“We’ve already given our blood,” Clara told them.
Life shook his head. “We are not here to take your life.”
“What do you want, then?”
“To give you this.” Catrina held out the pendant. The white side was facing up, and light rose from the small circle, illuminating the cavern with moonlight.
A child on a nearby island gasped.
Catrina flipped the pendant over to the black side. Sunlight glowed from her palm. It lit up the years of moss and mold and drippings that had flourished on the dark walls, but it also filled the cavern with unexpected warmth.
“It’s beautiful.” Clara accepted the token. “Thank you.”
“We also offer a prize,” Life added.
“A prize?” Clara frowned. “Is this a trick?”
Life shook his head. “This is no trick, child. We are here to grant you the gift of a long life.”
“A long life?” Clara pulled back. She swung her gaze around the dark cave and the islands with haunted children. “Here?”
Life sighed.
“I—I thought you said this was a prize.” Clara’s voice trembled. “That’s not a prize; it’s a punishment.” She moved as far back as she could on her little spot of floating mud. “I don’t want anything from you.”
“It is yours, and you must accept it,” Life replied.
“Why me? Give the prize to someone else, someone in a different place.”
“We didn’t choose you, child,” Catrina explained. “A cold and ancient breeze, shaped by forces far more powerful than us, found a window opened at just the right time.”
“It was pure chance,” Life said.
“I would say it was destiny,” Catrina replied.
Clara recalled that morning, so very long ago, when she found a tangle of silver wrapped around her braids.
“But…I didn’t ask for any of this,” she said.
“Indeed, destiny cares little for our desires,” Catrina replied.
“Well, I don’t want your prize,” Clara said. “Or your gift.” She held out the pendant, but Catrina refused it.
Resigned to a truth he could not deny, Life whispered, “I’m afraid you have no choice.”
Clara blinked rapidly. “But why not? I don’t understand.” The acoustics of the cavern amplified her words.
“Life dealt you these cards,” Catrina said. “It is how your story unfolds.” She paused briefly before adding, “You’ve never had a choice.”
Clara thought back to all that had transpired in the last days. It was true, in a way. She hadn’t had a choice about the tree or the scorpion or Chita dying; or about Esteban being transported to this world; or about her being trapped by the vines and captured by El Diablo’s men. And there were other things, events that had happened long before that fateful day when she opened the window and heard the bells toll.
It all led her to this place, and she hadn’t had a choice about any of it.
“W-well…” Her voice trembled, matching the tremors running through her body. “What about you?” She turned to Life. “Do you have a choice?”
Life startled.
“Do you have to give me the prize?” Clara asked.
In all the years upon years, centuries upon centuries, nobody had ever asked him this question. He had never considered that his choices were as pre-determined as those of the human pawns at the center of their game.
“I—”
“It’s unavoidable,” Catrina said. “This game must end.” She turned to Life. “Or there cannot be another.”
Catrina looked at Clara and shook her head. “I’m sorry. We must give you the prize. It’s the only way.”
“Then give me something else,” Clara begged. “Anything other than a long life in this—this awful place.” Her voice cracked. “Surely that’s a choice you can make.”
Life turned to Catrina. A smile played on his companion’s face.
“How clever,” Catrina said.
“What would you have me give you, then?” Life asked.
Clara didn’t hesitate. “A wish,” she said. “I wish that none of this had ever happened.”
Life shook his head. “You cannot change the past. It is what it is. I could send you back to the day this all began, but things would unfold in exactly the same way, and we would find ourselves here once more, facing the very same dilemma.”
“There is no point in reliving such sorrow,” Catrina added.
“Well, then…” Clara looked around at all the children. “I wish for you to free us. Send all of us home, back where we came from.”
Life sighed, a deeply regretful sound. “Those are multiple wishes, one for each. I can gift only one.”
“So…you can free only one of us.” Clara’s voice was hardly a whisper.
“If that’s what you want,” Life said.
“It is,” Clara replied. The words carried a certainty she had not felt in a very long time, and she spoke them before her fear caught up with her. “I wish for you to save Esteban. Send him to my parents, make him forget everything that happened.”
“Clara!” Esteban cried. “No. I won’t leave without you.”
Clara turned to her little cousin, her number one fan and supporter; the one who had always known, even when she herself did not, that she was the brave one, capable of great things. She looked at all the giggling children reaching for the butterflies.
“Listen,” she told Esteban. “And remember this: we may not have a choice about what happens to us. We didn’t ask for any of this.” She extended her arm, pointing across the lake. “We didn’t choose to end up in this dark and broken place. But there is nothing we can do to change the fact that this is where we are.”
Esteban sobbed quietly.
“The thing is, even if we had no choice about what happened to us, we still get to decide what to do about it.” Clara pointed at the butterflies blinking overhead. “I choose not to let the terribleness of this place be the end of my story. Or yours.”
She turned back to Life. “I’ve made my decision. I want to free Esteban.”
