Paola Santiago and the Forest of Nightmares

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  A whisper in the back of Pao’s mind had always told her that there was a place for her. That if things got too unbearable at home, if she really, truly didn’t fit in, there was somewhere else she could go. . . .

  She had staked everything on it. Her sanity, her friendship with Dante, Señora Mata’s life. And it was all gone.

  “You realize this is the first place the police will look for us, right?” Dante said as Pao went quietly to pieces, trying not to cry. “After what happened last summer?”

  She wanted to snap at him, but she didn’t, because he was right. What had been a sanctuary, a barrier between her and the people undoubtedly looking for them by now, and a gateway to her father had now become a liability.

  “What’s the plan here, Pao?” Dante asked, clearly not noticing, or caring, how upset she was.

  “I don’t know,” Pao said, more to herself than him. “They were supposed to be here.”

  “Based on what, exactly?”

  The old Pao would have had some kind of retort. Even the new Pao was supposed to be trying to repair things with Dante. But she was too tired to do either of those things right now. Night had fallen in earnest, the stars were twinkling above them. In the distance, Pao thought she could hear sirens again.

  “Hello?” Dante said, his voice cutting.

  “I’m sorry!” Pao said. “Obviously this is a major setback! And I’m worried about being found and I’m worried about your abuela, and, yes, sue me, I’m also worried about our friends who are supposed to live here and whether they’re okay! Not that you’d be the least bit curious about that, I guess.”

  Dante rolled his eyes, and the gesture held none of the affection it once had. “They’re a bunch of immortal monster hunters with magic weapons,” he said, and even out here, he lowered his voice. Like someone was just waiting around the nearest cactus to call him a freak. “I think they’ll be fine without our help.”

  “But look at this place,” Pao said. “What if something really awful happened?”

  “Something really awful like their grandmother and sole legal guardian being in some freaky coma?” Dante asked, back to shouting again. “Don’t start pretending like you care how your friends are doing now, Pao.”

  “What are you talking about?” Pao asked, the cold, tired numbness back, all the fire extinguished.

  “You dropped Emma,” Dante said. “Right when she needed you the most. And I’ve been terrified all year, trying to deal with what’s going on. But did you notice? No. It was always the Niños this and the void that. You never once asked how I was doing.”

  From being cold, Pao was suddenly boiling over. “You never told me anything!” she said incredulously. “I was going through stuff, too, okay? But if you had asked for my help with your abuela, you know I would have been there for you!”

  Dante opened his mouth to reply, but Pao kept going.

  “And I didn’t drop Emma,” she said. “I saved her life, and then I helped her come out to her parents. I even convinced her to join the Rainbow Rogues!”

  “Yeah,” Dante said. “And then, once she wasn’t one of your experiments anymore, you left her high and dry until you needed something again. Face it, Pao, you’re too obsessed with yourself and all this”—he gestured around at the deserted camp—“to be a good friend to anyone.”

  This time, she didn’t bother explaining herself. Dante had made up his mind. She just stood there, staring at her shoes, willing the tears prickling her eyes not to well up.

  “We don’t have much time,” she finally said when the awful silence couldn’t stretch one second more. “If you want to go back, fine. If you want to go ahead without me, do it. As for me, I’m going to find a way to save your abuela.”

  Dante scoffed. “I’m not leaving this up to you,” he said. “I’m going to save my abuela. As long as that’s still your plan, I’m here.”

  The implication of his words was louder than the words themselves. He was only here because they had a common goal. If he didn’t need her to save Señora Mata, he’d be long gone.

  Pao was too sad and tired to unpack it all, so she just nodded in what she hoped was a grateful way. Despite everything he had said to her, she wasn’t ready to leave Dante behind.

  “The bus station is closed by now,” Pao said, “and we’ll look super suspicious sneaking back into town at night. I say we get a couple hours’ rest here and then walk into Rock Creek at first light. See if we can catch a bus from there.” The neighboring town was seven miles away, but hopefully no one there would recognize them.

  Dante tersely nodded once, and Pao took the fact that he ignored the gaping holes in her plan as a good sign.

