by Alex Aster
“You’re going to make yourself sick,” he said, watching Engle finish his entire drink in a single gulp, then toss the cup in a trash barrel.
Engle proudly rubbed his middle. “This stomach’s a fighter,” he said. “Has served me well for a dozen years. I don’t plan on it failing me tonight.”
Tor shrugged.
Instead of worrying about what would happen if his wish didn’t come true, he now considered what would happen if it did. He hadn’t told his parents about wanting to be rid of his leadership emblem, let alone the fact that he wanted to be a water-breather instead. Now that seemed like a mistake. He had gone behind their backs.
Selfish. The word bubbled up in his throat, ready to be spoken aloud. He was so selfish. For months, he had only thought about how much he had wanted his wish. He should have considered someone other than himself.
But he deserved to be happy. And if his parents truly loved him, they would understand that.
Tor blinked as someone snapped their fingers in front of his nose.
“Are you in or not?” Engle asked.
“In for what?”
“Sneaking your mom’s copy of Cuentos. It has the vanor story, doesn’t it?” The Book of Cuentos was a collection of stories they had grown up reading as children, myths of curses and creatures.
But the tales they knew were watered-down, simplified. The worst parts taken out. The true tales were dark and deadly…the stuff of nightmares. His mother’s book held the true stories.
Of course Tor was in.
The Cave of Cosas
Once upon a boiling cauldron, there was a cave. The Cave of Cosas was not to be entered—though there was no door keeping anyone out. Cielo’s mother had warned him to never even walk in its shadow.
It’s cursed. Every piece of it.
Cielo listened. For a while. But then summer came, and he spent his afternoons in the fields around the cave, where the grass was so long it brushed his sides as he moved through it, running his hand along its top, like petting the back of a giant beast.
One night, Cielo fell asleep in it. When he awoke, the moon was a pearl above him, and stars blinked hello.
And there was something else.
A voice.
No—a whisper.
Cielo…
He sat up, toward the sound.
Toward the cave.
Is someone there? he asked into the darkness.
There was a moment of silence. Then, come closer.
Cielo swallowed. Wondered if he should turn around. He could see the twinkling of candles from his village at the edge of the field. Could even see his home, if he squinted.
I have something for you.
The voice sounded sweet as milk and honey. Kind, velvety.
He took a step forward.
Just a little closer…
And Cielo kept walking, until he was at the mouth of the cave.
There was a woman, bathed in light, standing just inside. She wore flowing fabrics that changed color before his eyes. And there was a chest.
It swung open to reveal gems sparkling through the night, like stars plucked from the galaxy.
That’s for me? he asked, eyes wide. Focused on the jewels. He had never wanted anything more in his life.
You can keep whatever you can fit in your pockets, the woman said.
He took a step forward, hands already wide open, fingers curved.
But the moment he entered the cave, the woman vanished. The gems turned to dust in his palms.
Cielo stumbled backward, then gasped. The field had shriveled up, grass to dirt, crops to rocks. No, no…
He screamed out as the emblem on his wrist scabbed over and fell away—and something else formed in its place. An eye, with an iris dark as night.
A curse.
And no one ever entered the Cave of Cosas again.
3
Cursed
Tor woke up to a new year without the help of the sun shining through his window or the smell of his father’s January cakes, a stack of violet pancakes that guaranteed the family would start off the year on a sweet note. He stretched. He felt fine. Refreshed. It was a good morning.
Then, with a jolt, he remembered his wish.
A confetti of nerves burst in his chest. His arms were covered by pajamas. All he had to do was peel back his sleeve…
He did, and gasped. His emblem…
It was gone. And something sat in its place.
“Oh no,” Tor said, rubbing at his wrist. “No, no, no, no.” This could not be happening.
There was the symbol of an eye where the purple rings used to be, a marking crafted out of a dark, swirling ink. Just as he rubbed at it again, the new emblem did the unthinkable.
It blinked.
Tor barely managed to muffle a scream. He had read about this kind of marking just last night in The Book of Cuentos. His wish had clearly upset the wish-gods.
And he had been cursed for it.
Someone knocked on his door. He rushed to pull his sleeve down. “Come in,” he said, voice cracking.
Chieftess Luna poked her head inside, smiling. “How was your Eve? I heard you ran out a little early.” Tor gritted his teeth. Sometimes it felt like his mother had the entire village spying on him. It really was a wonder she still didn’t know about his swimming sessions.
A lie snaked down his tongue, ready to be spoken, but he swallowed it down. Sneaking out of last night’s festivities was the least of his worries. “Engle and I went looking for your copy of Cuentos,” he admitted.
“Ah.” She sat down at the foot of his bed. “I will assume I’ve kept it well hidden?”
He nodded sheepishly. Engle and Tor had searched all over. They’d ended up reading “The Cave of Cosas” for the hundredth time from Engle’s parents’ copy, which was missing most of its pages.
