by Ryan Calejo
Wait. Was it… lit? Because forget about a health hazard. Sleeping with a smoldering pipe around all these crates and boxes would’ve been a full-blown safety hazard!
Frowning, I picked it up. A faint reddish glow shone deep down in the bowl. But even weirder, the bowl looked impossibly deep.… I couldn’t see the bottom.
Except it had to have one. Everything did.
Squinting, thinking what an odd pipe this was (which, in all honesty, wasn’t that surprising considering its owner), I peered closer, almost touching my eye to the bowl.…
And suddenly the world around me began to spin and sway like a top!
* * *
The trees, the road—even the boxes and crates on the back of the truck—swirled into a dizzying, dark brownish blur. Somehow only the seashell pipe remained in focus, and I watched it grow larger and larger while at the same time I felt myself tipping forward as a strange sensation began to prickle over my skin: a feeling of tightening, of shrinking—of falling. I plummeted through the swirling, spinning world, screaming, my arms and legs flailing, searching for something to grab on to—something to stand on—but not finding anything.
Then the ground rushed up to meet me, and I landed hard enough to feel the jolt of the impact shudder all the way up my spine and to the top of my reeling brain.
Gasping, wobbling, my heart flopping around in my chest like a drowning fish, I blinked my streaming eyes, looking left… right.
I was now standing in the middle of a small, cluttered room that smelled oddly of smoke and something else… banana milkshakes, maybe?
The walls were some kind of corky wood; so were the floors and the soot-stained ceilings, which sloped up to a big, circular opening way high above.
All around me rose huge mountains made up of the most random stuff: marbles, packs of playing cards, candy bars, sunglasses, car keys, bags of cassava chips (Mama Mia brand), books, vinyl records, and, yep, bananas—there must’ve been truckloads here. From neon green to bright sunshine yellow, most still clinging to the wide flopping leaves they’d grown on. Neat foot-high piles of rice littered the floors. Old-school aluminum toys gleamed on the few tables and chairs scattered about. The place looked like some sort of hoarder’s paradise.
But what was this place? And more importantly, where was this place…?
And where was Violet? And Saci? They’d been right next to me just a sec—
Just then the peak of the nearest mountain of junk began to rumble. A stack of Blu-rays cascaded down its side like a mini avalanche. Something soft and plasticky-sounding went POP! I froze like I was playing a life-or-death game of Red-Light, Green-Light and felt my heart somersault into my throat as some sort of tiny-headed monster poked its tiny monster head out from between a pair of old tennis shoes.
Wait, not a monster—it was a chicken.
And a familiar one too… Orange and blue feathers. Brown beak.
I’d seen that chicken before. And recently.
Suddenly it all clicked. The chicken. The random piles of junk. The stink of smoke.
¡DIOS MÍO! I’VE BEEN SUCKED INTO SACI’S PIPE!
“HEEEEELLPPP!” I began to shout wildly, turning my face up toward the big hole in the ceiling, which was very obviously now the opening in the pipe bowl. “VIOLET! I’M IN THE PIPE! V—HEEEEELLLP!”
I shut up for sec, listening for a reply. Some sign that someone—anyone—had heard me. But all I heard were crickets. Like, literal crickets. They were hopping around everywhere. High-diving off the mountains of junk. “Why isn’t anyone talking back…?” I wondered out loud.
Because they can’t hear you, answered a tiny voice inside my brain. Which, of course, sent another rush of panic swirling in my chest. You’re probably like AN INCH tall right now, dude!
I started turning in fast circles. I had to find a way out of here. ASAP! But how? Climbing out of the bowl was a total no-go; the opening was way out of my reach, and when I say way out, I mean like past Pluto, round the bend of the Milky Way, and halfway out across the known universe. Not even the tallest junk mountains rose that high.
But there had to be another way. Another end to this thing, didn’t there?
Of course there was—the stem! That was my way out!
Now, was it going to be super gross? Duh. Saci always had that end stuck in his mouth. But crawling through a tunnel of nasty, sticky saliva was definitely better than spending the rest of my life with El Pollo Loco over there.
