It was Doña Florestela’s birthday, and the entire family had gathered at the Big House, right in the middle of the greenest orchard in the Rio Grande Valley. No one could say for sure how old Florestela Monteverde de Kinski was—she had already seemed old, the grownups said, back when she had guided her daughters, daughters-in-law, and granddaughters across the border during the height of the confluence of the Mexican Revolution and the First World War, nearly two decades earlier. The deaths of her husband and youngest son at the hands of revolutionaries—as well as the loss of the family’s beautiful, verdant estate—had etched themselves, her daughters affirmed, deeply into her flesh.
Fortunately, in the first decade of the new century, Florestela’s two oldest sons had found work as machinists in the United States, to which country they had voluntary exiled themselves to escape the madness that was brewing in their native San Luis Potosí. Once news of their brother and father’s deaths reached the men, they had sent for their mother, sisters, sister-in-law and nieces, as their status as US residents permitted them to do. The six women and four adolescents had then set out on a harrowing trek, across nearly a thousand miles of mountains, wilderness, and desert, across battlefields and broken towns, by train and on foot, till they met the Kinski-Monteverde brothers in Nuevo Laredo and crossed into their new homeland.
The stories of this amazing voyage had for years filled the minds and hearts of the great-grandchildren who now gathered around the stately magnolia tree that stood at the river’s edge, the pride of the orchard, its miraculous flowers the envy of many magnates of Valley horticulture. Even John Shary would pay a visit to Doña Florestela from time to time, eager to take a bouquet of fragrant flowers back to his wife, who loved to festoon the Shary mansion with those unlikely blooms.
Now the old woman sat serenely in her rocking chair, looking out at several dozen grandchildren and great-grandchildren, her green eyes twinkling with lively humor, her magnolia-white hair glowing softly against the deep, wrinkled mahogany of her skin. The tug of the spring breeze against her flower-embroidered blouse and green skirt seemed the playful touch of her husband’s hands, spectral yet insistent, calling her on. Though she felt her body’s hold on her spirit slipping slowly, she clung to this life a little longer.
There was one last tale to tell.
“Would you like to hear a story?” Her voice wavered, like the flowing of a small brook over mossy stones.
“Yes!” the children shouted, scooting closer to the storyteller, their faces expectant. One of them, a girl of seven named Rosamaría, peered intently at her great-grandmother with eyes of the same forest green. Will she tell us a story we already know? Perhaps she will whisper of the ancient gods, forest spirits, shape-shifters, and thousand-year curses. Or will she tell us family tales? Will she repeat the story of the Polish aristocrat, Joseph Kinski, and his escape to Spain? Or will she hearken back to her wedding day and the majestic balls she and José Antonio Kinski Fernández held to celebrate their many anniversaries? Will she narrate Madero’s escape to San Antonio and the plan he came up with that would destroy the life and land of José Antonio? Will she tell us of Pancho Villa and how she convinced him to let the ten women continue their journey? Of the Spanish Flu and the granddaughter she lost to it? The stories had braided inside Rosamaría, twining themselves integrally with the fibers of her soul. She would not hope for a new tale. To have the strings of her heart strummed with her great-grandmother’s voice one more time was quite enough.
The storyteller’s eyes fell upon Rosamaría then, and the old woman smiled at the love and awe that shone like beacons from the little one’s face. Her own spirit fluttered in mute anticipation, for it knew the spell that bound it to this world was fading fast.
In a hushed and raspy voice, she intoned the glamour: “Once upon a time…”
The breeze stilled, and the children shivered at the familiar magic.
“…the son of an exiled courtier found himself betrayed by the woman he loved. Heartbroken, the young man fled Spain and came to Mexico, where he acquired a huge tract of land and a marvelous mansion. He frequented balls and parties of the most magnificent aristocrats of that country, and many a girl’s hand was offered to him in marriage.
