Page 10 of Cuervo's Carnival
Tapping, louder and louder, as it attempts to steal my attention.
I keep my gaze onAbuela, not wanting to acknowledge its presence. Except the tapping persists, so loud that its sound completely drowns out the machinesAbuelais hooked up to.
Persistent fucker.
Still holding her hand for dear life, my neck snaps in the direction of the hospital window, where it is perched on the tree limb that brushes against the glass. Staring back with eyes so pitch black it makes its onyx feathers look grey in comparison.
Her hand breaks free from my desperate grasp. I try to clasp tighter, but the minimal strength she has prevails as she breaks free and slowly lifts her arm, pointing her finger in the direction of the raven.
“Mira es un cuervo,” she says, over and over. Each time she says it, her voice weakens and slows. “Mira es un cuervo,” she says again. She licks her thin lips and whispers, “Lola, es tu tiempo.”Lola, it’s your time.
Panic and heartbreak dance within my veins as confusion over what she just said to me plays in my mind. Here I sit, next to her on her deathbed, the life fading out of her with each passing second, and yet, clear as day, she tells me that my time has come.
I want to ask her what she means. I want to shake her and beg her to stay. But it is then that the bitter moisture of my grief continues to stream down my eyes, clouding my vision and stinging my skin as if acid is being poured out onto my cheeks.
Tears, so many tears, too many tears flow like a dam has been broken, and with my sadness comes a screech. Not from my lips, but from the raven’s bill. Ear-piercing and sinister, it expels its haunting sound against the glass, traveling past my ears and embedding itself in what feels like my psyche.
It is then that the chills begin again, growing in intensity.
I feel it—a switch that has been flipped. Morphing my body from living as I once knew, as I once understood, into a state I do not understand.
Yet, I feel something unexpected through the bleak, frigid, horrifying cold.
There, in the depth of despair, lies an unexplainable hope within my loss.
Suddenly, the tears that broke free from my irises like floodgates, stop.
My now tear-free eyes shift to the window, which offers the previously dim state of the hospital room a glimmer of light. There, as I expected, is the face of the creature that has forced itself into my life from the moment I saw it at The Chamber’s Door Carnival.
Silent.
Cryptic.
Waiting.
Once more, it taps its blackened bill on the glass with such power. I wince, expecting the glass to shatter. But the glass, unlike my sanity at this moment, remains intact.
No words are whispered.
No sounds are muttered.
A final tap and it flaps its wings, up and away.
I turn my head back to whereAbuelalays in limbo, my hand still holding onto hers.
And then, I feel it.
Her breathing halts. And just like that, seventy-six years full of stories, of triumphs, of trials, of bittersweet life withers away, leaving me in a pile of grief at her bedside.
My weary gaze falls to her hand still in mine, and it’s then I notice the symbol of her perseverance through grief—the gem she always kept on her finger—just like her, is now gone.
5
Lola
One MonthLater
A loud shriekescapes my mouth, rivaling the thunder that roars outside. The remnants of my shrill cry echo within these four walls, and even though I now lay awake, I am not ready to open my eyes. That noise, whatever it was, came from somewhere buried deep within me, and I’m not ready to learn more about its origins.
