Charlie Hernández & the Castle of Bones

by Ryan Calejo

  “Doesn’t have to be like that. I mean, it doesn’t have to stay like that.” When she only looked at me, I said, “What I’m saying is, maybe I could, you know, teach you some Spanish.…”

  Violet was smiling now, playing with the ends of her hair. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, why not? I’m pretty…” “Fluent” was the word I was looking for. But it’s kind of a tricky word, and in the time it took me to come up with it, Violet jumped in.

  “You are pretty…,” she said with a sly grin, and I felt my ears turn flamingo pink.

  “No, I mean, pretty good at it… at Spanish. It was actually my first language. I think I’d make a good teacher.…”

  Violet was still grinning at me as she said, “I think so too.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  The sun had just dipped below the red rim of the horizon by the time we’d finished buying all our supplies and finally made it over to Cabana Mesa, the place where the anchimayens suggested we lay our trap. The hill was about twenty or thirty feet tall, wide at the top and flat, and probably fifty yards in circumference with clumps of leafy green bushes clustered near the center. There were no trees up here—nowhere else for someone to hide. Which made it just about the perfect spot to spring an ambush. Violet and I got right to work. We put out a picnic with all different types of fruit and a big jug of milk, scattered half a dozen or so of the anchimayen’s gold coins around the blanket along with the sugar packets, then lit all the long wax candles we’d bought (they were mango and ocean breeze scented) and spread them out around the hilltop to make sure their flames could be seen from down below. Next, summoning my inner Rambo, I took the bungee cord, tied a wide loop at one end, and set it down right next to the blanket. Then I covered the loop in handfuls of grass and fallen leaves, trying to camouflage it and doing my best to make the whole thing look as natural as possible (although I didn’t exactly have a ton of experience setting traps for mythological beings—or any other kinds of beings, for that matter), and tossed the other end into the bushes. And once all of that was done, we waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  “It’s been almost an hour now,” Violet whispered a while later, glancing down at her watch. The two of us were still hiding in the bushes, lying side by side on the soft, grassy ground, both holding on to a section of bungee cord, which we would pull to spring our trap. An occasional breeze blew across the hill, but other than that the night was completely silent. You could’ve heard a gnat burp. “What if he doesn’t show?” V asked.

  I shrugged. “Then it’s game over.”

  “How do you say that in Spanish?”

  “Fin del juego.”

  “Sounds even more ominous.”

  A few minutes later I rolled onto my side and peered through the tangle of leaves, scanning the hillside for movement. There wasn’t any. I sighed. “Maybe we should’ve bought more candles.…”

  “Or milk,” V said. “I’m getting thirsty.” And she wasn’t the only one.

  Licking my chapped lips, I glanced across the hill to my left—

  And had to do a double take. A tree, tall and thick limbed with bright red flowers budding on its branches, stood at the edge of the hill. A tree I could’ve sworn hadn’t been there a second ago, because a second ago I could’ve sworn that the hilltop was completely treeless.

  I nudged Violet. “Was that tree always there?”

  She turned, tilting her head to one side. “Hadn’t noticed it…”

  “Looks… familiar, no?” It looked sort of like the tree we’d seen in Chiloé, the one that had smacked the anchimayen out of the air as she’d come sizzling toward us. Looked a lot like it, in fact.

  Violet shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  A soft wind blew across the hilltop, and we both went quiet.

  “V, I’ve been thinking…,” I said after a few seconds. “Don’t you find everything that’s been going on a little weird?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, for starters—Los Embrujados… Don’t you find it strange that some werewolf priests that no one’s heard from for over six hundred years are suddenly after me? And don’t you think it’s a teensy bit odd that an ogre from a race of baddie ogres known all over Argentina for kidnapping children just randomly decided to help a couple of kids? Like, out of the goodness of its black heart? Also, isn’t it just slightly curious that Adriana—this girl neither one of us has ever met before in our entire lives—just happens to show up right in the nick of time?”

