I looked to the matriarch and the patriarch as they acknowledged the missing family member. My research into Maritza’s background revealed Moira Brodeur had passed—though not recently—and was survived by her husband and their three daughters.
Malvyn tapped his glass. “Lastly, I offer a toast to Maritza. Congratulations are due to you, my treasured sibling. Not only have you chosen your first apprentice, it would appear you have also found your true Demesne.”
Everyone’s gaze shot to Maritza then to me. Margarita beamed and touched the rim of her glass to mine. As multiple voices, and the accompanying sounds of metal and stoneware and crystal reached a crescendo, my mentor’s voice sliced across of the table.
“My what?” she asked. She planted her polished fingertips to either side of her setting, leaned forward, and glared first at her brother, then her father and lastly—and longest—at her mother.
“Did he go to his knees?” Margarita asked. She raised a spoon to her lips and sipped demurely at the soup. “Did you not notice a peculiar sensation in your chest?”
What I wouldn’t have done in that moment for something solid to grip, an amulet, carved of stone, impermeable and unbreakable. Malvyn’s statement intimated that because of something that occurred in the past fifteen minutes, my future—and his sister’s—had grown considerably more complex.
“I dropped an earring. It rolled toward Alabastair. He picked it up.” Maritza took a knife in one hand and her fish fork in the other and tapped the handles against the table. “And if you insist on honesty, I will admit my chest did feel like it was—”
“Shredding?” asked James. “Crackling? Splitting into fine fissures from your sternum outwards like the glaze on a piece of raku?”
“Yes?” Maritza answered. She turned her head and looked at me. “Did you experience any of that?”
I pressed my fists against my thighs and leaned in. “In truth, I have wanted to serve you since I first learned of you and when I saw your reflection in the window as you entered the room, I—”
“Serve me?”
I nodded and barreled ahead, because our audience appeared enthralled by the entertainment we were now providing. “When you made the apprenticeship application public, I took it as a sign. As I am also a Portal Keeper, I already had set my sights on visiting this area of the world. There are a number of missing portals that need attention, and my guild thought—”
Maritza raised her pointer finger at me. I stopped mid-sentence and once again felt the heat creeping up my neck. “You can share more later. In private.” A bright blue nail pointed to her brother. “Are you telling me something like this happened between you and James? And Mamá,” she said, slashing at the air between Malvyn and Margarita, “this domain phenomenon, did it happen with you and Papi?”
“The term is Demesne,” said Malvyn, spelling it out, “and yes, it did. I first set eyes on my husband when I inadvertently stepped into the greenhouse at Uni during a lecture on psychotropics being given by a somewhat controversial ethno-botanist. In that moment, when James was framed by the spatulate stems of night-blooming cereus, I could have sworn I had already taken the hallucinogenic drops the lecturer was raving about.”
I pressed my lips together as James stood, pushed his chair back, and went to kneel near his husband. “I felt it too, in the very same moment.”
Maritza sighed. I caught the tail end of her dramatic, possibly tortured, facial expression. “I suppose you’re going to say it was the same for you?” She stabbed her fingers through the loose strands of her hair and glared at her mother. Margarita shrugged.
“Our first moments were less poetic, perhaps closer to—”
“Warfare?” said Carlos. He mimicked his wife’s nonchalance by lifting his spoon and sampling the room temperature soup. “I could have sworn I heard the baying of hounds, the rattling of swords, and the sharpening of knives.”
Margarita laughed easily and patted my hand. “Such humor. Let us enjoy our meal and I will tell you the story of our family and its history over dessert y un cafécito.” She gripped my wrist, her small hand and soft skin belying her underlying strength, and whispered, “You have nothing to fear if you do not fight the Demesne, mijo. Come, finish your soup. James times the opening of the squash blossoms to coincide with my visits.”
She held onto my wrist while she ate. My anxiety calmed under the maternal authority of her touch. I picked up my spoon, admired the presentation of the first course, and sampled the creamy flor de calabasa soup. Malvyn and James were masterful hosts and by the third course I was relaxed enough to join in the conversations flowing around and across the table.
A walk was suggested as a way to make room for dessert. I wondered if Malvyn offered the option as a means for escape. Maritza had neither looked at nor spoken to me during the lengthy meal. I declined a group stroll with the excuse I had to follow through with a portal issue on the Japanese island of Yakushima.
“Ah, the ancient cedars,” James said, nodding in understanding. “They must be in cahoots with the groves on Vancouver Island.”
Voices faded behind me. I was grateful that no one tried to stop me as my legs bore me straight to my rooms. Once there, I shut the door, locked it, and continued on to the set of sliding glass doors that opened to my private deck. The lack of a railing encouraged my spirit to keep walking, even as my body stopped its forward motion and began to tremble.
I swiped my cell phone. “Demesne,” I muttered, tripping a bit over the pronunciation as I spoke.
Demesne. To belong. To be held in Demesne is to
