Another pop at our feet. We jump back. Nova stands directly under a beam of light. I can feel the anxiety bubble in my chest, and I scream. I push him with a blast of my magic. He hits the trunk of a tree. The place where he just stood goes up in roaring flames.
Nova jumps around the fire and grabs my hand. He doesn’t have to say it. My legs are already moving.
We run.
14
Rain of fire, birth of ash.
Born again, the gods will clash.
—Song of El Fuego, Bringer of Flame
The Selva of Ashes goes up in flames around us.
No wonder birds and insects were traveling upward. But Nova and I can’t climb. I’m not even sure if we’re going the right way, but I don’t stop running. We race across the beams of light, their heat pulsing against the ground. Even though I know it’s coming, I can’t stop from jumping every time a blaze of fire pops. It’s like we’re surrounded by land mines.
I thank La Mama that I decided to join the track team last year. I jump over fallen trunks like hurdles. I pump my arms at my sides. I’m surprised Nova is keeping pace beside me, and I can’t help but think that he’s had some practice at running from things too. He shoots me a challenging smile. He nods to the light ahead, where a line of trees in silhouette marks the end of the rain forest.
I run across a beam of light just as it explodes. It burns my shoulder, but I keep going. Fire is catching up behind us, and it licks at our feet. I feel the burn in my legs, my lungs, but the end is so close, I throw myself out of the line of trees.
Nova falls beside me.
We’re out of the Selva, and the light-gray sky feels infinite.
“Oh my gods,” I say, sprawled out on the ground.
“And here I didn’t think I’d get in my daily cardio,” he says between heavy breaths.
I cough and get up. My adrenaline is buzzing and so is the magic around us. The entire floor of the Selva has caught flame. We watch as the underbrush burns quickly to ash. Then it stops. Then, the sky breaks and the rain comes and washes away the black ashes, revealing dark-green buds.
“Why is this land separate from the rest of Los Lagos?” I ask Nova.
“Not sure.” He’s still trying to catch his breath. “Let me add that to my list of Los Lagos mysteries.”
“Okay, genius.” I put a hand on my hip. “How do we get across the river?”
Now that the Selva of Ashes is behind us, we can only look forward. At the end of the rocky bank is a silver river that gleams in the gray light. The river rushes in an undulating current. On the other side is a black line of caves. The Caves of Night look more like an impenetrable wall. The bank, the river, and the caves—they all go east to west as far as my eyes can see. It makes the land feel so expansive, like it’ll never end no matter how far we walk.
Nova closes his eyes and leans his head back, his face toward the open sky. It really is beautiful, like a black-and-white photo. I inhale the cool, salty air, and allow myself to sink into the reality of this plane.
It startles me when I look at both ends of the horizon. The moon and the sun are out at the same time. On one end, the sun is a white circle hidden behind the overcast sky. On the other side of the horizon is a sideways, slender crescent moon, the points facing up. Something swells inside me, a faded memory of bedtime stories about them reaching across the sky to join together—La Mama and El Papa. I touch the moon necklace between my collarbones.
“Is that our moon?”
Nova stands beside me. His boots crunch the gravel. “Yeah.”
“But that’s not our sun?”
He shakes his head. “The passage of ‘time’ is marked by the movement of the moon and sun across the sky. They travel from one end of the horizon to the other, bypassing each other. That’s a cycle, what we’d call a day. Every cycle, the moon and sun get closer and closer to each other.”
“Like the story of La Mama and El Papa traveling across the galaxy to find each other.” I used to love that story as a kid. The two major Deos were once separated by their enemies, and so they had to reach across the heavens, creating night and day.
“Exactly,” he says. “When they eclipse, that’s when the Tree of Souls takes all of its energy and metabolizes it. Then, the Devourer feeds on the power for herself.”
“How do you know that?”
“You’d know too if you went to Lady’s classes.” He takes out the map and flips it over. “Also, it says so right here.”
There are a few notes scrawled in nearly illegible handwriting. I wonder who it belongs to. My father? Aunt Ro? Maybe Mama Juanita. I remember her sitting at the kitchen table when she thought everyone was asleep. She had a cigarillo in one hand and her fountain pen in the other. Usually, a bruja writes their initials after an entry in the Book of Cantos. The map of Los Lagos, and the notes scrawled on the back, are unfinished, anonymous.
“Wait,” I say. “If the Devourer is siphoning out the energy, wouldn’t that kill the land?”
Nova stares at the shore across the silver river, clutching his prex. He rubs the blue stones one at a time. My mother does that when she’s uncertain and when she’s praying.
“I don’t know, Ladybird. What I do know is the moon and sun are still far apart. We have time. We’ll have to see how fast the cycles pass to mark our pace.”
“You can say day, you know.”
He shakes his head and walks west.
I start to follow, but I see something moving in the water. I walk to the edge of the riverbank. My boots kick gravel into a current so fast it doesn’t even ripple. I try to find a sense of calm in the rushing water’s silver waves. I reach my hands to touch the salty water, but Nova yanks me back. I fall on my butt.
“What the hell?”
His face pales as my foot dangles over the river, silver waves licking at the tip of my boots. He grabs me again and drags me back a few feet.
“Don’t touch things just because they’re shiny.”
“I wasn’t.” I push myself off the ground and dust the moist earth from my pants.
He makes a deep guttural noise that makes me think of my neighbor’s pit bull.
“Do me a favor. Let’s have the rain forest that sets itself on fire be our warning for the rest of our time here. Don’t touch anything. You don’t know what kind of water this is. You’re not back home, Alex. We’re in another dimension. If I can’t make that clear for you, then you’re dead, and I’m dead with you.”
I cringe at the smell of burning rubber. I look down to find a hole at the top of my boot where the silver water splashed me. Right. Don’t touch anything.
“Welcome to Los Lagos, Ladybird,” Nova grumbles as he leads the way. “Come on.”
? ? ?
We walk at a safe middle distance between the edge of the rain forest and the edge of the silver river. The clouds thicken in dark-gray mounds above us. Every shadow, movement, and splash makes me want to jump out of my skin. What else is going to get set on fire? Is everything here made to kill? I take off my shirt because of the thick humidity and stuff it in our backpack. In minutes, I sweat right through my tank top.
“Did you see that?” I point to the water. “There’s someone in there. I saw it before.”