“None of them, of course, could compare with the lady who had betrayed him. Their beauty was drab in his eyes; their conversation, insipid and trite. So the young man, despondent, took to wandering his vast property for days, unable to forget, unable to move on.
“Finally, in the lushest, densest part of high hills that were shrouded in mist, the young man discovered a magnolia tree upon which a thousand golden butterflies flitted like divine sparks. The tree was impossibly beautiful, its bark smooth and flawless, its leaves broad and perfectly shaped, its flowers worthy to be woven into a garland for the gods. And in its gentle swaying, its nearly balletic response to the mountain wind, the wanderer seemed to perceive an awareness, a vegetable mind of amazing kindness.
“The young man dropped to his knees and regarded the tree, unable to speak, overcome by emotions that he could not name. In all his travels a more suitable being to be his wife had never met his eye. He knelt there, unmoving, for days, his entire soul yearning, reaching, striving to shrive the bonds of mortality and touch the fey intelligence he sensed within those festooned limbs.
“And as he lost touch with the world willingly, caring only for a single whisper from the object of his love, he sensed a sort of tearing in the air about him. Instinctively he poured every ounce of his love and awe into that gap, trembling to the root of his being with the effort. With a sound like the soughing of the wind in a million boughs, the tree was transformed into a breathing lady fair, with hair as white as magnolia flowers; deep, dark forest-green eyes; and lovely golden-brown limbs.
“The young man took her into his arms, then, and they both understood their destinies lay intertwined forever.”
Doña Florestela’s breath grew short as she stopped her tale, happily-ever-afters dancing in her great-grandchildren’s heads. But the effort of telling the tale had drained her of vitality, and the old woman slumped with enervated surrender. The grown-ups shooed the children softly aside, gently taking the matriarch by her arms and leading her back to the Big House, where they laid her in her bed for the very last time.
Late that evening, she passed away without another word. The children wept when they learned she had gone, and their parents could find no comforting words to ease their loss. Florestela’s passing had left them equally bereft. Compared to her absence, the freeze of ‘25 and hurricane of ‘33, both of which had pushed the family close to an oblivion from which they were only now recovering, seemed paltry setbacks. Without their matriarch, the Monteverde clan’s very warp and woof seemed likely to unravel.
But Rosamaría did not shed a tear. Something was rising in her, a joyous urgency. They were all of them family tales, she realized with a shivering gasp. The girl rushed out into the orchard, a huge glass bowl in her arms. Though the others wept and moaned and whimpered, the little one’s heart was thrumming with a jubilant song, an ancient melody that burst from her heart and was joined by the voices of leaf and trunk and root. The stars seemed to dance in time to its waltzing, sparkling tune as she skipped to the river’s edge, certain of what had to be done.
Back in the Big House, the great-grandchildren had gathered round her silent form, memories blurring their sight as her stories echoed in their souls. Suddenly a sweet forest scent compelled them all to turn their heads to see a smiling girl with white magnolias in a bowl. Ignoring grown-ups’ cries, Rosamaría rushed to the bed and with a laugh showered petals on the storyteller’s eyes.
With a wondrous sound like the coming of spring, the woman burst into a swarm of golden butterflies.
They lifted in a cloud to the high ceiling, and then streamed merrily down at Rosamaría, enveloping her as she laughed and laughed. Soon the startled adults and weeping children began to laugh as well.
The butterflies swirled about Rosamaría for a time, singing for only her. And their song burrowed deep. And when they finally drifted into the night, the storyteller’s gift had settled within the girl to wait in soft, quiescent sleep.
Till the following year, on the anniversary of the Miracle, when her cousins gathered round the magnolia tree, as if to hear the storyteller weave once more her tale.
They all stared as Rosamaría walked to the rocking chair and settled in it with a smile. She paused for a moment, readying the spell, plucking softly at the weft that bound the tales together, bound their souls together. Then she closed her eyes and whispered:
“Would you like to hear a story?”