“You’re going to start believing in the Deos?”
Rishi grins. “Or I could just put all my faith in you.”
I get closer to her. Her brown skin is bathed in the starlight. Her long, dark hair is windblown and wild around her shoulders. Something in the pit of my stomach falls, and when she smiles at me, it just keeps on falling.
“You can believe in anything you want,” I say, “as long as it feels right. Even seeing the things I grew up with, I wanted to pretend they weren’t real. I have all the proof in the world, while some people go lifetimes hoping to see a miracle. It was easier to think I was living the wrong life. It’s easier to want to be someone else.”
“I would never want you to be someone else.” She coils my hair around her finger. The ends have started to curl on their own. Magic transforms you. “I want you to be you. You’re magic, Alex. I always thought so, even before I knew your secrets.”
Her smile is full, and hearing these things, my heart feels so full it might burst. I exhale hard, look up at the circle of stones that surround us.
Then, a bright light explodes, like the flash of a camera. Nova stands just outside the temple. The worry mark on his brow is gone. His hands glow with light.
“Find anything interesting?” he asks.
“If you think ancient witch carvings are interesting, then sure,” Rishi says. She walks toward him and leans on a stone pillar.
“Well?” Nova asks me. “Was Agosto pulling our chain?”
“Not funny,” I say.
“Too soon?” He shrugs a shoulder.
I ignore him and continue tracing my fingers along the stone. The magic here is strange. It isn’t the dull pulse of the earth I’ve felt during this journey. It’s like a sigh of relief.
There’s a carving above eye level of a crescent moon lying sideways. The symbol of El Papa. I touch the necklace my father gave me. The next pillar has the mark of El Terroz, a square stone. A feather for El Cielo, an eight-pointed star for La Estrella, an arrow for El Corazon. I walk in a full circle, looking at all thirteen pillars—each one is for the High Deos—until I reach the sun, for La Mama. Here, the grass is wild and overgrown. I try to imagine what this place would have looked like in its prime. The grass would be green, not yellow. The stones would be newly etched, not fading. Brujas and brujos would stand in this circle.
“It feels so forgotten,” I say.
“I don’t get it,” Rishi says. “If the Devourer or Xena or whatever her name is was also a bruja like the tribes who built this, why would she kill them all?”
“What do you do with an obstacle?” Nova asks.
I don’t like where he’s going with this. “You go around it.”
“What if it keeps moving in your way?”
“You get rid of it.” If I shut my eyes, the wind sounds like the ghosts of brujas and brujos screaming for their lives. “My mom believes in the balance of all things. She says La Mama and El Papa are a symbol of that.”
“The Deos don’t create the balance,” Nova says. “We do. Their power is in us.”
“Maybe they should be more careful in giving power to people in the first place,” Rishi says.
“Then why did they choose me?” I wonder aloud.
“Don’t go down that rabbit hole, Alex,” Nova says.
“I mean, no one should have this much power. No one. But here we are.”
“It could be worse,” Rishi says. “Your spell could have worked, and then who would be here to fight the Devourer?”
“I would.”
“But you stand a better chance having this great bruja power.”
I reach down for the earth and push my magic into it. The land’s weak pulse answers back in greeting. I remember you. It doesn’t speak it, but the thought pops up in my head. The land aches, as if waking from a deep slumber. I pull at the dead patches of grass. Right where my magic met the land, a tiny, green bulb appears.
I place my hands on another patch of earth. The dry, yellow grass comes away with a snap. It reminds me of Mama Juanita plucking the feathers off a chicken. It reminds me of pulling at my hair in an angry fit, alone in my bedroom with the lights turned off while I listened to my mother crying for my dad.
I remember you, says the earth.
Green sprouts twist from the ground like newborn fingers stretching. My heart races with the boost of my magic. Instinct, as old as this place, grips me. I take a step toward the center of the temple, pulling away the dead plants from the dirt. My fingers touch something hard. A worn stone tile buried and forgotten. I jolt as sparks burn my fingertips.
I need light. I raise my hands to the overcast sky.
“La Estrella,” I say, “bless me with your light.”
The air in my chest escapes in a gust. My magic pushes against the clouds, and they race away across the night sky until there is only the blazing light of a million stars. They shine down on the circle of stones.
One by one, the symbols etched at the top of the stone pillars glow, creating a circle of light that reaches down to the ground. The newborn grass bulbs spring up higher, alive and lush.
Something’s missing. I can feel my magic, taut like a guitar string, urging me to take another step. I place both feet on the stone tile. It gives under my weight, sinking into the earth, snapping into place. The light bounces off each pillar, then funnels into a single beam, crashing over me.
“I remember you,” I say as the light fills me. Every cell of my body snaps awake, and I wonder if this is what it feels like to be born once again. If this power is a good thing. If I can control it.
The skin at my throat burns where my necklace catches the light that shines down on the grass in front of me. Yellow grass breaks away, revealing another stone. The stones glow, and when I step on them, they sink. The dirt ahead clears, revealing the next step for me to take—then another and another, leading out of the circle and down a hill and then up another.
When I look up, I’m filled with so much color and joy and light. I walk ahead, lighting up the path for Rishi and Nova to follow. The path is dizzying, and just when I think I’m heading in the right direction, the stones change. I struggle for breath as the stones lead us up a new hill, then alongside patches of lavender, and then another stretch of dead earth.
After a while, I look over my shoulder. Nova’s face is full of awe. His eyes are wide and looking only at me. Rishi, my little magpie, urges me to keep going.
So I do. I keep going until my muscles ache and my tongue is parched. Until the incline is too steep and we struggle to breathe. Until I see the ripple of the glamour, and I know we’re closer. Until the clouds return, darker and stronger, and the light of my crescent moon disappears.