I'd had enough disappearing animals for the day. Or the month, really, though I hoped to never see another turkey in my life. I wanted a nap, but now I was alone in the town unless Emma was hiding somewhere. I had no Grifo to warn me if a coywolf approached. I took Emma's spot against the house and waited for Jem to come back.
He did eventually, and dropped a fresh rabbit beside me. "I found their snare lines."
I winced.
"I know. But we need to eat."
"We're stealing from the dead."
"If you'd rather have turkey..."
I couldn't muster up the strength to laugh. I needed an ally in all this. "Jem, tell me if you can see the dog prints going around the house."
He left me with the rabbit and followed Chimalli's trail. I heard him stop for a long time behind the house, then pull himself over the wall and jump down inside. He emerged wide-eyed. "What visited you this time?"
Of course he wouldn't question it. "A dog."
"Ad..."
"Hairless." I held up my hand. "About this tall, dark reddish-brown. Big ears."
"A Xolo?"
It hadn't crossed my mind. I had never seen a Xoloitzcuintle, a Mexican hairless dog, before, but I guess that matched the stories. And the myths. "Yeah."
"Diez madres." He pulled off his hat and clapped a hand to his forehead, then ran it back over his hair. "I've had enough of this for two days. Can we go home?"
"About that."
He looked down at my face and sat beside me.
I told him what Emma had told me, then about Chimalli's visit. I was glad he didn't freak out, because my throat was closing up again and I didn't know if I could handle the reminder. "I refuse to believe I have to be alone for the rest of my life now," I finished. "But if there's a way to fix this, we don't know it yet."
My predicament loomed like a mountain in front of me, so tall I didn't see how anyone could cross it. Fuego didn't leave survivors. It wasn't even a normal disease; herbs and tonics would be no use against it. My mind flickered briefly to the shrine in Jem's family's tent. Was this a punishment from an all-seeing God? If I only knew what I was being punished for, maybe I could atone for my sins. Maybe he would forgive me, and cure me.
Or maybe that God didn't exist. Two discrete lines of belief still persisted in Grillo Negro, passed down from the days of the founders. Some people blended them, but for every Catholic Abraham there was an abuelo Godofredo, staunch in his conviction that there was a god for every element and then some. Those gods and goddesses could be benevolent, but they could also be selfish, petty, two-faced, and apathetic towards the world below.
If I was honest with myself, one of those described the state of our world a lot better than the other. And only one had magic. Or maybe I just wanted someone else to blame.
Jem scratched the back of his neck. "If that dog was here, I'd have said we follow her."
"Why?"
"Well... magical things like each other, right? And she at least seemed friendly. She might belong to someone who could help."
I gave a short laugh. "A god's dog. That would be helpful."
"I'd settle for a friendly spirit at this point."
"Diez madres, I can't believe we're talking like this. Remember when I used to say I didn't believe in myths?"
"I remember your tío Rodolfo sat us both down and told us about El Día de Fuego. That shut you up."
I punched his shoulder. It had shut him up, too. Though to be fair, he had taken to the idea of magic and multiple gods a lot faster than I had.
"Normal diseases don't burn people," said Jem. "Or houses. Or roads. And they definitely don't do all that and leave the plants behind. If we're looking for a cure for you, I think we need to start from that assumption."
Our eyes had met at the mention of plants; now they met again. My cheeks tingled.
"Is she... calmed down a little?" said Jem, averting his gaze.
"Dunno. Let's go find her and find out."
We located Emma at the far end of the town, sitting against a wall with a broad view of the desert. Grifo was asleep beside her. She seemed to have calmed down, though she had clearly been crying and her hand was still around her pendants.
"Ad just met a Xolo that disappeared on us," said Jem—like it was the most normal thing in the world—as we took seats on either side of her. He was making a tactful decision not to bring up our tattoos again. "And now we're wondering what to do. If she can't go back home and none of us can catch Fuego anymore, we might as well try to find a cure. Or a protection for the rest of the village."
"He wanted to follow the dog," I said. "I'm out of ideas."
