Labyrinth Lost (17 page)

Take me to the glittering mountain

to find the riches of the world.

Take me to the glittering mountain

to mine its treasures untold.

—Folk song, Book of Cantos

When I fall down, hands grab me instantly to pick me back up. Nova turns me over on my back.

“I'm fine.” My body is screaming with pain, and my heart and mind are racing.

He holds my face in his hands. “You're not fine. We've walked for miles. You're exhausted.”

“Don't tell me what I am.”

A smile creeps on his face. “Stubborn.”

“Jerk.”

“Do you see that?” Rishi shouts, running ahead.

“Wait!” I call after her, but when we make it around a steep hill, I can see what has her so excited. There's a smattering of trees that grow so low to the ground they appear to be bowing. It's a tiny oasis in the middle of a barren land.

Despite the ache in my bones and the sight-splintering headache that comes from recoil, hunger, and general exhaustion, I sprint to the perfectly round pond nestled in a valley between two hills. I cup the water in my hands and drink greedily until my belly is full and my head spins.

“Sweet, sweet nectar of life,” Rishi says.

I look up at the dark-purple sky, torn between the need to keep going and the toll the journey is taking on us.

“We need rest,” Rishi says. “We're not going to be of much use if we crawl the rest of the way.”

Nova holds his hand out to me. “Give me your dagger. I'm going to find us something to eat.”

“Since when are you the hunting-and-gathering kind?” Rishi asks.

“Just thank your stars you've never been so hungry you hunted squirrels in Central Park at night.”

I can't tell if he's joking or not, but the idea of Nova alone and hungry in the dark makes my heart hurt. Then he breaks into that sly smile of his, the kind that makes you forget about all the worries you might have.

“You collect wood,” Nova tells Rishi. Then he turns to me. “You should get your rest. I don't like being out in the open like this.”

When Rishi and Nova leave, I fill our empty water bottles. I look at my reflection in the pond. My skin is bruised, and I look like I went a few rounds with a heavyweight champion. I take off my clothes. With Rishi and Nova gone, I let myself cry out in pain instead of keeping it in. I wade into the water and submerge myself until my chest burns for air. I let myself float on the surface, and the tepid water washes away the dirt on my skin and more. It fills me with a pleasant warmth that pulls me beneath the surface. I feel myself sink. I
let
myself sink.

I know I'm dreaming when I'm standing on top of the pond. I jump when I fear I'll fall straight through the surface, but my feet only create small ripples. There's a woman standing in front of me. When I recognize her, I want to fall on my knees and weep.

“You always fell asleep during your bath time,” Mama Juanita says. “Even as a baby. I told your mother she gave birth to a fish instead of a little girl.”

Suddenly I'm six years old again, and my sisters and I are running around the yard, pretending we're part of our great-grandmother's Circle. Mama Juanita, our favorite person in the world. She had a mean face, but she baked the best sweets and told the best stories—the kind my mom said we were too young to listen to.

“Mama Juanita?”

The glow of her soul is so bright against the violet of the day. She looks just as she did before she died—skin dark as coffee, and the same gray eyes as my dad and Lula. Long, white dress. A ring of orchids around her neck. A prex made of onyx. A thin cigar hanging between her red lips. Mama Juanita was our matriarch before her heart attack at ninety. Mama Juanita has this way about her, like the world should tremble when she walks. She could speak to the dead like Rose. She could recite all the blessings to the Deos, every canto in our family book. This is the woman who named me. She died before my sisters and I could grow up. Before my father left. Before my mother started going crazy from missing him. Before the greatest Circle of brujas and brujos dwindled to handfuls.

She clicks her wooden cane on the water, then smacks my leg with it.

“What was that for?”

“Don't be such a drama queen, nena,” she says. “It's only a tap.”

“Is that what you told yourself all those years?” I rub the spot she hit. “Mama, why are you here?”

“Why do you think I'm here, eh?” She takes a puff of her cigarillo and blows at the sky like she's exhaling a cloud. Ghost secondhand smoke can't kill, but the scent reminds me of late mornings, watching her strain coffee through a sock and fry cheese on top of plantains. “I'm waiting for you to come and get us out.”

“I'm trying.”

“Try harder.” She smacks my other leg with her cane.

I hiss, then bite my tongue.

