“Los Lagos is a place of power. You have power, whether you want it or not. The land calls out to us. It’s saying hello.”
I stare at the brilliant-blue bug that looks like something out of a prehistoric exhibit. It scurries across the dirt, right past my feet. Then it opens up its hard shell, revealing wings. It flies around my head.
“Hello,” I say, while Nova laughs at me.
“I wouldn’t touch anything,” he says.
“Is it poisonous?” I jerk away from the buzzing little bug. Then it loses interest in me and flies away into the trees.
“I don’t know,” he says, “but it’s just common sense to not touch things unless you know what they are.”
“You could always volunteer as a test subject,” I muse.
“So could you.”
The heat starts to rise. I can feel the air turning to steam. I sit beside him on the tree trunk, facing the map. It’s the most precious thing we have right now. I touch the thick parchment, whisper a rezo for my family.
Nova nudges me with his shoulder, sending a spark of pain from the landing.
“We’re here.” He taps his finger on a dark sketch of land labeled Selva of Ashes. “It’s a land unto its own, separating it from the rest of Los Lagos by a river. We have to get across the river, through the Caves of Night, take this middle path from the fork in the road that leads through Meadow del Sol, over this small mountain range called Las Pe?as, and boom. We’re at the labyrinth. Cake.”
I want to hyperventilate and slap him at the same time. There’s a black blotch above the Tree of Souls, at the center of the labyrinth, like someone set a pen there and let the ink run. “A small mountain range? Are you crazy? We don’t have the supplies for that!”
“With your powers and my brilliant survival skills, it is cake, Ladyb—”
“Why can’t we take the path on the left and cut across? There’s an arrow pointing to it.”
He holds the map up to my face and points. There’s a sliver of a trail between a place called Bone Valle and the Poison Garden.
“What part of Poison Garden makes you think we should go there? And Bone Valle.” Vah-yey. He puts an emphasis on that last word. “That’s straight up what it sounds like. A valley of bones. Not to mention it borders Campo de Almas. Now, I may not spend a lot of time around them, but I’ve been told wandering souls can get pretty nasty.”
I get what he’s saying, but whoever drew this map made a direct line through the worst-sounding places of Los Lagos.
“It’s the most direct route,” I say, wavering on my instinct. I wipe the sweat from my brow. I drink more water. The insects that were surrounding us start to fly up to the canopies.
“Look,” he says. “You’re going to have to trust me.”
“Yeah? Because you trust me so much.”
“I don’t,” he says. “You tried to suck the life out of me. If anyone should have trust issues, it’s me.”
“I’m not the one who spent three years at a juvenile detention center.”
“I’m not the one who sent her family to hell.”
I stand and walk away. The tree canopy shudders and a thick, warm rain falls. I raise my face to the heavens. I know that Nova is right. I have to put all of my trust in him, not just because I’ve paid him, but also because he’s all I’ve got. It doesn’t mean I have to like it. I don’t know why I’m so hard on him. If Lula were here, she would say this is why Rishi is my only friend. When I was with Rishi, I never felt like there was something wrong with me. Maybe it’s because Rishi hasn’t seen this side of me, the girl with the power. The girl with the selfish heart.
I wonder how my sisters are right now. I wonder if they’re in pain. I wonder if this creature, this Devourer, is hurting them. I wonder if they’ll ever forgive me. I wonder so hard that my own tears mix in with the warm rain, and it feels really good not to have to brush them away.
When the rain stops, soft, gray light filters through the canopies. Strange, fat, black-and-green birds weave between branches, higher and higher until I lose sight of them. Bright-yellow snakes slither around thick, red tree barks and race up, up, up.
Behind me, Nova’s shoved all our things in the backpack. He shoulders the weight and comes up behind me. The smell of a just-put-out fire clings to him.
“Like it or not, Ladybird,” he tells me, “we have to trust each other just enough. Not completely, but enough to know that I need you alive to get my money and you need me alive to get your family back.”
“Good point,” I say darkly. I have to keep reminding myself that Nova isn’t helping me out of the pureness of his magical heart. When he looks at me, he sees a dollar sign.
And when I look at him, what do I see?
A boy with a handy switchblade, a borrowed mace, and more tattoos than you’d expect on someone so young. It makes him look older than seventeen, older than his dimples and casual humor suggest. I wonder what made his skin so tough, what made the cuts on his face. Our paths crossed the moment Lula’s boyfriend almost ran him over, and now they’re aligned, two freight trains side by side. When do we collide?
My face flushes as he pulls up the hem of his shirt to dry off his face, but between the heat and the rain, it’s a lost cause, and he takes it off completely. His muscles are bulky and taut, like he works hard to stay so big. But his muscles aren’t the most fascinating part. On his solar plexus is a tattoo of a sacred heart surrounded by thorny rosebuds and a brilliant starburst. Around it are more tendrils of black ink, same as his hands.
“Let’s get one thing straight.” He leans forward and a part of my brain tells me to pay attention to the way his abdominal muscles flex when moves toward me. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve never been here, and I made that clear. It’s fifty percent suicide. But if we don’t do this, you’re already dead. And if I don’t try to get that money, I’m dead too. Let’s get out of this rain forest and through the Caves of Night. Then we can bite each other’s heads off trying to pick a fork in the road.”
“Fine,” I say, snatching my water bottle from him.
“And another thing,” he says. “No one needs to know the details of why we’re here. Whatever or whoever we come across, just lie.”
That should be easy enough.
Above us, a flock of the fat birds perching on a branch snap awake. Their eyes glow amber, their howls so human that it makes my skin go cold. They spread their wings and vanish deeper into the rain forest.
There’s that smell of cinder again.
“Do you smell that?” I ask him.
Nova grabs my arm. He looks up to the canopy. There’s smoke coming from a plant where a beam of light shines down. A pop of flame makes me jump. It burns fast and hard until there is nothing but a patch of ash where the plant used to be.
“Selva of Ashes,” I whisper. For ashes, you need fire.