Catrina removed the black-and-white pendant from her purse. She held the white side toward the moon and the black side toward the sun. A ray of sunlight broke away and reached for the pendant. As it did, the moon reached out as well. Both made contact at the very same moment—a flash of gold and silver.
Catrina lowered the pendant, admiring the smattering of silver dots that now glittered on the white side and the flecks of gold embedded on the black side. She handed it to Life.
“And did you notice?” he said. “The white side is smooth and cool to the touch. The black side seems to be radiating heat.”
“A truly remarkable gift,” Catrina said.
“That it is.” Life returned the pendant to Catrina, and the two friends descended the steep steps of the pyramid arm in arm. They took their time, ambling in silence across the vast lawn with all its tombs and pyramids as the ancestral ghosts vanished in the growing light.
Soon the area would be swarming with tourists, but at that moment, as they made their way to a wooden table set up for picnics, it was a peaceful sanctuary for the two friends and a friendly cat, which dropped a mouse at Life’s feet. The mouse was not quite dead, and Life gently pressed a finger upon its quivering fur. With a squeak, the mouse jumped and scampered away.
Before the cat could follow in pursuit, Life ran his fingers along the cat’s fur.
“It was a generous gift,” he told the cat, now purring contentedly. “Thank you.”
Catrina gazed into the small silver mirror displaying Clara’s unfolding fate.
“The girl has surprised me,” she admitted. “I did not anticipate her courage.”
“I don’t think she anticipated it, either,” Life replied. He pulled out the tablas and the cards.
“I suppose we all need help seeing the truth within us.” Catrina smiled. “Even if that help comes in painful ways.”
“Indeed,” Life agreed.
A bird flitted over to the table. The cat made a leap for it, and the bird fled to Catrina’s shoulder. Before it could utter a chirp, Catrina pressed a bony finger on its quivering feathers, and the bird unraveled into many colorful threads that then embroidered themselves onto the sleeve of her dress. An exact replica of the little bird now perched on a cluster of stitched roses.
“Shall we continue?” Life asked.
Catrina nodded, and Life flipped the top card from the Lotería deck. “AL VER A LA VERDE RANA, QUÉ BRINCO PEGÓ TU HERMANA.”
“WHAT A JUMP YOUR SISTER GAVE WHEN SHE SAW THE GREEN FROG.” Catrina shook her head. “There is no frog on my tabla.”
“Or mine,” Life replied.
He uttered the next riddle: “EL QUE POR LA BOCA MUERE, AUNQUE MUDO FUERE.”
“THE ONE WHO DIES BY ITS MOUTH, EVEN IF IT CANNOT SPEAK. A reference to the fish.”
A petal landed on Catrina’s tabla as she bent her head over it, looking for the fish. She plucked the petal off the board and gave it to the wind. “Alas, no fish.” She peered over at Life’s tabla. “You?”
Life shook his head and flipped over a third card. “ROSITA, ROSAURA, VEN QUE TE QUIERO AHORA.”
“ROSITA, ROSAURA, COME BECAUSE I WANT YOU NOW,” Catrina repeated. “The rose!”
As she spoke the word, a new rose bloomed on her crown.
“Finally!” Life placed a black bean on the image of a blood-red rose.
“And so the story resumes,” Catrina declared.
A raccoon was in the tunnel on his way back from the garden when he felt the ground moving around him. Thinking he was being punished for his act of thievery, he dropped the food he’d filched and scurried away. But he didn’t get far, for there was a tangle of vines blocking his passage. A creature appeared to be caught up in it. Muffled cries came from the vines, and the raccoon inched closer to inspect the creature.
A hand reached for the raccoon, who instantly pulled back.
“Wait!” a voice called out. “Please help me.”
Unfortunately, it was not in this raccoon’s nature to be helpful. Indeed, he was rather greedy, selfish, and sometimes quite mean. As soon as he realized that the rumble of dirt wasn’t a threat, he retreated and recovered his bounty. From a distance he watched as Clara struggled to disentangle herself. Her efforts were in vain, as the vines gripped her tight. Eventually, she had to stop to catch her breath. By then, the raccoon was losing his patience: he was hungry and eager to get home.
Clutching his food with one paw, the raccoon approached Clara, sniffing for a way around her.
“Hey,” Clara called out again, reaching toward him, perhaps in an effort to steal his food.
Fearful of the girl’s intentions, the raccoon clutched the food tighter and dug into the dirt by her feet. It was slow going, as he refused to release his bounty, but eventually he managed to carve a passage in the wall alongside the girl. The whole time, she struggled and continued to call for help. However, the raccoon had other plans, and he focused entirely on his task.
As the passage grew larger, the raccoon became more excited and dug faster, until he cleared a space just wide enough for his slender body to squeeze past—that is, had he been willing to leave the food behind. But the greedy raccoon was not willing to consider that.
In his eagerness to expand the hole, he had alerted the vines to a new intruder. The vines, which did not discriminate among intruders, shifted their focus to him and loosened their hold on Clara.
