“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.
38
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.”