Paola Santiago and the Forest of Nightmares

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  Pao understood Estrella, and with the understanding came a sense of belonging she hadn’t even known she’d been seeking. And also a big dose of dread.

  But she had a plan.

  “Would a fire—uh, un fuego—count as una emergencia?” Pao asked Estrella under her breath, trying to make sure Franco didn’t hear.

  Eyes wide, Estrella nodded.

  “Gracias,” Pao said, pressing her hands together. “Me . . . ayuda”—yes, that was the word—“mucho.”

  If the grammar was wrong, if Pao’s accent wasn’t quite perfect, Estrella didn’t mind. She beamed at Pao like she had forgotten about the fire question. Like the only important thing was that they’d understood each other.

  And for a moment, that was true. But then it was time to burn things down.

  The problem with the fire plan, as Franco wasted no time in telling Pao, was that the clearing was so small and so filled with organic matter that they would all burn up before they ever got the attention of the duendecillos.

  “You got a better idea?” Pao asked, staring him dead in the eye.

  “Yes!” Franco said, waving the Game Boy thing at her. Pao did the best acting of her life when she pretended she wasn’t interested in how it worked. “We already missed the last pass of the signature—”

  “The Hitchhiker, you mean,” Pao interjected.

  “But its next pass will be in twenty-four minutes,” Franco went on, totally ignoring her. “I can lock onto the signal with this and convert the energy it’s producing to send a magical beam straight through the barrier!”

  “Where we’ll be face-to-face with a leyenda,” Pao finished for him. “An extremely dangerous one that we can’t hope to defeat, even together.”

  “With the beam we can!” Franco said, looking ready to stomp his foot in frustration like a five-year-old.

  “Let me ask you this, Franco,” Pao said as the rest of the Niños watched, some with amusement in their expressions (Naomi, mostly) and some looking fearful or angry. “Have you ever used the beam on anything as powerful as the Hitchhiker?”

  Franco didn’t say a word.

  “Have you ever used it at all?”

  “That’s irrelevant!” he exploded. “I’ve done the research—I know it’ll work!”

  “Well, I actually have made a fire before, which increases our odds of success,” Pao said, looking around. “Plus, it will warm things up. So, all in favor of fire?”

  “Who authorized you to call a vo—” Franco began, but he was drowned out by the sound of at least ten kids yelling, “FIIIIRE!”

  Naomi punched Pao on the arm, grinning at her. Marisa shrugged sheepishly at Franco, mouthing sorry, though she didn’t really look sorry at all.

  “Okay!” Pao said. “The Hitchhiker passes every thirty minutes, and it’s been six since the last. That gives us ten minutes before the Hitchhiker is at his maximum distance from this place, when it will be easier for us to escape. We’ll light the fire a few minutes before then, everyone will huddle near the gate, and as soon as the elders open it . . .” Pao pantomimed busting out dramatically. Sal followed suit, and soon all the smaller kids were doing it, like an audition for the Kool-Aid Man was happening in the world’s least likely talent-scouting location.

  Pao grabbed Naomi and told her to start hunting for rocks. They decided to start the fire in two locations as far from the door as possible, giving themselves the best chance of getting out before anyone got hurt.

  Pao collected a little bundle of dried grass. Too bad she couldn’t use her magnifying glass to light it with the sun, she thought. The sky overhead was dark. Instead, she found a nice flat stone at the edge of the clearing and turned it over in her hands, remembering what her mom had always said about using natural materials in rituals—They work better if you’re on good terms.

  With three minutes to go, Pao asked her rock to spark and promised to aim it well. She waved everyone to the door. It was time.

  Since her staff’s blade was the only one she had, Pao transformed her magnifying glass without thinking and was surprised by the hushed whispers that sprung up from the crowd of Niños near the gate.

  The only other Niño with an Arma del Alma, as far as Pao knew, was Franco.

  “Let’s go, hero girl,” Naomi said, already striking her stone with her knife.