Life nodded. There was no flash of lightning or shimmering in the air, no tear in the fabric of time. Life simply held out his hand to Esteban and helped him into the small boat.
“I love you!” Esteban cried.
“I love you, too.” Clara forced the words past the tight knot in her chest.
She pushed the canoe away. Life gave her a small nod, and a petal drifted off Catrina’s crown of roses as she inclined her head in parting. The petal floated on the dark water for a brief moment before being devoured by the lake.
Clara watched the boat until the tunnel swallowed up the three figures. And then her heart split open, flooding her in sorrow.
As the canoe traversed the dark tunnel, it fell into a gently swaying motion that lulled Esteban to sleep. It was in this state of slumber that Life plucked out Esteban’s memories, one by one, and dropped them into the river, where they quietly dissolved. But he made sure to keep Clara’s parting words intact. Even if we had no choice about what happened to us, we still get to decide what to do about it.
Despite all odds, despite the unbroken chain of events that had led the girl to this one moment over which she had no control, she had nevertheless managed to make a choice.
As if she were reading his thoughts, Catrina said, “Remarkable.”
Life looked up at her.
“I did not expect to find such hope and courage amidst so much darkness,” Catrina said, turning her gaze back down the tunnel toward the cluster of islands.
Life nodded. Even at this distance they could pick up the red glints of butterflies.
“Or the ultimate proof of free will,” Catrina added.
“The girl’s choice?” Life
asked.
Catrina shook her head. “No. Yours.”
“Mine?”
A smile spread across Catrina’s face.
“All this time,” she said, “thousands of years, we’ve been trapped in this endless game, trapped in this endless conversation.”
Life nodded, urging her on.
“We always seek a pawn over whom we deliver an inevitable verdict. Never once did we consider that we—not the people with whose lives we play—are the pawns in this game.” She shook her head and laughed.
And it was true. The game always followed the same rules: a victim was identified, never chosen; the cards were shuffled and flipped, never chosen; the result was inevitable, never chosen.
“And yet today,” she went on, “for the first time in eternity, a choice has been made. You chose a different fate for the child.”
Catrina paused, and a deep silence marked the enormity of what had transpired.
“I suppose you’re right,” Life finally conceded. “Although it is not a fate to be envied.”
“No, indeed, it is not,” Catrina replied. “But I wonder. There may yet be a way out for the girl.”
“A way out?” Life asked.
“Another choice to be made,” Catrina said.
In his slumber, Esteban stirred, mumbling something unintelligible. “My dear friend,” Catrina said. “The girl may think her ultimate choice was granting the boy’s freedom. But she made another, even more important choice.”
“Oh?”
Catrina pointed across the water. “You and I, we look around and see darkness and despair. The girl, she looks at the same thing but sees hope. We see the inevitable conclusion of a game; she sees an opportunity to transform.”
Catrina turned back to Life. “She is bound by the same circumstances that enslave all the children here, but she chooses to see a different paradigm, one in which she need not be defeated.”
Defeated. The word echoed down the tunnel, away from the canoe slipping through the darkness.
“What’s more,” Catrina went on, “her choice liberated you.”
“In what sense?”
Death smiled. “We have been playing this game for an eternity, constrained by what we thought to be its strict rules.”
“The rules are unchangeable,” Life said.
“In the same way that the children’s present circumstances are unchangeable.” She pointed toward the children’s islands. “These circumstances may describe the moment, but they do not define it.”
“So what defines it?”
“The choices they make.”
Life looked past Catrina toward the dots of islands in the distance.
“This place is what it is: a cavern of squalor, despair, and hopelessness,” Catrina continued. “But the girl’s choice also makes it a place of beauty and wonder. In so doing, she has given these circumstances a different meaning.”
“And the game?” Life asked.
“It, too, is what it is,” Catrina replied. “But your choice has given it a different meaning; it has opened up a world of opportunities for those who receive your gift.”
Life nodded.
“And it opens up a world of opportunities for us as well,” Catrina added.
“How so?”
Catrina sat up straighter and fanned her skirts around her. “I, too, choose to give this game a different meaning.”
She adjusted the crown of flowers on her head. “But we must go back and speak to the girl. In the end, it is she who must decide.”
It had been only an hour, though it felt as if an entire lifetime had been lived. The boat drifted to a stop at its mooring. Catrina stepped out first, and Life followed, carrying Esteban in his arms. Once they were on steady ground, Life snapped his fingers, whisking them away from the king’s castle and depositing them in Chita’s backyard, where the sun was just announcing its morning arrival.
Neighbors and family alike had searched Santa María del Tule and the surrounding towns through the night for Clara and Esteban. Not an hour earlier, the last of the search party had withdrawn to catch a few hours of sleep. They slumbered fitfully, blanketed in sadness.
In the kitchen, Juana had fallen asleep at the table while making tortillas in preparation for another day of searching. Her head rested on her arm, covered in masa flour, and in her hand she clutched a ball of dough.
