by Lucia Ashta
Copyright 2017 Lucía Ashta.
All rights reserved.
Published by Awaken to Peace Press.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously or are entirely fictional. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer or with written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to [email protected].
Cover design by Lou Harper.
Edited by Elsa Crites.
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For the extraordinary ones,
who sense the magic all around us
When we still ourselves and listen,
our hearts speak loudly,
guiding us toward that which matters.
Contents
Daughter of the Wind
Make a difference
Acknowledgments
Read more by Lucía Ashta
About the Author
Daughter of the Wind
“Mariela. Mariela. Dale, child.” A loud huff, one far too gruff for the petite woman. Muted footsteps pad across a worn tile floor, cool despite the early warmth of the day. “Mariela. You better answer me, or I’m going to pinch you, hija.”
Silence is the only answer. It’s always this way, Esperanza observing her daughter travel to places she hasn’t been, accepting that she’ll never follow.
“Hey!” Mariela said. “Why’d you pinch me like that, mami?”
“Because, hija. You’ve ignored me. Again. Like you do all the time.” Esperanza tries to be stern, but her round face blossoms into a smile. She squeezes her daughter’s chin and brings their faces close. She brushes wisps of obsidian hair from Mariela’s forehead, kisses it, and stares into dark eyes, but only for a second.
“What am I going to do with you, ah?” There’s no one Esperanza knows better than her one daughter. Still, Mariela’s eyes are like bottomless wells, and Esperanza fears what she might find within their depths, even though she can’t imagine what there might be to fear from her daughter. There’s never been a gentler creature to walk the countryside. That’s what the townspeople say. Mariela is like a sheep that wanders the fields, with her head in the clouds. Or, Mariela is like a newborn fawn. Esperanza is never certain whether the villagers mean these comments as praise or insult. Either way, they tell the truth.
There is no one like her daughter. There is no one even similar to Mariela, not in their small village of three hundred. “What did I do to deserve a dreamer like you, eh? It’s just the two of us, and whom do I have as my only companion? A dreamer. Someone who’s barely here with me, leaving her mamá alone.”
Esperanza takes a step back. She doesn’t think Mariela notices. There’s a glassy look to her eyes, the one she gets when she’s somewhere else more than she’s there. What Esperanza wonders is what this somewhere is like that Mariela prefers it to home. “What am I going to do with you? Ah, Mariela? What?”
Another huff that doesn’t match the woman. It isn’t always this bad. Some days, it is.
“Hey! You pinched me again, mami. I’ll do it in just a minute, okay? You don’t have to pinch me.”
Esperanza bites the inside of her lip to keep from smiling. She shouldn’t encourage Mariela.
Rosa del Carmen has been Esperanza’s friend since they were girls, born and raised in the village. It’s been just the two of them to witness the miracle of life as Mariela entered this world. If anyone outside the walls of their one bedroom home understands that Mariela is different—special—it’s Rosa del Carmen. But even Rosa del Carmen tells Esperanza that she shouldn’t encourage her.
“And what is it I’ve asked you to do? Since you’ll do it in a minute?”
Mariela’s eyes are dark pools. Esperanza would have sworn that her eyes are magical if she thought anyone would believe her. But not even Rosa del Carmen would believe that.
Esperanza watches the glassiness in her daughter’s eyes retreat as Mariela attempts to focus. She laughs, even if she shouldn’t. “You have no idea, do you?”
Mariela stands and pulls her close. “I’m sorry, mami. I don’t remember what I’m supposed to do.”
“What am I to do with you? You don’t listen. I talk to the stone in the walls and the fire in the hearth. They don’t answer me either.”
“But they hear you.” Mariela smiles, and a ray of light enters the open door to brighten the room.
Esperanza suddenly doesn’t care about shoulds or shouldn’ts. “If you say so, hija. Maybe they listen to me more than you do.”
“I listen to you, mami. I do.”
Esperanza guffaws, and as she does, she thinks she never has before. “You? Pay attention to me?”
“Of course I do. It’s just that I also pay attention to everything else.” Mariela acts as if she’s said nothing unusual, but Esperanza watches her closely. Mariela’s never said anything like this before.
“And what is this everything else?”
“I hear things.” Mariela pretends to pick lint or crumbs or anything off her flowered dress.
Esperanza takes a seat, sagging into the old worn chair, the burden of raising a child like Mariela, heavy at times. “What kinds of things do you hear?” Her voice is soft, afraid.
Already, Mariela doesn’t play much with other children. Inevitably, she drifts away from them to wander. There appears to be no thought behind Mariela’s actions. She goes wherever something—whatever it might be—leads her. Not her mother. Not her people’s way of life as it’s been passed down for generations.
Mariela fidgets, something she rarely does. Her mother sighs. She’s tired. Lately, she’s often tired. “There’s nothing to be nervous about, hija. It’s just you and me here, like it always is. Tell me. What do you hear? What do you listen to?”