“I didn't know what was going to happen! I just wanted—”

“Don't you yell at me, Alejandra.” She points her finger at me. “You're not the first witch to make a selfish choice, and you won't be the last. I should've been there to teach you the ways. Your mother didn't want me starting on you three too young. I respect that. The first time I saw a dead body, I was five years old. Neighbor was murdered and the cops couldn't figure out how. So the family brought him to us. I had the Gift of the Veil, like Rose. Had to sit in a room with his dead body for three days and wake his soul, ask him how he died. I didn't talk for days after that.”

I look up when she says that. She smiles like she knows the secrets of the world, and in my heart, I believe she does.

“I told you,” she says, “you're not the only one. I couldn't be there for you, but I'm here now. Rose is a fine little bruja. Between her and me, we can project ourselves to you, but you're a hard one to reach.”

“I've been told.”

“Don't get fresh with me.” She smacks her cane on my arm. “Who are the witches you're traveling with?”

For an apparition, it hurts like hell. Talking back will just get me another ghost slap, so I stay quiet.

“There's this boy. He's a brujo. He's got the gift of light.”

She sucks her teeth. “Parlor trick. Human matchstick if you ask me.”

“
Ma.
” I sigh. Why is it never easy to talk to your family, living or dead? “He was going to help me get to the Devourer. Then there's Rishi, but she's not exactly a witch.”

“What do you mean ‘not exactly'?”

So I tell her about Rishi and how she followed me here. How we started at the Selva of Ashes and met the avianas. How we faced the Devourer and found the Hidden Path.

I brace myself for another slap from the cane, but it never comes. I gnaw on the inside of my cheek.

“Do you know what the Devourer did when she saw me?”

Mama Juanita shakes her head solemnly.

“She
laughed
. She laughed because she thinks I can't beat her. I'm sorry I did this to you. Every step I take, I think about how everyone I love is going to die because I'm not enough.”

“Listen here, nena.” She clicks her cane on the water, sending a wave that spills onto the banks. “You listen good. I don't
ever
want to hear you say that. You are the blood of
my
blood, and you are more than enough. You think we don't know the burden of our power? I lived with it for ninety years. Believe me, I know.”

“You're the first one who's actually called it a burden.”

“I can say whatever I want. I'm dead. But burden or gift, this is who we are. Just think, nena, if you didn't fear your own power, then you wouldn't have respected it enough to rein it in. But you have to get past that. Magic is an extension of us. Imagine the things that we could do. Create. Destroy. This Devourer, she doesn't fear her power. She fears someone who could be stronger than her.”

I think of the fear in the Devourer's face when I was able to cut her. I enjoyed that feeling. I wanted to see someone afraid of me.

“I'm not blaming your mother,” Mama Juanita says in that passive-aggressive way of hers. “Bless her heart, but if I had been alive, this whole mess never would've happened. You would've known not to mess with cantos you had no business messing with. You would have memorized every herb and poison in the Book of Cantos.”

“But you
weren't
,” I shout. “Where was the magic when my dad left us, huh? Where was the magic when my mom had to take two jobs just to pay the mortgage? How was I supposed to see the good in magic when we've only had suffering? I don't live in the old days, Mama. I live in Brooklyn circa now. The only reason this happened is because of me. Not my mom. Not you.
Me
.”

Something inside of me just snaps. The earth trembles. Boulders roll down the hill. Mama Juanita cocks her eyebrow and takes a puff. The winds around me have funneled into baby tornadoes. Mama Juanita reaches out her hand to touch one, and for the first time since I was five, the old woman smiles. Actually smiles with teeth biting on that cigar.

“That's my girl,” she says. “You need your family blessing. You need to hurry and free us.”

Then, her smile disappears. She looks over her shoulder and winces. It's only for a moment, and then her sassy, cranky self is back.

“What happened?”

“I'm sorry.” She shuts her eyes and shakes her head. “I didn't come to make you feel guilty, nena.”

“Could've fooled me.”

She purses her lips but keeps talking. “I came to tell you that your magic isn't enough. You're an encantrix. You've been chosen. You have magic, but all brujas need a way to conduct it. That's why wands and charms became part of witchcraft. Our bodies, they're just flesh and bone. The Deos are not, but our powers come from them.

“Without your family blessing…” She lets it linger. “That's what the Deathday is for: to fortify you, so you can use your gift and not burn your body or mind so quickly. Have you started feeling it? The nightmares, the body aches? That's the recoil, but it'll get worse. At least I don't see any marks.”

