by Ryan Calejo
Violet was shaking her head now, opening her mouth like she had something to say, but I wasn’t finished yet—and she needed to hear this.
“But, V, that’s not all.… Get this: Joanna’s the only one who knows where the necromancer’s coffins are hidden; she’s the one who hid them!”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw a vision in the Warlock’s Cave. In the Seeing Bowl. It didn’t mean anything to me until just now—I didn’t know it was her!”
Violet threw up her hands as the wind swirled around us. “Whoa, whoa, whoa—you saw a vision in the Seeing Bowl in the Warlock’s Cave? When were you planning on telling me this…?”
“I didn’t say anything because it didn’t make sense to me then. But I saw her do it, V.… I saw her curse those coffins, and I saw her hide them with my own eyes.”
Saci was nodding along, still chewing on his pipe. “Things making good sense now to Saci.…”
“What are you talking about?” Violet snapped at him. “What’s making good sense?”
“He right!” Saci burst out. “It’s HER! Your queen friend behind all this!”
“Hey, reality check,” V said, “to BOTH of you. Joanna’s one of the good guys. She’s not running around trying to raise the necromancer and building those… those bone castles.”
“For you informação—it’s in her blood!” And when we both only stared, Saci said: “Raising the dead started with her family—jess look where dey name come from!”
“Where—Castile?” Violet said—and froze with the last word still hanging on her lip.
“Castile, castell—don’t you get it? The spelling change over time—you know, slowly, slowly—but in old Spanish, they the same word. The dark magia of necromancy runs in they blood. Her family the ones who figure out how to raise the dead!”
“Joanna of Castile,” V murmured, as if giving the words a taste test.
“Man, and you know that necromancer everyone’s so scared of? He Juana’s half brother!”
“What? No way!” she shot back.
“Yes way! It’s the worst best-kept secret in the world!”
“Now you’re just making stuff up.…”
“Yo, I no making nothing up! Most of her family are bad sombras! Dark brujas and brujos. She’s the only one who came out okay, and she’s not even that good.” He let that sink in before adding, “Joanna’s loca, yo! Half of her is good. But the other half…? That side is so bad I pray you never see it. There’s always a war going on inside her. Good versus evil. And maybe her good side has been winning for a while, but what about tomorrow? Next week? A hundred years from now? Her bad side could take over any second, and trust Saci, she’s not going to be so friendly with you or La Liga when dat happens. And things gonna get ugly when dat happens. Real ugly.”
* * *
It was still dark, and I was lying wide awake on my back, staring up at the starry night sky, when I heard a small, anxious voice whisper, “Charlie… you up?” It was Violet.
“Can’t sleep,” I whispered back. In fact, with how many freaky and terrifying thoughts were currently racing through my mind, I’d be surprised if I ever slept again.
She rolled over to face me, the wind whipping her hair into tangles. “Me either,” she said.
There was a moment of silence during which the only sound was the hum and whine of the delivery truck’s huge diesel engine. Then Violet asked, “So you really believe everything you said—everything Saci was saying…?”
“I do. V, it just all makes perfect sense to me.” I sat up so I could look at her. “And I was just thinking about this—but I got a bad feeling that Joanna’s the traitor the chonchón told me about.… I mean, who else in the League would have reason to wanna team up with La Mano Peluda and try to raise the necromancer? Not El Cadejo. Not El Justo Juez.”
“True—but… I don’t know.…” Violet sounded conflicted, torn. “I mean, do you honestly believe all this?”
“I don’t want to, V; trust me, I don’t. But just look at the facts. We know the necromancer killed King Philip. We know Joanna was madly in love with him and wanted to bring him back from the second he died. We also know that Joanna is probably the only person on earth who knows where the necromancer’s coffins are hidden; she hid them, for crying out loud. And we have reason to suspect there’s a traitor in La Liga. I hate to point fingers or whatever, but if I did, all ten would be pointing straight at her.”
