to see the labyrinth.

I raise my hands and feel for the glamour on the land. I remember

Mayi from Lula’s circle uses her powers to change her eye color and

straighten her nose all the time. But sometimes, when I look at her

from the corner of my eye, or between blinks, the glamour reveals

itself. That’s small magic. Magic used for vanity doesn’t end well, my

mom would say.

Even from miles away, I can feel the ripple of magic across the

land. I relax my eyes, and for a fraction of second, the ghost of a

mountain ridge appears. Then a force pushes against me, like a punch

to the gut. I gasp for air and stumble back.

“What is it?” Agosto asks, rushing to my side.

“What do your bruja eyes see?” Rishi asks dramatically. Then she

gives Nova the finger when he snickers at her. So much for their

truce.

“It’s there. It’s hidden behind a glamour.” I take Agosto’s

outstretched hand and pull myself up.

“What should we do?” Nova says. “We could walk straight for it.

When we get closer, you can pull the glamour.”

I shake my head, unsure. If I can feel its strength from here, I

don’t know if it’ll get any better. “What if I can’t?”

“I beg your pardon,” Agosto says, “but pulling the glamour won’t

be enough. This is what the Devourer wants. Walk straight to the

mountain and be unable to pass. Walk around it and end up in the Bone

Valle. Disrupt her magic, and she’ll come right at you, and I fear

she’ll take greater precautions now that she knows she underestimated

you. You should make for the Hidden Path.”

“Um,” Rishi says, raising her hand as if we’re in the middle of

class. “Okay, but how do we make it the Un-Hidden Path?”

“Before our rebellion, Kristiсe created the path through the

mountain to let other tribes pass. Their plan was to attack unseen.

But their own people betrayed them, and as they crossed, the Devourer

ambushed them from both sides. The Alta Bruja, leader of the tribe,

used the last of her power to curse her traitors with immortal life.

Gouged out their eyes and buried them beneath the earth. The Devourer

found them and dug them up. She healed their bodies by linking their

life force to the earth. She called them her ‘blind giants,’ guards of

the labyrinth.”

“How can they guard anything if they can’t see?” Rishi asks.

“They don’t need eyes to find you,” Agosto says darkly. “Sight is

the most easily fooled of all our senses.”

I look at Nova, who stares at the horizon. I wonder what’s going

through his head right now. He looks more worried than I’ve ever seen

him before.

I follow the twisting trails down below with my eyes. We could get

lost no matter what. Los Lagos is as much a labyrinth as the

Devourer’s maze. As the sun and moon start to reach their peaks in the

sky, nudging closer to eclipse, their light bounces off the henge

below.

“Head for the temple. Alta Bruja Kristiсe erected the circle of

stones and called it the Heart of the Deos.”

“Why’s it always the heart or the eye of something?” Rishi asks.

“You notice that? There are so many body parts that don’t get enough

love, like earlobes and belly buttons.”

“ Rishi .”

She shrugs in her I’m-only-just-saying kind of way.

I find myself touching my necklace to feel the familiar weight of

knowing I was connected to someone-the way I used to when I missed my

dad. I’m starting to get that feeling back.

“I take it you’re not coming with us,” Nova says to Agosto.

The Faun King shakes his head. “I must return to my people. Take

them to safety. I fear Xara will retaliate soon.”

He takes my hand and presses it to his lips, then his forehead. “I

hope to see you again, encantrix.”

I don’t wait to watch him go. I take off, running down the hill.

• • •

The temple is bigger than anything it seemed from up the hill. The

stones are great pillars weathered by wind and rain. I press my hand

against the groves and dips in the stone, the carvings of different

moon phases and constellations. Sparks flare between my fingers.

Night falls as the moon and sun pass each other across the sky and

set. Stars emerge behind thinning clouds.

“This is incredible,” Rishi says, standing in the center of the

temple with her hands stretched toward the sky. “My parents do all the

ceremonies in the world, but I never thought I believed in anything.

After this, I might have to reconsider.”

“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.”