside by a river or a creek, just like the little body of water that trickles through this very canyon, and if you wander outside late at night, as every good child knows she ought not to do, you will hear the mournful screams and cries of the terrible La Llorona."
My heart beat with a wildness in my chest. "What is La Llorona?" I asked.
"She is a woman ..." Papa wiggled his fingers, and the shadow of his hand seemed poised to grab me from the wall. "A betrayed woman who, as it so happens, was also named Maria, like your own, dear mother. She drowned her children to spite their unfaithful father and in death repents her sins. She roams by the rivers of Mexico, the Southwest, and even California, weeping, wailing, asking, 'Where shall I find my children?'"
I shuddered.
"And," he continued, "if she finds a child walking about on her own in the dark"—he grabbed both of my arms—"she'll snatch her away!"
"Louis!" snapped Mama from the sofa. "That's a horrible story to tell a little girl before bedtime. Stop it, please."
My fingers, I realized, now clung to Papa's vest, wrapped like little claws around the smooth brocade. "Is it true?" I dared a peek at our closed front door. "Is she out there right now, looking for children?"
Papa's pink lips spread into a smile above his beard. "You had better not go outside on your own to find out, little one. Had you?"
That January night when the coyotes howled and Uncle Magnus slept downstairs, while my mother and sister slumbered in the room beside mine, I was so certain I heard her—La Llorona—roaming the land beside our creek. Her wails rose and strengthened, building up into an ear-shattering crescendo that shook my windowpane and sent the bells around the house clanging and warning, She's coming! She's coming! She's coming!
"Mama!" I called out into the darkness.
The Weeping Woman's cries rushed toward my upstairs window. The hand mirror rattled from her howls, and the curtains billowed with a scream.
"Mama!" I called until my throat blazed with fire.
"Quiet, Odette!" Mama flew into my room with a swish of her nightgown and a flash of a candle's flame. "You'll wake the baby."
"Do you hear her?"
"Who?"
"La Llorona."
Mama wheeled toward my window.
"Do you hear her?" I asked again.
She huffed a sigh. "It's only coyotes."
"No, Papa said—"
"Papa knows nothing of monsters."
"She'll steal Tru away—I know it. She wants a baby, and she's going to take Tru, because she's the best one."
"Go back to sleep." The black sleeves of Mama's gown flapped in my direction, and I pushed the fabric away, for they felt like bird wings rustling against my face. Again, I shrieked.
"What's happening?" asked Uncle Magnus, his brown eyes shining in the light of a kerosene lantern behind Mama.
"Louis told Odette about La Llorona last Christmas. She thinks the coyotes are her."
"It's La Llorona, Uncle Magnus." I put out my arms to my uncle. "She wants Tru."
"Come now, darling." My uncle rounded my mother and arrived at my side posthaste. "Bring your pillow. You're sleeping downstairs with me so your poor mama can rest."
From around the corner, Tru burst out crying.
"Someone's taking her!" I bolted upright. "Save her, Mama! Why aren't you saving her?"
"She's crying because of you." Mama grabbed me by the hand and coaxed me out of bed. "Go downstairs with Magnus. Let your sister sleep so I may sleep. No one has ever been snatched away from this house, and I'm certainly not going to allow that to happen now that there are two of you."
I grabbed my rag doll from the sheets before my mother could herd me out of the room, and I walked between the grown-ups through the near-darkness of the upper landing. The flames of the lamplight bobbed and shivered around me. Shadows stretched and darted across the deep blue wallpaper, and my stomach churned, but, somehow, I managed to follow Uncle Magnus downstairs without tripping and crashing to the bottom. La Llorona's howls retreated into the farthest reaches of the canyon, as though she knew I now possessed Protectors and light.
Upstairs, Mama shut her door and tended to Tru, who soon stopped crying.
Uncle Magnus tossed my pillow next to his on one of the paint-spattered cloths in Papa's studio. He set the lantern beside his beige blankets and slid his legs beneath the covers. I did the same, laying my head against his chest so that the beats of his heart blocked the last of the screams outside. His blood pumped in a steady rhythm against my ear.
"Is Mama's hand mirror one of her monster-hunting tools?" I asked. "Is that why she puts it in my window?"
"Yes," he said, wrapping his left arm around me. "Sometimes, nasty little fiends find their way into our realm, and special mirrors like that one send them straight back to where they belong."
"Why does Mama need a case full of other tools, then?"
"I didn't say it was filled with tools."
"What's in it, then?"
"Something extremely special. She'll always keep you safe, Od. Don't ever doubt her bravery."
I blinked and studied the thin slice of moonlight that shimmered in the darkness where the curtains parted.
"Od," said Uncle Magnus, his voice now sounding heavy, tired, impossibly deep.
"What?" I asked.
"Your father is finally coming to meet your sister tomorrow." I listened to five more ticks of his heart before asking, "How do you know that?"
He flicked his left wrist and, without even a breath of a sound, another one of his tarot cards manifested in his hand in the dim haze of the lantern. This one showed a man with a pointy brown beard and a large hat. He sat in a gold chair and held a coin as large as his face.
"The King of Pentacles told me so." He tucked the card inside his right sleeve. "I can't be here when your papa arrives."
"Why not?"
"I just can't." Uncle Magnus swallowed. "I can't look at your father ever again. He makes me furious, the way he keeps your mother trapped here like Rapunzel. He always has."
I raised my head off his chest and played with one of the frayed drawstrings hanging from his nightshirt. "Are you going to kill him?"
The corners of his lips twitched into a smile. "Such a dark question for a little girl."
"You said you would, when we sat beneath the tree and Tru was crying."
He swallowed again, and the smile faded. "After he's left the three of you alone again, whenever your mother seems sad and in dire need of help, I want you to close your eyes and wish with all your might for me to come back here." He brushed a lock of hair out of my eyes. "Will you promise me that?"
"That won't work."
"Yes"—he nodded—"it will. You and I are very much alike, Od. We form connections to the people we love—connections stronger than regular bonds."
I frowned and twirled his string between my fingers. "Is that true?"
"I've heard you call to me before. Your soul, Od, pulsates with enchantment. I told you, you're going to grow up to be something rather special."
I lay my cheek back down on his chest, and his heart again boomed against my ear. He cupped a warm hand over my left ear, and all I could hear was the symphony of his internal rhythms. All other sounds slipped away.
"Please don't kill Papa," I said in a whisper.
He removed his hand from my ear and wrapped it around my shoulder. "Please don't grow up and make the same mistakes as your mother."
