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.

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