—Folk song, Book of Cantos
We walk down the tunnel in silence. Rishi kicks stones out of the way. They roll like dice down our path. Nova cracks his knuckles over and over. I think the lines on his arms are stretching farther up. Why won’t he talk about it? I think about the recoil of my magic. I examine my hands. All I’ve had to show so far are bruises that have begun to fade. Passing out isn’t exactly my idea of fun, but I wonder if it’s better than permanent marks.
I listen to the steady hum of life beneath the tunnel. The stones, the minerals, even the stream that runs through the caves. I can feel all of it calling to me like a long-lost friend. Madra said the Devourer is sucking up all the life from these lands. If there is nothing left, would she try to find a new place to destroy?
“You all right, Ladybird?” Nova asks, not looking back at me.
“Just wishing I’d brought a bottle of painkillers.”
“Why can you heal others but not yourself?” Rishi asks.
“We’re not supposed to use our powers for our own benefit,” I say.
“That sucks.”
“It’s not so bad,” I lie. I should say, It isn’t as bad as Nova’s, but I don’t. I wonder why my recoil is different from his. My mom says there aren’t truly evil or good brujas. That our powers are the same blessings and it’s up to us to choose how to use them. Perhaps the marks come when a brujo uses his powers for bad. They cover Nova’s hands, forearms. They ring around his heart… Maybe I’m trying to see a good in Nova that doesn’t exist.
Rishi picks up her pace to walk at my side. She’s a funny sight in her black dress and broken black wings, but that’s what I love about her. She’s completely and unabashedly herself, no matter who’s around.
“You’re practically a bird,” I say, playfully tugging at her hair.
“That’s what I want to be in my next life,” she says. “Being people is too hard sometimes. I just want to shower in birdbaths and fly like the wind.”
Nova looks over his shoulder briefly. His bright eyes trace my face. Then he shakes his head. Whatever he might have said is dispelled into the dark of the tunnel. He keeps walking with his hands in his pockets.
“Where did tall, dark, and ugly come from?” Rishi whispers.
Ugly is the last word I’d use to describe Nova. He walks with his head down, and I try to picture him walking down the street. If I saw him walking opposite me, before I knew him, I’d probably cross to the other side. Now that I know him, I want him walking with me.
“Rishi, be nice.”
“I guess if you’re into muscles and tattoos or whatever,” Rishi says.
“He’s a family friend.”
“If that’s what you call a hired lackey.” She makes a face. “It’s like I’m seeing a whole new side of you. I’m not complaining. It’s just that you’ve been this kind of blurred version of yourself and now what I see is more crystal clear.”
“Are you freaked?”
“Do I look freaked?” She looks at me, trying to pull me into a staring contest.
I shove her playfully. “Not enough.”
Her wings brush against my arm. Nova looks at us again.
“I’m glad you’re here though,” I tell her. “You have to know that this isn’t a fairy tale.”
She slings her arm around my shoulders. “You’re magic, Alex. You’re like my human shield.”
Nova reaches the end of the tunnel first. Tiny creatures flutter through miles and miles of sharp-green grass as tall as Nova’s shoulders. The ring of sun and the crescent moon travel across the swirling, purple sky. I’m thankful the gloomy, gray rain is gone. I’m thankful the moon and sun aren’t close enough to eclipse. I’m thankful we still have time.
We cut through the wild grass. It practically swallows Rishi and me whole. Nova could pass for a disembodied head walking across the top of the emerald-green sea. Giant flowers grow in brilliant shades of red, yellow, and orange. We use our knives and the mace to part our way and keep the flower’s thorny vines from scratching our skin. Still, when we reach the road at the clearing, my arms are covered in dozens of thin scratches.
The road here is dusty and sunken in, like thousands of feet have walked across it. Who were they? I wonder. What were they searching for?
Nova reaches for something around his neck—his prex, but it’s gone. Instead, he kisses the back of his thumb. “Thank El Papa for our passage.”
