early age. Camille, once sheâd reached her teenage years, had ended up becoming a Santera, a priestess of the cult. Sheâd taken on great power. And she loathed living in poverty.
âAnd so she cast a spell on the old man, making him love her?â Jack asked, a little humorously.
But his companion didnât even pick up on that.
âUh-huh. Perhaps,â Luis suggested, still entirely serious, âshe even brought about the drowning of his second wife.â
Some versions of the taleâand there seemed to be plenty of themâinsisted that she really did marry him, but not in any Christian fashion. In a secret ritual in the woods.
Whatever the truth, nine months after they first met, she bore him children. Twins. Two girls, Isadora and Lucia. It was said that you could tell them apart only by the color of their eyes. They both grew up to be extremely beautiful themselves. And learned their motherâs secrets, becoming Santeras in their own right.
Camille must have loved them too much, blind to all their faults. Since, having been raised in luxury and comfort, her daughters were greedy, selfish women.
âSanterÃa is mostly a benign religion, but all things have their darker side. BrujerÃa , it is called. The worship of bad orishas . Some even say the pair of them became Awo âwitchesâand learned the unholy art of Palo Mayombe .â
Either way, by the time that they had turned eighteen, theyâd become powerful enough to break their motherâs spell on Santiago DeFlores and replace it with their own.
âOh my God. You mean . . . they made their father . . . ââJack falteredââlove them? As in, that way?â
Luis nodded uneasily.
âThey slept with him, yes. And it increased the dark side of their powers in a way that nothing else could.â
For his own part, DeFlores must have been wracked with guilt, and terrified of what might happen if Camille or anyone else ever found out. The one solution he could think of was to leave her on her own to manage the plantation, while he brought his daughters to the capital.
âBut of course, Camille finally learned the truth. One day, late in the summer of that year, she took a horse and rode the whole way to the mansion. And she stole inside while everyone was out. She scattered through the master bedchamber a colorless, odorless potion known only to her kind. Then, she hid in the gardens and waited.â
DeFlores and the twins must have sat through dinner that evening and then retired to bed. And once she saw the light was on, Camille employed a very unique spell.
âHer orisha was Changó, you see. The god of lightning and fire. The potion she had scattered was special to him. And the room burst into violent flame, trapping her husband and daughters inside. The twins joined hands, and it is said that in their dying agonies, they made a vow. That they would come back to this world one day, stronger than ever before.â
It all sounded pretty insane to Jack, but he still asked, âHow?â
âBy something called egungun , âpossessionâ in English,â Luis told him. âThe tradition of SanterÃa is full of it. We do not touch their graves because we fear the souls of the two sisters will possess us. And we soak the soil above them with the blood of animals to keep them trapped below the ground.â
Jack tried not to smile at this old wivesâ tale. But he regarded the boy cautiously, seeing how convinced he was about this. âLetâs hope it works, then,â he murmured quietly, for want of anything better to say.
âYes. Letâs hope.â
They started making their way back to the cemetery gates, Jackâs head still spinning from the heavily detailed but rather farfetched story.
âAnd how about Camille?â he asked. âWhatever happened to her?â
âShe died a few years later, so itâs told.
Rebecca Hamilton, Conner Kressley