"We're all women here," one laughed, "You have nothing we haven't seen before."
But Faith did. The three white scars that ran along her tanned cheek weren't the only scars that marred her flesh and some of them were in places that gave witness to what had been done to her. She wasn't ready to expose or explain those scars. She was already labeled a bruja, a practitioner of forbidden arts, though these women didn't seem to hold it against her.
What would they think if they knew she'd been a demon's plaything for two long years? Foolish question. They'd think the same as she did. She'd been painted with the brush of evil as punishment for her sins.
"Leave her alone," Briza laughed, "Maybe she was convent raised."
"How would she know? It's been what, almost three weeks."
Three weeks? Had it been that long?
"Oh no! My sister Hope will be worried sick! I'm surprised Nico and Canaan aren't knocking down Lucien's door. Agdta, don't let me go to bed without writing to her."
Briza gripped Faith's shoulder. "Who sent you here?" she asked. Her friendly tone was replaced by a frighteningly serious one. "Why did you come?"
Agdta slapped the hand away. "Of course she is different. She's not meant to be one of us. She is for the Patron. She is his. The forgetting doesn't apply to him just as it doesn't to my brother. Why should it apply to his Novia?"
Novia? Faith's speeding panic now switched lanes. Agdta had brought this up before. She was not Lucien's Novia!
Amidst the oohs and aahs of the other women, Briza spoke out. "He wouldn't marry a bruja. Everyone knows the legend. Everyone knows what was done."
The speeding panic slowed and pulled over to the side of the road. Faith formed a T with her hands as she'd seen Adam and Lalo do. "Time out! It's Daughter of Man, not bruja and which version of the legend are you talking about? And what am I supposed to be forgetting?"
"What does she mean?"
"Is there more than one legend?"
"She doesn't know?"
"Should we tell her?"
"If she is la Novia, she has a right to know."
There it was again, la Novia, but Faith thought it best to fight one battle at a time.
"The Daughters of Man have a legend, too, but it's a little different from the one the Paenitentia tell." She told them the story as Manon had told it to her.
One of the women nodded sagely and shook her finger at them all, "You see? This is how it always is. Men always say it is the woman's fault."
The chatter then revolved around various stories of the men in their lives making foolish decisions before it came back around to Faith.
"So there is nothing to stop him from choosing you for his Bride," Rosa concluded.
"Well no, but…"
"Then you see?" Rosa continued, "There's no reason for her to forget. She is la Novia."
The chatter started up again and Faith clapped her hands for attention. "Forget what? What am I supposed to forget?"
The room quieted. It was Agdta who spoke.
"Your life," she said quietly, "The one you had before you came here. It is how we have stayed safe. For those that come here the past becomes hazy, their names, where they come from. Like those two travelers the Patron brought back, they are usually men or women who wish to forget and start over. They'll be tied to the land as we are. They'll become part of the People."
There were so many things Faith wished she could forget. "Maybe if I moved into the village…"
She realized her hands were moving when Briza's hand covered them.
"Maybe you are meant to remember," she whispered so quietly only Faith heard.
Faith looked down at their joined hands. There was no mistaking what she felt. Her gaze went to Briza's and was met by the slightest shake of the head.
"It's the same for us if we leave" another woman continued unaware of what was passing between Faith and Briza. "The Patron owns all the land within our boundaries. Once we cross over, we will begin to forget until we remember nothing of who we are. We are lost forever and can never come home."
"Do many leave?" As much as she wished to forget her own life, she wasn't sure she could give up the memory of her sister or the women who'd become like sisters to her.
There were uncomfortable glances around the room.
"Some, not many. Mostly young women who find life here not to their liking."
Faith smiled wryly at the woman's polite phrasing. She'd bet those young women felt the same way she once did, stifled by small village life. It didn't matter where you came from; some things were always the same.
"Why don't the young men leave?" she asked, simply curious.
"Perhaps they don't have a reason to," Briza said quietly and then grabbed the nearest items of clothing. "Do you have someplace where Miss Modesty here can try these on?"
Chapter 16
"Hooo, honey Mama. Bring it on home to Papa," Adam crowed and held out his arms, wiggling is fingers in a come-on gesture, when he saw Faith coming toward him. He and Lalo were waiting for them in the parking lot of La Cantina.
His comment earned a big grin from Faith and the threat of another head-cuff from Agdta which made him turn his attentions to the older woman.
"You're looking pretty hot to trot yourself there, young lady. I've been peeking through the doors and there's some movin' and shakin' going on in there that I'm not real familiar with. You're going to have to let me take you for a whirl around the dance floor so you can show me the steps."
Agdta made the appropriate remonstrative noises, but she blushed furiously and Faith knew the little housekeeper was enjoying the attention. When Adam offered her his arm, Agdta giggled like a young girl.
"You think a woman my age has forgotten how to move, but the young woman whose body once made men like you sigh still lives inside me." Agdta shimmied her hips and Adam's eyes popped. Then he laughed and patted the rough hand wrapped over his forearm.
"Come on Agdta, my love. I'll bet you can still make a few of them sigh."
