It’s the first time Zaybet has addressed Saysa since what happened with Sergio, and the latter looks at her hopefully. When Zaybet doesn’t break their gaze, Saysa seems eased somehow.
Even though Cata wasn’t exactly warm toward Saysa on the way here, she’s also not being cold the way she was after Saysa attacked the witch in Kukú. In fact, no one seems to be holding Saysa’s actions against her. It feels like what Sergio did crossed our communal line of mercy.
“Let’s see what we have to work with so we can make this place habitable by nighttime,” says Zaybet. We follow her lead as we spread out to investigate the remains of this manada. While the brujas scope out the lone remaining structure, Tiago, Enzo, and I sprint to see what lies farther down.
We race past the debris, cutting across a dried dirt crater and more melded metal, and as the release of using my muscles pumps new energy through me, I feel a lightness invade my chest—but my body grows heavy when I see that Tiago’s stopped ahead.
Whatever existed beyond this point, we’ll never know. The entire landscape is smothered in a stony sea of lava rock that dried in swirling patterns. The volcano swallowed this manada whole.
“I hope everyone made it out,” I whisper as we survey the remains.
“They did,” says Enzo, coming up beside me, his breathing shallow.
“What’d you find?” Zaybet asks us when we regroup with the brujas.
“Just a crater in the ground,” reports Tiago, “and the rest of the place is covered in dried lava. This is all that’s left standing.”
His musical voice newly startles me, and I realize this is the first time I’ve heard him speak since leaving the Coven.
“Some fresh air ought to start us off right,” says Zaybet to Cata.
My cousin nods in assent, and her pink gaze lights up. “Close your eyes,” she warns us, “and hold on.” We take one another’s hands and shut our eyes right as a massive wind picks up, flapping our clothing against our skin like whips. It blows away from us, toward the crater, and I open my eyes a slit.
Dirt and ash and other dust flies up and funnels in the air, like a trashy twister, and soars away from us. By the time Cata’s eyes dim, the view is considerably less gray.
“Now for a little wash,” says Zaybet. We’re still holding hands, and I feel a slight pull on my energy as her eyes light up and a chill infects the air. The stone structure grows an icy sheen, like it’s been crystalized. The frost lasts an instant, then it melts away, the water sloshing down the sides.
As more grime comes off, etchings are revealed in the rock. It says patio de comidas. This was once a food hall.
“I’ll disinfect,” says Laura. A blast of warmth hits us all, and we drop one another’s hands to shield our faces.
“Sorry,” she says, her eyes aflame. “Guess the lava is a little strong.”
Once the temperature drops again, Zaybet looks to Saysa. “We may need some inoculations while we’re here.”
Saysa looks at her fingers like they’re contaminated.
“Whenever you’re feeling up to it,” Zaybet adds, and Saysa nods grimly.
“Okay, listen up,” says Zaybet to the rest of us. “We’re going to need to haul over blankets and pillows and supplies from the ship. We also need to clean the patio de comidas from the inside.”
Tiago and I get to work lugging supplies over, while Enzo acts as a power source for the brujas so they can cleanse the inside of the stone structure. I want to say something to Tiago, but it’s exhausting trudging back and forth through the trees, and I don’t think I can handle the emotional workout of a conversation too.
By the time the sun is setting, Zaybet, Laura, and Enzo are in el Hongo. They spotted some chanterelle mushrooms growing under an umbrella-like tree. The patio de comidas is a wide space littered with overturned wooden tables and mangled benches. There’s also a kitchen and bathroom signs—lobizón or bruja.
Saysa and Zaybet reactivated the island’s plumbing system with their magic. Cata and Saysa are now sitting at a table, using a fine, flexible rope to thread together a curtain made of leaves and flowers that we’re going to hang to separate the dining half from the sleeping part of the space.
Tiago and I are tossing out any furniture we couldn’t salvage into a heap outside. When we’re finished, the space looks hollow but habitable. Tiago hands me a bottle of water, then he has some himself.