  “You can sleep first,” Pao offered, an olive branch. “I’ll keep a lookout.”

  “Wake me up in an hour,” Dante said. “I’ll take over. Don’t fall asleep.”

  “Okay,” Pao said in a small voice, settling in against the quartz blocks that had once surrounded the Niños’ massive campfire. She couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to Marisa when the flames were doused. It was hard not to remember the grisly scene from her dream last summer, when Marisa, grieving for Franco, had swallowed a red-hot coal in a ritual that made her the leader of Los Niños de la Luz.

  Where was Marisa now?

  Within minutes, Dante was snoring. Pao huddled against the chill, feeling her eyelids droop, willing herself not to fall asleep. . . .

  Just an hour, she told herself, forcing her eyes open, not daring to blink until they stung and watered.

  Just an hour . . .

  Pao was back in the forest for the third night in a row. The glowing eyes in the trees watched her, casting a green light on the path. But this time, she wasn’t alone.

  Dante walked beside her, but like her father had been, he was a silhouette. From every angle he was nothing but shadow.

  “Dante?” she said. There was no answer. He just walked inexorably forward, faster than Pao could keep up with, like he was absolutely sure of his destination.

  “Dante, wait!”

  He didn’t. And soon, Pao was by herself, with nothing but the trees and their eyes for company.

  “Dad?” Pao called when she’d been walking for what felt like miles with no sign of anyone. The forest around her transformed, becoming the place where she’d seen her father the other night, but still he didn’t appear. “Dad, where are you? I have to talk to you!”

  Nothing happened.

  “Señora Mata?” Pao tried. “Are you in here?”

  The wind stirred in the trees, and the light changed as if a shadow had passed in front of the sun. Goose bumps chased themselves up Pao’s arms as the atmosphere became more sinister.

  She broke into a run, turning left when the path forked, toward where the green glow was brighter. Through the trees, down what she assumed was the other fork, Pao thought she saw Dante, but when she called out, he didn’t turn.

  She was about to push through the trees and grab him, shake him, demand that he speak to her, when she saw it: a man’s silhouette. Her father again. But this time he was lying on the ground.

  “Dad!” She ran to him, Dante’s shadow forgotten, ignoring the increased stirring in the trees, the big staring eyes growing more agitated the closer she got to her father. “I’m here! What can I do?”

  A green force field surrounded him like a bubble—like the one that had literally pushed her and Dante out of the Riverside Palace last year. She pounded on it while her father lay facedown inside.

  “Help me!” Pao shouted. “Someone, please!”

  No one came. Around her, the paper dolls sprouted up and unfolded again, bright green against the deeper color of the foliage behind them. They began to spin.

  Beyond the harsh glow they created, Pao could just make out her father finally stirring.

  Paola, he said, his voice in the rustling of every tree branch. Time is running out. Come to me, before it’s too late.

  “I’m coming!” Pao sa
id. “I’m on my way!” She wanted to ask him questions—she needed to—but the spinning sped up, and her father disappeared, and so did everything else, until the glow was the only thing Pao could see.

  An enormous green spotlight, projecting her silhouette into the sky.

  When Pao woke, bleary-eyed, the harsh contrast of her shadow in the green light still burned into her vision, the sky was dark. And someone was yelling at her.

  “I should have known it was you! Everything’s quiet for months, but then you come around, and suddenly it’s weird green light and dancing ghost things. . . .”

  Pao looked up from the bottom of the firepit, where she was curled up among the ashes. Naomi was peering down over the border of quartz blocks, looking like she wanted to shake Pao. Or hug her. Or both.

  Pao had fallen asleep after promising not to. She sat up and glanced guiltily over to where Dante lay, his back against the firepit. He was snoring. Pao blew out a breath of relief. The last thing she needed while trying to explain everything to Naomi was Dante and his Pao-is-the-source-of-all-suffering-in-the-world routine.

  “The Niños are okay?” Pao asked, standing up and brushing off the ashes as best she could. She must have sleepwalked in her dream, which was new. No matter how terrifying the landscape, she’d always stayed put before.