"You do look really nice," Lalo told Faith awkwardly as he held the door for her and the gaggle of women following behind.
"Thanks, Lalo, I feel really nice." Faith giggled a little and knowing the women behind her couldn't see her hands, she added, "You can thank my entourage. They think I'm the Vampire's Bride."
Lalo, usually quite graceful, stumbled. "What?"
"Don't read much paranormal romance, hmm?" she asked, laughing.
"Don’t read much of anything unless I have to," he answered, looking confused.
"That's okay. I'll tell you about it later." She patted his cheek affectionately.
"Is everything okay, Faith? You seem different. You don't seem so …" Lalo wasn't sure how to end his sentence. Was little-sisterish a word?
"It's the walk," she told him, "They taught me how to walk."
"I thought you already knew how."
"I thought I did, too."
After she'd tried on every stitch and the women decided what suited her best, they brought out their needles and thread and began altering the clothing to fit. The outfit she had on needed the least of their talents.
It was meant for a taller woman or girl more likely, but Faith liked the way the layered white skirt swirled around her ankles. Her top was bright red, a color she would never have chosen, and gathered at the neck in what Manon would call the peasant style. It was sleeveless, but Faith's arms no longer looked like tiny sticks. They were thin, but muscled. Her hard work with Diego was paying off.
It was when she was showing off the final result of their work that one woman quipped. "Now all you have to do is learn how to walk."
Faith answered much the same as Lalo. "I thought I already did."
Briza, the beautiful, stood to demonstrate.
"Lengthen your stride a bit. Loosen your hips. When I sway my hips, I am saying to a man, 'These hips surround my treasures. Do you think you hold the key?'"
Faith tried to do the same, but her
efforts were met with gales of laughter.
"When you throw your hips from side to side like that, Faith, it's like you're saying, 'My treasures are all sold. How much will you pay for the empty box?'"
Faith huffed while the women laughed, but she tried it again and again until, in frustration, she threw her hands in the air.
"Why can't I just walk the way I normally do?"
You would have thought she had a future as a stand-up comedienne.
"Because then your hips will say 'There are no treasures here yet. Come back in a few years when I am fully grown.' You walk like a child. No real man would fall in love with a child."
Faith looked at Agdta, who sighed and nodded. "Until tonight when you confessed your age, I thought you were much younger, hija. It wasn't only your body. It was your childlike ways."
Faith's face burned with embarrassment. JJ was right. It was time she stopped relying on cute and tiny. It was time she grew up. If you don't want to be treated like a child, don't act like one.
"Briza, show me how to do that again."
Lalo wasn't making any sense of this at all, but Faith's eyes looked happy and that was enough for him. Most of the time she smiled and joked and put on a good show, but there was a sadness in her eyes sometimes that made him sad, too. It worried him and it worried him more that other people couldn't see it. He didn't know the details, but he knew she'd had a hard time of it before coming to live with her sister. She was in bad shape and stayed that way and Lalo thought that might be because she couldn't leave that hard time behind.
"Will you dance with me, Faith?" he asked after they'd joined the others at a table that had been cleared for them.
Dancing in the Community of Saints was forbidden, so Faith did it every chance she had. Poor Hope would worry so about the neighbors dropping by when their father was out of the village, while Faith turned the volume up on the radio dialed to music that would set her heart pounding to its rhythm.
She looked out on the dance floor and frowned. Partners were whirling about, their feet flying to the music provided by four musicians in the corner.
"I'd love to, but we're going to have to wing it. I have no idea what I'm doing."
"I don't know what I'm doing most of the time. Who cares as long as we have fun."
Faith did have fun. She ate her supper with relish but made sure Agdta knew it wasn't quite as good as what was served at home. She danced with Lalo and Adam after he'd kept his promise and took Agdta for a whirl, and when the boys set their sights on some local lovelies, she danced with Vasco, who made a great show of it and was completely exhausted after the second number.
Álvaro posted himself by the door with his usual don't-talk-to-me frown, though Faith noticed that his eyes wandered to Briza a little too frequently to be casual observation. For her part, Briza appeared to surreptitiously steer her partners in Álvaro's direction and smiled in secret satisfaction every time he scowled in her direction.
A juke box was plugged in between the musician's sets and a small crowd formed around it laughing and arguing about what songs their money would buy. The vinyl records were old and scratchy, but no one seemed to mind. The selection was strictly Country Western.
Some of the younger women wore jeans with dressier tops and high heeled boots. Others wore skirts similar to Faith's. None of them looked to be accompanied by anyone other than people their own age. How long had it been since Lucien had been here? Not in this century. That was for sure and Faith was beginning to wonder about the last century, too.
Men favored clean, pressed, Western style shirts with bolo ties. Almost everyone's outfit had a southwestern flair. Everyone knew everyone and room was made at the table for anyone who stopped to chat. In many ways, the village reminded Faith of the best of the old fashioned ways of the place where she grew up. The difference was that the people here were more relaxed and knew how to have fun.