The movement of Catrina’s dress as it brushed against the plants startled Juana out of her sleep. She sat up and looked out the window, where she saw a beautiful woman and a dapper man holding Esteban in his arms.
“Oh!” she gasped, and raced out to the garden. “You found him!”
Life nodded and handed the sleeping boy into Juana’s waiting arms. Her eyes asked a question that her lips could not yet formulate.
“We didn’t find the girl,” Catrina said, which was a lie, of course, but kinder than the truth.
Catrina had returned to the island and given Clara the choice of death—to join her then and escape her circumstances altogether. But Clara had refused, not because she feared death. Rather, it was “for the children,” she had said. “If I go now, they’ll be all alone.” She pointed at the kaleidoscope of firelit wings flitting from island to island. Small hands reached out playfully, a giggle caught flight on a cold gust of wind. “If I stay, I can at least give them…something.”
“Hope,” Catrina said.
Clara had nodded, and with that she sealed her fate.
“I’m sorry,” Life now told Juana.
Juana sighed deeply. “Thank you for bringing him home.” Then she added, “Would you like some coffee or…something to eat?”
Life shook his head. “You’re kind to offer, but it’s been a long night and it’s time for us to go.”
“I understand.” Juana nodded.
Life and Death watched as Juana carried Esteban into the house and set him gently on the couch. They watched as she covered the boy with a warm blanket and sat down beside him, placing her hand protectively against his body.
“It seems our work here is done,” Life said.
“I believe it is,” his partner agreed.
Life, dressed in his black suit and vest with a crisp white shirt and the tiniest hint of red peeking out of his jacket pocket, smiled at his companion.
“Until we meet again.”
“Until then.” She gathered a blossom from her crown and pinned it to his lapel.
He gave a solemn bow, and with a snap of his fingers, the two friends vanished.
Esteban would wake many hours later with no recollection of what had transpired during his fateful journey to Las Pozas. The only vestiges of the adventure were a deep ache in his heart whenever he thought of Clara and a vague image of butterflies glittering in the darkness.
* * *
The family never stopped searching for Clara, and Clara did return—one last time.
After Life and Death had departed the cavern, taking Esteban with them, Clara continued to share her magic with the children. The two-headed dragon stayed faithfully by her side, breathing light into her creations. In this way the years drained from her body as the cavern filled with stars and dragonflies, fish with wings, and birds with petals for feathers.
But for every flutter of glowing wings or sprig of snowcapped roses, her heart would suffer the knowledge of life fleeing her body. Within two months, she was an old woman. Sometimes despair would fall upon her, threatening to crush what little hope she kept alive. Then she would place the black-and-white pendant on her palm to give them all a moonlit moment or the memory of the rising sun.
As for the king, in an inevitable turn of events (for it is well known that every act has consequences, as does every promise that is broken), his betrayal cost him his kingdom. Having betrayed Clara and Esteban, the king
promptly forgot everything Clara told him. By the time El Diablo returned, the king was busy studying a set of unicorn horns, and he dismissed the plotting fiend with a wave of his hand. Thus, he was not prepared when El Diablo launched his attack.
The creatures from the catacombs, released at last from their entrapment, relished their newfound freedom and overran the king’s palace with devastating swiftness. The king was dethroned and put in a little red canoe. He was then taken to an island in the center of the black lake.
The children on the islands watched the entourage approach. The youthful king’s eyes widened as he took in the oppressive darkness of his new home; his attempted plea for help became a strangled cry of despair.
The children on the lake were returned to their homes. Many, like Clara, had lived their final years in the dark cavern. But for the other children, their remaining years were full of love. They often talked about the girl who had made butterflies and roses and fairies out of sadness, and Clara’s small acts of hope would go on to play a role in the lives of many.
But those are stories for another time.
On this last day, Death was waiting for Clara when she finally departed the Kingdom of Las Pozas and returned to Oaxaca City. The oppressive heat that had kept the city hostage for so long had finally abated; its heavy cloak lifted and was replaced by a cool breeze. The morning sky was unfurling in ribbons of pale pink and peach, cut through by the early rays of golden sun.
The day was just beginning, and nobody saw the old woman with a dragon on her shoulder walk out of the trunk of a gnarled tree, or the woman with the crown of roses waiting for her.
“Thank you,” Clara said.
She had refused Catrina’s gift when it was offered. However, knowing it was inevitable that she would meet Catrina again, Clara had asked for something else instead: an extra day, when the time came, to say goodbye.
Death and Clara found a seat on a bench facing the robin’s-egg-blue house. It wasn’t long before the door opened and Juana stepped out on her way to the mercado. A wave of profound love tore through Clara’s chest, releasing the tears she had not allowed herself to shed in her role as magic maker for the children. A moment later, the door opened once more, and Esteban ran out. He called to Juana, who stopped and extended her hand. She smiled when Esteban caught up with her.
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