“Marks?”

“Without a Deathday, your power starts to consume your body. It eats away at you. It leaves behind black marks. When you're covered in it, well, that's when you know it's the end.”

I shake my head. “No, that can't be right.”

She leans in close, reaches for my face but grabs air. “Tell me you don't have marks, nena.”

“I don't.”
I
don't, but Nova does.

“Alejandra, you can't—” Mama Juanita drops her cigarillo from her lips. She chokes on black smoke.

“Mama!”

The shadows slither around her neck.

I reach for her, but this time I do grab air. She flickers away, and for the first time in my whole life, I see fear in her eyes.

“Alex!” Nova shouts. It's like I'm hearing him from the other end of a tunnel.

The water gives beneath my feet. My mouth fills with water. My dreams are of the dead. My family. My friends. Myself. We lie in a field of thorns and turned earth. Over us stands the Devourer. She licks her fingers. Every single one. Then settles her red stare, her face hidden behind that helmet of bone and steel. I feel her hunger.
My
hunger.

When she takes it off, she's wearing my face.

The oceans sparkle with your tears.

The land aches for your return.

—Folk song, Book of Cantos

I did not travel through a portal and across a strange land only to drown in a pond. I kick up and reach the water's edge.

“Alex!” Rishi and Nova both shout, running for me.

I'm too busy coughing my throat raw to answer. I brush water out of my eyes and wring my hair out.

“I'm fine,” I say. “I had a vision of my great-grandmother.”

When I look up, Rishi and Nova are staring at me. Nova's eyes are more green now, like sparkling jade crystals. His cheeks are bright red. He holds a bloody animal in one hand and a knife in the other. His lips move in a jumble of words that end up nonsensical, and then he turns his face to the side.

“Alex,” Rishi says, her eyes wide with wonder. Whatever she's holding falls to the ground. She looks at me the way people usually look at Lula.

I look down to realize I'm naked and a golden light covers my skin. I hold up my hand and push a blinding light out so they have to look away. I grab my clothes and run behind a tree, their laugher tinkling in the wind.

“Not funny!” I shout at them.

I get dressed. My clothes cling to my wet skin. I could swear that Lula's apparition is nearby making fun of me. She'd say, “What's the big deal? That's how we were made.” Why has it always been easier for Lula to be freer than I am? It's not like I'm covered in boils and puss. It's not like Rishi and I don't have the same parts. It's not like Nova doesn't know what a naked girl looks like.

I hit the back of my head against the tree trunk, and I can't help but smile at how nervous Nova was and the blush on Rishi's face. I'm not used to making people react to me that way because, for the most part, I'm not used to being seen. My heart races and I think this has to be a different kind of power.

I dust myself off and get ready to return to my friends when I realize the bruises on my arms are all gone. Then, my heartbeat spikes when I see a dark spot on my palm. Fear of Mama Juanita's words takes hold of me. My mouth goes dry and my fingers shake as I move to touch the mark.

It comes away easily—just a smudge of dirt. It didn't take long for my witchy hypochondria to start now that I know what happens to brujas who don't have their Deathdays.

I find Nova and Rishi sitting around a small fire. Nova is skinning a large, rabbit-looking creature and Rishi is sharpening sticks. We sit in complete silence with only the brush of the weeping willow making noise as it slaps the surface of the pond. Rishi hands over one of the sharpened sticks to Nova and he skewers the animal straight through. I'm trying to put together an image of Nova, but it's hard because there are missing pieces.

“Where'd you learn to skin?” I ask him.

His eyes, more blue now, flick to my forehead, then back to the animal. He smiles. “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”

“He worked in a butcher shop,” Rishi says. “He's just trying to make you guess the worst.”

“You have no chill, Rishi,” Nova tells her.

She blows him a kiss, and he rolls his eyes.

“So,” Nova says, “what was with all the glowing when you came out of the pond? You looked like the painting of that Greek lady surfing on a giant clam.”

Rishi slugs him in the arm and he just laughs. “Classy.”

“Oh come on,” Nova says. “I'm just trying to make things a little less awkward. We could all go skinny-dipping and then we'd all be on an even playing field.”

“Pass,” Rishi says.

“First of all,” I start, “that was probably one of my most embarrassing moments, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't make fun of me.”

“Believe me,” Nova says softly, “there's nothing to make fun of.”

