The House of Impossible Loves Read Online Free

you only ever have daughters, that you’re doomed to a life of disgrace.” He cleared his throat, wishing he could take back that last word.
    “They forgot to tell you the real bane of our existence. It’s true we only ever have girls who never marry, and they call this a life of disgrace, but we’re doomed to something far worse, my friend: we’re doomed to be unlucky in love. We’re fated to suffer for love, for the one love that steals our soul. It’s why no spell can end our suffering or make us forget. Once the soul is gone, no magic can cure it.”
    “I promised Clara I would return, and I will keep my promise.” The landowner felt the heat from the fire on his cheeks.
    “My daughter is a fine example of her father’s stock.” The old woman looked up at the ceiling, her blind eye staring blankly. “She’s attractive, proud, and brave. She knows how to take care of herself, but this thing with you was bound to happen sooner or later. The amulet I made her is useless. It was only to protect her from other men until the one who was destined to come came along. But she knew to stay away from the others. Clara fears the curse; it might be the only thing she fears. Now pour me some wine.” The old witch pointed to the bottle on the table. “All this talk of curses makes me thirsty.”
    He poured a glass, and the witch swallowed the wine in a single gulp.
    “Now, would you like me to predict your future with the cat bones? When you throw the bones, the position of the tail will tell whether you’ll have male heirs.”
    “I have to get up early to catch the morning coach. Perhaps when I return.”
    “I understand.” The tip of the old woman’s tongue, blackened from tasting her potions, protruded between her lips, and the Andalusian could not help but stare. “Why don’t you give me a few coins for something more useful, then.” She pulled a greenish bottle out of a leather bag that was slung across her shoulder and sat at her hip. She handed it to him. “Drink this when the moon wanes, then wash the area over your heart with thyme and rosemary water. It’ll help you forget, and you won’t ever have to return.”
    “But I don’t want to forget.”
    “Keep it. Pay me and I’ll be on my way.”
    The Laguna witch picked up her rigid sack, took the Andalusian’s coins, and left. The landowner stood with the little jar in his hands as a soft pulse beat behind the glass. He let go, and it shattered on the floor. A yellowish liquid stinking of rotten figs seeped out as a lizard tail thrashed on the floor.
    The young landowner was hardly able to sleep that night; whenever he did, his mouth grew dry and he dreamed of the potion’s smell and reptiles. The next morning, he took the first coach home to Andalusia, his eyes shot through with insomnia, his hounds in the cart behind, their barks throbbing in his temples.
     
    Clara Laguna settled in to wait for the Andalusian landowner. She continued to fetch water from the town square at dawn, but now everyone she passed—man or woman, young or old—studied her belly to see if it had grown, to see if it hid another Laguna girl. The months passed as Clara tended her tomatoes, cleaned the pen, fed the chickens and the goat, helped her mother repair hymens and stir potions, as she went to the oak grove and to the estate to contemplate the yellow rose that ignored the tedium of the seasons. But the belly everyone expected to swell remained flat and silent.
    Every two or three months Clara received a piece of mail from the Andalusian: pages drenched in olive oil and dried in the sun, orange blossoms and jasmine flowers wrapped in tissue paper rather than words because Clara was illiterate. She replied with dried leaves, bark from an oak tree, yellow rose petals, pine needles, and locks of her hair stuffed into blue envelopes it took all her courage to buy at the general store and fill out, copying her lover’s address in a tremulous hand.
    By the middle of