The alma loved both, but there was no doubting that the expectant daughter was favored. His own parents had not loved their children equally, after all. Alvardo wondered at this, then wondered at his own surprise. The twins Imelda and Marianela, previously indistinguishable to Alvardo, were impossible to confuse under the soft guidance of alma. Squandered potential, such a shame, but at least he was not the only son. The eldest son had spent his days carousing and gambling away his allowance with the bestial-souled boatmen at the riverfront. He raised his newly colored eyes to the family, allowing the emotions the soul felt for each to wash over him like the white-capped waves on the river after a summer storm. The words of denial affected him much more deeply than before-their poetry stirring emotions from the alma. He whispered the customary curse to El Dios Tacaño, completing the ceremony. They too must have been blue, but it seemed to Alvardo that the world had been born and died many times over since then. Alvardo struggled to remember what color his own eyes had been before apprenticeship, but could not. Perhaps not as free-no, certainly not as free-of sin as it had been when the old woman had become besouled after birth. His eyes took on the old widow’s color, brilliant azure, the color of a young soul not many times embodied, still mostly free of sin. Hiring his services from Maestro Eusebio proved this.Īlvardo watched his reflection in a washbasin on a stand beside the deathbed as the alma settled for the moment and took up its temporary residence within. All four of the children were besouled with human alma, a sure sign of the elder Espinoza’s success in business, not that Alvardo had ever doubted. The Espinozas were a very wealthy family, merchants with dozens of ships sailing the Blanco, trading maize and silver for silk and spice. Alvardo’s knowledge of them had been limited to the facts. Seven days he had spent among them as an empty vessel. As he did, so too did the gathered sons and daughters of Espinoza finally take breaths of their own. Only when he had secured his breathing orifices did Alvardo allow himself to take a small, hesitant breath through the filters. He could not truly avoid it, of course, but if he was successful here, it would be a small step towards earning the money to buy back his own soul. Feeling the soul struggle and send out waves of feeling, he knew that he never wanted to be empty again. He needed this job to go well, and he would not take risks. To be absolutely certain of the soul’s safety, to allay his new fear, he slipped the oil-soaked cloth mask from around his neck and over his mouth. To take him away from his parents, to separate him from his natural-born soul, then sell it off to some needy merchant family. With the alma filling the crevasses within, memories awakened from his life before becoming the soulless custodio.įear was what he had felt scraping at his insides when he was just a boy and Maestro Eusebio had come to measure and examine him. The emotion had been described to him by the maestro.īut he also remembered this emotion, dimly, from a time that had been locked away deeply in some part of him. Alvardo shakily retrieved the filter plugs from the pocket of his robes and lodged one firmly in each nostril. The alma struggled against the barrier of his lips, then changed tactic and coursed to the back of his throat. The aching emptiness within his vessel filled with the sloshing of the elderly woman’s soul. It was a fact of his training, something that he must do. Before the vessel could expel its final breath, Alvardo covered her lips with his own and inhaled sharply and deeply. The color from her eyes drained, leaving only pale white marbles that matched Alvardo’s own. As Maestro Eusebio had said many times, “When the moment comes, you will know.” And he did. He had falsely predicted her passing four times in the past three days, but the passing was unmistakable. Alvardo nearly missed the moment, eavesdropping to the gathered family’s whispered conversations. Marguerite Espinoza took her last breath as the sun slipped behind the Salt Mountains outside the expansive windows of her third floor bedchamber. Series: The Tales of Gorlen Vizenfirthe.Series: From the Lost Travelers’ Tour Guide.People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction!.
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