Cata and Saysa don’t look up from their threading, and Tiago sits at the end of their bench, gaze adrift. The silence feels too pointed not to ask anymore, so I do.
“What do you guys think of all this?”
Saysa shrugs.
“Of what?” asks Cata, without looking up.
“This whole … situation.” I look at Tiago, but he just stares at his drink. “You know, Zaybet’s plan to recruit enough Septimus here to open a portal to Lunaris? Her thinking that the Coven will change its mind?”
“Does it matter what we think?” asks Cata, her voice so calm, she almost sounds bored.
“Of course it does. I mean, if you have concerns, you should share them—”
“Why? You’re going to do whatever you want anyway.” Her pink eyes snap to my face.
“Cata—”
She slaps down her threading work on the table. “You think I enjoyed spending all that time thinking of the right combination of words you could say that might keep you safe? I did it because I thought I was saving your life!”
“Well, sometimes it doesn’t feel like my life,” I say softly.
“Then you should have said something.”
This time it’s not Cata.
It’s Saysa.
“I tried to speak up,” I say. “You all shot me down so fast—”
“That should have been your first clue it was a bad idea!” exclaims Cata.
“Yamila was going to tell them the truth anyway—”
“Yes, and that’s why we had a plan. It might not have been perfect, but it was a start. And more importantly, it’s what we agreed on together.”
At that last part, Tiago finally looks at me.
“Do you have something to add?” I ask when he doesn’t say anything.
“Doesn’t sound like you want to hear it.”
So they’re all against me.
“At least you found something you can all agree on,” I say, charging past Zaybet, who’s framed in the doorway. I don’t know how much she heard, and I don’t care.
I venture into the woods. Even though it’s dark out, Tiago and I made this trip enough times that a path is beginning to take form. When I’ve climbed down to the edge of the rockface, I stare at La Espiral’s ghostly reflection.
Laura said she’ll sink it to the seafloor so no one spots it. The ocean laps against the ancient seashell, and overhead the waxing gibbous moon is just a couple of slivers shy of being full.
I hear soft footsteps and inhale a cool, briny scent coming from the wrong direction. When she gets close enough, I say, “Hi, Zaybet.”
She settles beside me on the rocks, resting an empty sack on her lap. After a long moment of comfortable silence, she says, “You, Cata, and I have something pretty big in common.”
When I don’t respond, she adds, “Comes in a package that’s about a meter and a half tall.”
Still, I don’t speak, so she comes out with it. “Saysa changed all our lives.”
Curiosity gets the best of me. “She said you saved her life in La Isla Malvada.”
Zaybet nods. “When I met her, she was this little shit who’d just manipulated her brother into bringing her to the island, then schemed to get away from him so she could explore one of the most treacherous landscapes in the world all by herself, without any powers, just because she fucking dared.”
Zaybet’s gaze glistens with starlight. “She was small for her age, but too large for her size. And there I was, fifteen years old and on a group date where we’d all just run away from our wolf escorts because it was fun to mak
e the boys chase us. In Saysa’s presence, I’d never felt more childish.
“After that, she became a kind of talisman for me. When I was too afraid to go against my parents, I’d picture her. She was who I wanted to become when I grew the ovaries. Sometimes I wonder if I ever would have discovered the Coven—or myself—without her example.”
Ocean spray dapples the stone we’re sitting on, and Zaybet circles her finger through the drops. Her eyes glow, and the drops begin to dance around on the rock, like tiny diamonds. I watch their entrancing patterns while I consider what she said.
What led me to the Septimus? Was it ICE arresting Ma? Was it discovering Ma’s betrayal? Was it seeing the Z symbol and the red smoke? If not for Yamila, would I never have found this world?
It’s impossible to know.
There’s only one action I can say for sure led me here, and that was my choice to climb into Leather Jacket’s truck.
