The duende grins, tapping his long, thin fingers against each other. He’s missing two on each hand. He deeply inhales the air around me.
“I want to hear you scream,” the duende says.
It waves a hand, and for a moment, I feel like the space around us spins. The hedges turn over. The sky is beneath me, then above me again.
I blast the duende with my magic, but it goes right through him. He tsk tsks at me.
“You’re supposed to be the chosen girl. You should know that wouldn’t work on me. I am fear. I am the shadow of your mind. I have no name. I am everything you hide, and I cannot be defeated.” Then slowly, the missing fingers of his hands start to grow back.
The duende snaps his teeth in my direction, hungry for more. Then it sees something behind me.
“Be gone,” Nova commands him. “The Devourer sent me for her.”
“I am never gone, girl,” the fear duende says, bowing to Nova. “Remember that.”
Nova walks around me like a hawk. He presses his palms to his temples and screams. “Why are you doing this, Alex?”
“If it bothers you so much,” I shout, “then stop following me. Go back to your master.”
“I can’t!” He takes a step toward me, and I blast out a shield. He presses his hands on it. His perfectly healed hands. “I can’t watch you die.”
I let my shield down. “But you can watch my whole family die, right? You’re so noble.”
“I’m trying to make this right.”
“Try harder!” I shove him to the ground.
When I turn around to run, there’s a snarling shadow beast at the end of the path. The maloscuro’s snarling teeth are wide open and coming for me.
“Get down!” Nova shouts, blasting his light. The labyrinth starts to change again. He grabs my hand. “Come with me.”
“I’d rather take my chances with the maloscuros.” I pull my hand out of his.
Nova shoots a blast of burning light at the maloscuros running toward us. I swing the mace like a baseball bat and slam it into the shadow creature’s face. Blood sprays my skin. My hands tremble as I pull my weapon back just in time to swing at the next one.
We’re surrounded in seconds. The blind giants turn a corner, their feet shaking the earth. Nova creates spears of light in his hands. He slings them at the giants, piercing the tender, unprotected skin of their eyes. When the giants scream, it echoes all through the labyrinth.
I look up just in time to see a saberskin ready to pounce on me. I push my borrowed magic into a shield. It’s weak and it flickers, but it keeps the beast away long enough for me to get a better grip on my mace. I conjure flame in my hand and light the head of my weapon. Then, I bash it into the creature. Its oily skin catches fire. I blast a horde of bat-like creatures that attack overhead. Nova burns them to a crisp.
There are too many of them.
I can hear the Devourer cackle. It sounds like it’s coming from all directions. I concentrate on singling it out, then take the open path to my right when a light blinds me. I don’t have time to scream. His hand clamps down over my mouth. Nova pulls me into a pitch-black corner.
“Sh,” he whispers in my ear. He’s holding me around my waist. The hands of a stranger. They seem empty without the black marks covering his skin. The Devourer is on the other side of the wall. She’s speaking to herself nonsensically. Every now and then, she stops and laughs, then screams and cries out for blood. She curses at the moon and the sun and tells them to hurry up.
“Withdrawal,” Nova whispers.
“No, I had withdrawal,” I whisper back. “That’s something else.”
“She gets this way toward the end, when she hasn’t fed since the last eclipse.”
We’re boxed in my black, trimmed hedges. I remind myself of Nova’s betrayal. I remind myself I can’t trust him. I throw my elbow back and dig it as hard as I can into his gut. Slam my boot against his foot. He grunts and falls, and I lift my hands into the air to—kill him? Can I?
“Take me to the tree,” I tell him.
“Wait, Alex, please.”
“Don’t say my name.”
“Fine,” he snaps. He gets back on his feet. “Encantrix, let me explain.”
I call my borrowed power to the surface. I’m not going to kill him. I’m going to make him hurt the way he hurt me.
He meets my power with his own. I fall back on my ass. “Alex, don’t.”
“Don’t say my name.”