Rishi gives me a sideways glance and shrugs. I’ve got no one to ask blessings to because I know in my heart I don’t deserve it. Instead, I lower my head and ask El Guardia, Protector of All Living Things, to watch over my family.
We get to the fork in twenty minutes. I press on the sides of my watch. When it beeps, Nova’s eye twitches, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he stares at the paths in front of us.
“I’m not sure about this,” he says.
“Madra said to take the right path,” I say.
“Why are you so eager to trust the birds over me?”
Rishi coughs into her hand and says something that sounds like, “Thief.”
“Let’s look at this objectively,” I say. “The left path leads to the trail I wanted to take between Bone Valle and the Poison Garden.”
“I don’t know how I feel about bones or poison,” Rishi says.
“See?” Nova asks.
I scoff. “Now you agree with each other.”
The left fork looks bulldozed, cleared of trees and rubble.
“Now let’s look at my path,” Nova says, pointing to the one in the middle. The way is green and vibrant, lined by lush trees. White butterflies flutter by the dozens. When the wind blows, petals and leaves fall to the ground. Fuzzy animals that remind me of overgrown hamsters race from tree trunk to tree trunk. “It’s goddamn angelic is what it is.”
“I don’t know about you guys,” Rishi says, “but that third one, the ‘right’ one we’re supposed to take, doesn’t look so hot.”
She’s not wrong. The third path is out of my worst nightmares. The trees are dry and black, like used coal. Thin and tangled like barbed wire, and just as prickly. A hunched, furless cat scatters up a tree with something dead in its jaws.
“I’m not just doing this to contradict you,” Nova says. “We don’t know Madra. For all we know, she could be leading us into a trap. The Meadow and the Wastelands lead to the mountain pass. Let’s take the way that looks less likely to kill us.”
“But—”
“You paid for a guide, Ladybird. So let me guide.”
Doubt makes my thoughts spin. I reset my stopwatch to keep track of our next leg. “It seems too easy.”
“We deserve a bit of easy, don’t you think?” Nova smiles, and it lights up his whole face.
Rishi raises her hand. “I like it easy.”
Madra did tell me to look twice. The more I look at the path on the right, the more it frightens me. A tiny imp creature lazily drags a bloody bag over his shoulders. It glares at us with black eyes, bares a row of tiny sharp teeth, and hisses, “Intruders.”
The middle path sings with light and life. One step closer to my family.
Finally, I hold my hands out and say, “After you.”
22
Look twice, my child,
for shadows change
and so do faces.
—Rezo de las Brujas
“So far, so breezy,” Nova says, whistling as we walk.
Their good mood is a wordless shift that happens when he flanks me on the right and Rishi on my left. It’s like there was never a different path or option. This was the only one.
As we walk, my magic tickles my skin. Something about these woods is magnetic. I want to reach out and let my power free, but I hold back.
“I wonder if the rest of Los Lagos looked like this once,” R
ishi says. She picks up a white flower that fell from a tree and tucks it behind her ear. “Before the energy-sucking monster started destroying everything.”
“When I was little,” Nova says, “my gran used to say that Los Lagos began as a waiting place for spirits. La Mama and El Papa created it for the afterlife. But then the land took on a life of its own. It became solid. Grass and forests began to grow. Mountains formed, prairies shifted, and lakes and rivers cut across them all. The Tree of Souls was always the heart of it. Then the Deos sent animals and half-beings that didn’t belong in the human realm anymore.”
“Like the dodo bird?” Rishi asks hopefully. Out of every extinct animal, she wants to see a real-life dodo.
Nova chuckles. “Something like that. People came after that. Brujas and brujos were banished here. Some even came on their own, seeking to build a new life.”
“When did the Devourer show up?” I ask. Tiny animals on the trees shudder when I say the shadow creature’s name.
“I don’t know,” Nova says. “Maybe she was banished here or maybe she was here from the start.”
“I wish Madra were less cryptic,” I say. “I think the answer to defeating the Devourer is in the tree. Maybe we’ll come across another one of the tribes Madra mentioned. Maybe we can get real answers.”
