Winds of Fate [Books IV - VI]

Chapter 171.1: Burning Point

Author's Note: This is quite a very long update! You might want to take breaks reading it with every section banner/separator. I really can't break off this chapter into two because of the themes/motifs that each segment shares with the other 😅 Enjoy 😊

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1720
Present Day
Guantánamo, Cuba

"I don't understand, Abuela," Eleanore murmurs as she helps Bohique Aguayey sew the sails for her raft. The priestess has been used to it, and at times, she heard Abuela Alcaunex herself as Eleanore sees the visions. "You do not like Don Pedro at all... and the Spaniards seem... different from those who went here in Guantánamo... and across the sea, to Hispaniola?"

"Feelings do tend to change, granddaughter..." Abuela Alcaunex sighs deeply, leaning against the doorway of the hut, her hands clasped together, and the sunshine making her spirit shimmer. She sadly smiles. "And you?"

"Hm?"

"Will you not tell me of this husband of yours?"

"Oh--"

Bohique Aguayey elbows her, chuckling. "I bet you miss him already. Don't worry! Your abuela and I will keep it a secret. Promise!"

Abuela Alcaunex just smiles.

Her heart dips. Eleanore finds the energy sapped from her arms... her hands. She lays down her part of the sail and lets the needle fall on the silk. "I don't know what to say..." She presses her lips tight. "Because I might cry." At that, they all quietly laugh, and Abuela Alcaunex adjusts across her, for a second, Eleanore thought her grandmother would touch her brow. Bohique Aguayey beams. She blushes deeply. "We married on his birthday. He is the kindest man, and I know... I know in my heart God gave him to me." Her voice trembles, for Anton, but also for a forgotten prayer... of many forgotten prayers she had whispered long, long, long ago in cold, unforgiving Boston.

And the first magic, now she is sure of, met her in a dark wood.

Eleanore grips the needle between her fingers and takes a deep breath. "We always seem to love sailors, Abuela," she says with a smile, "all the way back to you?"

Abuela Alcaunex scoffs and laughs. "And way back."

They chuckle together, until Ana cries from her nap and settles between Bohique Aguayey and Eleanore, only to fall asleep watching them sew. When she touches the child's hair to soothe her, Aguayey senses it and raises a brow. "Ah, you'd do your old great-grandmother well, Iwanona, when you finally have your own daughter and heiress. It simply is in your soul, the love of a mother."

Elena... Eleanore closes her eyes, and when she looks up, she sees understanding in Abuela Alcaunex' sad eyes. "We have been... hoping. But perhaps not now when I am so far away from my him..." She still touches her empty belly, and smiles. "One day."

How many times have I promised myself that... Eleanore takes a deep breath and meets the old women's eyes, one glassy with age, the other translucent with death. In between. Here she is, with a promise of a new day, she shouldn't really be so mournful about it.

No matter how many one days she still hopes for.

"So... in Havana, the Taíno lived in relative peace with the foreigners? Unlike the others... that's odd..."

Abuela Alcaunex sighs and touches the sail thoughtfully, brows knit together. Bohique Aguayey watches her quietly too and pats Ana's back to dry the child. "It is, and we should have never let that façade of peace lure us into hoping for a good fate," Abuela grimly says, aghast. "Uncle sought the goodness in everybody... and feared the other Supreme Caciques. We were not unified. Far from it." Alcaunex closes her eyes. "Nor the Spaniards."