like someone set a pen there and let the ink run. “A small mountain
range? Are you crazy? We don’t have the supplies for that!”
“With your powers and my brilliant survival skills, it is cake,
Ladyb-”
“Why can’t we take the path on the left and cut across? There’s an
arrow pointing to it.”
He holds the map up to my face and points. There’s a sliver of a
trail between a place called Bone Valle and the Poison Garden.
“What part of Poison Garden makes you think we should go there?
And Bone Valle.” Vah-yey. He puts an emphasis on that last word.
“That’s straight up what it sounds like. A valley of bones. Not to
mention it borders Campo de Almas. Now, I may not spend a lot of time
around them, but I’ve been told wandering souls can get pretty nasty.”
I get what he’s saying, but whoever drew this map made a direct
line through the worst-sounding places of Los Lagos.
“It’s the most direct route,” I say, wavering on my instinct. I
wipe the sweat from my brow. I drink more water. The insects that were
surrounding us start to fly up to the canopies.
“Look,” he says. “You’re going to have to trust me.”
“Yeah? Because you trust me so much.”
“I don’t,” he says. “You tried to suck the life out of me. If
anyone should have trust issues, it’s me.”
“I’m not the one who spent three years at a juvenile detention
center.”
“I’m not the one who sent her family to hell.”
I stand and walk away. The tree canopy shudders and a thick, warm
rain falls. I raise my face to the heavens. I know that Nova is right.
I have to put all of my trust in him, not just because I’ve paid him,
but also because he’s all I’ve got. It doesn’t mean I have to like it.
I don’t know why I’m so hard on him. If Lula were here, she would say
this is why Rishi is my only friend. When I was with Rishi, I never
felt like there was something wrong with me. Maybe it’s because Rishi
hasn’t seen this side of me, the girl with the power. The girl with
the selfish heart.
I wonder how my sisters are right now. I wonder if they’re in
pain. I wonder if this creature, this Devourer, is hurting them. I
wonder if they’ll ever forgive me. I wonder so hard that my own tears
mix in with the warm rain, and it feels really good not to have to
brush them away.
When the rain stops, soft, gray light filters through the
canopies. Strange, fat, black-and-green birds weave between branches,
higher and higher until I lose sight of them. Bright-yellow snakes
slither around thick, red tree barks and race up, up, up.
Behind me, Nova’s shoved all our things in the backpack. He
shoulders the weight and comes up behind me. The smell of a
just-put-out fire clings to him.
“Like it or not, Ladybird,” he tells me, “we have to trust each
other just enough. Not completely, but enough to know that I need you
alive to get my money and you need me alive to get your family back.”
“Good point,” I say darkly. I have to keep reminding myself that
Nova isn’t helping me out of the pureness of his magical heart. When
he looks at me, he sees a dollar sign.
And when I look at him, what do I see?
A boy with a handy switchblade, a borrowed mace, and more tattoos
than you’d expect on someone so young. It makes him look older than
seventeen, older than his dimples and casual humor suggest. I wonder
what made his skin so tough, what made the cuts on his face. Our paths
crossed the moment Lula’s boyfriend almost ran him over, and now
they’re aligned, two freight trains side by side. When do we collide?
My face flushes as he pulls up the hem of his shirt to dry off his
face, but between the heat and the rain, it’s a lost cause, and he
takes it off completely. His muscles are bulky and taut, like he works
hard to stay so big. But his muscles aren’t the most fascinating part.
On his solar plexus is a tattoo of a sacred heart surrounded by thorny
rosebuds and a brilliant starburst. Around it are more tendrils of
black ink, same as his hands.
“Let’s get one thing straight.” He leans forward and a part of my
brain tells me to pay attention to the way his abdominal muscles flex
when moves toward me. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve never been
here, and I made that clear. It’s fifty percent suicide. But if we
don’t do this, you’re already dead. And if I don’t try to get that
money, I’m dead too. Let’s get out of this rain forest and through the
Caves of Night. Then we can bite each other’s heads off trying to pick
a fork in the road.”
“Fine,” I say, snatching my water bottle from him.
“And another thing,” he says. “No one needs to know the details of
why we’re here. Whatever or whoever we come across, just lie.”
That should be easy enough.
Above us, a flock of the fat birds perching on a branch snap
awake. Their eyes glow amber, their howls so human that it makes my
skin go cold. They spread their wings and vanish deeper into the rain
forest.
There’s that smell of cinder again.
“Do you smell that?” I ask him.
Nova grabs my arm. He looks up to the canopy. There’s smoke coming
from a plant where a beam of light shines down. A pop of flame makes
me jump. It burns fast and hard until there is nothing but a patch of
ash where the plant used to be.
“Selva of Ashes,” I whisper. For ashes, you need fire.
Another pop at our feet. We jump back. Nova stands directly under
a beam of light. I can feel the anxiety bubble in my chest, and I
scream. I push him with a blast of my magic. He hits the trunk of a
tree. The place where he just stood goes up in roaring flames.
Nova jumps around the fire and grabs my hand. He doesn’t have to
say it. My legs are already moving.
We run.
14
Rain of fire, birth of ash.
Born again, the gods will clash.
- Song of El Fuego, Bringer of Flame
The Selva of Ashes goes up in flames around us.
No wonder birds and insects were traveling upward. But Nova and I
can’t climb. I’m not even sure if we’re going the right way, but I
don’t stop running. We race across the beams of light, their heat
pulsing against the ground. Even though I know it’s coming, I can’t
stop from jumping every time a blaze of fire pops. It’s like we’re
surrounded by land mines.
I thank La Mama that I decided to join the track team last year. I
jump over fallen trunks like hurdles. I pump my arms at my sides. I’m
surprised Nova is keeping pace beside me, and I can’t help but think
that he’s had some practice at running from things too. He shoots me a
challenging smile. He nods to the light ahead, where a line of trees
in silhouette marks the end of the rain forest.
I run across a beam of light just as it explodes. It burns my
shoulder, but I keep going. Fire is catching up behind us, and it
licks at our feet. I feel the burn in my legs, my lungs, but the end
is so close, I throw myself out of the line of trees.
Nova falls beside me.
We’re out of the Selva, and the light-gray sky feels infinite.
“Oh my gods,” I say, sprawled out on the ground.
“And here I didn’t think I’d get in my daily cardio,” he says
between heavy breaths.
I cough and get up. My adrenaline is buzzing and so is the magic
around us. The entire floor of the Selva has caught flame. We watch as
the underbrush burns quickly to ash. Then it stops. Then, the sky
breaks and the rain comes and washes away the black ashes, revealing