  Pao followed suit, and soon her little nest of grass was smoking. She placed it gently on a pile of twigs and sticks and stepped back just as the first tiny orange flames began to sprout like wildflowers from the forest floor.

  She was almost sad to be destroying even a small part of such a beautiful place.

  Almost.

  Their work done, Pao and Naomi ran to join the other Niños at the spot where Estrella said the gate would open. Their little fires were already happily kindling, twin columns of smoke reaching for the canopy of trees above.

  Any minute now, Pao thought, the duendecillos would sense the damage to their sanctuary and come to investigate.

  Any minute . . .

  The fires went from cheerful to ravenous, feeding on the easily accessible fuel until they were at least four feet tall and also stretching lengthwise toward each other across the clearing.

  The mood of eager anticipation began to change. Feet were tapping, hands were fidgeting in hair, eyes were darting from face to face. Pao looked at Naomi, who was looking at Marisa, who was looking at Franco, who was looking furious.

  Beside her, Estrella pressed close.

  “¿Pronto?” Pao whispered to the creature, hoping she would know that Pao meant They’ll be coming soon, right?

  “Sí,” said Estrella, but Pao couldn’t help but notice she didn’t sound quite as confident as she had before.

  One of the fires reached a tree and raced up its trunk, doubling in size. From a faint scent in the air, the smoke had increased in volume until it was tangible around them.

  At least five of their precious minutes before the Hitchhiker supposedly cycled back around were already gone, and there was no sign of the barrier becoming anything resembling a gate.

  The fires met in the middle, a shower of sparks celebrating their union. One of the smaller kids, who had just been pretending to be a Kool-Aid Man, coughed into the crook of his arm.

  Franco’s expression was murderous, and it was fixed right on Pao. This better work, it said, or you’ve just killed us all.

  Two more minutes passed. The fire was gaining ground quickly, rolling toward them across the clearing, hot enough to burn through the moss, which Pao had hoped would contain enough water to slow its progression.

  Forget the Hitchhiker, Pao thought. This whole cell is about to burn with us inside. She cursed her own hubris, her insistence on being the one to get information from Estrella, her pride at beating Franco in a vote.

  What did any of it matter now?

  The smoke was stinging Pao’s eyes. Almost the entire ten minutes had passed. The fire couldn’t burn through the magic boundary, so it was pushing with all its chaotic energy right toward them.

  She tried to get Marisa’s attention, to say she was sorry, but Pao’s eyes were streaming, and a cough was all she could produce. Was this it? Had she really just crashed in here and ruined everything in under thirty minutes?

  The toes of her sneakers began to get hot as the fire reached the cell’s two-thirds mark. They only had minutes left. The flames jumped and danced gleefully, ready to embrace them like they were old friends.

  Just as Pao was about to throw herself between the fire and the younger Niños to protect them as long as she could, the wall behind them shifted.

  At first, Pao thought it was just an illusion, the shimmer from the heat casting some kind of cruel trick on her eyes. But the movement didn’t stop. The uniform wall became a gate, and as it opened within an absolute cyclone of ash and smoke and embers, everyone piled into a scandalized group of duendecillo elders.

  “Out of the way!” Pao screamed, scattering them with a wide, harm
less kick. It did the job. Pao slammed the gate shut the moment she was sure everyone was accounted for, leaving the fire to burn itself out inside.

  The prison cell wouldn’t be usable again for a long time, Pao thought, and good riddance. The taste of fresh air was reviving her already. She wiped away her tears and drew her staff, pointing it at the elders.

  “We’re going now,” she said. “We’re taking Estrella with us, and you won’t be following, ¿entienden?”

  The little duendecillos looked furious at having been tricked, but even they seemed to realize they were outnumbered (not to mention outsized). They folded their little arms and tucked their chins in defeat.

  Pao was secretly glad it hadn’t come to a fight. They really were too adorable to stab.

  “Can you lead us out of here?” Pao asked Estrella, ignoring the way Marisa was tenderly wiping soot from Franco’s face. Naomi was looking elsewhere, but her scowl told Pao that she’d seen it, too.