  “Not to mention the fact that we keep running into castells everywhere we go…,” Violet said.

  “Yeah—exactly. That, too.”

  “I’m not gonna say it hadn’t crossed my mind, but… yeah. I guess it all is sort of weird.…”

  “Oh, and that’s right,” I said, suddenly remembering. “I forgot to tell you—but there’s a traitor in La Liga!”

  Violet’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “A traitor? Charlie, how do you know that?”

  “One of those warlock heads told me back in Chiloé.” Now, there was something you don’t say every day.

  “A chonchón?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’d it say?”

  “That one of our own has turned against the rest. That they’ve begun to pull away from the others. Something like that…”

  Violet was nodding now, her eyes locked on mine. “Makes sense, actually…”

  “What?”

  “Think about it, Charlie. Whoever kidnapped Joanna was able to get inside the Provencia—all the way into her study.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Well, the Provencia is warded, isn’t it? There are all sorts of protections and barriers on it to ward off evil. Which means whoever kidnapped her either knew their way around the place, or, and much more likely, is posing as one of the good guys. And the minairon even said that the conversation he overhead started off as friendly. That right there makes me think it’s someone Joanna knows. A friend, even.”

  “You mean a traitor,” I said, and Violet nodded grimly.

  “Did the chonchón say anything else? Any hints about who it might be?”

  I thought back, shook my head. “Nah, that’s it.…”

  “Well, who’s been pulling away from the others, then? Who haven’t we seen hanging around the Provencia lately?”

  Immediately two names popped into my head—but no, it couldn’t be one of them… could it? I felt stupid and ridiculous and actually sort of embarrassed for even considering the possibility that either one could be the traitor—I mean, they’d both saved my life. On multiple occasions. Why would they have done that even once if they were really evil?

  Violet must’ve seen the gears turning in my head, because she said, “Who are you thinking about, Charlie? Who is it?”

  “El Justo Juez and El Cadejo. Haven’t seen either one of them in days.…”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Just as I’d spoken those words, a strong wind blew across the flat hilltop, stirring the bushes and swirling our hair around our faces. I scanned the skies for one of those whirlwind thingies but didn’t see any. Not even the wispy beginnings of a funnel cloud. I started to think Saci wasn’t going to show. Maybe he’d spotted our trap and given us the slip. Or maybe he’d decided to skip town with our egg. Either way, our grand scheme was going up in flames. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, right then I spotted some nosy kid jogging up the far side of the hill, just sort of casually looking around, like, Oh, hey, I’ve never seen candles before. Let me go check that out! He must’ve noticed them from below and wanted to see what was going on up here.

  He’s going to ruin everything! I thought, pushing up to my hands and knees, getting ready to leap out of the bushes to scare him off.

  But an instant before I could—just a heartbeat, really—I noticed the kid wasn’t actually jogging as much as he was hopping… a sort of one-legged kangaroo-like hop. Then he bounded out of the
shadows and into a pale swatch of moonlight, and I saw why: He only had one leg. Just one—and I felt a spike of adrenaline flood my belly.

  It was Saci!

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  It’s HIM!” V whispered excitedly. “It’s him! It’s him! It’s him!” She paused, rasped, “Is it him…?”

  “Oh, it’s definitely him!” I said, and there wasn’t the slightest doubt in my mind. But the legendary prankster looked way younger than I’d imagined, right around our age, give or take a year, which was what had thrown me off. I was expecting, like, at least a teenager or something; I mean, he was, after all, thousands of years old. And he was shorter than I’d imagined too—probably a couple of inches shorter than me, but about ten or fifteen pounds heavier. He wore bright red overall-shorts, one strap undone, with a shabby pointed cap, almost the exact color of his overalls, stuffed into the front pocket. His skin was a rich, deep black, like the sky on a moonless night. There were holes in both his hands, each one about the size of a silver dollar and perfectly round. Just like in every tale I’d ever heard about him, he only had one leg, but the leg was freakishly muscular. Sort of like a soccer player’s leg, with all the little quad muscles showing above the knee. A pipe made of colorful seashells dangled from his lips, which were currently pulled back in a mischievous grin as his dark eyes flitted over our picnic spread.

