dark-green buds.
“Why is this land separate from the rest of Los Lagos?” I ask
Nova.
“Not sure.” He’s still trying to catch his breath. “Let me add
that to my list of Los Lagos mysteries.”
“Okay, genius.” I put a hand on my hip. “How do we get across the
river?”
Now that the Selva of Ashes is behind us, we can only look
forward. At the end of the rocky bank is a silver river that gleams in
the gray light. The river rushes in an undulating current. On the
other side is a black line of caves. The Caves of Night look more like
an impenetrable wall. The bank, the river, and the caves-they all go
east to west as far as my eyes can see. It makes the land feel so
expansive, like it’ll never end no matter how far we walk.
Nova closes his eyes and leans his head back, his face toward the
open sky. It really is beautiful, like a black-and-white photo. I
inhale the cool, salty air, and allow myself to sink into the reality
of this plane.
It startles me when I look at both ends of the horizon. The moon
and the sun are out at the same time. On one end, the sun is a white
circle hidden behind the overcast sky. On the other side of the
horizon is a sideways, slender crescent moon, the points facing up.
Something swells inside me, a faded memory of bedtime stories about
them reaching across the sky to join together-La Mama and El Papa. I
touch the moon necklace between my collarbones.
“Is that our moon?”
Nova stands beside me. His boots crunch the gravel. “Yeah.”
“But that’s not our sun?”
He shakes his head. “The passage of ‘time’ is marked by the
movement of the moon and sun across the sky. They travel from one end
of the horizon to the other, bypassing each other. That’s a cycle,
what we’d call a day. Every cycle, the moon and sun get closer and
closer to each other.”
“Like the story of La Mama and El Papa traveling across the galaxy
to find each other.” I used to love that story as a kid. The two major
Deos were once separated by their enemies, and so they had to reach
across the heavens, creating night and day.
“Exactly,” he says. “When they eclipse, that’s when the Tree of
Souls takes all of its energy and metabolizes it. Then, the Devourer
feeds on the power for herself.”
“How do you know that?”
“You’d know too if you went to Lady’s classes.” He takes out the
map and flips it over. “Also, it says so right here.”
There are a few notes scrawled in nearly illegible handwriting. I
wonder who it belongs to. My father? Aunt Ro? Maybe Mama Juanita. I
remember her sitting at the kitchen table when she thought everyone
was asleep. She had a cigarillo in one hand and her fountain pen in
the other. Usually, a bruja writes their initials after an entry in
the Book of Cantos. The map of Los Lagos, and the notes scrawled on
the back, are unfinished, anonymous.
“Wait,” I say. “If the Devourer is siphoning out the energy,
wouldn’t that kill the land?”
Nova stares at the shore across the silver river, clutching his
prex. He rubs the blue stones one at a time. My mother does that when
she’s uncertain and when she’s praying.
“I don’t know, Ladybird. What I do know is the moon and sun are
still far apart. We have time. We’ll have to see how fast the cycles
pass to mark our pace.”
“You can say day , you know.”
He shakes his head and walks west.
I start to follow, but I see something moving in the water. I walk
to the edge of the riverbank. My boots kick gravel into a current so
fast it doesn’t even ripple. I try to find a sense of calm in the
rushing water’s silver waves. I reach my hands to touch the salty
water, but Nova yanks me back. I fall on my butt.
“What the hell?”
His face pales as my foot dangles over the river, silver waves
licking at the tip of my boots. He grabs me again and drags me back a
few feet.
“Don’t touch things just because they’re shiny.”
“I wasn’t.” I push myself off the ground and dust the moist earth
from my pants.
He makes a deep guttural noise that makes me think of my
neighbor’s pit bull.
“Do me a favor. Let’s have the rain forest that sets itself on
fire be our warning for the rest of our time here. Don’t touch
anything. You don’t know what kind of water this is. You’re not back
home, Alex. We’re in another dimension. If I can’t make that clear for
you, then you’re dead, and I’m dead with you.”
I cringe at the smell of burning rubber. I look down to find a
hole at the top of my boot where the silver water splashed me. Right.
Don’t touch anything.
“Welcome to Los Lagos, Ladybird,” Nova grumbles as he leads the
way. “Come on.”
• • •
We walk at a safe middle distance between the edge of the rain
forest and the edge of the silver river. The clouds thicken in
dark-gray mounds above us. Every shadow, movement, and splash makes me
want to jump out of my skin. What else is going to get set on fire? Is
everything here made to kill? I take off my shirt because of the thick
humidity and stuff it in our backpack. In minutes, I sweat right
through my tank top.
“Did you see that?” I point to the water. “There’s someone in
there. I saw it before.”
“You saw what that water did to your boot. I don’t think it can
sustain life.”
I know what I saw but I drop it. A light rain starts to fall,
which makes our walk more slippery.
Nova searches the horizon with a frustrated scowl. “The ferryman
is supposed to be somewhere here.”
If the water burned a hole in my boot, how does it not burn a
boat?
As the rain gets progressively harder, the rain forest to our left
shudders as lightning strikes.
“There!” Nova points ahead.
I grab hold of him and together we run, trying not to slip as the
earth softens under our boots. We take turns almost falling, but when
the golden glint of something bobbing in the water becomes clearer,
I’m the one pulling him.
Disappointment comes swiftly. “That isn’t a ferry. It’s an
oversize rowboat.”
“It’s a small Viking ship,” he says. But even he has to admit it
wasn’t what we were expecting. “This can’t be right.”
Nova takes a step onto the golden pier that goes out a few yards
over the river. The gold boat has a curling bow and stern, and high
sides that might prevent the passengers from getting splashed with the
corrosive water. There are four oars resting across a bench, and it
looks like it seats up to six passengers.
“Hello?” I shout. I realize I probably shouldn’t announce myself
like I’m at the bodega.
Then a man appears from thin air.
“I’m right here, girl,” he says in a raspy voice. “No need to
shout at the wind.”
I take several steps back until I collide with Nova’s chest. His
hands fly protectively to my shoulders.
The man isn’t exactly a man. He’s got the face of an old man, yes.
His moss-colored skin looks rough to the touch. His eyes are like
swirls of gold, and when he smiles, two perfect rows of gold teeth
flash back at us. His torso is hidden beneath a long, black cloak
that’s caked in mud at the hem. He hobbles when he steps toward us.
“Fear won’t get you very far in these lands.” He extends a furry
finger that ends in a sharp, black nail. He breathes deep, as if he
smells a perfume he likes. “Though…perhaps your magic could.”