  “We’re fine,” Naomi said tersely, using the plural even though she appeared to be alone.

  Pao decided not to mention it.

  “So, are you gonna tell me what those green things are?” Naomi asked. “Do I need to be worried?”

  Pao sighed, slumping against the blocks. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what they are. They started out just in my dreams, but then . . .” Pao trailed off, not sure how much to tell Naomi. “They don’t seem to do anything bad on their own,” she said finally. “I was hoping you guys might know what they were.”

  Naomi shook her head. “Never seen anything like them,” she said. “They do have that void feel to them, though, don’t they?” She appraised Pao with an eyebrow arched. “What have you been up to the past few months, little tourist?”

  “Don’t,” Pao mumbled. “I’m not a tourist. Not anymore.”

  “Then what are you doing here?” Naomi asked.

  Pao glanced at Dante again, making sure he was still asleep. He stirred a little, but within seconds he stilled, his eyes closed, all the anger melted off his face.

  “Hello?” Naomi asked, waving a hand in front of Pao. “Are you gonna talk, or did you just come here to gaze at your little boyfriend against a different backdrop?”

  Pao felt her face flush. “He’s not . . . I wasn’t . . . Ugh!”

  Naomi looked amused in her detached way, as if Pao were a puppy chasing her tail.

  “What are you doing out here all alone, anyway?” Pao asked, trying to change the subject from the messy dynamic between her and Dante. “Where is everyone?”

  She didn’t think Naomi would let her get away with it. The amusement was suddenly gone from her face, her eyes distant.

  “Gone,” she said, a strange edge to her tone. “Moved on once they realized there were no more monsters. I guess there are other rifts to protect. . . .”

  She looked bitter, upset, and Pao knew there was more to the story than she was letting on.

  Whatever the source of the expression, Naomi shook it off quickly. “Anyway, back to you. Why are you bothering me in the middle of the night?”

  Pao wasn’t sure how to answer. She was still reeling from the absence of the other Niños. She’d been counting on the whole crew being here. Los Niños de la Luz. Naomi and Franco and Sal, but Marisa, especially.

  Marisa would have helped her for sure. Naomi was a loose cannon. She wasn’t a leader. She did what she wanted, not necessarily what was right. Pao wasn’t sure the state of Dante’s abuela and her own need to find her long-lost papá were going to pull at Naomi’s heartstrings.

  “I need to get to Oregon,” Pao said when the quiet had stretched on too long. “Two fantasmas attacked us in the hospital, and Dante’s abuela—who apparently used to be a Niña—is unconscious and losing her memory. I’ve been dreaming of a forest. . . .” Pao paused, worried again about giving too much away. “Between the dreams and what Señora Mata said before she went under, it seems like the answers are there.”

  “Oregon?” Naomi said, her eyebrow shooting up. “How do you know that’s where the forest is?”

  Pao shrugged. “Just a hunch, I guess.”

  “Oh, she has hunches now,” Naomi said to the sky. “Look out, world, you’re not ready for Paola the super-tourist!”

  “Whatever.” Pao rolled her eyes. “Can you help us get there or not?”

  Naomi appraised her. “I suppose you’re not going to tell me any more?”

  “I suppose you’re not going to tell me any more?”

  “I suppose you’re going to keep answering my questions with questions until we both die of old age?”

  “Aren’t you immortal?”

  “Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

  Dante stirred again, cutting their banter short. Pao’s eyes darted toward him, resting until she was satisfied with his level of unconsciousness.

  “Trouble in paradise?” Naomi asked, her smirk back in place.

  Pao shook her head. “He doesn’t want to be here. He’s . . .”

  “Threatened by your connection, right?” Naomi interjected, her eyes back on the horizon. “He just wants to retreat into something easy and safe. That’s so typical of her. . . .” Suddenly she seemed to remember Pao was there. “I mean him. Whatever.”

  “Why do I get the feeling we’re not talking about me anymore?” Pao asked.

