The Hacienda

by Isabel Cañas

It is said that mortal life is empty without the love of God. That the ache of loneliness’s wounds is assuaged by obedience to Him, for in serving God we encounter perfect love and are made whole. But if God is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, if He is three in one in the Trinity, then God knows nothing of loneliness. God knows nothing of standing with his back to a gray morning, of dropping to his knees in the dust.

God knows nothing of loneliness, because God has never tasted companionship as mortals do: clinging to one another in darkness so complete and sharp it scrapes flesh from bone, trusting one another even as the Devil’s breath blooms hot on their napes.

My wounds sinful stigmata, flinching and festering in the sun.

Industry will rise and fall, men will scorch the earth and slaughter one another for emperors or republics, but they will always want drink.

Fate had been unkind to me, but sometimes, its pettiness worked in my favor.

Her eyes were pits, pits that burned with the crepuscular glow of embers, of hellfire.

Should is an oddly powerful word. Shame and anger have a way of flying to it like coins to lodestone.

When a man makes a promise, he makes it on his honor. When a witch makes a promise, they feel it in their bones. Titi believed words are power: they may lay your destiny in stone or shatter a legacy altogether. Words can damn or bless in equal measure, and are never to be used lightly.

I was not my mother, ready to give up when the blood was spilled and the muskets leveled. No. I was a general’s daughter. But I was so, so tired.

In my brief, stolen hours of sleep since that night, I saw nothing but her silhouette against Perdition’s rage.

Like an arroyo glutted by a flash flood, I was flush with dark power.