voices I hear are in my head or not. Except for his voice. Nova says
my name. It’s a desperate thing, and I know if I don’t focus, we’re
lost. I row and row and row, despite the fire in my muscles and the
pain in head.
“ Alejandra. ” The voice I heard before comes again, like someone
searching for me in a crowd. I can almost see her. It isn’t coming
from the river of souls. It’s something else-someone else. When I look
up, hoping to see her familiar face, all I see is death.
The skeletal, silver face lunges at me. The boat has come to a
slow, painful drag. The withered creatures are pulling apart from
their eternal soup and clamoring for us. They cling to the oars as I
struggle to row. They cling to the top of the stern and the golden
dragon’s head at the bow.
Nova screams my name. With his magic exhausted, he picks up the
mace again and swings. I channel the magic inside me, but it’s
thinning and weak, and I can’t get ahold of it. What’s the point of
being what I am if I can’t use it when I need it to save my life?
The hungry soul bends over the side of the boat, its body a
disfigured, warped mass of bone. I can feel the cold of its being, the
angry force that keeps it moving. Those deathly hands reach for me,
inching closer to my skin. This can’t end before we’ve even started.
My voice is a horse scream and I grab the soul. I hold its skull.
It’s like nothing I would have ever thought touching a soul would feel
like. The skin on my palms bubbles and burns. When I close my eyes, I
see my mother wrapping her arms around me after I burned my hands on
the stove. I know that’s impossible, but I feel her now, warm and
comforting. And when I open my eyes, I know it’s the memory I needed
to channel my magic back from its hiding place.
Power erupts from my chest in a blast of fire. I can feel the heat
of it on my face. The magic rushes through my veins and lights up my
senses. With all my strength, I push the creature back into the river,
and it writhes and cries out in the terrible wail of the damned.
Above us, the sky crackles; the lightning looks more like the
sparks at the end of fried cables. Rain descends on us, hard and fast.
Without oars, the river is an angry rush that starts to push us off
our path.
“Alex-help me.”
My red, raw hands tremble. Nova can’t fight them all, and it took
so much of my energy just to push one of them away.
“There has to be another way,” I shout.
The winds get stronger now and carry the whisper of my name with
them. I can’t see her, but I can feel her spirit in the breeze that
wraps around me. She’s been calling me since we got on the river. Aunt
Rosaria. I know it’s her. I can’t tell if she’s haunting me or guiding
me.
I pull on my magic. I reach out to the wind and grab it. The wind
itself latches on to my power. The gust is so strong that our boat is
lifted up into the air and away from the silver hands that grasp for
us. So strong it nearly knocks me overboard, but Nova holds on to me
like an anchor.
“Nova!”
He takes my hand, and I let my power flow, our magics melding
together like metals under fire. Up in the air, we’re safe. I wish I
could look at us from a distance-a flying, golden boat sailing across
the River Luxaria.
“This is amazing!” he shouts over the moaning wind.
I squeeze his hand as we climb higher and higher, and I think
there is nothing as wonderful as feeling like you can fly.
“We’re not slowing down.” Panic takes over my sense of triumph.
“We’re about to pass the shore!”
I let go of Nova’s hand. The wind cuts out around me, and I fight
to rein it back in.
“Just a little longer, Alex,” Nova tells me. “You can land this
thing.”
“It isn’t a plane,” I shout.
“We have to jump,” he says.
I shake my head and cling to the sides of the boat. We spin in a
funnel of air. Doubt clouds my mind. I had it under control, and now
I’ve lost it. The black beach is fast approaching.
“Hold on!” he shouts. For the second time today, we’re falling.
My muscles seize and spasm from the recoil of my magic, so I’m
unable to shout, I can’t!
But when he wraps his arms around me, I realize he isn’t telling
me to hold on to my magic or the ship.
He means, “Hold on to me.”
16
Like a shadow, she crept across the land.
Like a weed, she took hold and grew.
- On the Devourer, from the journal of Rosaria Vargas
The first time I saw my dead aunt Rosaria, she was beautiful.
Brujas don’t lay their dead alone in wooden boxes. We build them
shrines and equip them for what comes next. When I was little, I
thought it was a grand thing. I didn’t realize the bodies were dead. I
didn’t realize we filled their mouths with flowers or put gold coins
on their eyelids so they wouldn’t reach the afterlife empty-handed.
Little eyes don’t see the consequences of adults.
“Why are you here?” I ask her now, here, in this wretched land.
Here in Los Lagos.
Aunt Rosaria is a vision in her white dress. Her lips are red and
plump, as when she was alive and dancing and full of wonder. Her
soft-brown eyes sparkle against the stormy skies of a world I wasn’t
sure I believed in until now.
She shakes her head, a sad smile on her face. She’s talking, but I
can’t hear her. Everything that comes out of her mouth is like radio
static except for one word. “Stubborn.”
I reach for her face, but I touch smoke. Aunt Rosaria dissolves
into the air, and when my eyes can focus, I realize I’m seeing things
that aren’t there. Maybe insanity is part of the recoil.
I sit up and regret it. My body aches in ways I didn’t think were
possible. I feel broken. Three back-to-back days of training broken.
Zero sleep after bloody dreams broken. Stiff neck after riding the
Coney Island Cyclone broken.
I grab a clump of damp sand. Run it through my fingers. Black
grains stick to my skin, and I remember that I hate the beach. No
matter what, even at the end of summer, I find sand everywhere.
But this isn’t a Brooklyn beach. It isn’t summer. And it isn’t
familiar. Our golden vessel is sideways. A battered Nova tries to
right it.
“Help me push this back into the river,” Nova says.
“Why? That guy was a dick.”
“Magical trade is all about the technicalities,” he says, shaking
his head. “I should’ve seen it. He provided crossing, and we got
ourselves across. I don’t want to have to keep watching my back
because we stole mad gold from a duende. Do you?”
I don’t tell Nova he’s right because I’m sure he’s keeping count.
My palms are still missing a layer of skin, but I help Nova right
the boat on the river. It sails cleanly into the layer of mist that’s
settled over the water. At the shore where the sand is darkest, we
watch as hands stretch up in soft waves where surf should be.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks.
“Doesn’t matter. We have to keep going.”
The thing I love about Nova is that he lets things drop. Rishi
would poke and prod until I told her everything that was on my mind.
Rose would stare in silence until I confessed, like the time Lula and
I ate her stash of chocolate. Lula would simply demand I tell her what
was wrong. Nova picks up our backpack and walks ahead of me, holding
on to the mace with a firm hand.
We walk for a long time across the sandy shore, stopping only once
to eat some bread and split an apple. The apple skin gets stuck in my