  My fingers tightened around the bungee cord as I watched the little punk glance suspiciously around the hillside, looking for the picnickers. When he didn’t see anyone, his grin widened, and he began to tiptoe around, picking up the gold coins and stuffing them down the front of his baggy overalls while at the same time ripping open the sugar packets and streaming sugar into his wide, smiling mouth. Guess the kid really did have a legendary sweet tooth. He was shaking his head now, giggling as he scooped up the last of the coins.

  We got him, I thought. This was actually going to work! And it was going to work because the dude simply could not help himself!

  Just a little to your left, you sticky-fingered punk…

  No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than those mischievous brown eyes once again flicked over our picnic spread. I could almost see the gears turning behind his eyes. Naughty ideas were filling his head like helium filling a balloon. He looked around, taking his time, and then waved a hand over the fruit—and instantly it all spoiled! The apples and bananas pulled one of those TV-commercial time-lapse tricks, turning dark purple and moldy right before our eyes. Saci, of course, thought this was the funniest thing in the whole world; he started laughing uncontrollably, all bent over and clutching his little potbelly, but managed to hold himself together long enough to pass a hand over the jug of milk, which instantly began to curdle and clump together like potter’s clay.

  And then it was too much for him. He fell over on his side, laughing and kicking and rolling around on the ground like he’d just played the greatest practical joke in the history of practical jokes.

  Little did he know he was now lying smack in the middle of our trap.

  “Get ready,” V whispered, doubling her grip on the bungee cord as I did the same.

  “Yep.”

  Had we been overly anxious, we might’ve sprung our trap a moment too soon. But we both knew we had only one shot at this. So we waited for the punk to get it all out of his system, waited for him to have a grand old time. Then, just as he started to push up, just as he began to rise, we yanked on our end of the bungee cord, and the loop lying hidden in the grass sprang to life with a loud whoosh, cinching around his ankle like a belt. The force of our combined yank swept his leg out from underneath him, and he hit the ground with a thud and an even louder yelp of surprise.

  For a moment all V and I could do was stare, neither one of us actually believing that we’d managed to pull this off. But the fact was we had. We’d caught him! ¡Lo agarramos!

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Violet and I were out of the bushes in a blur, charging toward Saci as he struggled and flailed and tried to figure out what the heck had just happened to him.

  “Charlie, don’t let go of the bungee cord!” Violet yelled, and Saci must’ve heard her, because his eyes snapped in our direction. He saw us, started to panic, and then began to spin in wild circles on his stomach like a break-dancing turtle. As he spun and spun, I noticed that he had cut the name from the back of a soccer jersey—a Neymar jersey—and sewn it onto the back of his overalls. Sort of a cool touch, I had to admit.

  Overhead, the clouds churned. The wind picked up. Leaves and grass began to swirl around us, and I realized he was trying to whirlwind his way out of here.

  But we were ready for that. Just as the winds began to lift him off the ground, the bungee cord stretching to its absolute limit but not snapping (which was probably why the anchimayen had recommended it), V dug into her pocket, pulled out a brown-and-copper-beaded rosary that Mario had given us, and flung it right at his face. I knew from legend that throwing a rosary into his whirlwind could help capture him. But what I didn’t expect was for the long string of shiny beads to fly straight at him through the swirling winds like a heat-seeking missile, wrapping itself around his wrists (even twisting its way through the holes in his hands) like a pair of living, intelligent handcuffs. Not a second later Saci dropped out of the sky and hit the ground—hard. Immediately the winds died. The funnel cloud vanished, and Violet and I were on him in a second, dropping our knees across his chest and holding him down with our hands as he glared up at us, struggling against the rosary, with his seashell pipe still somehow dangling from his lower lip.