“Maybe.” Rishi is half listening, half petting tiny, green fairies that jump on branches and walk alongside us. They come in all the colors of the forest, with gossamer bodies and slick, bald heads crowned with thorns. They seem to make it a game of seeing who can get the biggest bite out of us.
One opens its tiny pink mouth and goes for my face. I pinch her leathery skin and hold her up to my lips. I blow at the fairy, like she’s an eyelash at the tip of my finger. As she floats away, I wonder if I should’ve made a wish. Nova, on the other hand, flicks at one that lands on his shoulder. It hits a tree but recovers quickly, spitting in our wake.
“It’s hard to think of Madra being afraid of anyone,” Rishi says. “When she caught me in the middle of the sky, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Not that Hindus believe in that heaven, but you know what I mean.”
“Monsters are the origin for a lot of human myths,” Nova tells her. “Like angels.”
“Madra isn’t a monster!” Rishi says. “Madra is doing the same thing as Alex. She’s trying to keep her people alive. The Devourer is a monster.”
I remember the night of my Deathday. The portal opened up, and she was on the other side, waiting, her face hidden by the horned skull of a hideous beast. I’ve found you, she told me.
“I wonder what the Devourer looks like beneath that bone helmet,” I say. “The Book doesn’t have a sketch.”
“The avianas described her as a ‘terror in the night,’” Rishi says. “I’m not sure I want to find out what that looks like.”
“In a place of magic like this,” Nova says, “power doesn’t always have a single shape. It just is. Maybe the Devourer is a beautiful woman one moment and a winged demon the next.”
“I suppose it shouldn’t matter what she is,” I say, “as long as I can defeat her.”
Rishi makes a pondering sound. “What if she has a million eyes or poisonous fangs or, I don’t know, a flaming sword. What if she’s human?”
Nova looks at Rishi curiously. “Is something easier to destroy if it doesn’t look human? Like, you’d kill a spider because it scares you, but you wouldn’t kill a person if it destroyed someone you loved?”
“That’s different!” Rishi shouts. The flower in her hair is drooping.
“Not all monsters look monstrous.” There’s so much sadness in his voice that I want to ask how he knows that. “Sometimes they’re perfectly normal humans. Sometimes they’re so beautiful, you would never suspect.”
He holds up a branch so Rishi and I can pass without it hitting our heads.
“We have to be prepared for any form it takes shape.”
“I’m prepared,” I say, sounding bolder than I feel. “The Devourer consumes power. What if there’s no tree to take power from?”
“Destroy the Tree of Souls?” Nova stops walking for a minute. “You’d destroy an entire realm to save your family?”
“That’s not what I said.” I keep walking without looking at him. Suddenly, I’m annoyed at Nova. My eye keeps twitching, I’m sweating, and I’m hungry. “Whose side are you on?”
“I don’t exactly like Sir Lights-a-Lot,” Rishi says, “but he’s got a point. Without the Devourer, the tree can give life back to Los Lagos. You could save more than your family. You could save the whole world! Or rather, this world.”
They don’t understand, a tiny voice says. I listen to the wind rustling through the perfectly green trees and perfectly blooming flowers. Not one of them understands this power.
I walk faster, leaving them behind.
“Alex, get back here,” Nova shouts.
“Just give her space,” Rishi tells him. Their voices are amplified in my head, like I’m hearing them over a stereo.
“We really shouldn’t separate.”
“You don’t know anything about girls, do you?”
“I know enough.”
Rishi scoffs. “She’s overwhelmed by how enormous this task is and scared because everything is trying to kill us, and hello, you don’t exactly have the best bedside manner. I know Alex better than you. Back off.”
“You know her better? Clearly not well enough that she trusted you with her secret.”
I can’t take it anymore. I pick up my pace, sweat dripping down my chest and spine. I wish I could outrun their voices, my memories, my sins. When my legs burn and Nova and Rishi are shouting for me to wait for them, I stop. I grab my knees and catch my breath.