  “¡Sí!” Estrella squeaked, turning one last time to stick out her tongue at the elders.

  Pao was elated. Everyone was alive, they were together, and her plan—however poorly it had been executed—had worked!

  She was so busy congratulating herself that she forgot all about Franco’s clock—and the magic signature that could only belong to one creature.

  They were free, yes, but they were also out of time.

  This time, it was clear the Hitchhiker didn’t plan to pull any punches.

  He charged into the outer clearing like he was a raging bull and Pao was one of those guys in a little jacket holding a red cape. The only trouble was, she wasn’t the only person in the crossfire.

  The Niños, Estrella, and the duendecillos mayores stood there, shocked, as the fantasma barreled into their midst like the Tasmanian Devil. When he straightened up, their shock turned to horror in an instant.

  She had been so stupid, Pao realized, to think El Autostopisto had been doing anything but baiting them on the bus. The form he took now made the little boy with the four eyes look like a kitten in the pet store window.

  The Hitchhiker was at least twenty feet tall, but that wasn’t what made him the most terrifying. On the bus, he had switched forms to unnerve them. Now, unbound by the confines of his own trick, he seemed to have become all of them at once.

  On his massive face were four sets of eyes, stacked one on top of the other—a pair from each of the personas he had taken on while following Pao. Closest to his strange, flat nose were the long-lashed eyes of Elenita, fluttering at them as the rest stared menacingly.

  His hair cascaded around his face, wild and alive, like snakes.

  He was magnificent, Pao thought, with four arms, each wielding a different deadly weapon, and his massive body clothed in a close-fitting bright-red jumpsuit. Then there were his mouths. Elenita’s full lips were in the center, and a flat-lipped, more masculine mouth had split in half to bracket them.

  When he opened them to speak, a thousand voices came forth, layered like a symphony.

  “Who dares to challenge me?”

  Franco, Naomi, Marisa, and Pao all stepped forward together, like they’d rehearsed it. “I do,” they said as one.

  But the Hitchhiker zeroed in on Pao. “Little sister, why do you fight? Your true nature is not to resist, but to succumb. Do you have no idea what power awaits when you join us?”

  His words tugged at something deep inside Pao, her feeling that she was bound to this leyenda more tightly than she’d ever believed. She’d carried the same feeling through the haunted cactus field and into the mouth of the void, that there was something bad inside her, and it was a part of her very essence.

  “I’ll never join you,” she spat, and she meant it, no matter who she really was.

  I’ll find out from my father, she thought desperately. After we’ve defeated this monstrosity.

  Pao pointed her staff at the Hitchhiker, her eyes narrowed in fury when she remembered his threat to take the innocent bus passengers to the void.

  The blade of Pao’s staff glowed in the dark forest, but El Autostopisto generated his own light as well. It was a malicious luminescence, the kind a poisonous mushroom might give off as a warning of the toxins within.

  As if he’d heard her thoughts, the Hitchhiker spoke again, the voices layering horrifically, echoing off the trees. “You’ll join us, or you’ll die,” he said. “That is the way for all of our kind. The world will never accept you, Paola Santiago, no matter how many shiny weapons you force it to give up to you.”

  “I’m. Never. Going. To. Join. You,” Pao said, emphasizing every word. “So I guess that just leaves death.”

  “No,” said the Hitchhiker, bringing one of his hands to his chin like he was pondering. “Not until you are ready to learn the truth.”

  Pao was dying to ask what he meant. Her craving to know the “truth” tasted like metal in her mouth. But she had learned that there was a time and a place for discovery, and whatever this one was, she didn’t want to hear it from a monster.

  So, instead of asking, Pao lunged, catching the fantasma by surprise, digging the blade of her spear deep into his red-clothed shin until green blood sprayed from the wound.

  When he screamed, it was with every voice at his command. His victims, Pao somehow knew, as if she were looking into his very soul. She saw their faces flicker by like photos in a flip book. Elenita, and Alán, and the nameless little boy in the red pajamas.

  There were others as well. Many others. With names and stories and families she would never know.

