Chapter One

Part One

A Plague of Tongues

Chapter One


Many years later, when the wise men gathered with their pierced faces and carved gourds to purify the streets of Floralinda, they agreed they should have known a run of plagues would curse this town. There had been signs, they muttered, sprinkling the hard earth with river water. There was the coughing dog. The blue-skinned boy.

The little white terrier, Basadre, a normally mild, unexcitable creature, had spun through Don Victor Sobrevilla’s house whining and frenzied, chasing his tail in perfect circles. There was a madness to his movements—out of control, yet full of grace—a four-legged tango marked by perfect concatenations of the figure eight.

The children laughed, following the dog through the corridors of the mansion, humming, spinning, somersaulting behind him, crashing against furniture until the air clattered with the sounds of the family silver. It began on the top floor of the house, when Basadre came to the doorway of the schoolroom, issued one last bark—a high, strident little cry—then twirled down the stairs to the second floor with its narrow passageways, cavernous bedrooms, and faded mirrors. The five children, age four to ten, sprang from their chairs, so delighted by the sight of the dancing dog that their teacher, Señorita Marcela, didn’t have the heart to stop them. They followed the animal, shrieking and bumping along walls so that lizards leapt out and scurried under the carpets in terror. By the time they reached the ground floor, they had chased the little dog over the black-and-white tiles of the foyer, in and out of the