He waved a hand, like he was trying not to brag. “I have the Sight, too. I can See through magical shields and glamours. I can cast some cantos, but my brothers are better than me.”
Tears pricked at her eyes. Her very distant memory remembered magic. It remembered a bright golden light that burned her retinas. Then darkness. Then the tower.
“Fabían, tell me everything.”
* * *
Danaë said his name in a way that didn’t make his shoulders bunch up and his insides cringe. Faaahb-eee-aaahhhhn. She dragged the syllables like she was singing just for him. It made him feel light-headed. He’d had as many crushes as he had digits, but this strange girl made him feel something no one else had. She had a heart-shaped face and a small round nose. With eyes like that and lips that always looked pink, she was the closest thing to a Disney princess he was ever going to see up close. She had the weirdest freckle on the mound of her cheek, misshapen like it didn’t know if it wanted to be a circle or a star. It was pretty, no matter what, and the longer he stared at it, the more he decided it was a star. Definitely. One to guide him back.
He thought of that as he inched back down the tower with her rope of hair wrapped around his ankle and his heart lodged in his throat. The sun was breaking, and when he glanced up at her, she was there in the shadow of the window. How wack was it that she could send down her hair, but never leave herself?
These damn hunters.
As he ran all the way home, trying to beat the rising sun, he thought about his tasks for the day. Gather as much junk food as possible. She could only eat these tiny purple berries growing from the vines at her window. They kept her alive and healed her. He wasn’t sure what kind of injuries she could sustain in a circular room, but he’d heard stories of people who got locked up. People who couldn’t leave their homes because their fears took over. People who had no choice. He shook his head. If she was going to be stuck up there, then he could at least give her a crash course on the last sixty years.
When he walked into his house, he stopped to think. He had a crush on an older woman. Technically, technically, she was, like, eighty-two. But she still looked sixteen. One year younger than he was. She’d been frozen in time for so long. What must it be like for her to age mentally but not physically? Weird.
Then he stopped for an entirely different reason.
His mom was standing in the hallway. The dark skin under her eyes was pinched. Her rollers were tied in that silk net she always put on before bed. The long bata she wore to sleep wasn’t even wrinkled, like she’d been awake sitting up. And then there was the rolled-up newspaper in her hand.
When she was angry, she only spoke in Spanish. But this was next level. It was on some Satanic ish level, like when the Irish kids in the apartment down the hall tried to play their granddad’s records backward. He thought it sounded like “Where have you been?” Or maybe “I’m going to kill you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I went to Central Park and there were these fairies. You know how time stalls when they’re around. I’m sorry!”
One thing he’d learned from fairies was how to lie without lying. He had been in Central Park. There were fairies in Central Park. Time did act weird at their magical raves and gambling dens. His mom did know all that.
She touched her forehead. Her heart. Her throat. It was like a prayer, but for brujas asking or thanking the Deos for a miracle. Why did she always worry? He was fine.
“If you’re not home tonight by dinner, I’m going to invent a canto that will ground you for the rest of my life. Go put on the coffee.”
He did as he was told, scooping the grounds of Bustelo into the coffee filter and hitting the on button. The whole time he thought about Danaë. Her face. Her hair. He’d never seen so much hair in his life. The way she sat there in the pale blue dress that brought out the freckles on her arms. The way she spoke about her old life. The things she remembered, at least. The songs she liked. He was already making a playlist on his phone for her. He didn’t understand why she’d been put in that tower, but he was going to find a way to break her out.
* * *
It took him three days to come back. In that time, Danaë tidied up her belongings. She scrubbed her skin. She changed her dress. She gathered the tiny, fragrant flowers growing in from her window vine and rubbed the sticky floral scent on her wrists and throat.
Her mother had once told her about boys. They’d been on the ship, and several young men had called her attention with sharp whistles and sultry glares. Her virtue had been the most important thing about her, it seemed, until the day her magic surfaced.
“Danaë!” he shouted. “It’s me.”
When he made it back up, she dug her fingers through her hair and massaged her scalp. “Did you double in weight while you were gone?”
“I came prepared.” He only laughed. He shook off a backpack from his shoulders and a satchel from across his chest and got to work. A black cylinder. Bags of what looked like food. Candles. Jars of powders and sticks of palo santo. Clear boxes filled with more food. Coca-Cola in tin cans instead of glass bottles. Her longing for the world outside grew.
She picked one up and held it in her fingers. “Can I?”
“It’s for you,” he said. Then, as she popped the top, he added, “It’s all for you.”
For a long time they feasted. She cried when she crunched on the salty platano chips. She wept harder when the black cylinder, which he called a portable speaker, plugged into the smallest telephone she’d ever seen and played the songs of her childhood. They spent the day following the sun as it filtered into her small room. They reclined on cushions, and then as the sun began to sink and they’d nearly finished eating everything, they lay side by side with their shoulders touching.
Touch was something so strange to her, after decades of being alone. She reached out for his hand and he didn’t move. His skin was warm in hers. It sent a spark across her chest, filled her with a heat that felt like it could burn her up if she let it. A simple touch could do that?
“How does it work?” he asked, tracing his thumb across her knuckles. “The magic of the tower? Every spell can be broken.”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be here.”
“The hunter—the sorcerer—he didn’t give you any hints? Usually bad guys like to give out their plans in long monologues at the end of the movie. Gods, I want to take you to a movie. Special effects have come a long way since, well, your time.”
She wanted to tell him not to give her hope. “No charms or incantations. No blood sacrifice. No true love’s kiss.” Then she pictured the sorcerer standing in the hall of her studio apartment. Her mother’s flowers were taking over the windowsills, growing wild out of their ceramic pots. He wore all black and a long coat with a metal pin over the breast. A knight riding a horse with an eight-pointed star over his head. He’d said he was from the Order of the Knights of Lavant. He said he would help them. That there was a place Danaë would be safe. No charms or incantations. No blood sacrifice. No true love’s kiss. Nothing could set her free except a willing exchange.