other side. Now that I know him, I want him walking with me.
“Rishi, be nice.”
“I guess if you’re into muscles and tattoos or whatever,” Rishi
says.
“He’s a family friend.”
“If that’s what you call a hired lackey.” She makes a face. “It’s
like I’m seeing a whole new side of you. I’m not complaining . It’s
just that you’ve been this kind of blurred version of yourself and now
what I see is more crystal clear.”
“Are you freaked?”
“Do I look freaked?” She looks at me, trying to pull me into a
staring contest.
I shove her playfully. “Not enough.”
Her wings brush against my arm. Nova looks at us again.
“I’m glad you’re here though,” I tell her. “You have to know that
this isn’t a fairy tale.”
She slings her arm around my shoulders. “You’re magic, Alex.
You’re like my human shield.”
Nova reaches the end of the tunnel first. Tiny creatures flutter
through miles and miles of sharp-green grass as tall as Nova’s
shoulders. The ring of sun and the crescent moon travel across the
swirling, purple sky. I’m thankful the gloomy, gray rain is gone. I’m
thankful the moon and sun aren’t close enough to eclipse. I’m thankful
we still have time.
We cut through the wild grass. It practically swallows Rishi and
me whole. Nova could pass for a disembodied head walking across the
top of the emerald-green sea. Giant flowers grow in brilliant shades
of red, yellow, and orange. We use our knives and the mace to part our
way and keep the flower’s thorny vines from scratching our skin.
Still, when we reach the road at the clearing, my arms are covered in
dozens of thin scratches.
The road here is dusty and sunken in, like thousands of feet have
walked across it. Who were they? I wonder. What were they searching
for?
Nova reaches for something around his neck-his prex, but it’s
gone. Instead, he kisses the back of his thumb. “Thank El Papa for our
passage.”
Rishi gives me a sideways glance and shrugs. I’ve got no one to
ask blessings to because I know in my heart I don’t deserve it.
Instead, I lower my head and ask El Guardia, Protector of All Living
Things, to watch over my family.
We get to the fork in twenty minutes. I press on the sides of my
watch. When it beeps, Nova’s eye twitches, but he doesn’t say
anything. Instead, he stares at the paths in front of us.
“I’m not sure about this,” he says.
“Madra said to take the right path,” I say.
“Why are you so eager to trust the birds over me?”
Rishi coughs into her hand and says something that sounds like, “
Thief .”
“Let’s look at this objectively,” I say. “The left path leads to
the trail I wanted to take between Bone Valle and the Poison Garden.”
“I don’t know how I feel about bones or poison,” Rishi says.
“See?” Nova asks.
I scoff. “ Now you agree with each other.”
The left fork looks bulldozed, cleared of trees and rubble.
“Now let’s look at my path,” Nova says, pointing to the one in the
middle. The way is green and vibrant, lined by lush trees. White
butterflies flutter by the dozens. When the wind blows, petals and
leaves fall to the ground. Fuzzy animals that remind me of overgrown
hamsters race from tree trunk to tree trunk. “It’s goddamn angelic is
what it is.”
“I don’t know about you guys,” Rishi says, “but that third one,
the ‘right’ one we’re supposed to take, doesn’t look so hot.”
She’s not wrong. The third path is out of my worst nightmares. The
trees are dry and black, like used coal. Thin and tangled like barbed
wire, and just as prickly. A hunched, furless cat scatters up a tree
with something dead in its jaws.
“I’m not just doing this to contradict you,” Nova says. “We don’t
know Madra. For all we know, she could be leading us into a trap. The
Meadow and the Wastelands lead to the mountain pass. Let’s take the
way that looks less likely to kill us.”
“But-”
“You paid for a guide, Ladybird. So let me guide.”
Doubt makes my thoughts spin. I reset my stopwatch to keep track
of our next leg. “It seems too easy.”
“We deserve a bit of easy, don’t you think?” Nova smiles, and it
lights up his whole face.
Rishi raises her hand. “I like it easy.”
Madra did tell me to look twice . The more I look at the path on
the right, the more it frightens me. A tiny imp creature lazily drags
a bloody bag over his shoulders. It glares at us with black eyes,
bares a row of tiny sharp teeth, and hisses, “ Intruders. ”
The middle path sings with light and life. One step closer to my
family.
Finally, I hold my hands out and say, “After you.”
22
Look twice, my child,
for shadows change
and so do faces.
- Rezo de las Brujas
“So far, so breezy,” Nova says, whistling as we walk.
Their good mood is a wordless shift that happens when he flanks me
on the right and Rishi on my left. It’s like there was never a
different path or option. This was the only one.
As we walk, my magic tickles my skin. Something about these woods
is magnetic. I want to reach out and let my power free, but I hold
back.
“I wonder if the rest of Los Lagos looked like this once,” Rishi
says. She picks up a white flower that fell from a tree and tucks it
behind her ear. “Before the energy-sucking monster started destroying
everything.”
“When I was little,” Nova says, “my gran used to say that Los
Lagos began as a waiting place for spirits. La Mama and El Papa
created it for the afterlife. But then the land took on a life of its
own. It became solid. Grass and forests began to grow. Mountains
formed, prairies shifted, and lakes and rivers cut across them all.
The Tree of Souls was always the heart of it. Then the Deos sent
animals and half-beings that didn’t belong in the human realm
anymore.”
“Like the dodo bird?” Rishi asks hopefully. Out of every extinct
animal, she wants to see a real-life dodo.
Nova chuckles. “Something like that. People came after that.
Brujas and brujos were banished here. Some even came on their own,
seeking to build a new life.”
“When did the Devourer show up?” I ask. Tiny animals on the trees
shudder when I say the shadow creature’s name.
“I don’t know,” Nova says. “Maybe she was banished here or maybe
she was here from the start.”
“I wish Madra were less cryptic,” I say. “I think the answer to
defeating the Devourer is in the tree. Maybe we’ll come across another
one of the tribes Madra mentioned. Maybe we can get real answers.”
“Maybe.” Rishi is half listening, half petting tiny, green fairies
that jump on branches and walk alongside us. They come in all the
colors of the forest, with gossamer bodies and slick, bald heads
crowned with thorns. They seem to make it a game of seeing who can get
the biggest bite out of us.
One opens its tiny pink mouth and goes for my face. I pinch her
leathery skin and hold her up to my lips. I blow at the fairy, like
she’s an eyelash at the tip of my finger. As she floats away, I wonder
if I should’ve made a wish. Nova, on the other hand, flicks at one
that lands on his shoulder. It hits a tree but recovers quickly,
spitting in our wake.
“It’s hard to think of Madra being afraid of anyone,” Rishi says.
“When she caught me in the middle of the sky, I thought I’d died and