The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina

by Zoraida Córdova

She’d lived a hundred lives in different ways, but no one—not her five husbands or her descendants—really knew her. Not in the way you can know someone, down to their bones, down to the secrets that can only be augured in bloody guts.

Back then she didn’t call it by what it was—magic. It was just how Orquídea was with her home remedies. Everyone had home remedies, didn’t they? Everyone had brought secrets from the old worlds with them.

We don’t talk. None of us. Why don’t we ever talk? Silence is a language of its own in this family. A curse of our own making. That’s the inheritance my daughter got from me, and I am so very sorry.”