Labyrinth Lost (21 page)

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 light 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.

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.

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.

'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 form a tornado at the center of the labyrinth.

“You must go, encantrix,” Agosto says.

“I'm making sure everyone gets back.”

There's so much to say. It's too much to convey with a simple embrace. Madra gives me one of her feathers; Agosto, one of the throwing knives from his belt.

Aunt Ro pulls me back to the tree. “Go, Alejandra.”

She's different too. The symbols of the sun and crescent moon are marked on her forehead. She glows with a light that comes from deep within.

“What happened to you?” I ask.

“The Deos have a plan. They always have a plan!”

When my mom sees my aunt, she nearly faints. “Rosaria?”

Aunt Ro's dark skin glows with a different kind of blessing. A balance. The Devourer is gone and someone needs to take her place. This is why the Deos gave her a second chance. The sisters embrace. My mother shudders in her little sister's arms. Aunt Ro kisses my mother's wet cheeks, then forces herself to let go.

“Okay, head count,” Lula says.

One by one, they jump in—Lady, Rose, my mom, and so on.

I watch the labyrinth crumble as the fire dies and leaves the skeleton of branches. Funnels of clouds swirl across the hills and carry the ashes away. The Meadowkin and the avianas wave from a distance. Rishi takes my hand and squeezes.

“Ready?” I ask.

“Don't stand me up again.” She kisses me and jumps into the portal.

Then there's Nova, standing alone.

“I'm staying,” he shouts.

My heart, the treacherous, bloody mess, betrays me. It squeezes with unexpected hurt.

“If you stay,” Madra says, cold as ice, “I'll make sure you pay for your betrayal. The Devourer may be gone, but this still isn't paradise.”

Nova nods an understanding.

I look at Madra and Agosto once more. I commit them to memory. I never want to forget this moment.

The force of the gateway pulls at me, but so does a part of me I didn't know was there. A part that wants to stay. How easy would it be to stay? What version of myself is going to come out of the other side of that portal?

Aunt Ro takes my hand. She kisses the inside of my palm where my cut stings. “Don't shut me out again, nena. I'll be watching over you always.”

“I'll be waiting.”

The first time we went through a portal, Nova pushed me. I see the hesitation in his eyes and the fear of not belonging. Before I can change my mind, I wrap my arms around him and pull us into the portal.