  Naomi sighed, looking tired. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her white hair looked listless even as it glowed under the light of the moon. There was something about her stare, too—it had a mania that hinted she’d been alone too long.

  “Why didn’t you go with them?” Pao asked.

  Naomi scoffed. “And leave all this?” As she said it, an old shopping cart with half its wheels fell over, hitting the quartz bricks of the firepit with a metallic crash.

  When Pao was sure the sound hadn’t woken Dante, she looked back at Naomi, her own eyebrow raised this time.

  “I hate it up north,” Naomi said, pulling at the frayed cuffs of her jeans. “I like the desert. This is our home. It’s where we work. All that greenery? Actual seasons? No thanks.”

  Pao had learned a little something about silence since her last venture into this cactus field. Sometimes it was the quickest and most efficient way to get what you wanted.

  “Fine.” Naomi relented when the quiet had become unbearable. “Maybe a small part of me was sick of listening to Marisa defer to Franco for every little thing. Like, she’s just throwing her power away. Everything she wanted and sacrificed for . . . she’s just gonna hand it over to some puffed-up jerk with a savior complex? And I’m supposed to support it?”

  Though she was still doing her silence-as-a-tactic thing, Pao thought privately that Naomi had a point. Pao had been there when Franco returned to the camp, and she’d watched Marisa immediately attach herself to his arm. Marisa’s intimidating timeless-leader-of-Los-Niños persona had instantly slipped away as she’d settled back into his shadow.

  Marisa had told Pao that she and Franco would share leadership duties. But it didn’t sound like that was how it had gone.

  Naomi, stewing in Pao’s silence, exploded before Pao could ruminate further on what had happened here.

  “I mean, it’s his fault the rift got out of control in the first place!” Naomi said, getting up to pace back and forth, running her hands agitatedly through her bone-white curls. “We were here to watch the opening, protect the town. Underestimating a fantasma—even a leyenda!—just because it’s a crying woman? He walked right into her trap and almost let everything get destroyed!”

  “What’s a leyenda?” Pao asked, but Naomi didn’t
seem to hear her.

  “But let’s not hold him accountable for being the worst leader we ever had,” Naomi continued, dust flying up in the wake of her combat boots. “No, let’s invite him back in! Let’s let him take the lead on the most important mission in the Niños’ history! Let’s spend all night giggling with him by the fire and leave behind our . . .” She trailed off, remembering Pao was there. “Anyway, I hear non-desert humidity’s a silent killer, so I stayed home.”

  But Pao wasn’t listening anymore. She’d been so wrapped up in Naomi’s story that she hadn’t seen the pieces falling together until this moment.

  “Wait . . .” Pao said. “They went north? For the biggest mission in Niños’ history?”

  Naomi stopped pacing and looked at Pao like they were in a spy movie and she’d just caught her leaking secret information.

  “You know something, don’t you?” Pao asked, getting to her feet and walking toward Naomi. “About why there were fantasmas chasing us at the hospital, and why I’m seeing a spooky forest in my dreams.”

  “I don’t know why you’re seeing anything,” Naomi said. “You’re a tourist who, yes, helped us out of a serious jam, but it makes no sense for you to know all that while I’m in the dark about everything.”

  Pao was angry now. “This isn’t about you, Naomi! People’s lives are at stake!” She took a deep breath, gathering herself before fixing the other girl with her most no-nonsense stare. “So I’m asking, where did the other Niños go? And what do you know about what’s happening?”

  Naomi met Pao’s gaze with an even fiercer one of her own. Then, suddenly, she seemed to deflate. “I don’t know why I’m protecting them anyway,” she said. “Marisa told me not to tell anyone, but I know she’s just following his orders. What am I afraid of, you messing it up?” She sat on the firepit wall with a tired chuckle. “Like I haven’t considered sabotaging the whole thing myself, just to show her what a complete loser—”

  Pao cleared her throat pointedly.

  “Fine, yes,” Naomi relented. “I’ll tell you what I know. But I’m doing it because I hope you’ll ruin everything. Not because I trust you. Just so we’re clear.”