Incantation Read Online Free Page A

forehead. I felt so hot I nearly drank the water myself.
    What are you and Catalina plotting, Raven?
Andres asked me.
    People had stopped calling me that long ago. It was a child’s name, but in Andres’s mouth, it was something more. I was surprised to find he was looking at me in a way I hadn’t expected. I wondered if the word Raven stuck in his throat like a knife.
    Andres looked like an angel even though he had been digging in the field all day. His hair was long and pale. His eyes were blue. He was so unusual, so handsome, that people always stopped and stared at him, as I now did.
    Your cousin thinks I should move in with you.
    I couldn’t believe the nerve I had. I let it sound as if it would just be the two of us. Me and Andres. Together. As if we were husband and wife. Catalina hadn’t said it that way. She was the one with plans for Andres.
    Andres laughed so hard he spit out the water he’d drank. Then he looked at me in another way.
    Does she? And what do you say?
    I say you’re drooling.
    I laughed and ran away. That was probably the reason my heart hurt so much. I ran so fast. All the same, even without looking, I could feel Andres watching me.
    I was the exact same age my mother had been when she’d met my father and promised herself to him. I could smell almond flowers, and the heat crackled the air. When I narrowed my eyes and tried to see into my own future, all I could see was the white brightness of the sun. My throat hurt, not because of what I’d said, but because I had more words that I was afraid to say. I had wanted to shout out:
Yes! I say yes!
Instead I had run away.
    What’s wrong with my cousin?
Catalina asked when I came back to sit beside her under the olive tree.
He has a foolish look on his face. You shouldn’t have spoiled him and given him what he wanted. You have to teach boys how to behave.
    Andres was standing in the field when he should have been working on the irrigation ditch. My mother could never match the blue of his eyes with any of her colors, not if she tried for a thousand years. Bluebell, water reed, wild grass, feathers, none came close. It was as though I was in a dream. I couldn’t see anything else but Andres, even from this distance, even though I knew he wasn’t mine.
    Are you still staring at him?
Catalina asked.
    Of course not,
I said to my best friend.
    And just like that, it was done. It was the first time I’d lied to her.
    But it would not be the last.

    W HEN L UIS came home from the seminary we celebrated, even though he would only be with us for one short week before he had to return to his studies. Luis took a coach from Barcelona, then walked from the Plaza. All of our neighbors went out to their verandas to greet him. Luis must have been tired; all the same he took the time to stop at every house, asking after each neighbor’s health, wishing each one good fortune.
    Luis looked like a man now, an important man of the church, no longer a boy. Coming toward us, he was almost a stranger; he wore the black coat with the red sash of a seminary student. Then Luis jumped up and down and waved and at last he looked like himself, my dear brother. A boy with long legs and the dark raven eyes that were our heritage, who carried a huge weight on his shoulders: the great man he was to be someday.
    I ran up to him and hugged him.
    Raven,
he said, using my childhood name,
I wish you could fly to visit me. Not that I miss you.
He grinned.
    Not that I miss you either,
I teased back. I hugged him tighter. I missed him so much I could feel it at every hour of the day.
    You look grown up,
my brother said.
    When our grandmother is done with you, you’ll look fattened up,
I teased.
    In Luis’s honor, my grandmother was making a special dinner:
burkas,
grape leaves filled with feta cheese, and kabobs flavored with cinnamon and garlic. My grandfather had put on his fancy black suit; at last, he looked happy. Luis was everything to him. My brother had been gone a