touch.
How many others has he led down here? Does he think of them now as
he looks down at his hands? There is no recognition in his eyes, only
awe. They’re unmarked. Perfect. New. He touches his chest where the
marks were spreading around the sacred heart of his tattoo. They’re
all gone.
As if noticing I’m still standing here, he jumps.
A bit of metal glints in the black grass. My dagger.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” he warns me.
“Like think I could trust someone like you?”
Hurt flashes across his face briefly.
I try to stand tall and defiant, but I can’t. My muscles cramp and
burn until I double over.
“What you’re feeling is going to get worse, Alejandra. If you try
to fight me without your powers,” the Devourer tells me, “you will die
with the rest of your family. You’re only human now. If you’d like to
go home, Nova will create a portal.” She glances at the moon and sun,
and a broad smile fills her face. They’re nearly lined up perfectly.
Today. The eclipse happens today. “Though I suspect I’ll be seeing you
on the other side soon.”
The Devourer presses her hand on her chest. Something is wrong
with her. A thin line of blood trickles from her nostril. She wipes
the blood away. Licks it off her finger. She starts to glide across
the field covered in fog, back into the labyrinth. Then she stops. She
turns to look over her shoulder. “Nova.” She says his name the way a
mother would, urging her child to come along, to follow.
“If you stay here, I will kill you with my bare hands,” I tell
him.
He nods and disappears with her.
When she’s gone, I sink to the ground. I curl into fetal position.
I spent so many days and nights in my room like this, begging La Mama
to take the power from me. Now that it’s gone, I feel a void. A cold
sweat bubbles on my skin. I shiver uncontrollably and dig my fingers
into the earth. I can’t hear the pulse of the land or hear the words
in the wind. I can’t feel my family anymore.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“Alex,” Rishi cries. “Alex, please get up.”
Rishi needs me , I tell myself. The vines are still squeezing her.
I hear the crack of a rib, followed by Rishi’s scream. I push myself
up and find my dagger. I slice the vines, but it’s a hydra. Everywhere
I cut, the vines multiply and grow. I start digging around Rishi’s
feet until I find the root. I stab the core of the plant over and over
until it lets go of Rishi and dries up.
I catch Rishi as she falls. She wraps her arms around my neck and
we cling to each other. The land here is gray and bleak, cast in the
shadow of the labyrinth. I search for the magic inside of me but it’s
gone.
“I failed them,” I say.
Rishi shakes her head into my shoulder. “You’re still alive.”
“Sh.” I brush her hair out of her face. She’s covered in her own
blood. I reach for my power to heal her and come up empty. The void
inside me grows bigger by the second. I try to conjure a spark between
my fingers, and when I can’t, I pound my fists against the ground.
“You know when you want something so badly, but when you get it, it’s
not what you expected?”
She nods, stroking her thumb over my cheekbone.
“That’s what it felt like when I gave her my power. Only a
thousand times worse. When we were back home, I thought it was the
magic that made me do terrible things. I’ve always blamed the magic. I
hid behind it. But here, magic was the only thing that made sense. Now
it’s gone.”
Alejandra , a voice whispers to me.
Rishi turns to the labyrinth. She heard it too. It’s different
from the voice I was hearing in my head. That was the voice of my
power guiding me. This voice is different. It sounds like my aunt
Rosaria.
“I want you to take the mace,” I tell Rishi. “Find a place to
hide.”
She makes a very loud noise that lets me know she’s not going to
listen. “I heard that too.”
“I don’t have my power to protect us, but if the Devourer thinks
I’m going to turn around and go home, she’s wrong.”
“She can’t feed from the tree until the eclipse,” Rishi says. Her
lips are swelling, but she refuses to stay quiet. “You heard her.
She’ll have your family’s power. She’ll come into our world.”
I think of what Agosto said. She’s nearly drained Los Lagos dry.
She needs somewhere else to go. With our combined power, she could
break free of Los Lagos and into my world.
“You were right before when you said the answer is in the Tree of
Souls. Nova was just trying to make you second-guess yourself because
he was working for her.”
That stings more than it should. I’ll deal with Nova later on.
The tree. The answers lie in the tree.
“We have to get through the labyrinth. What would Lula do? Without
my powers, they can’t reach me. I wish I could ask them.”
“Do you know what I ask myself sometimes?” Rishi takes my hand in
hers. “What would Alex do?”
I press my forehead to hers. The thing that drew me to Rishi was
her happiness, the way she wore it on her sleeve, the way it lit her
up like the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. Now, in the most
hopeless of places, she gives me that light.
We pull each other up. We face the labyrinth. There’s a swirl of
black-and-gray clouds directly above it. I take a deep breath and
stretch my aching muscles. No power, no recoil.
Rishi takes my dagger, and I sling the mace over my shoulder.
I’m not the encantrix everyone thought I would be. Right now, I’m
just a girl, and there is also magic in that.
Part III
The One
34
I search for you in lost fields.
Hear me, my dear. Your loved ones wait here.
- Canto of Spirits, Book of Cantos
We run into the Campo de Almas.
There is no life, only dirt where nothing grows and rain doesn’t
fall. The sky is a fiery burst of red, like the top of the sky is on
fire while the rest of it sleeps.
The campo is a field of wandering souls. These souls are different
than the ones in the river. They’re thin as fog and move slowly, like
they’ve forgotten where they’re going. I wonder what’s worse than
roaming aimlessly without knowing you’re dead.
A cold hand grabs at me, and I instinctively pull on my magic.
Nothing comes. The hand on my shoulder is cold and soft. As soon as it
touches my skin, it passes through me. They’re less than
ghosts-they’re shells of memory. The soul repeats a word I don’t
understand. I realize it’s a girl’s name. He says it over and over in
a gruff voice, like it’s the only word he remembers, the only word
that matters beyond years and life and death.
“What’s wrong with them?” Rishi asks.
Directly above us is the labyrinth. It hits me. “This is where she
throws them away after she drains their energy.”
Rishi takes my hand, and we run through the wandering souls. Their
essences make my skin pucker, my heart ache. I can’t let his happen to
my family. Rishi squeezes my hand tighter. We’re chain links of
desperation attached to one another.
We reach the twisting black arches that mark the entrance of the
labyrinth.
“Stay close,” I tell her.
We step inside. The deep-blue darkness surrounds us, and I prick
myself on the twisting vines that wrap around the labyrinth wall. The
path is narrow and littered with stones. Above me, the sky is a sea of
storm clouds. My eyes adjust to the dark. The hedges tremble as they