  Pao tore her spear out of the fantasma’s ghostly flesh, disappointed that he was still on his feet. She’d been rattled by his slideshow of horror, but the moment she severed the connection, her mind was her own again, and the images disappeared.

  Looking around at the rest of the Niños, now drawing weapons and preparing to fight, Pao hoped to see signs that they were rattled, too. That they’d seen what she had. But none of them looked haunted. Not the way she was, at least.

  And wasn’t that always the way?

  Once again, Dante’s words returned to her. . . . You’re connected to the head of every monster in the flipping world. . . .

  She knew she was. But wondering why had never gotten her anywhere. And now, when it seemed vital to understand, there was no time for wondering. No time for anything but surviving.

  The other Niños leaped into battle now, as the duendecillos huddled against the closed door of their burning prison, cowering in fear. All but Estrella, who cloaked herself in a strange green bubble and charged at the ankles of the Hitchhiker with the tiniest battle cry Pao had ever heard.

  It was the inspiration Pao needed.

  Her heart was full, her spear was warm in her grasp, and her friends were fighting around her. Pao threw herself back into the fray, hoping their efforts would be enough. Praying. Even if they didn’t have an Ondina, or a pearl of ultimate power . . . maybe, together, they could take down this horrible scourge once and for all.

  Marisa was everywhere, her hair flying behind her like a banner, fearlessly attacking the Hitchhiker with her water knife, her movements as fluid and graceful as a dancer’s.

  Naomi struck with the stealth of a snake, her white curls bouncing as she jumped, flipped, and slid into whatever opening was available.

  The little kids had been strictly instructed to stay behind with the duendecillos, but only one of them had obeyed, and even he stood in front of the tiny elders with a pocketknife drawn, a fierce look on his face like he dared anyone to come close.

  Sal, little Sal, was in the thick of the fight, too, shadowing Franco, who hacked powerfully with a glowing short sword Pao recognized at once as an Arma del Alma.

  Pao weaved in as needed, offering encouragement, moving the little ones out of the way, and getting in her own hits when she could. Her staff had easily twice the reach of any other weapon in the field, but it took time to position, and when she stretched to jab with it, she left hersel
f wide open.

  She used the move sparingly, but each time she reached up to stab the fantasma’s ribs, he seemed to anticipate the attack, and no matter what else he was doing, one of his weapons would descend on her.

  Twice she took hits to the shoulders, and once to the hip.

  Gasping and wheezing from the last blow, she stepped back to catch her breath and survey the scene, and what she saw was far less encouraging than the story she’d been telling herself.

  They were losing. Badly. And it had barely been fifteen minutes. More than half the Niños were no longer fighting. Instead, they were at the fringes of the clearing, tending to their wounds or the worse wounds of others.

  Marisa was still in the mix, as was Naomi. Sal had been sidelined with a bad cut to the leg, and he sat with the duendecillos mayores.

  Pao’s vision was going fuzzy—the slash she’d taken on her hip was deep. Blood was seeping into her T-shirt, making the black fabric glisten.

  “Not yet . . .” she said to herself, noticing Franco on the attack, the Game Boy device in some kind of Velcro holster on his belt.

  They hadn’t located the anomaly yet, just a leyenda that seemed hell-bent on making sure they never did. Did the Hitchhiker want to keep Pao from finding her father? Were they going to die in this clearing? Before she’d even gotten the answers she came for?

  Green spots began to dance before Pao’s eyes, stretching and shrinking like the paper dolls she’d last seen in Raisin Valley just before she plunged into Dante’s past and everything changed.

  The Hitchhiker took a wild swipe with a long, jagged sword. Three of the remaining five Niños went flying, Marisa included. Tears filled Pao’s eyes.

  “No . . .” she said, lifting her staff with a heavy arm. She didn’t want to go down like this, not standing here crying, letting her friends die. She was going to fight, just like she always did. Just like she always would do. No matter what the truth about her was.

  And so Pao charged, taking heart from the warmth of the staff in her grasp.