Esperanza forces her expression to relax even though her stomach knots. She clasps and unclasps her fingers beneath the thick wooden table, out of sight.
She waits. With Mariela, there’s no other way. The child doesn’t respond well to being hurried.
Esperanza adopts a placid expression, one she hopes will encourage her child to tell her one of her secrets. A myriad of secrets Esperanza isn’t a part of swirls behind those dark eyes. Perhaps today she’ll learn one secret, a key that will allow her to see the world the way her daughter does.
Mariela holds her hands behind her back and rocks from side to side as if she’s five, not thirteen. Her eyes no longer search for lint. They follow worn trails across the kitchen floor.
“Hija, look at me.”
Esperanza startles to see how vulnerable those nearly black eyes are. She rushes to her feet, no longer tired.
She pulls Mariela into her arms. The girl is now taller than she is, hair trailing past her waist. Mariela brings her head down to her mother’s shoulder. There, she cries. Then she sobs.
“Shhh, shhhh, shhhh. It’s all right, hija. Why do you cry? There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just you and me. There’s no one else. There’s never been anyone else.”
Esperanza rocks the girl as she had when she was a baby, when Mariela was small enough to fit in the length of her arm. Esperanza swings side to side, her hand holding Mariela’s head still against her shoulder. “What is it, hija? What makes you cry this way?”
Mariela tries to speak. Instead, she cries more.
“Oh. Shhh, shhh, shhhhh,” her mother soothes.
Esperanza lets a long time pass. So long that no normal girl could cry any longer. And stil
l Mariela cries.
She cries until they’re standing in a pool of water, until Esperanza sees their reflections when she looks down.
A girl barely there and a mother desperate to hold onto her.
Esperanza freezes. Her hips still. She presses Mariela’s head against her shoulder harder, as if she can keep her there by force of will.
She squeezes her eyes shut. Oh please. No, no, no. It’s not yet time. She’s not ready. I’m not ready. I deserve more time, carajo!
She’s hoped this moment wouldn’t arrive, yet all the while she’s dreaded that it would. The fear of it’s been like a cold stone weighing down her heart.
Esperanza doesn’t want to, but she has to look again. She has to be certain.
She gazes down at the pool they’re standing in. Bare feet in the center of the water that continues to rise. Soon, it will cover the kitchen floor, and then it will travel toward the hearth.
There she sees what she’d been promised she would never see.
Her daughter is an impressionist painting expressed in long, fading strokes. A swirl, a blur, what no human should be. She is taffy, stretched long to each side. She is the weeds and the rushes along the river, swaying back and forth, undefined.
She’s a breath on a pleasant zephyr, floating, traveling, exploring, and drifting toward the clouds and the world of dreams.
Esperanza gulps, holding back, lest they drown in her sorrow.
In the pool of her daughter’s tears, Esperanza sees her as she really is. A mirage. Barely there. She’s been there before—as much as she could be. Now, she’s nearly gone.
She is the daughter of the Wind, and the cunning devil is claiming her when he’d promised he wouldn’t.
Esperanza heaves, trying to delay what’s coming. But Mariela is bound to him, to the handsome rogue who wooed and seduced Esperanza in one day of delirious passion.
He promised her wonders, and he delivered on that promise. Mariela is and always would be a miracle. But dammit, he also promised that she could keep that miracle. Even if she hadn’t known what he was promising her in exchange for that one day of passionate love, she understood she would keep it.
Esperanza clings to Mariela as if the power of her love can change everything, can rewrite what she’s never written, what was decided by the Wind, the breath that courses through all life.
Esperanza tries to be strong for her daughter. She tries so very hard. She’s been strong for her always. But today she is tired. The fear of what would come next threatens to break her in half.
The tears break loose of their embankments in a rushing flood. Sorrow for what hasn’t yet been lost rips through her, tearing down every wall she’s built to protect Mariela, the most innocent of them all, the product of a love not entirely of this world.
Esperanza grips Mariela to her chest, wishing she could keep her, that she could share in her daughter’s fate.
Her anguish swells to mix with the pool of Mariela’s tears, grief at something uncertain, until Mariela’s tears are nothing compared to her mother’s.
Esperanza howls with grief. She pulls the girl against her so tightly that the water can’t pass between them and nothing will separate them. Oh, but Esperanza knows there’s one thing that still can. One thing that is neither a man nor its opposite.
The water, salty and warm, rises. It wets their colorful skirts, swirling the material in the torrent of unleashed emotion. Thirteen years of secret fears are enough to drown them.
The levels rise until the water douses the fire in the hearth. The soup pot sizzles and quiets.
Esperanza cries, and Mariela cries more because her mother, her rock, a bastion of strength and courage, has broken.
The water levels climb. Soon, their tears could wash them away.
