Read Online Malinche by Laura Esquivel - Free Book Online

orange and a burst of light surrounded the mind of those two females who looked enraptured, transformed, lifted from the severity of this life to float in the lightness of their dreams. The grandmother sang in different dialects and in unintelligible voices as she embraced her granddaughter with nostalgia and eternal affection. After a while, she asked her to go gather as much dry grass as she could find. When the child had fulfilled her command, they went inside the house and built a new fire with the previous day’s embers.
    â€œAll birds take their shape from fire,” the grandmother said as the dry branches burned. “Thought also has its origin in fire. The tongues of flame pronounce words as cold and exact as the fieriest truth that lips can utter. Remember that words can remake the universe. Any time that you feel confused, watch the fire and offer it your mind.”
    Fascinated, Malinalli watched the thousand shapes hidden in the fire until it had consumed itself.
    â€œAlways remember,” the grandmother smiled, “that there is no defeat that the fire cannot consume.”
    The girl looked at her grandmother again and noticed how tears were flowing through the dry earth that covered her eyes. Then the grandmother took a jade necklace and bracelet from the basket where she kept her belongings and, her voice serene as she put them on her granddaughter, she made a final blessing.
    â€œMay the earth become one with the soles of your feet and keep you firm, may it sustain your body when it loses its balance. May the wind cool your ears and offer you at any hour the answers that will heal all that your anguish might invent. May the fire nourish your gaze and purify the victuals that will feed your soul. May the rain be your ally, may it offer you its caresses, cleanse your body and mind of all that does not belong to you.”
    The girl felt as if her grandmother was saying her good-bye.
    â€œDon’t abandon me, Citli,” she said in a wounded voice. “Don’t leave.”
    â€œI already told you that I would never leave you.”
    And as she hugged her tightly and covered her in kisses, she offered her granddaughter to the sun. She blessed her in the name of the gods and without words said, “May Malinalli be the one who chases fear away. The one who triumphs over fear, makes it disappear, sets it on fire, banishes it, erases it, the one who is never afraid.”
    Malinalli remained tangled in her grandmother’s arms until she felt completely at peace. When she finally separated herself, she noticed that her grandmother was still. She had ceased to belong to time. She had evaporated from her body, and her tongue had returned to silence.
    The child understood that it was death and she wept.

    Now, beginning her new life, lighting a new fire amongst her new owners, she felt happy. Until now, everything had been as she had expected. She wanted to believe that the time of tears was behind her. She felt renewed inside. The few days that had passed since she arrived in the Spanish camp had been unforgettable. She had never felt threatened or unsafe. Of course she had not arrived alone, and not just because she had come accompanied by nineteen other women slaves, but because she had come clothed in her past: the familiar, the personal, the cosmic. She wore a jade necklace that had belonged to her grandmother, tiny bells around her ankles, and covering her body a huipil that she herself had sewn and embroidered with precious bird feathers symbolizing a stairway to the sky that she would climb in order to be reunited with her grandmother.

FOUR
    M alinalli was washing clothes in the river, on the outskirts of the town of Cholula. She was upset. There was too much noise. Far too much. Not just the noise made by her hands when she scrubbed and rinsed the clothes in the water, but the noise inside her head.
    Everything around her spoke of this agitation. The river where she washed the