by Rena Barron
Frankie frowned again. “Well, this supports the idea that humans came from sea creatures five hundred forty million years ago.”
Eli waved his hand. “Sea slugs, not just any creature. Get it right.”
All three of us—Frankie, Eli, and me—listened in disbelief. Frankie looked like she wanted to ask a thousand questions. Eli bounced on his seat, as if he was bursting with questions too. Papa was almost as old as the universe, and I couldn’t wrap my mind around that. His driver’s license said that he was thirty-nine, and I’d thought that was really old.
“The orishas didn’t grasp how fragile life was back then,” Miss Lucille said. “When your father wove the veil, it helped the humans evolve, but the darkbringers suffered. The sudden shift killed off almost all the crops in their world, since some plants couldn’t survive in the constant dusk. Those darkbringers who weren’t close to other food sources died. As immortal beings, the orishas didn’t understand death at first.”
She was dancing around the truth, but I understood what she was hinting at. “You mean some darkbringers died because of what Papa did?”
“Millions died, Maya, but it was truly an accident,” Miss Lucille said, glancing to her hands. “When the Lord of Shadows woke again and saw his people suffering, he waged war on the orishas. He was more powerful than they could ever imagine. He could absorb energy from others and drain the life from anything he touched.
“The war between him and the orishas lasted for centuries, until they found a way to negate his powers. Unable to kill him, your father trapped the Lord of Shadows in the Dark with the darkbringers. Eventually Eshu, the orisha of balance, created equilibrium between the two worlds. Life flourished in both. For a time, all was well, but the Lord of Shadows found a way to escape. He invaded a godling’s dream and convinced her to open one of the ancient gateways. When he escaped, he killed Elegguá’s family.”
“His family?” I asked, my palms sweaty. “We’re his family.”
Papa never said he had a family. Mama’s family lived in Georgia, and we only got to see them once a year during the holidays, but Papa said he was an only child. Come to think of it, he always avoided the topic of his parents, and now I knew why. He had none, not in the way we thought of parents. The universe was his father and his mother.
“The orishas are old as time itself. Many have had families over the millennia,” Miss Lucille explained. “But Elegguá only ever had one family before . . . an aziza wife and their three children.”
I could hardly believe what she was saying. Papa had another family.
“That was a millennium ago,” Mama said, picking up the story. “When the Lord of Shadows escaped the Dark, he killed them out of revenge.” Mama’s voice faded, as if she didn’t have the strength to say more.
Although the cranky twins looked older than Papa, it turned out they were only two thousand years old, give or take a decade. They were also godlings like us. After what happened to Papa’s first wife and children, they vowed to help protect his family. I took a deep breath. It sucked feeling like you were the last one to know everything.
“The orishas imprisoned the Lord of Shadows in the Dark again,” Miss Lucille continued. “After that, your father swore that he’d never have another family. He went centuries living a life of solitude until he met your mother.”
“He never hid who he was, Maya,” Mama said. “It wasn’t easy for us in the beginning, but we moved here so you could always be safe. There’s an orisha community like this one on every continent.”
My friends looked as overwhelmed as me. “Are all godlings half human and half orisha?”
“Godling means part orisha,” Miss Lucille corrected. “Nana Buruku came up with the term godling three or four millennia ago. As long as you have a drop of celestial DNA, if you can call it that, then you’re a godling. Doesn’t matter if you’re one-half or one-eighth. The orishas claim all their offspring.”
“Nana’s an orisha?” Eli gasped, his eyes shiny with surprise. “Who else is one?”
“Your highly respected grandmother is head of the orisha council that oversees this community.” Miss Lucille wrinkled her nose at him. “At the start of the first war with the Lord of Shadows, there had been four hundred and one orishas. He killed a third of them before Elegguá was able to trap him in the Dark. Over the millennia, their numbers dwindled to one hundred seventy-two, almost all due to the second war. So we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past, some of them have stepped in to set rules for how we interact with mortals. That is how communities and councils came to be. As for who else is an orisha, that is not my place to say.”