I’d just started my climb up Mount Everjunk, my feet slipping and sliding on the mess of old toothbrushes, remote controls, and empty leather wallets, when a painting caught my eye. It was half buried in junk, but the half I could see stopped me dead in my tracks: It was a painting of Queen Joanna!
She was kneeling, weeping, beside some elaborate wooden coffin, a dark veil pulled low over her pale, tear-streaked face.
The mood of the painting was obviously somber, but the colors were so bright and vivid, they appeared almost wet. In fact, the tears running down Joanna’s face looked like they were running down the painting, down the canvas itself!
It reminded me of the paintings I’d seen in the Warlock’s Cave—the lienzos—and I remembered Mario telling me how Saci loved to take these things and replace them with kids’ finger paintings to mess with the witches and warlocks.
Without thinking, I reached out to touch one of wet-looking tears on Jo’s cheek—
And the moment my fingertips grazed the paint—the very instant my skin made contact with the oil or acrylic or whatever it was—a web of dark tendrils exploded right out of the canvas!
Tentacle-like and slimy, they wrapped themselves around me, the tendrils tugging and pulling on my arms, my back, even as I struggled and screamed, and then they were snaking around my head, over my eyes, and before I could scream again, my entire world went pitch-dark.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
When the tendrils vanished, I was standing in a vast, ancient-looking church. Candles in gilded candlesticks glowed on the walls, their flames burning low, casting long, flickering shadows over the endless rows of empty benches.
Up near the front stood a large wooden casket, etched with an intricate coat of arms—castles, roaring lions, golden eagles—surrounded by great wreaths of colorful flowers; it was the same casket I’d seen in the painting… and the same person I’d seen kneeling beside it was still here now, still weeping.
“Queen Joanna!” I shouted almost automatically. And even though I couldn’t have been standing more than ten yards away, it didn’t seem like she’d heard me. She just kept weeping over the casket, her arms stretched over it in a sort of awkward embrace. Still a little dazed, I opened my mouth to shout her name again when I realized it was pointless—she wasn’t going to be able to hear me.
And that was because I wasn’t actually here.
Or at least, hadn’t been.
This was a scene from Joanna’s past—a memory she’d turned into a lienzo!
“You don’t touch the paintings,” Mario had told us, and now I understood why. Because apparently these paintings touched back.
“You have to let them bury the body…,” said a tight voice at my back, startling me.
I spun around to see a young woman in a simple black gown standing in the aisle. Her hands were clasped politely in front of her, and she was staring anxiously at the queen. “It’s been almost ten days now…,” she whispered. “The priests are beginning to complain about the smell.” Joanna, meanwhile, hadn’t stopped sobbing—hadn’t even looked up, in fact. “Mi reina, you must leave this place.… You must return to your throne or the politicians will run you off it. Some have already begun to incite the people; they’ve come up with a nickname for you—Juana la Loca.”
I stared at her for a moment, confused. Juana la Loca was a famous Spanish queen from the sixteenth century. But the woman currently kneeling and weeping beside the big fancy casket was very obviously Queen Joanna. So why had that lady just called
her Juana la Loca…?
“If you keep this up, they’ll have you locked up,” said the lady. “Or worse.”
Finally, Joanna looked up. Her face was a trembling mask of tears. “You know I’m not crazy, Yolanda—I’m in love.”
The girl offered her a sympathetic smile. “Mi reina, what’s the difference?”
Suddenly Joanna scrambled to her feet. She fumbled past the casket, nearly tripping in her haste as she came rushing up the aisle, rushing toward me—and then passed right through me as if I was nothing more than a vapory mist!
My heart stuttered. My breath caught. Every single muscle in my body went absolutely rigid.
But it wasn’t “the ghosting” that had me feeling like I might pass out.
No, it was what I’d seen hanging around Joanna’s neck: What appeared to be some sort of royal crest—two lions flanking a shield and a great black eagle, its wings spread in flight, in the background. It was the same necklace I’d seen in the vision in the Seeing Bowl… the exact same necklace the hooded figure had been wearing.