Heat spreads from my solar plexus across my skin. I push the feeling away and realize there is something I do want to know. “I have a better idea than skinny-dipping.”

Nova's eyes light up. “Yeah?”

“I want a secret.”

“
Psh.
That hardly seems like a fair exchange.”

“You're a Neanderthal,” Rishi mumbles.

“Mankind had to start somewhere,” he says. “At least I can make a fire.”

“You used your magic,” Rishi counters.

Nova turns the rabbit. Juicy fat melts off and pops in the fire. “Magic makes the world go 'round.”

“Why didn't you tell me that you never had your Deathday?” I blurt out, growing tired of Nova and Rishi's bickering.

Whatever he thought I was going to say, it wasn't that. He avoids my eyes and cleans my dagger on his pant leg. Rishi looks like she's about to speak, but I shake my head. I want to give Nova space. I know that's what I'd want. I'm torn between wanting to know more about him and wanting him to tell me on his own. We sit and watch the fire burn and wait for Nova to be ready. But what if he's not?

“How'd you know?” he finally says as a nonanswer.

“My great-grandmother appeared to me.” I fill him in on the charm of Mama Juanita and the shadow smoke that attacked her the way it did Lula and my mom. “She told me that power burns our human bodies without the family blessing.”

I look at Nova's hands. The black marks have spread farther up his biceps. One tendril flows from his stomach to his clavicle and then his shoulder.

“Why didn't you say anything?” Rishi asks.

He shrugs like it's no big deal.

“Nova, stop. You know I can't let you keep using your powers.”

“No one
lets
me do anything.”

“Well, maybe if someone did, you wouldn't get yourself in so much trouble.”

He shuts his eyes and gives me his cheek. “You guys don't know squat about me.”

“Then
tell
us something. Your answer is to act like the world is against you. Believe me, I know. I felt like that every single day. I felt like my magic was the worst thing that could ever happen to me. It broke my family. It breaks so many people.”

“Now you've changed your mind?” He's being defensive.

“Something's changed—me, the magic, this place. I can't explain it. There are moments when the magic feels
right
. There are other moments when I'm afraid of what I could be capable of. There's this tiny voice that takes pleasure in doing bad things. I'm afraid I could become like the Devourer.”

“Never,” he tells me. He reaches for my face, but then he catches himself and instead rubs his hands over his face.

“You could never be like that,” Rishi says.

Nova looks up at the sky and mouths a silent rezo. “I never had my Deathday because my parents died when I was a kid. Deadbeat dad, drunk mom, delinquent brothers and sisters. The only ones who got away were my eldest brother, Unico, who turned his back on us and became a cop. Then my sister, Cinqua. She ran away the first minute she got a chance and I haven't seen her since. I should have gone to my grandmother, but she already had too many kids in the house. Plus, she was still mad at my pops. Isn't that something? Only brujas can stay mad at someone who's dead. Besides, my old man would've been real disappointed if he knew I'm just a human matchstick.”

“Don't say that,” I tell him.

He smiles, but I can see the strain in his face. “Don't worry about me, Ladybird. The first time my magic appeared, I hurt someone. I didn't mean to. Let's just say my foster parents weren't exactly out of a fairy tale. My foster father deserved it. After that, I just kept running and hiding. When the marks started, I wasn't sure what was happening. I don't have a Book of Cantos like you, and I don't belong to no Circle. When my grandma finally took me in, she tried to give me the family blessing. But my family's so broken, even the dead have forgotten us.”

“So you knew the consequences, but you use your powers anyway.” Rishi licks her lip. She's hungry. We're all hungry, but it seems wrong to eat while Nova is talking about his past. “Why?”

“Survival of the illest,” he says, but his laugh is forced. “I've never been much good at being anyone other than who I am. Even if it got me locked up. Even if it kills me in the end.”

“What happened?”

He shrugs. I hate when he shrugs.

“Girl was in trouble. I tried to help her from getting mugged. Someone called the police. She couldn't really tell me apart from the people trying to hurt her.”

He won't look at us. He's startled when Rishi is the one who takes his hand to give him comfort.

“The marks have only gotten worse recently.” He holds up his hands. The black marks are as dark as ink. No wonder he has so many tattoos. What better way to cover up his magical ones?

“I told myself I'd figure out a way to reverse it.” He holds his hands up to the flames. “While I was in juvie, these guys showed me there was a way.”