Dwindled was a nicer way to say that they had died. It was hard to believe that one celestial being was powerful enough to kill so many immortals. Also, I didn’t miss that she’d said almost all due to the second war, which meant that orishas had died from other causes too, including Frankie’s mom. “Outside of a few, most humans don’t know orishas exist, do they?”
“Correct,” Miss Lucille said. “The orishas decided that the magical species must keep themselves hidden from humans. Among them are the aziza, woodland fairies wary of outsiders. The elokos, who are forest-dwelling elves with an insatiable appetite. There are also the trickster kishi, with their two faces, and the adze, who are fireflies that feed on blood. And of course, the werehyenas, who, as you’ve seen, can be unpredictable. There are countless more. It’s the orishas’ job to keep magic from interfering with human development, as the universe intended.”
“How is it possible that no one knows?” Eli waved his phone. “I got video. No way no one else in the world hasn’t already uploaded video to YouTube. Somebody’s seen something.”
“Do you have video?” Miss Lucille said, raising an eyebrow.
Frankie and I hunched in close to Eli as he played the video. It was completely blank.
“Magic doesn’t abide by human-world rules,” Miss Lucille said.
“But if we’ve seen magic, can’t other humans see it too?” I asked. “And what about the human parents in our neighborhood—don’t they know?”
Miss Lucille went on to explain that a third of the children in our neighborhood were godlings. The orishas had made a pact to not tell their human families the truth unless one of the godlings showed powers. Until Frankie, none had for hundreds of years.
“My sister and I can alter reality,” Miss Lucille said. “If a human happens to see or come upon magic, we make them think it was something ordinary. It’s not very hard, since they struggle with the concept of magic to start.” Miss Lucille sighed as she looked us over, her own face showing something bordering on pity. “I know this is a lot to take in, but Elegguá thought it best to fill you in on the basics before he returned to go into the details. Now that the veil is failing, everything has changed.”
Frankie’s powers were cool. I wanted to be like her, like Oya, like Papa. I had the staff, but it wasn’t the same as having magic of my own.
“There’s a lot more to tell you,” Mama said. “But you’ve heard enough for—”
We all jumped when there was a knock on the door. Miss Lucille sprang to her feet—nothing old about the way she moved now. She sure didn’t have any problems kicking those darkbringers butts in the park either. Both she and Mama rushed to the door, and Miss Ida burst into the room. Sweat dripped down her forehead.
“What’s wrong?” her sister demanded.
“I got word from Eshu,” Miss Ida said, half out of breath. “He was with Elegguá patching up a large tear in the veil.” Her face was grim and flustered. “The Lord of Shadows ambushed them . . . Eshu got away, but Elegguá . . .” Her pained eyes landed on me when she said, “He’s gone. The Lord of Shadows took him into the Dark.”
Ten
My world falls apart
A man made of the scariest nightmares had taken Papa into the Dark. I squeezed the staff so hard that my fingers ached. Even though Miss Ida’s words echoed in my head, I swallowed down my t
ears. Papa needed me to be strong.
Mama held her emotions behind a stern face, her shoulders squared, her chin tilted up. “Eddy will find a way to escape,” she said, her eyes defiant. “He always comes home.”
I wondered if every time Papa left, she worried that something like this might happen. Was that why they had hidden the truth from me?
“We have to get him back!” I yelled.
“It’s not that easy, Maya.” Miss Lucille winced. “Don’t you think we’d go if we could? Your father created the veil so that no one could cross between worlds. That’s the whole point of it. There are protocols and procedures we must follow.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, itching to do something. “The darkbringers came here.”
“They came through the tears in the veil,” Miss Lucille explained.
“But you said there were protocols and procedures you must follow,” Frankie said. “Does that mean there is another way?”