When the raccoon felt the first vine gripping his hind leg, he tried to pull away with a jerk, but that only made the vine cling to him tighter. He responded by clutching the food even more greedily and digging with a fiercer determination.
Other vines released Clara’s body and moved to ensnare the greedy creature. As they did, Clara was able to slither out of the tangle. One vine wrapped itself around the raccoon’s leg, and another quickly took hold of his body. By then, Clara had escaped her trap completely, which was now nothing more than a loose coil slithering toward the new captive.
Clara was nearly free when the raccoon whimpered. But she had wasted so much time already and did not want to get caught in the netting again.
“Help me!” the raccoon cried out. “Please.”
Clara stopped, and without giving herself time to change her mind, she turned back for the trapped animal.
She thrust her hands into the tangle of vines and pulled with all her might, making an opening wide enough for the raccoon to squeeze through.
“Run!” she called as the vines writhed in her hands, like snakes coming to life. “Leave the food!”
But the selfish creature refused to let go of his stash, and he couldn’t fit through the gap with such a large bundle.
“Make it bigger!” he cried as the vines wound their way around Clara’s wrist.
“I’m sorry!” She swatted at the vines, yanking her arms away from their grip, then turned and fled from their onslaught. The telltale shifting of earth at her feet left no doubt in her mind that the vines were in hot pursuit, but the exit was close. With a final push, she flung herself out into the light, landing with a crash in a patch of brambles.
Scrambling to get away from the tunnel as quickly as possible, she pushed herself deeper into the brambles. There was no need: the vines had long since retreated to deal with the raccoon, who had chosen to live by greed and, in so doing, sealed his fate.
Clara would never know it, but the fawn’s statement about good deeds having their own value had proved true once more. Had Clara not gone back to help the raccoon and spent those extra seconds trying to persuade him to forgo his food, she would have exited the tunnel right at the moment the man in red approached Esteban, lying on the ground not two feet away.
“Come now,” she would have heard the man in red say, not unkindly. “The king awaits, and with him your mother.”
And t
hen Esteban would have turned and seen Clara. And the man in red would have seen her, too. Had that all happened, it would have made for a very different story. As it was, the man in red helped Esteban to his feet, brushed the dirt off the boy’s clothes, and handed him a treat wrapped in shiny tinfoil.
“Eat this,” he said. “It’ll make you feel better.”
Esteban unwrapped the foil to find a small polvorón tucked inside it; the crumbly sugar-dusted cookie was his mother’s favorite. Without a second thought, he popped it into his mouth. As the cookie dissolved on his tongue, it seemed to take with it all of Esteban’s worries and concerns.
A smile crawled across the face of the man in red. “Shall we?”
The boy didn’t hesitate and gladly accepted the devil’s hand, following him up to the pink castle.
But Clara missed all of that. Instead, she was lying in a heap among the briars, struggling to catch her breath as her eyes adjusted to the light.
A massive structure of pink and crumbling stone rose high above the trees. Where Esteban had seen a perfectly trimmed and orderly garden, Clara saw a wild disarray of once tended-to plants now being overrun by the jungle.
Faded benches lined the garden, and broken bird feeders hung from trees. An old basket nearby bulged with pears, brown and rotting. A pair of rusted shears caught the light.
Clara peeked through the bushes, expecting to see people walking around, but there was no one. She crawled out of her spot, keeping low to the ground and in the shadows. The thorns pulled at her hair and scratched her skin. She stifled a cry.
Once free of the brambles, she pressed her back to the vine-covered wall that encircled the garden and listened for voices. There were only birds and the distant trickle of water.
Clara inched toward the castle, stopping every now and then to listen.
“What are you doing?”
The voice was quiet, only a murmur, but it made Clara freeze in her tracks. Slowly she looked around for the source of the words.
I must be imagining things. She took a moment to steady her heart and catch a few breaths.
“Why are you here?” The voice spoke once more.
And once again Clara looked around but saw nothing. “Where are you?” she whispered.
“Up here,” the voice replied.
Clara squinted into the sky. A cluster of roses rustled overhead, though there was no wind to move them.
Clara stood and examined the roses more closely.
“That’s right,” the voice said, and one of the blooms quivered. “You found me!” Then it added, “What are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for my cousin,” Clara replied. “I think he might be here….” She looked around. “Somewhere.”
“A young boy?” the rose asked. “Looking for his mother?”
“Yes!” Clara gasped. “That’s him. Did you see him?”
“I did,” the rose replied. “But he’s not yours to take. He belongs to El Diablo now.”
“No,” Clara said. “That man took Esteban! He stole him right out of his bed.”
The rose giggled, and it seemed to Clara that the whole bush shared in the laughter.
“Shhh!” Clara begged.
The bush fell silent.
“El Diablo doesn’t take people. They follow him,” the rose explained. “There’s a difference.”
“Well…El Diablo tricked Esteban into following him,” Clara replied.
“Maybe,” the rose said. “But the boy walked in here all on his own. It was his choice. I saw him.”
It was pointless to argue with a flower, and Clara was wasting valuable time. “Look, I just want to get my cousin back. Do you know where he is?”