“There’s my Olympic runner,” Rishi says, patting me on the back. “I don’t know about you guys, but all this talk about destruction has me hungry. I had a dream the other night that I was eating a tray of empanadas by myself.”
“You’d have to get in line,” Nova says.
My mouth waters at the thought of the food we had at my party—the trays of lasagna, hayacas, towers and towers of pastelitos and ham and cheese croquettes, fried sweet plantain with melted cheese, crackling pork belly over salty beans and yellow rice.
“We’re here,” Nova says.
Up ahead, the trail gives way to the Meadow del Sol. The trees form a perfect ring around the clearing. The sun and moon shine an ethereal light, so everything looks overexposed. There’s a long, wooden table at the center of the meadow.
“You know what I find weird?” Rishi asks.
“You, the girl with fake wings and purple combat boots, think something is weird?” Nova asks.
Rishi turns her long nose up at him and continues her thought. “Madra kept talking about the other tribes, but we’ve been walking for hours.”
I look at my watch. “Two and a half to be exact.”
“But we haven’t seen anyone. It’s not like when you walk around Brooklyn and you see people coming and going.”
“You’re forgetting one thing,” Nova says. “Some creatures prefer to see, not be seen.”
“Oh great, I love getting creeped on by supernatural creatures,” Rishi says.
“Maybe your voice scared them away,” Nova tells her.
“If anything’s scary around here it’s your face.” Rishi skips around Nova, ripping flowers from the ground and throwing them at him. He grumbles and slaps them away.
I shield the light from my eyes with my hand. Something shiny glints on the wooden table in the meadow. The sweet smell of freshly baked bread envelops me, and my belly growls so loudly, I’m sure a galaxy far, far away can hear. “What’s that?”
As we get closer, I see the table is carved out of a fallen tree that’s been cut in half. Toadstools and long grass rise up from the ground to creat
e natural chairs. I can smell bread, but I don’t see it.
Rishi squeals and claps her hands together. “It’s a tea party.”
“I don’t see any tea,” Nova says.
I turn my face up to the sun and moon and welcome the sweet breeze. My nose tickles with my magic. There’s a strong power all over this meadow.
Nova pokes the toadstool with his foot, and when he determines it’ll hold his weight, he sits on it. “This reminds me of the stories of the Kingdom of Adas.”
“What are adas?” Rishi asks. Ah-dahs.
“They’re fairies,” Nova says. “But they live in a different realm. They’re pretty as hell, but I wouldn’t want to meet one. They have giant banquets and party all night. I got invited to one in Central Park, but it’s just not the same.”
“How come we don’t go to magical parties in Central Park?” Rishi asks me.
“Because if you eat fairy food, you’re stuck there,” I say. “Also, because no.”
“What, in Central Park?” Nova scoffs. “You only get stuck if you’re in the Kingdom of Adas. Only an ada can take you there.”
“Shut up,” I grumble, but then so does my stomach. “I’m so hungry.”
“Well, if you hadn’t given all our supply to the avianas, we’d be feasting on beef jerky and stale bread right now, wouldn’t we?”
Rishi mimics him as he speaks.
Then, their faces draw a blank. They jolt from their seats, slowly retreating from the table.
“Alex,” Nova says, locking his eyes—blue and green and slightly terrified—with mine.
I see them too late, but maybe they were always there. What was it that Madra said? Look twice.
I blink rapidly, and it’s like clearing a hazy film from my sight. From the trees, the shadows, the tall grass, creatures emerge all around us.
My mother told me it’s rude to stare, but they are wonderful and fearsome to look at. Real fairies from the Kingdom of Adas. Tall, slender green pixies with shimmering wings and black, almond-shaped eyes. Their fingers are long, like flower stems, ending in leaves where nails should be. Snow-white women with skin like leather and smooth, hairless heads wear crowns of thorns and pale roses. Dresses made of thousands and thousands of dry flower petals that rustle in the breeze like unearthly ghouls.
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