“Not a fan of any love if it’s coming from you.”
Part of me wants to take it back. Out of everyone here, he’s the only one who noticed me leave. I want to tell him to come back, but he’s already gone. When Nova shuts the door, I look up at the light he left. It dims slowly, like a concentrated sunset meant just for me.
“There you are!” my mom says, running into the kitchen. She holds my face with her hands. She kisses my forehead. I take a deep breath, but I can’t stop myself from shaking. “It’s time.”
10
When the bruja meets her dead,
she will welcome them.
She will open her heart
and know her true potential.
—The Deathday, Book of Cantos
It starts in the dark.
My closest living relatives—my mother, Lula, Rose, Aunt Jeanette, and, from my dad’s side, cousin Teresa and Maria—sit in a circle with me at the center. My feet fall asleep in seconds. Sweat clings to my lashes, blurring my vision with every blink. Somewhere in the dark is Old Samuel, tapping the drum skins, matching the rhythm of Lady’s song.
Lady lights the stone bowl between us. She thanks the Deos for blessing me with such power. She’s singing about the moon and sun and the balance of the earth. Then, the names of my ancestors are listed one by one and called forth to meet me.
The lights go out, but a different brightness fills the rooms. Soft, red, and warm. My heart booms—a terrible, bloody thing inside of me. My first instinct is to run. Lula widens her eyes at me, a quiet order to stop fidgeting. So I concentrate on the rattle of shells, on the tsssss of tongues against teeth. On the wisps of smoke rising to the ceiling. On the parakeet batting its wings in my hands.
“Carmen,” Lady says my mother’s name. “The death mask.”
My mother dips her fingers in a bowl of white clay. She covers my face with it, blows on it to help it dry quickly. Her breath is sweet like rose punch. Then comes the coal. She traces the black of bone around my eyes, down my nose, my lips, my cheeks. We wear the face of the dead so the waking spirits feel at home.
Lady takes my hand and slices it down the center. I gasp and pull away. She grabs it back, and I force myself to stay still. For my counter-canto to work, I need my blood too. I look away and squeeze my fist. Warm wetness trickles into the fire. The fire burns acid green, which is strange. I see the confusion on Lady’s face. She and my mother look at each other. Is it my canto? Every Deathday I’ve been to, the fire burns white once the blood is spilt. I fear I’m caught when there’s a firecracker pop, and the green flame becomes true white. Relief washes over my mother’s face.
Then, they arrive.
The temperature drops, announcing the presence of the spirits. The brujos and brujas of my family are hidden in the shadows beyond the circle. I can hear them singing along to Lady’s song, louder and louder, voices rattling like thunder.
Mama Juanita once said there are many kinds of dead. Once you die, you can choose the way in which your spirit returns. Most opt for their younger selves. Others as they were when they died, no matter how gory. Others go straight onto their next lives. Some get stuck in a terrible in-between.
Even in death there is possibility, I think. If my father is dead, will he step forward?
The spirits show themselves. They dance and walk around me, cocking eyebrows at the small bird in my hands. I see my grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, and others that have been dead for hundreds of years. One woman is as dark as night. A white wrap covers her head, and a cigar is clenched between her strong, white teeth. My heart squeezes painfully. Mama Juanita.
In my life, they’re old, fading photographs, but now they’re here and they’re waiting for me, judging me, expecting me to be fulfill this legacy.
I grab the parakeet tighter. It bites and struggles to get free. It’s stronger than I thought.
“Alejandra Mortiz,” Lady says. Her face is more severe than usual, all rough lines and angles. “What do you offer the spirits of your dead in exchange for their blessing?”
“Blood of the guide,” I whisper.
“We accept,” they respond in a chorus.
I take the knife from Lady. The handle is ivory. The steel glistens with anointed oils. Press it to the yellow feathers of the parakeet’s chest. I’m searching for two faces. Aunt Rosaria. She should be here. She’s been haunting me all these years, so where is she when it matters the most?
“Alejandra,” Lady says. “The dead don’t like to be kept waiting.”
But don’t they have nothing but time?
I search for his face, but I don’t see him, and I don’t know if I’m relieved or not that my father’s ghost isn’t here.
“The guide,” Lady says harshly.
I hold the parakeet up to my lips, kiss the soft feathers as it chirps a cry I want to return but can’t. If I don’t complete the canto now, then my life will be full of death and demons forever.
“It’s okay, Alejandra,” Mom says, seeing me stall. Her eyes are still bruised from yesterday’s attack. I hope she can understand one day that I’m doing this so we can all be safe. “You can do it.”
“Go on,” Lula says.
There’s chattering from the audience and the dead. I squeeze the knife tighter. I can feel the parakeet’s heart racing under my thumb. I will never get a chance to do it again.
With trembling hands, I plunge the knife into the bird. It stops trying to fly. There’s a smattering of applause. My mother lets go of a long sigh, as if all of our worries are now over.
But my canto isn’t complete. I gave my blood and the sacrifice. Now, I retrieve the raven feather from its hiding place. My hands shake, and sweat drips down my face. Someone gasps, but I can’t see who. I throw the feather into the flames. The dead stumble back in a great gust as the red light is replaced by shadow. White smoke billows all around us. I hear my name shouted from all over the room. The house trembles, as if a thousand fists and feet are beating at the walls.
“Alejandra!” my mother screams. “What are you doing?”
The smoke surrounds me and only me. Wind funnels into the house, bringing rain and lightning. But I sit still. I grab the bowl of coal. The feather chars and curls, then turns to ash.
“Lady de la Muerte,” I shout. I grab fistfuls of ash and salt and draw a circle around myself, breaking my connection with the others. “Accept my offering. Protect me from my living. Protect me from my dead.”
Windows shatter, doors fly open, the floorboards warp beneath me.
I cry out as my heart feels like it’s twisting out of my chest.
Something is wrong. This wasn’t part of the recoil.
“What have you done?” my mother asks me.