“I don’t know that there’s any plan for our lives,” I say as the thought occurs to me. “I think we just get confronted with choices, and the more honest we are when making them, the more our life begins to reflect us.”
“Hm,” says Zaybet, like she’s considering my perspective. “You should speak from the heart more. Maybe don’t let Cata script all your speeches.”
Hearing Zaybet’s story about meeting Saysa makes me want to know more about how Zaybet became Zaybet. “How did you end up at the Coven?”
She hands me the sack on her lap, then she gets up and starts climbing down the rocks to the sea. Unsure what else to do, I follow.
“Stay there,” she tells me when we’ve almost reached the water’s edge. We’re just a few feet apart, but the ocean’s roar is loud enough to fill the air.
She perches on a stone that crests the water’s surface, and I cradle into a damp crevice between stones in the rockface.
“Laura recruited me into the Coven after graduation,” says Zaybet without raising her voice, since she knows I can hear her. “At the academy in Marina, I’d organized a bruja strike. I wanted us all to refuse to use our magic to prove that the world runs on our labor. The Coven got wind of it, so … Laura found me.”
I get the sense there’s more to that story, but she’s never pressed me, so I don’t press her. Zaybet dips her fingertips into the ocean and swirls them like she did with the drops on the stone. Her eyes are alight with magic as she swims her hands around.
“What about Enzo?” I ask.
“He’s been at the Coven for longer than any of us in the younger guard. Sometimes we joke around that he was born there.” At last she pulls her hands out of the water. “Catch!”
A massive wave suddenly crests, so tall I think it’s going to swallow us—then I see the fish, and I understand.
I snap to my feet and open the sack as the water crashes over me, but Zaybet evaporates the liquid, so that just a dozen silver fish rain into the bag. I catch them all.
“Dinner!” she announces.
As we’re threading back through the woods, I can’t help asking, “What happened with you and Tinta? If you don’t mind sharing?”
“I met him soon after I got to the Coven. It was love at first fight. The instant we argued, I knew I was crazy about him. He was as ambitious and radical and impatient as me. When we started dating, we made up a cover story to tell our friends and family, about how we met on a judge’s campaign trail—but the truth is Tinta got me that job so we could sell the story.
“To the outside world, we looked like this ambitious power couple that was rising up the system’s ranks, and everyone was thrilled for us. But in secret, we were part of the resistance, planning disruptions and plotting a new world order. I loved our double life. It felt like a real revolt, you know? An actual defiance. Until the day he ruined it.”
“How?”
“He asked me to marry him.” She shakes her head. “I thought we were partners in the same fight, but he thought we could start a family and resist in our free time. That was the problem. To him, our outside life was the real one and the Coven was the fantasy. For me, it was the other way around.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “How long ago did you break it off?”
“A few moons,” she says, and given how recent it is, I understand the level of passion between them. “My family is devastated, so I don’t like going home. They just expect me to start dating again. A Septima’s life is a countdown to reproduction. We’re not allowed to want anything else.”
She reminds me of the protagonists I like to read about in adventure stories who are independent and free in a way that makes them untouchable. I used to think I was like that because I wanted to be an astronaut and travel the stars. But part of the appeal of outer space was the hope of finding a world where I belong.
“Is it like this for women too?” asks Zaybet. “In the human world?”
“It varies by culture. But overall, most women have to navigate patriarchies, and for many there’s a societal expectation to have children.”
“At least humans have words like divorce and abortion. We don’t have those in our vocabulary. Or gay or lesbian or bisexual or queer or asexual—”
“I know something about lacking the language to describe yourself,” I say, and she gives me a wry smile.
We’re almost back to the group, and I can see the patio de comidas through the thinning trees. But before we go any farther, Zaybet’s fingers close around my arm.
“Seeing you with Tiago kind of helps,” she says as we face each other, her voice low. “The way you look at each other, I mean. Tinta and I didn’t have that.”