There was such a mixture of skin tones, body types and facial features, and it didn't take a geneticist to see that the members of this village were not a homogenous group. Their welcoming of the occasional traveler had made its impact on the whole. Some were tall, others short, some thin, others round and everything in between. A few were as fair as Faith and barely browned by the sun and from there darkened, shade by shade, until you reached the other end of the scale where color deepened to such a rich dark brown as to be almost black. Some might have stood out in more urban settings, but others would fit right in. The People looked exactly like millions of other people the world over.
What made them special? God or Nature would not have isolated them here if they weren't. What was it about them that the world shouldn't know?
A few people, urged forward by Agdta's friends came up to say hello and Faith touched them all. From only a few of them did she feel that same otherness she'd first felt in Álvaro, but of those few, it was always stronger in the men than the women, although the strength varied from one man to the next.
She made sure to smile at the children who shyly peeked out from behind their parents. A few of the younger and braver young men asked her to dance and with a nod from Agdta, who was taking her role as duenna seriously, Faith danced with everyone including young Diego who was looking quite debonair in crisply ironed black trousers and snow white shirt. He, too, had a string tie; his with a replica of a buffalo nickel as a clasp.
His mother, Flor, patted her chest in time to a beating heart and laughed and sighed at the same time when Faith took the seat beside her after being whirled breathless by the enthusiastic, but incompetent dancer.
"My son is in love with an older woman," she said and laughed again when Faith looked around the room to see who it was. "It's you. He's smitten with the Patron's woman."
"Diego is my friend. He's not in love with me and I'm not…" The Patron's woman, she started to say, but Flor cut her off.
"You may be his friend, but he dreams of being your lover," the woman went on. "This is a good thing. He'll get his first taste of love and heartbreak from someone who is kind. My sister-in-law assures me this is so," she said of Agdta. "First loves are always hard, but they help us see the real thing when it comes. Don't you think?"
Faith didn't know. Though it was only a few years before, her one experience with love seemed like a lifetime ago. Tommy Barrett, the boy who taught her to drive, grew into a handsome young man who promised to take her away from the hated Community of Saints as soon as they were wed. They were both virgins and their coming together was awkward, but loving.
It all came to nothing, of course. Her father found out about her fall from grace, Tom disappeared without her, and her life descended into hell.
"So first love isn't real love?"
"Sometimes, sure, but mostly it's a taste of things to come." Flor laughed again. "I was more in love with the idea of love than I was with the boy I thought I loved. I was sure my heart was forever broken and I would live the rest of my life alone and in misery when his eyes turned to another." She gestured with her chin to an extremely obese man with greasy hair and gravy stains on his shirt. "That one was the love of my life when I was thirteen. Not even on the days with a sink full of dirty dishes and a floor covered in mud do I regret the day he left me for another. I was such a drama queen," she laughed. "My Fabiana is only ten and already shows all the signs; my punishment for what I put my poor mother through."
Flora's laughing confession made Faith question her own first love. She was much older than thirteen, of course, but the principle was the same. Did she love the man or did she love what he represented? Tommy Barrett had been her ticket to freedom and escape from the memory that haunted her more each year.
*****
Lucien was already tired and sore and his patrol had barely begun. The lull between demon sightings was over and he had battled and killed two tonight. He wondered how many more he'd missed and how many people had died because of it. He'd found and buried three travelers tonight. There was nothing to say who th
ey were or where they came from or if anyone would miss them when they didn't write.
He turned his horse homeward, murmuring nonsense and stroking her mane. No matter how long they were with him or how well they were trained, his horses were always skittish after an encounter with demons. He would settle the mare in her stall and saddle the gelding for the rest of his patrol.
In the distance, the lights from the village shined like a beacon in the dark and before the decision was a conscious thought, the mare was responding to the slight pressure of his knees and heading toward the light.
It would only take a few minutes from his patrol and the mare would find comfort in the familiar smells and people. He could check on Faith and reassure himself that she was having a good time. He was worried the young trainees would abandon her for the more lively local girls and leave her to the company of Agdta and Vasco, good folk to be sure, but hardly good company for a young girl in search of a little fun.
Leaving the horse tied to one of the old iron rings that lined the side wall of the building, Lucien paused for a moment to listen to the music and laughter spilling out onto the street and had a vision of his little hummingbird hovering in a corner alone. Pausing again at the door, he scanned the sizable room and quickly found Agdta holding court at a large round table surrounded by her friends. Vasco had found a stool at the bar. Lalo was entertaining an audience of youngsters with coin tricks, plucking quarters from behind their ears and Adam was dancing to an unfamiliar recording of fast paced music.
"Where is she?" Lucien asked Álvaro who stood by the door with his arms folded and a sour look on his face.
The Vigilante pointed with his chin toward the crowd of dancers in the middle of the floor who were now forming a circle and clapping their hands as Adam whirled his partner around and around.
Because of the crowd, Lucien could only see Adam's head and shoulders and the Liege Lord's eyes opened in shocked surprise when a pair of shapely legs flew over the trainee's back in an unladylike maneuver that had her white skirt rising to her thighs. The spectators cheered and Lucien moved forward thinking Faith must be at front of the circle.
Guardian's Faith Page 14
