Asa could see the happiness and apprehension rise within Olivia. He couldn’t imagine what she must be thinking, finally being able to see her sister again after so many years.
“Can he come too?” Olivia asked, to his surprise.
“Fine by me,” said the other guard after a moment. “But come on. Miss Iba—I mean, your sister—has been making a racket all day.”
The guards led Asa and Olivia to the church and stopped them before the door.
“Wait here,” they said. They went to the door and knocked.
Asa felt Olivia slip her hand into his.
The door opened, and Mother Morevna appeared, stooped and sunken. But power still emanated off her like heat from a summer road. She nodded once to Olivia, then opened the door wider.
“Come now, girl,” she said. “Your sister is here to take you.”
Asa heard Olivia catch her breath.
A girl in a long white nightdress stumbled forward then, hair long and mussed, but clean. She was a thin imitation of the girl from the picture. She looked like Olivia, but pale and sallow from years spent locked indoors, and she was so frail that she seemed nearly insubstantial. She blinked once as though waking from a dream. Then she saw Olivia and light leapt into her eyes.
“?Olivia! ?Has vuelto! ?Has vuelto!” she cried, running into Olivia’s arms. The two collapsed there in the dust in front of the church, holding each other and weeping.
“Rosa! Mi hermana, mi hermana… ?Estás bien?” Olivia asked, stroking her hair as she held her close. “?Te lastimó? ?Era cruel contigo?”
Asa stood back and watched the two of them there in the dust, so similar, yet so different. Olivia was so gentle with her. There was such love, such tenderness in every weeping syllable the two uttered.
He loved her, he knew then. Completely, irrevocably, with a love so doomed and impossible that he suddenly understood all those Shakespearean characters with their monologues and knives, ready to be plunged into their own hearts. It hurt, terribly. But he knew then that even if he’d known how it would turn out, he’d have chosen this again and again and again.
“Come on,” Olivia said, putting her arm through the crook of his elbow. “Let’s take Rosa back home.”
“Olivia… ?quién es el?” Rosa asked, wary eyes on Asa as she held Olivia’s other hand.
“Asa Skander,” Olivia said. “él es mi… novio.” (Asa’s heart gave a fluttery thrill at the last word.)
“Buenas tardes, Rosa. Mucho gusto en conocerte,” he said, smiling his friendliest smile. Then he pulled a thornless rose from behind her ear, much to her delight, and handed it to her as she marveled.
“I didn’t know you could speak Spanish,” Olivia said, tucking the flower behind Rosa’s ear.
“You never asked,” Asa said. He tried to smile, to keep things lighthearted, for Rosa’s sake, but he became aware of Mother Morevna then, watching from the doorway. Her eyes were not on the Rosales sisters. They were on him, scrutinizing him, as though he were a puzzle to be completed.
“Come on,” Olivia said, beaming. “Let’s go see the others.”
And, with a glance back over his shoulder at Mother Morevna, Asa followed the Rosales sisters into the dark, back to the house where the other girls waited.
CHAPTER 22
When Olivia and Asa arrived with Rosa behind them, we weren’t sure at first how we should act. I worried that Judith or Mowse would scare her, she seemed so timid. But as Olivia introduced Rosa to all of us and she hugged each of us in turn, we found our voices lowering to match pitch with hers. To my surprise, it felt natural having her around. And to my surprise, when she was close, I could feel magic emanating from her too, faint but present, hanging around her like perfume.
Asa, ever the performer, was surprisingly good with her, for not being truly human. He spoke to her in fluent Spanish and always made sure to communicate with her as clearly as possible without talking down to her like I’d seen nurses do to a deaf man once at the hospital. And whenever he made Rosa laugh, I thought Olivia’s own face might split in two, her smile was so wide.
“He’s going to take care of her tomorrow, while we train the guards,” Olivia told me as we watched Asa entertain Rosa with his sleeves full of colored scarves. “There’s no use in him coming until the horses are ready to be powered up. And, anyway, she adores him, don’t you think?”