The middle of its earthen floor was taken up by a wooden bathtub. A large iron pot simmered on a hearth in one corner, its steam filling the cramped room with a dense, pleasant odor. Bundles of herbs hanging from the rafters added their fragrance, and candles guttered on an altar, which was dominated by a three-foot plaster statue of Jesus wearing a scarlet cape, his exposed heart dripping blood from the thorns twined around it. Beside the statue was a bohío the size of a dollhouse, complete with a straw roof decorated with seashells, a tiny window, and a door against which a pair of miniature crutches leaned. None of this, exotic as it was, drew Will’s attention as much as Elvira. In a fresh white gown that reached to her bare ankles, her wrists adorned with bracelets of black and pale blue beads, her throat with the gold pendant, she sifted dried herbs into the pot, hearth coals and candlelight burnishing her skin so that she looked like a living icon cast in bronze and gold. She turned around when the two boys entered, and her eyes lingered on Will before they shifted to Enrique, the sight of whom appeared to frighten her. She quickly averted her gaze and went back to her sifting and stirring. After he left, Rosaria, sitting on a footstool in front of the altar, beckoned her patients to come forward.

They sat on a reed mat in front of her. Eliot, feeling a mild terror, flinched when the old woman, her seamed brown face like the masks Lockwood had brought from Africa, took his hand in hers and began to rub the back of it with the broad, bright green leaves of a plant. Next—and this almost made him yelp—she produced a headless pigeon from a basket beside her and dripped blood from its severed neck onto his hand, chanting as she did in a high, quavering voice and in a language neither he nor Will had heard before. Elvira accompanied her, the chant like a litany, with one word—“Babaluaye”—repeated several times. Rosaria interrupted once and, reverting to Spanish, said something to the younger woman, who repeated the chant. Although Eliot could understand none of it, he divined that Elvira was a pupil, engaged in some sort of recitation exercise. My God, he thought, he and Will were guinea pigs in a school for witch doctors! Nevertheless, he submitted to Rosaria’s ministrations, mostly because he was afraid he would insult her if he did not, partly because the treatment was having an effect, A soothing warmth penetrated his skin, like the camphor rubs his mother gave when he had a cough.