Violet frowned as the trees whipped and flew by. “But… Joanna being evil… it feels wrong.” And she had a point. It did feel wrong. Unless…
“But what if she’s not?” I said. “Not really. What I mean is, what if Joanna really does have two sides to her like Saci said…? What if it’s her evil half going around building castells and trying to resurrect the necromancer while her good half is trying to stop her, leaving us clues and stuff? She might not even realize she’s the one doing it!”
Violet sat up. The moonlight filtering through the stack of crates at my back shone in her eyes. “But—but Charlie, it’s Joanna!”
“I know. It’s pretty convincing, though, isn’t it?”
Violet was quiet for several seconds as she tried to process everything. Finally, she just shook her head. “Something’s off.…”
“What do you mean?”
“Okay, for one—that would mean that Joanna staged her own kidnapping.”
“Not necessarily. Maybe she really did fight someone in the monastery. Remember all the plant guts we saw? What if Madremonte found out what she was up to and tried to stop her? See, that would make sense!”
V considered that, then started shaking her head. “Eh, I guess—but I feel like…” Her voice trailed off.
“Like what? What is it?”
“Honestly? I feel like we’re being played. Like someone, somewhere, somehow is pulling the strings, making us dance.” She paused again, her blue eyes fixing on mine, holding there. “But okay, fine. Let’s just say you’re right. About everything. Where exactly does that leave us?”
She wanted my honest opinion, so I gave it to her. “I’m thinking we’re gonna have to save a witch queen from herself.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Sometime early the next morning the delivery truck came to a screeching stop on the side of some tree-lined road in the middle of nowhere. I had no idea if the driver had spotted us in his rearview mirror or if he had just realized that Saci had messed with his delivery/drop-off sheet, but I didn’t think we wanted to be around to find out. Fortunately, all three of us were awake, and the second the truck stopped, we hopped out the back and slunk off into the trees, hoping to stay out of sight. I hadn’t caught a glimpse of any road signs (not that that probably would have helped much), so I didn’t have the slightest idea where we were, but Saci kept telling us to relax—that we were close. We hiked for maybe twenty minutes through dense jungle and soon found ourselves approaching a huge, shimmering lake hidden deep in the woods. The shoreline was all rocky dirt. A rumpled carpet of green hills rose up around us, blocking out the reddish glare of the blazing sun. Less than five feet away, Lake Guatavita—or at least what I hoped was Lake Guatavita—rippled in every shade of blue, black, and green, as if some giant invisible hand were trailing its giant invisible fingers across the surface of the water.
“What Saci tell you?” he said, gesturing grandly at the lake with a big smile on his chubby little face. “Saci get you here safe and sound!”
Squinting, Violet pointed up at my forehead. “What does b-a-r-a-t-a t-o-n-t-a spell?”
“Sounds like Portuguese.…”
“It spell ‘silly cockroach.’ ” Saci grinned at me. “Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.”
“Did he write on my face?” I asked V, but it was Saci who answered.
“Sim, and with permanent marker, so that gonna be hard to get off.… I suggest soap and hot water.”
Violet pressed her lips together like she was trying not to laugh.
“Is it big?” I asked.
She nodded, still pressing her lips together. Still trying not to laugh.
“I hate him,” I growled.
“Me too,” V said, but a snort of laughter slipped out. “Sorry…”
As I peeled off my shirt, Saci said, “Ei, you not really going in dat lake, are you? You even know how to swim?”
“Course I know how to swim—I’m from Miami.” I tossed my shirt onto a rock near the lake’s edge and waded into the shimmering turquoise water. “Now, let’s see if those old legends are true.”
“How is it?” Violet asked me.
“Freezing.” Holding my breath, I went under. Lake Guatavita, like most lakes, was freshwater, so opening my eyes underwater wasn’t a problem; the problem was visibility—the lake was an underwater galaxy of swirling grit and lazily drifting clumps of algae that made it hard for me to even see my toes.
When I came up for air, Saci called, “You find a golden city down there?” then had himself a nice, hearty laugh about it.
I ignored him. “I don’t see anything, V.…”
“Maybe it’s deeper in?” she guessed.