The Chieftess laughed, her head bobbing back. “If I can’t protect my own son from that frightening book, how am I supposed to protect a village?” She smiled at him. “Not to worry, you’ll study them at some point. The future chief of Estrelle needs to know the island’s tales.”
Future chief.
Tor’s stomach lurched.
He didn’t have his leadership bands anymore; he was no longer eligible to be his mother’s successor. The thought brought him a crumb of relief, but mostly an unexpected tsunami of shame.
When she found out, she would be so disappointed.
“Is everything okay?” his mom asked.
“Everything’s great,” he said. He didn’t want to lie, but what choice did he have? “I just want this new year to go smoothly.”
His mother’s eyes softened. “It will,” she said encouragingly. “Your lifeline says so. You’re to have a nice, comfortable life.”
Tor almost wanted to laugh—or possibly cry.
If he was destined to have a boring life, how could he have been cursed? Was his wish truly so terrible?
She stood. “Your father is at the restaurant early, and I’m off to the office.” She always had an early morning meeting the day after Eve, to discuss how the event had gone. “January cakes are on the table.” He received one last encouraging smile before she left. A few moments later, the front door closed. Rosa had already left for chorus, so Tor was alone.
He paced around his room, then around the kitchen, then around the family’s dinner table. As if walking in large circles was a dance that could fix all of his problems.
No, no, no, no. Even if curses had at some point in time been real, they should have died out, like trolls and gnomes. They should have been a thing of the past, like the plague…or strange haircuts. Right?
He lifted his sleeve just a little. The eye stared back at him.
No, this curse was very real.
The front
door flew open, and Tor jumped about two feet into the air. It was Engle, holding his stomach. “Staying home from school today,” he mumbled, his expression pained. “Think I ate a little bit too much last night. Do you have miel tea?”
Under normal circumstances, Tor might have said something to the effect of I told you so. But today, his eyes widened and heart dropped as Engle’s own all-seeing eyes found his wrist.
His friend’s pained expression quickly shifted into one of disbelief. “No,” he said, eyebrows nearly to his hairline.
Tor sighed. “Yes.”
Engle ran Mr. Luna’s cooking rag in hot water and wiped it roughly against Tor’s skin, like the eye was ink that could be rubbed away with enough effort. When that didn’t work, he tried using his palm for good measure. After a few minutes, the eye blinked, then squinted, glaring right at them. Engle stumbled backward.
“Yeah, that’s not coming off,” he said matter-of-factly.
“What’s not coming off?”
Tor gasped, while Engle whipped around to face the front door.
“What are you doing here?” Tor asked.
“And how do you keep sneaking up on us?” Engle said, stepping to the side to shield Tor and his new mark. “Surprised she doesn’t have an invisibility emblem,” he murmured.
Melda crossed her arms. “It’s twenty minutes into class. I told Mrs. Alma I would get you.” She sighed. “You really should be thanking me. Before I offered to come here, she was talking about sending word to your mother.”
Tor put his hands together behind his back. “Well, I’m not feeling well, so if you could go back and tell Mrs. Alma, that would be great.”
Melda glared at him. “Not so fast.” She walked past Engle until she was standing right in front of Tor. She placed her hands on her hips. “Hiding something?”
Tor backed toward the kitchen. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She frowned, then examined her nails with a studied casualness. “You know, I could probably help.” There she was again, Tor thought, always trying to solve everybody else’s problems.
Engle snorted. “You?”
Melda squinted her eyes so much they resembled coin slots. “Yes, me. That,” she pointed toward Tor’s arm, “looks like a curse. And I happen to know of someone on Emblem Island who might be able to help you.”
Tor flinched, wondering how Melda had gotten a look at the eye. He needed to be more careful. If word spread that he had been cursed, his reputation in town would be finished. He would have to leave Estrelle. He might even be sent to one of the more intense, stricter schools in the east. One miles away from any ocean…
Not only that, but what would happen to his parents? Would his mother have to step down as Chieftess?
Engle tilted his head to the side. “And where might that person live?”
She grinned, twirling one of the many blue ribbons in her hair between her fingers. “I’m not saying unless I get to come.”
Engle opened his mouth, undoubtedly about to say something like absolutely not, when Tor cut him off.
“Fine,” he said, making Engle sigh. He didn’t have time to play games. If Melda really knew someone who could help him remove the curse, he needed to find them, and preferably before dinner. He packed all the money he had into his backpack, in case this person wanted payment.
Tor turned to Melda, who wore a pleased look on her pointed, heart-shaped face, and wondered if he would regret his next few words.
“Lead the way.”
4
The Hermit’s Hut
Melda wouldn’t say a word about where she was taking Tor and Engle. The corners of her lips turned up deviously, as if she took great pleasure in knowing something they didn’t. Of course she did, Tor thought. This was Melda, after all, the same girl who for the past six years had taken any opportunity to make herself look better than him in class.
“If you won’t tell us where, at least tell us who,” Engle said as they stepped into the forest. They had used the house’s back door, leading directly into the woods. The last thing Tor wanted was to be spotted by Mrs. Guava, the nosy, porch-knitting neighbor who lived one tree over.