I thought back to what the anchimayen had said: how a powerful sombra—a bruja—had cursed the necromancer’s coffins. And all of a sudden, everything fell into place.
It was her.… Joanna had been the hooded figure! She was the witch who had taken the necromancer’s coffins off that doomed ship; she was the witch who had spelled them—who had hidden them throughout South America!
The realization slammed into me with the force of a freight train, and for a moment it seemed like the entire room had begun to seesaw around me.
“Mi reina, dónde vas?” asked the lady in the gown—Yolanda. And when the queen didn’t respond: “Juana, where are you going?”
“To resurrect the monster,” Joanna answered quickly. “There is no other way.”
And there it was again—the lady calling her Juana, and Joanna responding to it.
With surprising quickness, Yolanda stepped in front of her, blocking the queen’s path. “Mi reina, no!” she said in a firm voice. “You cannot bring that thing back into this world!”
“But I have to, don’t you understand? The king was murdered by the necromancer’s own hand! Only he can resurrect my Philip now!”
Hold up. So the necromancer had killed King Philip? King Philip the Handsome? That was Juana of Castile’s husband—Juana la Loca’s. But Joanna was talking about him like he’d been hers.… What the heck was going on here?
“Mi reina, control yourself—” Yolanda began, but Joanna cut her off.
“We spoke.… Did I tell you?” Jo’s voice was soft now, vulnerable. “I spoke with him.…”
“With whom?”
“Philip… He wants to come back—he’s begging me to bring him back!”
A shocked look crossed Yolanda’s face. “Mi reina, this is not right.… You’re violating the laws of nature.… This—all of it—it is wrong.” Her hands gripped Joanna’s shoulders. “I know how much you loved your husband, but bringing this monster back—even if it is to resurrect Philip—cannot end well. Consider the pain El Brujo could unleash upon this world. Consider the suffering—”
“CONSIDER MY SUFFERING!” Joanna roared, her expression turning suddenly vicious. Her eyes began to glow a deep poison green, and for a moment my heart stopped, positive she was about to attack this lady. But she never did. Instead she blinked several times, and after a few seconds all the anger seemed to drain from her face. The two of them hugged it out, and Joanna whispered, “I’m sorry, Yolie.… You are right… but I… It seems I can no longer trust myself.”
“Mi reina, you are Juana de Castilla. You are our queen. You must be strong. For España!”
A chill ran down my back. Whoa.… So there it was, out in the open, and Joanna wasn’t even denying it.
Which meant that Queen Joanna—our Queen Joanna, the leader of the League of Shadows (and the current president of Spain)—was a five-hundred-year-old ex-monarch who had lived and ruled way back before even toilet paper had been invented!
And now she began to weep. “But I want him back, Yolanda.… I want him back more than anything.… It’s the only thing I WAAAAANT!”
That last word rang in my head like a bell struck by lightning, and I felt myself jerked backward off my feet. The marble floors vanished. The church seemed to stretch out forever. I went tumbling down the aisle—no, down Mount Everjunk—landing, sprawled, on the pipe floor with El Pollo Loco strutting around my head, pecking at the ground.
I barely had time to sit up when the entire pipe—scratch that, my entire world—was suddenly flipped on its head. Gravity immediately took hold and the junk mountains turned to junk hailstorms as the pipe was shaken once… twice (and hard)… and on the third time I was spat out in a screaming, swirling, whirling gust of wind. I felt my body unravel like a ball of yarn, felt my arms and legs and head expanding back to their normal size, and I crashed down in the middle of the truck bed, flat on my back, my mind racing, reeling. Shapes crowded around me, the outline of faces.
A moment later they swam into focus.
“CHARLIE, YOU ALL RIGHT?” Violet screamed.
I shook my head to clear it—didn’t work. “Yeah, just feel a little squished.…”
“What HAPPENED to you?”
“Honestly?” I said. “No friggin’ idea…”
Saci shot a warning finger at me. “Hey, you no EVER go in my pipe ever again, okay? It’s PERSONAL SPACE, ouviste?” He whipped his head around to Violet. “And YOU—where you get dat crown, huh?”
