The Fifth Sacred Thing Read Free Page A

Blessed Lady of the Waters who had a community house on Madrone’s block. Rosa was nestled, half asleep, in Marie’s arms, and Madrone squatted down to take her hand and wake her gently.
    Rosa opened her eyes, large and dark in her thin face. Her hair hung in two long braids, a little frizzy and disheveled after the sleepless night, and Madrone remembered Consuelo’s hands moving deftly in her daughter’s hair, weaving the black, shiny strands. Never again.
    “I’m sorry, Rosa,” Madrone said simply. “I’m very very sorry.
Tu mamá ha muerto
. Your mother is dead.”
    Marie’s arms tightened around the child, and her blue eyes narrowed with concern. She too had been a patient of Madrone’s; she too was someone Madrone had not been able to cure and would lose. The milk-white skin of Marie’s Irish ancestors wasn’t made to withstand the ultraviolet that poured through the earth’s weakened ozone shield. Madrone noticed a new growth next to the older woman’s nose. Her skin was papery, transparent, the look of cancer.
    “I’m sorry,” Madrone said again. “We did everything we could. We just don’t understand this fever yet.”
    Now Rosa seemed to comprehend what Madrone was saying. Her eyes filled with tears. She buried her face in Marie’s shoulder and began to sob.
    “Pobrecita,”
Marie soothed her. “I’m so sorry.” She looked questioningly at Madrone. “The baby?”
    “She’s alive. For now. I don’t honestly know how it will turn out. We found a nurse for her. I wish I could be more optimistic.”
    Marie nodded. Madrone rested a hand on Rosa’s back. She would have liked to curl up and cry herself. I hate this, she thought. I really hate this.
    “You look exhausted,” Marie said. “I’ll take care of Rosa. You go and get some rest.”
    Nodding, Madrone stood up. If she hurried, she would have just enough time to run home, change into her festival clothes, and meet Maya before the ritual started.

    At the crest of the hill, people were descending from the bucket-shaped gondolas. Their thick cables spanned the city like a metallic spiderweb. They reminded Maya of Rio, how he had grumbled when they were first proposed after the Uprising.
    “It’s beyond our resources!” he had objected. “We’ve still got people we can’t feed; how can we afford to turn the City into an eco-Disneyland?”
    “I like them,” Maya said. “They’ll be fun. They’ll cheer people up.”
    “Circuses! It’d be cheaper to feed a few Millennialists to the zoo lions. That’d cheer
me
up!”
    “Don’t be an old crock,” she’d said to him, but then she noticed that tears were gathering in his eyes. The cataracts gave them a milky blue look that reminded her of an infant’s glazed stare. He was still a handsome man then, in his early eighties, just a few years older than she was. His blond hair had turned silky white and made a bushy frame for the roughly sculpted planes of his face. They could still end an argument by making love, burying in each other’s flesh their sorrow at all that had been done too little, too late.
    Maybe he was right, Maya thought. We were carried away by our own optimism, in the first flush of victory, still thinking in the old ways, in terms of massive projects and heroic efforts: the sea dikes, the gondolas. Yet in the end the gondolas were quite practical, given the impenetrable maze that the Uprising had made of the city. And beautiful, embellished over the last two decades with bright colors and sacred designs: spirals, interlocking triangles, moons, stars, animals, and birds.
    “Hi, Maya.
¡Que nunca tengas hambre!
May you never hunger!” Passersby greeted her, smiling, with the ritual blessing, and to each she replied politely, “May you never thirst!
¡Que nunca tengas sed!”
Some of them sheknew by name, others knew her by sight or through the books she had written. A few looked inclined to stop and chat, but she nodded at them and turned away. Too much