But they won’t. The water won’t claim her daughter. The Wind has already laid claim upon the girl. Thirteen years and nine and a half months ago. Even if Esperanza hasn’t accepted it. Even if she believed the hot musky whispers of a stranger against her neck instead of her ancestors’ warnings never to trust the cunning Wind, who is fickle and sly, a trickster who could outwit even the most intelligent among them. But Esperanza didn’t want to obey the admonitions. She wanted to give herself to him, to the prospect of an unforgettable night that would contain enough passion to satisfy an entire lifetime.
When she’d looked into his wild eyes and felt the heat that burned beneath his skin, she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to hold their future daughter in her arms. Or what it would be like to lose what she gained from that one night of love.
From the beginning, Esperanza believed that Mariela was special. It’s just that she also believed her daughter to be hers.
Yet Mariela could never be hers.
A renewed wave of anguish delivers tears in streams. The water in the little house sweeps every item off the surface it rests on.
Esperanza heaves, and her chest trembles. The water laps inside their tiny house, smacking walls. It sloshes until a wave grows large enough to sweep them through the door and onto the grass.
Still, Esperanza doesn’t let go of her daughter.
She holds on to her daughter until the girl speaks. “Mamá, shhh, shhhh, shhhh, shhhh. You don’t need to cry, mami. Everything will be all right.”
Mariela has never before been the voice of moderation or of prudence. Esperanza calms.
Mariela runs a hand down her mother’s back, along hair as long and dark as hers. In most respects, mother and daughter look alike. Their bodies and faces are similar, even though one is soft and round, the other billowing and lithe.
But it isn’t what’s on the outside that matters most.
“It’s okay, mami. I know.”
“You know?” Esperanza chokes out, speaking around the lump in her throat. Her eyes are wet and blurry, but she finds certainty in eyes that are rarely in focus.
Mariela nods. “I do. I’ve known for some time now.”
Esperanza isn’t sure what to say. Or how to say... whatever she might say when Mariela reveals she knows she’s the daughter of the Wind. “How?” is all that comes out.
Mariela smiles one of those smiles that reveals she knows those things that are important and doesn’t care about those that aren’t. “Because, mami, when you’re the daughter of the Wind, you feel it. You hear the Wind talking to you.”
Esperanza leans into her daughter, borrowing her strength for support, something she’s never done. She thought herself the strong one. “Is that what talks to you? Is that why you don’t listen to me, because you’re listening to the Wind?”
“It’s not just the Wind that speaks to me. It’s everything the Wind crosses and touches. Every whisper that caresses your face in the summer. Every cold, foggy breath that sends you to the warmth of the fire in winter.”
Esperanza wants to say something, but doesn’t.
“The Wind is everywhere.”
Esperanza meets eyes that don’t hold the fear she thought they had before. Now, she wonders if she imagined the fear. There is so much strength in these eyes that she can’t imagine fear ever clouding them. Has it been her fear and not her daughter’s? Has it been her fear all along?
Mariela stares into Esperanza’s eyes just as her father did those many years ago. Esperanza had lost herself in those eyes, unable—unwilling—to question what was happening as long as she could have one more moment to dwell inside them and the world so apart from hers they offered.
Just as Esperanza was helpless to resist Mariela’s father, she is helpless now. “Mamá, you don’t need to be afraid. I’m not afraid. I feel the wind inside me. I feel my father.” Mariela kisses her on the head, as Esperanza has done to her so many times. “As I feel you.”
Mariela quiets, and Esperanza wonders if she should say something. She is, after all, the mother. Surely, there must be something she should say, something to help her daughter.
Their tears have soaked the grasses nearest the small house, a
nd worms zigzag across the moist dirt. Birds chirp and draw near them, as if they’re celebrating the sun coming out after the rain. Esperanza expects a rainbow to illuminate the sky. But then she can imagine nothing brighter than the smile her daughter is beaming at her now.
“It’ll soon be time for me to go.”
“What— No, hija. No. You can’t go anywhere.” Thoughts of rainbows vanish. Without her daughter, she may never appreciate a rainbow again. “You’re my daughter. Not the Wind’s. I carried you in my womb. Gave birth to you. Nurtured you. Raised you. I taught you everything you know.”
Of course, Esperanza hasn’t—couldn’t have—taught Mariela everything she knows.
“Your father, the Wind, is never here for you. It’s been I who’ve been here for you. I’m your mother. I’m the one that needs to continue guiding you until you’re ready.”
“Ready for what, mami?”
Esperanza sputters. “Ready for... life, hija. Ready to go into the village and take your part in it. To become more than you were as a girl. A woman.”
“I already am more than I was as a girl.”
“Then you’re ready to become a woman. Together we can go to the village and announce that you’re a woman. You and I will go.”
“You think I’m ready to become a wife and mother?”
Esperanza doubts for a second, but then plows forward, desperation mounting, saying things she hasn’t thought before. “Yes, you are. It’s time, hija. You can marry and bring your family to live here, with me. I’ll help you with your children. I’ll help you cook and clean and raise your own children. You and I.”
“And my husband.” Mariela smiles, but there’s a twinkle in those dark eyes that wasn’t there moments before.
“Yes, yes. And your husband.”