Yet her expression reminds me of Diego’s after the Septibol match. Like they see more than we do.
“Manu, you can’t depend on him,” she says, and I shift the sack of fish from one hand to the other. “However much you love each other, it doesn’t change the facts. You will be judged. And he will get a pass.”
“It feels like Laura is one of the Septimus judging me,” I can’t help saying. “I don’t think she wants to be here.”
“She was raised in a much more traditional manada where they believe la ladrona is a real demon that will destroy all life on the planet,” says Zaybet. “But Laura has never followed her manada’s faith, so she knows better. She’s ashamed her cultural prejudices are showing. Give her a minute.”
“What about you? What do you think?”
I’ve been afraid to ask because I don’t want to discover she’s only here out of a misplaced sense of obligation for having brought us into the Coven, or that she’s just looking for a good adventure to be part of—because I care what Zaybet thinks. A lot.
“All I know is they’ve been making up stories about independent girls in every tradition since forever,” she says, her gaze steadfast. “And I think it’s time we take back our narratives.”
23
By the time I wake up, a crew of Coveners has joined us, and they’ve brought more yerba for mate and fresh facturas for breakfast.
I greet the newly arrived Septimas, counting a total of eight new brujas, two of each element. I catch Zaybet, Laura, and Enzo staring wistfully at the witches’ wrists, where their horarios must be. No wolves yet, aside from Tiago, Enzo, and me.
Some of the brujas spend most of the day in el Hongo, recruiting others, while the rest of us keep trying to make this manada habitable. We’ve brought all the tables outside so the patio de comidas can just be for sleeping, and now we’re building beds under Enzo’s tutelage. I’ve never met anyone more self-sufficient.
The mood grows more hopeful throughout the day as Coveners continue to arrive—including a few lobizones—with food, bedding, and other supplies. It’s startling how quickly we settle into a rhythm, same as the Coven. It makes me think about how much sentimentality we attach to plots of land, when it’s actually the seeds we plant there that give it meaning.
When we break for lunch, Zaybet waves me over to sit with her. Tiago and Enzo are at a table of wolv
es—there’s only nine of us so far—and Saysa and Cata are across from Zaybet and me.
Last night, when Zaybet and I returned to the patio de comidas, my friends and I didn’t talk to one another. I helped Tiago put up the thatchwork curtain Cata and Saysa threaded together, while Enzo prepared the fish and Laura seared it. After the meal, we were so exhausted that we each grabbed a pillow and blanket and crashed. The brujas and I slept in the area we curtained off, but Tiago and Enzo opted to sleep outside. He and I still haven’t spoken.
I guess if he was looking for a way out of this relationship, he found it.
I avoid looking in Cata or Saysa’s direction so our gazes won’t cross. It’s easier if I just focus on physical tasks, so I don’t have to think about the future I don’t have.
“We’ve got eighteen brujas and nine lobizones,” says Zaybet after doing a headcount to confirm her numbers are right. “We need another six witches—three need to be Jardineras—and fifteen, sixteen wolves. How are we coming on that?”
“Sara’s crew is coming in tomorrow,” reports Laura. “Natalio isn’t coming. No word from Antonio.”
“We’re only two nights away from the full moon. If we need to cast a wider net, we need to know.”
“You mean non-Coveners?” asks Laura, dark eyes narrowed in disapproval.
“Manu has lots of supporters. Not all of them have turned on her since the broadcast. They should be easy to track because they tend to be vocal.”
Laura sets down her half-eaten empanada. “There’s a difference between taking up a cause ideologically and actually volunteering to put your life on the line.”
“We don’t have a choice,” says Zaybet, and now there’s a hard edge to her voice. “If we can’t open our own portal here, Manu will be arrested.”
“How can you even be sure we’ll be able to open one?”
“Why do you think I chose this place? All the elements meet here—magma, ocean, forest, sea breeze. It’s a powerful magical soft spot. We just need enough Septimus to channel it.”
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