Your magic is your anchor. I used to believe it was my burden. I
used to believe it was the reason everything terrible happened to my
family. But what if we were ordinary people, without this darkness
surrounding us? Terrible things could happen still. That’s just the
way of the worlds. Here, in Los Lagos, my magic has done good. Can do
good-if I let it.
Wild magic can’t be tamed , I think, and for the first time in
forever, I don’t want to hold back. This magic is mine. I can feel it
calling to me.
I understand now. Magic is a living thing. It’s part of me. I
summon it, call it like a snake charmer calls a snake out of its
slumber. The magic answers back. It slithers from the tree. The
Devourer’s face contorts when she feels what I’m doing. My power, all
of it, is expelled from the cocoon and back into me. This time, I
don’t fight it. This is what Mama Juanita meant. I accept you.
I remember you.
The Devourer grabs my hand, and I get a flash of something.
A young woman alone on a hill, cursing the Deos.
I don’t want to see her impression. I don’t want to know, so I
pull away, leaving her staggering to the ground. I want to ask her,
How does it feel?
Instead I turn to the voices of the trapped souls in the tree.
They’re waiting for me. I just need blood, and I need it fast. The
eclipse is happening.
Blood of my blood.
I climb the roots of the tree to get to the center of the trunk.
The answer is the tree. I can’t help but think of Nova. It has to be
blood. Blood is life. I cut from my wrist up, blood flowing down the
trunk. I bite back the pain that burns as I cut. The tree becomes soft
as human flesh.
Free us , the voices whisper.
Release me , the land screams.
I raise my dagger and drive it deep into the bark.
38
Given the gifts of the Deos, the encantrix has a choice in the
worlds.
To heal it.
Or destroy it.
- The Creation of Witches, Antonietta Mortiz de la Paz
The world falls apart.
It’s the only explanation for the way fire falls from the sky.
Gashes rip fresh wounds into the earth. The roots of the Tree of Souls
rise up from the ground like they’re waking up from a long, long
sleep. The black cocoons shatter into fractures of multicolored light.
My magic hums against my skin. Every part of me is glowing. Even
my necklace. The light beams at the tree, illuminating the people that
emerge. The sight of them brings me to my knees.
My mother, Lula, Rose, Mama Juanita. Tio Guacho and cousin Betsey.
Hundreds of generations of my brujas and brujos stand before me.
There’s a woman who looks like she walked out of a Renaissance
portrait. Her ruffled collar is almost as tall as her curls. She looks
at me with a haughty face that tells me she’s not pleased, that there
is no better place for me than this-on my knees asking for
forgiveness.
“There is nothing I can say that would change what I’ve done,” I
tell them.
“You got that right,” Lula mutters. I could kiss her beautiful
face.
The lady with the collar speaks in Castilian. I don’t understand
it, but I don’t expect what she says is forgiving. Beside her is a
woman I’ve only seen in a black-and-white photo. My great-aunt Santa
Orchidia who lived to a hundred and twenty. Her skin is black as coal.
Her silver hair is wrapped in a white scarf that matches her mourning
dress. White. We mourn death in white. She speaks in a language that
rattles my bones.
Mama Juanita steps forward. She puts her hand on my cheek. “I’m
proud of you, nena.”
I lower my head. They surround me now, the way they tried to do on
my Deathday.
An old man steps forward. In his withered old face, I see my
father’s eyes. Lula’s eyes.
“Alejandra Mortiz,” Papa Philomeno says. “You have my blessing
now, then, and always. Do you accept?”
“I accept.” I hold out my bleeding wrist. He touches the blood and
uses it to trace our symbol-the crescent crowning the sun-on my
forehead.
I can feel their hands, all of the Old Ones, encircling me,
repeating, “You have my blessing, now, then, and always.”
• • •
I didn’t expect a being as old as the Devourer to go out without a
fight.
And she doesn’t.
She shakes with magic, blasting away the ring of avianas and
Meadowkin. When she turns to me, I don’t recognize her.
Her skin is aged like cracked desert. Her body is doubled over
like a question mark. Talons and nails have bloodied her arms and
face. But still, she’s a fighter. She pulls at the magic of the earth,
the roots of the tree. My family has escaped, and so are other souls,
floating away into the air in silver wisps. She tries to draw them
back, but they fight like fish swimming upstream. Those who were
captured alive stand ready to fight.
“We’re not finished, Alejandra,” she says.
“No, we’re not, Xara.”
“Don’t you dare use my mortal name. Xara was weak and afraid, just
like you will always be.”
But I’m not afraid anymore. “The Deos don’t take kindly to false
names.”
An unusual sense of calm settles in my body. I can feel them, all
of them, the lines of my family crisscrossing, not just living beside
my magic but merging together to create something more. I know why
everyone was so excited when they found out what I was.
Encantrix. The one chosen by the Deos.
“I will destroy you,” she tells me. “I will drink the magic from
your bones and then spit them out.”
“You should be careful who you threaten,” Mama Juanita says,
clicking her cane at my side.
One by one, they come forward. I can see Xara counting. Her eyes
grow wider with each person she sees.
“This is over four hundred years of my family,” I say. “And these
witches are pissed.”
I thought I was ready, but I’m not. My family channels their power
through me all at once. I can see our lifelines twisting like sinew,
like DNA, like roots in the earth. When I can breathe again, I direct
the flow of magic. It floods in prisms of color that can only exist in
between the realms. It is pure, undiluted power, and I fire it at the
Devourer.
She lashes out with everything she’s got. It feels like she’s
throwing stones while I wear Kevlar. Together, our magic fills the
skies with blinding lightning. I hold it in my hands and throw. It
cuts through the Devourer until there is nothing left but the ghost of
her scream and a shower of ashes.
39
’Round the twisting paths of eternity,
o’er the bridge of forgetting.
There, you’ll find the Kingdom of Deos.
- Book of Deos
The gash on the tree spreads, sucking up anything and everything
around it. Creating a portal through the tree was the only way to free
it from the Devourer.
“We have to go!” I shout.
One by one, the spirits of my deceased family members disappear
into the ether, back to rest until the next time they’re called upon.
The ones that are still alive wait for me. Then there are the others,
strangers, who were trapped against their will. Their souls fly around
me, they touch me, thank me, and then they vanish.
“Alex!” My mom’s voice cuts through the howling wind. I run into
her open arms and hold on tight. “We have to go. The portal is going
to seal itself.”
“Wait!” I pull out of her embrace. I run to where Agosto and Madra
are weary from the battle. Black clouds circle and twist, ready to