I heard a soft splashing sound behind me and turned. Rippling rings of water were spreading slowly outward from the middle of the lake. There might or might not have been a golden city in here, but there were definitely fish.
“Ei! Stop wasting Saci’s time!” Saci shouted. “El Dorado is not at the bottom of some lake, idiota!”
“Then where the heck is it?” I started to say. And that was when something huge and fur-covered (it felt like a hand—an actual human hand!) closed around my right ankle—and yanked.
I was instantly pulled off my feet and went under with a garbled cry, choking on a mouthful of silty water as the hand or fish or plant or whatever the heck had grabbed me began to drag me rapidly through the water and toward the middle of the lake. Half-blind with panic—and the tiny chunks of sediment swirling around me, stinging my eyes—I kicked out wildly with my other foot—my free foot—trying to fight myself free, and when that didn’t work, I stabbed my toes into the sandy ground and pushed up hard enough to just barely get my nose and mouth above the water. I managed, “HE—!” (though I was going for HEEELLLLP!), before I was pulled back under again, this time so hard that my shoulder slammed viciously into the lake floor. I cried out, swallowed another mouthful of the oh-so-delicious algae-flavored water, and started to choke. My fingers raked blindly across the bottom of the lake, trying to find something to hold on to, and when they scraped over a large rock, I gripped it with both hands and swung it down toward my legs.
Choking, being dragged roughly along the sandy bottom, I really didn’t like my chances. But I hit the jackpot, the rock smashing solidly against whatever the heck was holding me, crumbling a little from the impact. An instant later a shrill high-pitched shriek echoed through the lake—and suddenly I was free! I kicked up, breaking the surface of the water with a gasp, and began to swim desperately—blindly—toward shore.
“Wha’ happen?” Saci asked as I staggered out of the lake, panting, coughing up water, and collapsed onto the sand on my back. “Can’t swim after all?”
He was standing on the edge of the shore now, facing me, his back to the lake. Meanwhile, I was shaking my head, pointing past him, trying to tell him what had just happened but still choking too badly to actually form any words, mostly just grunts.
“I already tol’ you!” he shouted, wagging a finger at me, the bright morning sunlight spearing through the hole in the middle of his hand and getting in my eyes. “There’s NOTHING down there. NADA—”
As if on cue, a ginormous fur-covered hand attached to what looked like a never-ending cord of fur-covered tail exploded out of the shallows. Great sheets of water went flying in all directions as it snatched Saci up like he was some little kid’s plaything and dunked him, headfirst, into the lake.
“Oh my God!” I heard Violet shriek.
Without thinking, I scrambled to my feet and started into the water again, not sure what I was planning but knowing I had to do something—when Violet grabbed me around the waist, stopping me.
“Charlie, you can’t!” she shouted. “It’s suicide!”
There was another high-pitched shriek (it sounded like some helpless baby crying out), and the water around where Saci had been dragged under began to hiss and splash. I could see shadows moving just below the surface, a frenzy of dark shapes. A heartbeat later, Saci burst up out of the water. He sucked in a great wheezing breath through his pipe (which was kinda weird) and then began swimming furiously back toward us (which was kind of expected). When he reached the shore, he kept moving, hopping speedily along now, shouting, “VAMOS! VAMOS! INTO LA CAVERNA!”
There was a small cave in the hills that butted up against the lake. We raced inside, and once we were deep enough to hide ourselves in shadow, Saci said, “Don’ worry.… An ahuizotl will never come this far in. They scared of the dark.”
“Good to know,” Violet said, panting.
An ahuizotl—that’s what that thing was! Those awful dog-monkey-hybrid things with hands on their tails that supposedly lurked in rivers and lakes. Except in all the stories my abuela had told me, they were usually spotted in Central America. Apparently these things (like a lot of animals) had some sort of migratory pattern. At least this one did.
I turned to V. “That thing is probably protecting El Dorado! What are we gonna do?”
Saci cut me an annoyed sideways look. “You really thick in da head, huh?”
“Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“No, it makes no sense! El Dorado huge! How can it fit at the bottom of some teeny-tiny lake?”
“Then we have to search the jungle around the lake,” Violet said. “Find whatever clue Joanna may have left us. Maybe it’ll tell us the real location of El Dorado.”
“But that’ll take ALL DAY!” Saci snapped.
“Then we’ll stay here all day!” V snapped back.
“FINE. YOU WIN. Happy? You. Win!”
We both turned to look at him.
“But Saci ONLY telling you dis because I not gonna spend the rest of life searching around some stupid lake with some stupider ahuizotl inside!”
“We’re listening,” Violet said.
“Everybody who has a brain—obviously not you two—but everyone who does knows that if you wanna find the golden city you have to ask the cave anões… los enanos.”
I felt my brow furrow. “The cave dwarfs?”
“Did Saci stutter?” He made an annoyed face, then reached down deep into the bowl of his pipe and pulled out that orange-and-blue-feathered chicken of his by its scrawny orange-and-blue-feathered neck. Without even bothering to look down, he raised the chicken’s head to his mouth and opened wide like he was getting ready to bite its head off. He might’ve, too, if El Pollo Loco hadn’t let out a terrified BAAWWKKKK! startling Saci.
The legendary prankster made an embarrassed face. “Thought dat was a banana…,” he said, and then stuffed Mr. Pollo back into his pipe. “Dat’s Paco de Barcera, by da way. Coolest chicken in all of Brazil. He got his own website, you know.”
I sighed, rolling my eyes. “Yeah, we’ve met. He’s super cool. Now, would you please tell us where exactly we might be able to find one of these cave dwarfs?”
“Madre, you people slow! It’s in the name—cave. Dwarfs. You find dem in caves!” He turned, pointing back over his shoulder. “Olhe, look, you just wander on in there a little deeper, and I sure you find one.…”
“Perfecto. Lead the way, capitán.”
Saci seemed to flinch at that. “Wha’? No, no, no, no, no! Saci say, YOU go in, not me. I no go any deeper. Not one step!” He sniffed lightly at the air, then grimaced. “I can smell los enanos already!”
I noticed one of his eyes was twitching a little, a tiny, jerky movement. “You’re not scared of them, are you?”
“Ei! Saci not scared of nobody, nowhere, nohow, entend
e? I jess don’t wanna go, because I jess don’t wanna!” Crossing his arms over his chest like an angry two-year-old, he grumbled, “Saci could be in São Paulo right now… by the beach! Drinking coconut smoothies. Watching soccer on my flat-screens!” Then he looked up, looked straight at me, and shouted, “Ei, I bring you here. Now you gotta let me go. So gimme my cap, please and thank you, and I be on my way!”
“That wasn’t the deal,” Violet said. “The deal was you get us to El Dorado and help us find our friend, and then we let you go. And we still need to get to El Dorado, and we still need to find Joanna.”
“Hey, you two deaf? I not going one step deeper into dis cave! And you wanna know WHY? Because there’s only two things Saci hate in dis world. And the first is people who stereotype other people.”
“Right… and what’s number two?”
“Number two is CAVE ENANOS! THEY ALL EVIL! YOU NOT LISTENING TO SACI OR WHAT?”
“But why do you hate them so much?” Violet wanted to know.
“Because those anões are the nastiest, greediest, ugliest, SMELLIEST—”
A figure melted out of the shadows behind us—a little guy in a yellow miner’s hat with forearms like pythons.
“—most wonderful creatures in the whole wide world!” Saci grinned brightly at him. “How you doing, hermano? So glad to see you!”
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
The mini miner stepped forward, and I saw he was wearing beat-up dungarees and studded black boots that were big enough to double as clown shoes. His long dark beard, which hung below his knees, glittered with flecks of gold dust, and his bright little eyes glowed like polished onyx. In my shock, it took me several seconds to realize that he was a muki, a race of awesome cave-dwelling dwarfs with the ability to transform rock into precious metals. But that’s exactly what he was!