She is not supposed to be in the kitchens at all- she knows this. But outside, grey November fog hangs in the air, the patio is cold, greasy mud beneath her bare feet. In the kitchen, the cook fires are always bright.

It hums to her, softly from the back of her mind, a vague anxiousness about being in the kitchens at all. But she ignores it, happy for the warmth of the cook-fires near her, watching flour drift slowly from a ripped bag onto the floor. Just a corner of the huge bag hangs off the splintery shelf, already gnawed by mice. The kitchen floor is so hard-packed by everyone's feet that on sunny days it shines glossy with the light that washes in from the doorway. Now the flour trickling from the bag piles up onto it in a neat mound. She puts one bare foot into it, looks from the floor up to the source of the fountain. A thread hangs loose.

The cold corner of the huge stone pila helping her balance, she can just reach the thread. She holds it in her fist, holds her breath as she gives it a sharp tug. The sound of fabric ripping, a white cloud gushing out all around her. The air full of dust and the floor covered with snow, and then she hears the thick slap of heavy footsteps. She panics- she knows the sound of those footsteps, knows how that round dark woman slaps and bellows, has heard the serving girls cry.

She slips and scrambles on the spilled flour, her heart a trapped butterfly in her throat, running clumsily for the door before Mena sees her. Out again in the heavy November drizzle, she knows only one place to hide.

His door is open, the room dark beyond it. Here there are carpets on the floor and books, too, big heavy square things stacked all over, spilling from the tables, piled on the chairs, sitting upright or tilted or upside-down on the shelves. It smells of candle wax and ink and the books' leather covers. She is the only other person he lets in here, and she often sits underneath his desk, playing with his compass, listening to him mumble aloud as he reads.

She knows she is leaving footprints on the carpets as she runs toward the desk in the middle of the room and her grandfather, stooped over it. She wraps both arms tight around his leg, feeling the hardness of his kneecap against her cheek, just as Mena bellows "Juana Inés!" from the kitchen.

"Abuelo," she whispers, looking up at him, and he grins.

"Sh. Sit here." He picks her up and carries her quickly to the other side of the room. He smells comfortably of cinnamon and tabacco, and he sets her behind a stack of books in the corner from where she can peep out at the rest of the room. He returns to his desk, winks at her in the glow of his candle. Moments later, there is Mena, hands on hips, blocking the light from the door.

"Sir?" Grandfather pretends not to hear her. "Sir. Where is she?" Mena twists her hands in her apron. The old man makes her nervous, with his books and his mechanical implements, his carved stones and animal skulls, his strange sense of humor. Once she heard that he had argued with a priest about Scripture. She could not read, but if she could, no bribe on this earth could entice her to do that; not her or any other Christian soul she knew. She had crossed herself when she heard the story, but now she has to be polite.

"Where is who?" he asks, lowering his eyebrows at her. It is not too hard for him to suppress a smile- he is good at looking irritated.

Mena knows perfectly well that the little brat Juana is in here, knows that he knows, too. "Do you know where Juana Inés is. Don Ramirez. Sir."

"No. Of course not- I don't bother myself with children." He turns his back on her to dismiss her, and when she does not leave, he adds, "Or servants, either."

Juana watches from behind her concealing stack of books. Mena opens her mouth, shuts it, makes a half-hearted gesture toward the floor. Her eyes rake around the dim corners of the room, and Juana presses herself more tightly into her little corner.

In a moment, Juana peeks again, her cheek pressed against the sleek leather spine of one of the books. Mena is no longer there. The daylight from the open doorway now falls across the carpets, its path lighting a messy trail of small smeared footprints that lead directly to where her grandfather is standing.