Miss Lucille crossed her arms. “I’ve said all that I’m going to. It’s up to the orisha council now. Elegguá’s instructions were clear if something happened to him.”
“Which were what, exactly?” I let out a frustrated breath that would’ve gotten me a warning under normal circumstances. “My father wouldn’t want you to do nothing.”
“Keep you and your mother safe,” Miss Lucille said, her face hard. She wouldn’t budge.
“There are three ways to enter the Dark,” Miss Ida chimed in, casting her sister a sidelong glance. “One, through a rip in the veil. Two, through one of the ancient gateways. Or three, by opening a portal, which only Elegguá can do. But none of that will matter if the veil completely fails.”
I bit my lip, my mind reeling. We needed to stop wasting time and do something now. “Why can’t we use one of the ancient gateways to rescue Papa?”
“There’s no we, Maya,” Mama snapped at me. “You’ll stay put in this house.”
“Mama, I’m not going to hide while—”
I stopped midsentence as Mama went completely still. Her mouth was half open, but no words came out. She looked like my math teacher, Ms. Vanderbilt, when the world turned gray before. Frozen like a mannequin. The grandfather clock stopped ticking. Both Frankie and Eli bolted to their feet, their faces twisted in a mix of fear and surprise.
Miss Lucille cursed under her breath, then said, “It’s happening more and more.”
“What . . . what’s happening?” I asked, choking back tears. “What’s wrong with Mama?”
“She’s going to be fine, Maya.” Miss Ida patted me on the shoulder. “Time falls out of sync when there is a rip in the veil nearby. We’re not immune, but humans are more sensitive to its effects.”
“How is that possible?” Frankie said, taking a careful step closer to Mama.
Miss Lucille raised her hands so that her palms faced each other with a gap between them. “The veil isn’t a flat surface,” she explained. “My left hand represents the human world, and my right hand represents the Dark. The space between my hands is the veil. Try to think of it as a barrier between the two worlds that exists outside of space and time.”
“Wait a minute,” Frankie said, drawing out each word as the hands on the grandfather clock started to spin backwards. She had that look again. “So, when a place with time intersects with a place without time, time temporarily goes haywire. Almost like how the gravitational pull of a black hole slows time down.”
“Speaking of which,” Eli groaned. “This is not the time to be frankiefying us with science . . . this is serious.”
“I am being serious.” Frankie scowled at him.
Before they started arguing, I asked, “How are these tears happening?”
“There have always been normal tears over the years because the veil is so old,” Miss Lucille said. “But there’ve been bigger ones lately and too often. The council suspects . . .”
Mama drew in a gulp of air that startled us. When her eyes landed on my friends, she glanced at where they had been sitting on the couch before time got messed up. “How did you get over here?”
“Well—” I started to explain when a scream from outside cut me off.
No, not a scream. A lot of people screaming.
Miss Lucille and Miss Ida were the first to get to the window. They became a blur of blue light around the edges, moving faster than anything that should be possible. No wonder Frankie and I had lost track of them the night the werehyenas attacked us. Frankie, Eli, and I crowded behind them. Frankie gasped, and Eli pressed his face and hands against the windowpane. My heart slammed in my chest at what I saw outside.
A streak of crooked black lightning cut through the air near a green Camry across the street. The space around it rippled like a rock hitting water. When the edges of the black lightning begin to expand, I realized that we were seeing a tear forming in the veil. As it grew bigger, the car fluctuated like a mirage and shifted to make room for the black hole at the center of the tear. It was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen—even weirder than the werehyenas. Nothing disappeared or got crushed, there was just . . . more space. The Camry still sat next to the hole.
“Incredible,” Eli whispered, his jaw dropping.
Black ink bled across the sky, and it looked like we were in the early hours of night instead of the middle of the day. But none of the streetlights came on. I held my breath when the hole stopped growing. It was now massive enough to fit an elephant. Light sparked around the edges, but the center was dark. It was like looking into the belly of a murky well and not quite seeing the bottom of it. I could make out a sea of dark faces in the shadows. Without warning, something shot out of the hole and slammed into the oak tree in front of our house. Splintered bark and pulp burst into the air, and we stumbled away from the window.