Emma looked at her toes again. Then she opened her hand. Jem and I both gasped. Beneath her Grillo Negro pendant was the one she had worn in the desert as a baby, then kept all her life. Its weathered yellow metal gleamed like always, but its turquoise inlays now glowed. Not reflected the light. Glowed.
"When did that start?" said Jem, a more sensible question than I would have blurted out.
Emma pointed to our tattoos. "When I made those. It got warm. I checked it after and it was like this."
"And it's been like that ever since?"
She nodded.
"Does it do anything else?"
Emma got up and turned in a circle. The pendant's glow faded when she faced north, then returned as it saw the south again.
"Let's follow it," I said. It was something. Anything. If it was magic and Fuego was magic, maybe it would take us somewhere that could fix this insanity. If this was my life now, I was willing to follow every magical lead I found until I could rid myself of this disease.
"First things first," said Jem, cutting across me. "We need to tell the village. They're expecting us back by the end of today, tomorrow at the latest, and we don't know how long we'll be gone. If we're traveling anywhere, they need to know."
"I can't go near anyone but you two."
"But we can."
My confidence crumbled. Between us and a potential cure was a long, lonely wait while Emma and Jem returned to Grillo Negro. The walls of the death town loomed. "Leave me Grifo at least?"
"Well, we're not leaving you alone," said Emma. "And it doesn't sound like Chimalli is coming back."
"Grifo, vení."
His head and ears popped up. He hauled himself to his feet and trotted to my side, where he sat. His tongue lolled happily.
"Good boy."
Jem was staring at Emma. "How did you know her name?"
"Whose?"
"Chimalli."
"Didn't you say it?"
I panned back over the conversation, my hand lost in Grifo's thick scruff. "I didn't," I said slowly. "Neither of us did. Did you hear me calling it before?"
Emma was going pale. "No. I heard you calling something, but I didn't hear what it was."
Jem put his face in his hands and actually cursed. You knew something was bad when Jem cursed.
"Alright," he said, lifting his head. "I guess I'm the only one who's still normal here. Emma, when we've told the village, would you follow that pendant?"
She hugged it closer and nodded.
"Then that's decided." Jem pushed himself to his feet. "Let's eat and get going. If there's a chance of Ad burning up, we probably want to go somewhere helpful before that happens. The sooner we tell the village, the sooner we can leave."
He helped Emma up, then offered me a hand. I would have declined given the memory of the dance, but I wasn't back to full strength yet and he had let me sleep on his shoulder. We could call this even. I told myself strictly that the kick in my heartbeat at his touch had nothing to do with it.
We had rabbit and thawed tortillas for lunch, then Jem and Emma packed their bags and vanished over the horizon. I took Grifo to Chimalli's trail. When he reached its end, though, he just whined. I took him to the other end. He circled the spot I'd been sitting when Chimalli visited, and whined again. So the spirit dog had appeared and disappeared. She'd been friendly, yes, but I didn't like things I couldn't follow.
I went back into the house and prepared myself for two days of solitude. Jem had placed my bed in the least windy part of the ruin when I'd had a fever. I now moved it to the spot with the best view of the door. Then I cleared paths to two escape routes: the doorway and a crumbled portion of the back wall.
I wanted to be in the house and in bed when the sun went down, so I whistled for Grifo and set out to find food. Jem had reset the settlement's snares. I took the two rats they had bagged and added them to a collection of wild roots I had gathered on the way. Then I found firewood on my way back. I made several more trips just for firewood. You would sooner catch me naked in this ghost village than without enough fuel for an all-night fire.
I left the rats out to freeze before I brought them into the house; no sense in laying coywolf bait around my sleeping space. When darkness fell, I was exactly where I wanted to be: under the bedfurs, my back to the wall, in a sitting position both comfortable and easy to jump up from. A fire crackled beside me. I had my knife in my hand and Grifo at my feet.
Gods above, please don't send me any more visitors.
A/N: Speaking of visitors... okay, no more bad lead-ins. Just throw this one on your reading lists, too! I am deeply sorry (not sorry) if your reading lists are already as long as mine are.
The Uninvited Princess by JJJ000YYY
A naive young princess gets banished to a tower, and is inadvertently trapped with a wizard. Now, she must navigate through a world full of magic while the fury of the king looms over her.