“You’ll never be able to rescue him,” the rose said.
“Why not?”
“You’re just a kid.”
A renewed wave of laughter swept through the roses.
“You’re no match for El Diablo.”
Doubt slid its talons into Clara, attempting to get a firm grip. Of course, it was true: she was just a kid, and this magical world was wholly unfamiliar to her. It was clear El Diablo ruled here, and who knew what forces he had on his side.
And yet…
I’ve made it this far.
Despite all odds, Clara had managed to follow Esteban through a cactus and across an unfamiliar kingdom, all the way to this castle. She was not about to give up now.
“Please just tell me where he is,” she said.
“What will you give me in return?”
“What do you want?”
“Those shears,” the rose growled. Clara turned her gaze toward the basket heaped with pears and the rusty scissors. “Throw them over the wall!”
Clara scanned the garden to make sure nobody was watching and then sprinted to the basket. Up close, the pears looked as if they were made of glass imbedded with swirls of yellow and green. Her hands wrapped around the scissors, and she ran back to the wall of roses.
The flowers rustled anxiously, their petals fluttering frantically in the nonexistent breeze.
“Throw them over the wall!” the rose cried again.
Clara hurled the shears over the wall and heard them catch on a tangle of vegetation on the other side.
The flowers cheered, and a heady perfume wafted into the air.
“Okay, I did what you wanted. Now, where is he?” Clara demanded.
“He’s in the castle,” the rose replied.
Clara looked at the pink structure, held up precariously by crumbling pillars and slanting floors. “There’s nobody there. It’s empty.”
“Ha! That is a trick. To keep people like you away.”
Clara frowned. “How do I get in, then?”
“You have to be escorted in. As a guest,” the rose told her, “or a prisoner.”
“But how do I—”
Before she could finish her question, the blossoms on the wall erupted into a cacophony of wailing and screeching. Clara dropped to her knees and covered her ears.
Instantly, a swarm of guards spilled out of the castle and raced toward her, surrounding her in a matter of seconds.
One of the guards grabbed Clara and yanked her to her feet.
“You’re welcome!” the rose called after her.
Esteban climbed the grand staircase leading to the castle entrance. Long ribbons of color flew from flag posts atop the castle, and flags waved proudly on twin poles flanking the entrance. The door was inlaid with tiny pieces of wood intricately arranged to form the spiral of a conch.
A guard bowed in greeting as the man in red led Esteban through the foyer and into a great hall.
The chamber they entered was circular, with walls that seemed to vanish into the sky. Glittering sunlight spilled into the room, and birds chased each other in and out of the angled shafts of light. A fresh breeze swept through, trailing the scent of jasmine.
A ramp with a gleaming silver railing wound upward along the wall in an ever-rising spiral. People ambled along the ramp, talking and laughing, strolling in and out of rooms with different-colored doors. In the center of the chamber, a silver fountain bubbled directly out of the ground. It fed into three canals, which streamed into three separate wings of the castle. Music drifted from one of the wings, and it was toward the music that the man in red led Esteban.
“Where are we going?” the boy asked.
“To your room,” the man replied.
A faint echo of Esteban’s premonition pulsed inside his body, clamoring for attention. But his senses were dulled from a combination of the awe he felt at the marvels before him and the aftereffects of the crumbly cookie, making him dizzy and very sleepy. Snippets of his mother’s song called to him from somewhere not too distant.
He followed the man in red along the can
al that led to the left and under an archway leading to a second large hall, circular and sunny like the first, only smaller. The silver water burbled cheerfully alongside them, eventually feeding into a fountain in the center of the room.
Gathered around the fountain was a trio of musicians: a harpist, a cellist, and a flautist. As they played, their notes had an odd effect on the water, making it undulate and form whirlpools that turned into fantastical shapes.
An animal with an S-shaped neck and long slender legs sprung from the water. Strong wings spread out on either side of its body, and the bird took flight. As the music continued, more and more water birds rose into the air.
“Herons,” the man in red explained. Esteban watched the birds, catching the rays of sun on their wings and casting diamonds of water at his feet. The herons danced until the music ended, and then they simply vanished, leaving behind a spray of rainbow drops.
“Bravo!” The man in red clapped when the trio finished their performance. “Bravo!”
The three musicians bowed, then took up their instruments once more. Esteban turned his gaze to the water in anticipation of the next performance, but the man put his hand on Esteban’s shoulder and led him away.
“Come,” he said. “We must get you ready.”
Esteban nodded dreamily, vaguely aware of the ache in his belly. He followed the man up the sloping path along the wall, all the while running his hand along the silky-smooth silver banister. The friction created a sound, a single note that reverberated throughout the chamber.
On their way, they passed dozens of people. All bowed or curtsied to the man in red, but nobody gave Esteban a second glance.
“Here we are,” the man said, abruptly stopping at a bright yellow door. He took a key from his jacket pocket. It was a long metal cylinder with a trefoil at one end. It fit smoothly into a round keyhole next to the door. With one quick turn of the key, the door vanished.
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