Treasure of the World by Tara Sullivan (free ebook reader txt) 📕

We pick our way around the eastern face of the mountain and slowly, little by little, the city of Potosí fills our view again. It’s the better part of three hours later when we’re finally walking along the cobbled streets of the city. But to Santiago’s credit, it is downhill to where Yenni works. Mostly.

We stop beside tall walls with a decorative wrought-iron gate. Through the gate there is a carefully tended garden courtyard and an imposing three-story house with big stone arches. My mouth goes dry. This is not the kind of place people like me are allowed.

“Come on,” says Santiago, tugging on my hand. “The servants’ entrance is this way.”

The servants’ gate is a heavy metal door set into the tall concrete wall. Santiago raps on it with his knuckles. “It’s me—Santiago Quispe. Open up!”

I hear noise from within and then the door swings open. I stare and stare at the tended gardens. Potosí is so high up the Andes mountains that very little grows naturally there. This vibrant green is alien to my world of gray and brown and rusty red clay. I can only imagine how much work it must take the gardeners to create this little oasis.

Santiago points across the cobbled patio to a low, detached building.

“Servants’ quarters,” he explains over his shoulder. “This is where Yenni sleeps during the week. She comes home on the weekends. Today’s Monday, so she’ll be here until Friday night.”

I blink to absorb this information. Yenni, the daughter of a miner, has landed herself a job as a maid in the city. I wonder how she did it.

“Let’s try the kitchen first,” he says.

I hope the kitchen isn’t too far away. I need to sit down before I fall down.

The kitchen is in the main house and it is enormous, at least four times the size of my entire home. Its walls and floor are stone; the ceiling is white plaster. There are large surfaces for preparing foods, fancy metal appliances that I have only seen through shop windows on my walks to church and on TVs in public places, and two different sinks. An enormous fireplace takes up a third of one wall, and a huge black stove hunches in the far corner. Pots and pans of all sizes hang from the ceiling, and a heavy wooden table takes up the middle of the room. Three women wearing identical dresses are bustling around, cooking, cleaning, clattering.

If Santiago hadn’t been steering me, I would have stopped in my tracks and stared. Instead, I’m plunked on one of the wooden benches at the table while Santiago goes over to one of the other girls and collects a bowl of soup and a spoon. He hands it to me.

“Eat this,” he says. “I’ll go find Yenni.”

I take a sip, and flavor explodes in my mouth. After not eating for two days in the mine, this soup is something from another world. It’s a salty broth with rice and potato and chicken and carrots. I find the cook, a woman twice as wide as any of the others, with my eyes.

“Thank you,” I say. “This is delicious.”

She grunts at me, and I sit and watch the workings of the kitchen while Santiago looks for Yenni. Honestly, I’m so happy to be off my feet, I don’t even care how long it takes him. While I wait, I run my finger over the smooth grain of the wooden bench and table, marveling at them. Whoever owns this house must be really wealthy: a huge house, an impossible garden, and things made from wood even in the servants’ areas.

A few minutes later, Santiago pops back into the kitchen, Yenni at his heels. She’s wearing a neat black dress with a white apron just like everyone else in the kitchen. The fabric is even and heavy, better than either of us could afford. Clearly it’s the uniform for the women who work here. Her kind face lights up with a smile when she sees me.

“Ana! You made it.”

“Here I am,” I agree.

“Thanks for bringing her,” she says to her brother. “You’d better go now. You’ll need to have dinner ready by the time Papi gets home.”

“You cook?” I ask Santiago.

“Almost as well as Carmencita,” he says, puffing up his chest and waggling his eyebrows at the dour cook.

She grunts at him, and I think she might be mad, but when he flits over to her, she swats his behind with a dish towel and hands him a small wrapped bundle. “That’s because it is my cooking,” she says. Santiago laughs and gives the big woman a peck on the cheek and a thank-you for the food and, with a wave to me and Yenni, heads out the door.

Yenni rolls her eyes.

“That boy,” she says with enough feeling to make it a full sentence all by itself. Then she looks at me. “Go ahead and finish your supper. I’ve told Doña Arenal, the owner, that you’re here. If she wants to talk to you, you should do all the getting better you can before she does.” She winks at me and then leaves to help the other maids with their work.

I’m surprised to see so many of them working in the same place at the same time, but as I sit there and sip the salty broth, I can see that they’re all busy. One of the cooks is making bread dough; another is washing and drying a massive stack of dirty dishes and pots. Yenni and the other young girl keep ducking in and out of the kitchen, taking folded cloths and clean dishes and glasses out, and bringing dirty ones in, adding them to the stack. The cook and the dishwasher work quietly, but the others chat as they work.

I find myself lulled by the heat and safety of the kitchen, and soon I’m struggling not to doze off over my soup. The brusque clop of heeled shoes on the stone floor and the