“Stay here!” Miss Lucille shouted. Before I could protest, she and her sister became mist and melted through the wall, as if changing their physical form was as easy as putting on a new T-shirt. As soon as they left, Eli jetted from the window and out the door.
“I have to make sure Jayla’s okay,” he yelled. “She was in the yard playing.”
“Eli, wait,” Mama said, running after him.
Frankie and I ran close behind her, and I had Papa’s staff.
Outside was complete chaos. People I’d known my whole life tried to free themselves from writhing shadows. My ex-babysitter, Lakesha, dodged a shadow only to have another one rope around her ankle. She fell down, and LJ, her cousin, stomped the shadow over and over until it let her go. He helped her up, and they ran away.
They were the lucky ones. Some shadows wrapped people in cocoons and dragged them toward the tear in the veil—toward the Dark. I thought of the night the shadows had almost gotten me too—how scared I’d been. I couldn’t let this happen in my neighborhood.
Eli was out of sight by the time Mama made it down the porch steps and ran into a dark mass that stepped into her path. She stumbled back, her head tilting up slowly as my mind struggled against reality. The darkbringer standing in front of her was seven feet tall and as wide as a pro wrestler. When he breathed, steam came out of his nose like smoke from a chimney. His two curled bull horns were the color of blood. Looking down at Mama, he smiled, revealing pointed teeth. His razor-sharp, barbed tail whipped around in a flash, cutting through the air, aimed straight for her.
“No!” I leaped down the steps, spinning the staff. Mama needed my help. Before the darkbringer knew what hit him, I cracked the staff against his tail. He fell back, howling in pain. Mama backed away too and almost tripped over me, but Frankie grabbed her arm.
“Maya, watch out,” Mama yelled.
I barely ducked out of the way as the darkbringer’s claws swiped within striking distance of my face. Going on the offense, I angled the staff up and slammed it into his chest. A burst of light came from Papa’s staff, and the impact sent the darkbringer hurtling through the air.
I gasped, finally understanding why my hands and
arms were tingling. The staff had done more than just glow. It had real magic. Was that why the Lord of Shadows and his darkbringers were able to trap Papa? Because he didn’t have his staff to defend himself?
My heart thundered loud in my ears as I took in my neighborhood. More darkbringers came through the black hole next to the Camry. They were three times the size of the bullies on the playground and ten times meaner-looking. They wore dark uniforms—like soldiers, but they didn’t have any weapons. The one who had attacked Mama joined his friends in the center of the street. I counted seven of them.
White flashes of light swept down from the sky. Two landed in front of the darkbringers. They hadn’t moved at all, as if they were expecting this. The rest of the light swept through the neighborhood and freed people from the shadows.
I bit my lip, hoping that Eli found his sister. I didn’t think these darkbringers cared if they hurt adults or kids.
One of the white lights in front of the darkbringers dimmed. Eli’s grandmother appeared in its place with her hands on her hips. It was Nana but also not Nana. She was taller, wider, and her brown skin sparked with light. Her braided white hair glowed too. She wore a purple dress with black tights that rustled in the wind. The cranky twins said that Nana was an important orisha, but I never imagined that she’d be so . . . divine.
Beside Nana, the other light shaped itself into our science teacher, Mr. Jenkins. Frankie gasped. He was her favorite teacher, after all, and we didn’t have a clue that he was an orisha too. Lightning sparked across his brown skin and flecks of gold covered his cornrows. He had twin axes across his back, and he wore a red tunic. In my comics, an orisha who looked like him had helped Oya stop a zombie apocalypse.
“Mr. Jenkins is Shangó?” I glanced up at Mama. “The orisha of thunder and lightning.”