He makes a frustrated gesture at the air. “We don’t have a lot of time. I’m trying to help you.”
“Then get me to the Tree of Souls.”
“I’m trying. You just—you have to know. I was just doing my job. I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
“You didn’t have to try.” I take a step away from him. “You just did. You made me think you were on my side. You made me think I could trust you.”
“It wasn’t supposed to go down this way. There’s more I wanted to tell you. I just couldn’t do it in front of Rishi.”
“Why?”
He’s quiet. I can see the indecision in his face. He takes several steps away from me, hugging his body. He looks up to where the moon is touching the outline of the sun. When he turns around, he moves so quickly, I don’t have a chance to react—my hands are still raised in the air, and he stops inches from me. I can feel the hum of his heartbeat. Like the time I stole his life force, like the time he carried me in the mountain pass.
“The job was to gather power for the Devourer. I scouted you for weeks.”
I shut my eyes. I see him walking in front of the car that day. I see him crossing the street while looking back at me.
“It wasn’t hard to find you. There aren’t many of us left, you know? Everyone knows someone, but none of them had your potential. A score that big, I could get the Devourer to keep up her end of our bargain. To set me free. All I had to do was swap out your Deathday ingredients with mine, and your power would get sent here. It was easy to do when I dropped off my delivery. I didn’t expect your whole family to get in the way to protect you. I didn’t know what would happen, Alex. The Devourer still wanted you. Without you, none of this would work.”
“You created the portal. You made me think I banished them.” I shut my eyes for a moment, and tears run down my face. He starts to touch my hand. “Don’t.”
“There’s more.”
I turn to run through the hedge, but something grips me from behind. White-hot pain sears my skin. Magic floods my veins, and then we’re on the ground together. Pure magic flares through me so quickly that my head spins. His memories flood into my mind. I see my face the way he sees me, hear his heart slamming against his ears like fists against the wall.
There’s Nova as a kid, beating his knuckles bloody on a wall of exposed brick. His tortured back cut up in cruel, bloody gashes.
There’s a little boy hiding in a closet while guns go off in the next room.
There’s a police officer throwing him into a bus like a criminal.
There’s home after home. Monstrous hands that come out of the shadows. His heart beating and beating until it creates a spark. The magic finds him and burns a woman’s face.
There’s Nova, older, bolder.
There’s a boy who never got the chance to be a child. He roams the streets all night and sleeps in the nooks and crannies of the subway, the park, the construction site of a million-dollar high-rise. He’s so hungry he steals and steals until he’s just another shadow in the city.
The black marks start to spread every time he uses his magic. At first, he measures the progress, but soon enough he stops caring. He calls them tattoos.
People look at him a certain way. Fear. Awe. It’s the same thing, I guess. He’s older still, pulling his hood over his face so people won’t ask him what he is. Brown skin and ligh
t eyes, like the world’s biggest mystery.
He finds friends on the streets. Lost boys and girls surviving by any means necessary. There’s an accident. A girl screaming. A man with a gun. Nova uses his magic to scare away an attack. The girl runs in fear, not of the attacker but of him. There are blue and red and white lights, and accusations.
There’s juvenile detention. There are men there with magic too. They smell like steel and blood and fire. They whisper of a creature who can help. They call her the Devourer. She appears like a succubus in his dreams, all red lips and promises.
There’s hope. For the first time in so long, there’s hope.
He’s a pied piper of souls. He leads power to the woman with the mask of death. He hears their screams as she consumes. He wants to break away, but he’s bound to her. He longs for her promise to make him strong. He searches for more. He’s walking to a job. He almost gets hit by a car. There’s a girl. He sees her fear. Her power. He knows her from around the way. He loves her anger and her fight. He loves the way she holds her fears close to her heart. The Devourer sees her too. That’s the girl. Watch her. Wait. She’s the One.
He leads her down the dark. He holds her. She saves him. He saves her. He wants her. He loves her. But the human girl loves her too.