“Is that why you need the money?”

He looks down at his feet and nods.

“I promise I'll help you,” I tell him. “After all of this, I'll do everything I can.”

“I don't deserve that,” he says. “Besides, if I burn up in Los Lagos, then you don't have to pay me at all.”

And that does it. It hits me in the gut that he's not here for me. Not truly.

“I'm sorry, that was a stupid thing to say,” he says.

I put on a smile and shake it off. “Well, you've made up for it by cooking dinner.”

“Hold up,” Nova says. “I confessed a secret. It's Rishi's turn.”

“A nice Guyanese girl like me?” Rishi winks. “Alex already knows all my secrets.”

“I doubt that,” Nova mutters.

“I am sorry I didn't tell you sooner,” I tell Rishi. “I was afraid you'd see me differently. You were the one person that made me forget about my magic.”

“I love your magic.” Rishi holds my stare. Her eyes flick to my lips, then back to my eyes. “I should tell you that you look different. Good different. You walk with your head up and your eyes are brighter. You wear the magic on your skin. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.”

I always used to say that magic transformed Lula. I didn't think it would do the same to me. But the more I use my power, the more I feel it changing me.

Nova clears this throat. He takes the rabbit off the fire and rests it between the three of us. “You guys ready to eat or what?”

“Wait. Give me your hands.” I hold out my hands for them to take. I do something my mother used to when I was younger. “Thank you, La Mama, for this meal and for lighting our path. El Terroz for the bounty of your rich, strong earth.”

“And La Estrella,” Nova adds, “for a new hope.”

“And to Alex,” Rishi says, “for this adventure.”

• • •

We keep on going.

I find the stone path again easily. Or perhaps it finds me. The farther we walk, the more Los Lagos starts to feel familiar. The sky is violet, and there is not a skyscraper in sight. The grass is tall and yellow, and wild beasties scurry underground. It is unlike anywhere I've ever been, but somehow it reminds me of home.

You are the blood of my blood
, Mama Juanita told me. She believes my power is enough.

Every now and then, I turn around to make sure Rishi and Nova are keeping up. Rishi's face is flushed, but if she's tired, then she doesn't complain. Nova is quieter than usual, his bipolar eyes searching the sky. I go to check my watch for the time and realize my watch is long gone. The moon and sun are inching closer as they pass each other in the sky. The eclipse is approaching, but so are we.

“I'm coming for you,” I whisper, and hope the wind will carry that to my family.

We stop once more to drink water and eat the rest of our rabbit. But I can't sit still for too long. When the moon and sun set, I pull light from the stars and create three glowing, green orbs, so we don't have to walk in the dark. My skin tingles, and I know we're close. We rest again, so I can heal the blisters on Nova's and Rishi's feet. When I'm exhausted, my green orbs are extinguished like candle flames. I'm the only one who can't sleep, and so I try to make shapes out of the stars. I wonder if the Devourer can feel us approaching. I think of the one way she can hurt me—my family. I envision all the different ways I want to hurt her.

“I'm coming for you,” I whisper before I fall asleep.

The very second the sun and moon rise again, I wake Rishi and Nova up and we keep going for another half cycle.

“It's up ahead,” I say.

“I can feel it too,” Nova says.

“I know I'm not a witch or anything,” Rishi says, “but this place is making my skin crawl.”

“Is something finally scaring you?” Nova asks her.

“It was bound to happen,” she says.

I take her hand and squeeze, just to let her know that I'm here. I shut my eyes and let the mountain speak to me. Like the rest of this land, it has a voice. It calls to me, magic to magic.

La luna
, the voice whispers in the Old Tongue.

“The moon,” I say. I step away from my friends and line myself up with the moon. I step on the next stone, and when it sinks, a wave of energy crashes over me. A moonbeam connects to my necklace, shooting a prism of multicolored light into the glamour. The veil falls away, revealing a mountain range that glitters like stars and stretches higher than the Empire State building.

“The entrance!” Rishi says.

The prism of light that beams from my necklace illuminates a rift in the mountain that would be easy to miss in the dark. It looks as if El Terroz took his golden ax and created the gash himself.

When we stand at the entrance, the prism flickers and goes out. I struggle to bring back the light, exhaustion pulling at my life force.

“I've got it,” Nova says. He releases a ball of light over his head and blows on it. It floats ahead of him.