Joanna’s—or should I say, Juana’s—crown winked in the moonlight as Violet held it up for me to see. “He was going through our stuff again…,” she said. “Caught him sleeping with it!”
“I say, where you get dat?” Saci snapped, pointing at the crown.
“None of your business,” V snapped back.
“You got any idea who dat thing belong to…?”
“Of course I do. We’re not thieves, like somebody I know, if that’s what you’re thinking.… It belongs to a friend of ours.”
“A friend of yours?” Saci made a face like Yeah, right. “I no think so.… Dat crown belongs to a witch queen, and they not friends of no one.”
“You’re not dumb. Untrustworthy, unscrupulous, and generally underhanded, but definitely not dumb.”
“How you two know the mad queen of España, huh?”
So apparently Saci knew her secret too.
Violet blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Juana la Loca. Juana of Castile. Look!” He pointed at the base of the crown, where some small markings had been carved into the soft metal—it was the same royal crest from the necklace I’d seen Joanna wearing twice now. “Dat’s her crest!” he shouted.
“Wait up,” Violet said. “Are you saying that our Queen Joanna is Juana la Loca? That famous Spanish queen from the fifteen hundreds?”
“Duh! She the Witch Queen of Toledo! Don’t you two know NOTHING?”
Violet looked skeptical. “Charlie? You listening to this?”
“He’s telling the truth,” I said, but could hardly believe it myself.
V gaped at me. “What?”
“In fact, now that I think about it, Joanna is actually English for Juana. And Juana of Castile was born in Toledo, just like our Queen Joanna!”
Violet only stared, her mouth hanging open in shock, the wind tugging at her hair and T-shirt.
“Course she was!” Saci burst out. “Because is the SAME person. Pão, pão, queijo, queijo!”
“But if that’s true,” Violet said, “why wouldn’t she have told us?”
Which was an excellent question. Why hadn’t she told us? Why hadn’t she wanted us to know?
Saci huffed. “More like, what else hasn’t she told you…? But dat’s not so surprising to Saci.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s one CRAZY WITCH! She the one that carried the dead body of her husband around with her everywhere she went for almost TWENTY YEA
RS!”
“People… grieve in different ways,” V said lamely. “Though, now that I think about it, she has been acting kinda weird recently.…”
“Duh! All brujas and brujos get crazy around dis season. Especially that bruja. She’s already loca!” Saci began chewing nervously on the end his pipe.
“V, I think it’s even worse than that.” I couldn’t believe what I was about to say out loud, but I made myself say it anyway. “V, I think it’s her.”
“What’s her? What are you talking about?”
“I think Joanna’s the one trying to raise the necromancer.…”
Violet’s eyes nearly flew out of her head. “WHAT?”
I gripped her shoulders to steady her. This was crazy, I knew. But I had strong reasons to believe everything I said and everything I was about to say. “Remember what Mario told us… that the castells were signs of the necromancer raising himself? But that this time he thought it was just the necromancer’s followers building them to make people think he was coming back, to keep everyone scared? Well, I don’t think that’s what’s going on, and I don’t think his followers have anything to do with it.…”
Violet was looking at me like I’d lost it. But I didn’t let it slow me down.
“V, Joanna’s been wanting to raise the necromancer since almost the moment King Philip died.… There’s a painting in Saci’s pipe—”
“Dat’s not a painting, irmão—”
“I know,” I said. “They’re memories.” Then, to Violet: “Like the paintings in the Warlock’s Cave… Anyway, there’s one in there that belonged to Joanna—when I touched it and I went into it, it was like I was there, at Philip’s funeral. Joanna was arguing with a friend of hers—her friend literally called her Juana of Castile, but that’s not where I’m going with this. Where I’m going is that her friend was begging her not to resurrect the necromancer. See, Joanna wanted to resurrect him so he could resurrect King Philip. From what it sounded like, it seems like the necromancer might’ve murdered him; and, from what it sounded like, only the necromancer could resurrect him.”