  “Remember us?” Violet asked.

  Saci frowned. “You two look muito familiar. Have I pranked you before?”

  “Lapa do Santo ring a bell? Didn’t think you’d ever see us again, did ya?”

  Saci was shaking his head, his eyes huge with shock. “Not really,” he said, and it sounded like an honest answer.

  “Get him up!” I growled, and while Violet hauled him to a seated position, I quickly yanked the cap out of his pocket and the pipe out of his mouth. Saci probably thought this was all payback. But it wasn’t. Not exactly. See, my abuela had told me countless stories of the infamous Saci Pererê, and one of my favorites was about this little girl who’d snuck up on him in her kitchen late one afternoon while Saci was sprinkling flies into the large pot of stew her mother had been cooking. The girl snatched Saci’s cap, and for the rest of that day Saci had had to obey her, and she made him go around doing good, like untying horses’ tails (which he loved tying together) and unspoiling people’s crops (which he did whenever he passed a field). Saci eventually got his cap back and went back to his pranks, but my thinking was that maybe that little girl had discovered something in his nature—something we could use to our advantage. Either way, I knew that both his cap and pipe were magical and that he treasured them—especially the cap, because it turned the wearer invisible. So I figured (well, Violet figured after I’d told her about them while we were shopping in the feria) that, at the very least, they’d make great bargaining chips.

  “Hey, gimme dat back!” Saci yelled at me.

  “You be quiet!” Violet snapped. “You tried to kill us, you li’l punk!”

  “Ei! Hey! Never say dat! Saci never try to kill no one, okay? I jess messin’ wit you. Having some fun.”

  I pointed the pipe between his eyes, said, “Getting sucked up into a whirlwind isn’t exactly our idea of fun.”

  His expression turned mischievous. “I know… but it’s mine.”

  “I hope you know your stupid little prank might have cost a lot of people their lives,” Violet said. “We had to travel all the way back across South America just to find your prankster butt. Now, you’ll note my associate here is holding your beloved red cap and pipe, and if you don’t wanna watch your special items go exothermic, you better give us back what you stole and give it back right freaking now!”

  “Ei, you better untie these beads, okay? Saci getting angry
now.…”

  “Burn his hat!” Violet shouted, and I brought out the box of matches we’d bought at the feria.

  “Ei, ei, ei—wait! Jess WAIT!” Saci shrieked in terror. “Saci only making the chitchat, okay…? Why you gotta be so cruel?”

  “You’ve got five seconds. I want to see passports, money, clothes—and most of all, I wanna see that golden egg.”

  His face screwed up in confusion. “Saci don’t remember no golden egg.…”

  “Charlie, how do you say ‘ash the cap’ in Spanish?”

  “Quémalo.”

  “Then quémalo!”

  “Okay, okay! Saci may remember the egg… jess hol’ on there.” A smile dimpled his chubby cheeks. “It’s beautiful, no…? Saci never seen nothing like it.”

  “Two seconds!” V yelled.

  “Hol’ on! Jess hol’ it! You—you want your stuff…? Okay. It’s in my safe place, okay? My treasure room.”

  “Say good-bye to your cap,” I said, and struck a match. It crackled to life, an orange halo of flame forming at its tip, and Saci panicked.

  “Ei! I telling the truth! All you stuff is there! All safe!” He snapped his eyes to Violet and his voice dropped to a low, silky pitch. “You leave Saci’s cap alone, and I even throw in a lovely pair of earrings for the very beautiful senhorita.…” He was grinning at her now, trying to look all suave and stuff.

  But V saw right through it. “Yeah, no thanks,” she said. “Keep your bribes.”

  Saci looked genuinely hurt. “Ei, you sting Saci’s heart with those words.… Maybe we start over, okay? Why can’t we jess be friends?”