He betrays them. He doesn’t want to die.
The sound of rushing blood roars in my ears. Our connection breaks.
I sit up, shaking in his arms.
“There’s nothing I can do to make things right with you,” he tells me. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try.”
He holds out his hand.
It’s a stranger’s hand, a traitor’s hand.
“This doesn’t change a thing,” I tell him.
As the sky breaks above us with pouring rain, Nova creates a long passage through the hedge. There, at the end of the narrow path, is the Tree of Souls.
37
Find me where the sun meets the moon.
Past the wicked trees,
past the desert dunes.
—Witchsong #2, Book of Cantos
Nova and I run through the maze. The hedges try to shift, try to trick me, but I barrel forward. I smash at the dead hands that reach from the black leaves with my mace. I can smell fire and smoke. It starts on the outer rings of the labyrinth and races toward the center.
“How did you do this?” Nova asks me.
“I have a few tricks up my sleeve.” I hope Aunt Ro and Rishi are safe out there.
I stop at the base of the Tree of Souls and land on my knees. I feel dwarfed by its grandeur. Its long, thick branches reach for the sky, barren of any foliage. Instead of leaves, the branches are filled with hundreds of cocoons. The cocoons pulse with white light, and when I touch the tree trunk, I get impressions of the powers trapped in there.
Alex! I hear Lula shout.
She made it, another voice.
Encantrix, a united whisper.
“I’m here,” I say, then a sharp pain digs into my side. The blast sends me flying back, away from the tree and crashing into Nova.
Black, sinewy smoke surrounds us, toys with us. I pick myself up and get ready for another attack. The smoke settles in front of me and materializes into the Devourer. Her eyes are a deeper red now, almost black. Dry, red lips smirk. Her neck twitches, as if something inside of her is fighting to get out.
“Nova. I’m surprised,” she says. “I thought human self-preservation was better than that. I suppose not.”
“I’m used to being a disappointment,” he says without a trace of irony.
“I’m taking my family back,” I tell her.
“How?” she asks. “Kill me? You can’t. You’re alone. You’ll always be alone. I have your power, your family. Now, I’m going to take your life.”
“Enough, Xara!”
I turn around at the sound of his voice. Agosto, the Faun King, is flanked by his people. They wear armor made of tree bark and metal, their weapons are ready to charge. Madra stands beside the faun and bows her head in my direction. The avianas flap their wings and caw a warning. There are so many of them, even creatures I don’t recognize.
The Devourer takes a step back. It’s a single step, but it’s enough to show she didn’t expect this.
“The tribes of Los Lagos,” she says, recovering easily. “We’ve been down this road before. It never ends well for any of you.”
“Maybe this time it will,” I tell her.
“Look at you,” she says. “I love it. A few days ago, you were scared of your own shadow. Now, you’re ready to lead a rebellion.”
I’m still not ready, I think. My heart pounds. My legs shake. But I have to be.
“How noble of you,” the Devourer says, turning her face to the sky. The perfect circle of the sun and the crescent of the moon eclipse each other. The symbol of La Mama and El Papa. “But I’m afraid you’re too late.”
The Devourer raises her face to the sky. The rain clears and the clouds part to reveal the coming eclipse. The crescent moon crowns the white sphere of the sun, and together they’re lined up above the tree. The cocoons of stolen power pulse faster and faster, changing from white to black.
“No!” I shout. “Keep her away from the tree!”
Madra attacks first, swooping down from the sky. Her war cry fills the air. Her talons scratch the Devourer’s face, ripping her eyes from their sockets. The witch’s scream is a terrible thing that cuts through my eardrums. Her trembling fingers touch the blood streaming down her face.
The avianas swoop down and scratch her hands, peck at her hair, her skin.
The Devourer blasts the air with crackling energy. It strikes four birds down. They land, broken and twisted, at our feet.
It’s not enough. Her power isn’t weakening.
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. br />
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.”