“Well, she’s a bit of a hoarder,” Melda said, squinting at the sky, looking like she was trying to find another word to describe the woman. “A collector, if you want to put it nicely.”
Engle scrunched his nose. “And what exactly does she collect?”
“Information. She knows everything about everything.”
Tor stopped dead in his tracks. “She’s a know-all?” The owl-shaped emblem of a know-all was one of the rarest marks gifted.
“We haven’t had one of those near Estrelle for years, as far as I know,” Engle said. Tor nodded in agreement. He looked to Melda.
She shrugged. “She’s a bit of a hermit. Doesn’t get out much. And she is a know-all.”
Tor straightened. He never thought he would meet one in the flesh. They tended to reside in big cities, as advisers to the leaders there. “How did you find her?”
She grinned widely and Tor sighed, preparing himself for a long story. He guessed she wasn’t used to having an audience. “Well, I was looking for a source for a paper last year. The one about significant political events in the last century?” She glanced at Tor, and he nodded, even though he had no idea what she was talking about. Probably because he hadn’t written that paper. “Well, I was writing mine on the great droughts of Tortuga Bay, and how it was impacting their economy—they live mostly on oysters you know, and—”
Engle groaned. “The short version, please.”
Melda’s mouth formed a tight line. “I had one of the students with a tracking emblem help me locate a book I needed, one that had been checked out of the library for twenty years. Turns out, the know-all had it.” She crossed her arms in front of her.
“See, that wasn’t too hard, was it?” Engle said.
She shot him a glare in response.
Tor snuck a look at his wrist. Some part of him hoped the eye would simply have disappeared…and that they could all go to school.
School. He almost wanted to laugh. He had never wanted to sit in Mrs. Alma’s class more in his life.
He gulped when he found that the eye still sat on his wrist, opened wide. Taunting him.
Melda pressed a finger against it, making Tor rip his arm away.
“Don’t do that,” he yelled. The eye blinked a few times, angry.
“Sorry,” she said, looking at her fingertip as if to see if it had left a mark.
They walked the rest of the way in silence, Engle kicking up dirt with each step. After a couple of thunderous stomach growls, he groaned. “How far is this place? I’m starving.” He seemed to have recovered from his stomachache rather quickly. He sniffed the air like a dog that had just caught a whiff of dinner. “Do you smell that?”
Tor did smell that. There was something distinctly sweet in the breeze, reminding him of a cinnamon roll or one of those lavender-icing-covered donuts his father made when Rosa had a concert. Before he could stop him, Engle was off, following the smell like it would lead him to a mound of treasure.
“Wait!” Melda yelled, falling far behind. She said a few other things, too, but Tor couldn’t make out the words as he rushed to catch up.
A few more trees and a close encounter with a low branch later, Tor found Engle in front of a hut. It was built out of branches and leaves, blending in with the surrounding woods. Vines crept in and out of the windows, tying themselves all around the base, like the house had been taken hostage by the forest.
Melda skidded to a stop behind them, huffing and puffing as though she had run a much farther distance than they had. She was trying to say something, but through all of the heavy breathing and wheezing, Tor couldn’t understand a word of it.
They all cried out at t
he same time. A cat as tall as two of them put together and covered in what looked like spikes careened through a window and blocked their path.
The front door flew open, and a small, rounded woman stuck her red face out. “Back, Whiskers!” she yelled. The cat froze, just a foot away from the trio. Tor swore he could hear his own heart beating. A moment later, the creature’s eyes closed, and its spikes—which Tor now recognized as raised fur—began to settle down, making it look half as large. It was made of mostly hair.
“That’s a barbed malkin,” Engle whispered, voice trembling in a mixture of awe and fear.
Once the animal crept back inside the hut, fitting through an impossibly small sliver in an open door, the woman frowned. “And what do you want?” she asked.
Melda stepped forward. “Um, hello, Mrs. Libra. Lovely…pet you have there. Do you remember me?”
The woman’s expression did not change. “Whiskers isn’t a pet, he’s a messenger.” Then, her tiny chia seed eyes squinted. “And of course I remember you. How could I forget the little girl that ruined my ten-year streak as a successful hermit?”
Melda laughed nervously and shoved a hand in one of her pockets. Tor wondered how Melda could afford the blue lace that trimmed her pockets.
“Sorry to disturb you—er—again. But we could really use your help.”
The woman shook her head, then started to close the door. That was when Melda pushed Tor forward.
“Show her!” she yelled.
Tor held up his arm and yanked on his sleeve.
Mrs. Libra blinked, and the cursed eye blinked back. The woman’s face paled. “Come in,” she said, holding the door open again. “Quickly.”
The moment Tor stepped inside the hut, he realized Melda’s description of Mrs. Libra as a hoarder had been a gross understatement. Towers of books reached from floor to ceiling on almost every inch of the floor and wobbled back and forth when Mrs. Libra slammed the door shut. It was a wonder they didn’t all topple over or knock into each other like giant dominoes.