An excerpt from Elizabeth Ruth's 2013 novel Matadora, published by Cormorant Books
SUNRISE IN LATE AUGUST, wind sweeps through the valley of the Sierra de Grazalema and the morning air shimmers with red dust. Twelve-year-old Luna balances on the edge of the white stone wall that circles the ranch house. She is captivated by the silhouette of a lone Sangre Caste bull on top of the hill, a valiant statue cut from the dawning light. She can't look away. Already she knows: love is a dark and dangerous animal. For love, you must be prepared to die.
The wind picks up, flattening the skirt of her work dress against her bare legs. She leans into it and its sad lament. Mama, it whispers, washing over her with the inevitability of loss. She scans the dry, yellow hill where the bull swings his head from side to side. She's wandered the silent cork forest in her rope-soled sandals looking for some evidence of peace but has yet to find the unmarked grave. She's searched the property each season, dug with bare hands under a common cypress tree. Recently, she searched her own image in Doña García's ivory hand mirror, hoping to find consolation there. But death offers no consolation to the living; she wants something more.
Teetering, she spreads her arms out like wings. Today she'll lift her feet from the stony equator, soar with the birds chained so magically to the sky. Today will be the day she doesn't return to the house. She closes her eyes, face tilted into the rising sun, and prepares to give herself up to flight. With a silver coin squeezed in her palm, she jumps, and for an instant she's more than the orphaned bastard she was branded at birth, more than a servant; she is one of God's creatures. She can fly.
***
MANUEL WAS LEANING AGAINST the white stone wall when she jumped, with his notebook open in his lap, a pencil tucked behind one ear, and a pair of black binoculars hanging around his neck. At twenty-one, he was the eldest of Carlos García's two sons, a bronze prince with an intelligence for questioning assumptions, and a heart made to be broken. As he watched the girl sail into the air, inspired by the simple defiance of her act, an intrepid thought formed in his mind: perhaps, with enough faith, anything was possible. The thought didn't last long though, because gravity could not suspend its nature any more than the girl could, and she fell, landing beside him on her hands and knees. In a gesture of mutual defeat, or solidarity, he closed his notebook.
"What are you doing, Luna?"
"Nothing," she said, trying not to appear startled. She had no reason to fear Manuel. Not once had he scolded her for shirking duties, or demanded subservience.
Manuel pointed to the coin in her hand. "Is that my business, or are you reaching into Father Serratosa's pockets when he visits?"
Luna closed her hand around the coin protectively and sat crosslegged opposite him. "It's for my mother; it isn't stealing if I don't want it for myself."
He couldn't help grinning. Her rebellious nature impressed him, for he'd had to cultivate such boldness, if only to challenge his family's expectation that he become a bullfighter. "People have taken more for less noble reasons," he said.
Unfortunately for his parents, Manuel's real destiny involved the likes of Lorca and Whitman, not Manolete or Belmonte or Fransuello. He'd endured dreaded years of practising in the bullring to please his father, but he hated the sight of blood. To his father's great displeasure he'd been a poet from his first full sentence, which family legend claimed he spoke at the age of two, pointing to the sloping, graceful hill to the east of their house, and declaring that
the sandy pyramid was breathing.
He watched Luna toss the silver coin from one hand to the other. Once again he doubted his own talent; he'd yet to publish a single poem, or prove himself in any measurable way. It was possible, he thought, that he'd made a mistake in following his passion, and that poetry would not bring him success, or worse, that he'd not succeed at creating a thing of beauty. The idea made him as uncomfortable as the hard stone wall pressing against his back.
