The villagers fed and welcomed me that day with a generosity I did not deserve. In a small tent that night, I curled up in my bedfurs and pulled my jacket over my head. I refused to miss Grillo Negro. If I missed Grillo Negro, that would open a whole basket of poor decisions I would have to reckon with. These people were kind, yes. But the food here didn't taste quite right, the songs were painfully unfamiliar, and I moved with the unease of not knowing whose tent I could walk into and whose I should avoid. Was that something I could get used to? Or was going back the only way to regain that comfort?
No, there was still a way to compromise. I needed to bring this village and Grillo Negro together—I could already tell they would get along. That would bring Grillo Negro back to life, inject it with something more than its invented traditions and hundred-year history, and make it worth saving. It would create a place where having children would not just draw out the death throes of a dying population. Maybe it would even lift Grillo Negro out of its curse, and let more of those children survive. That was something Tepepia certainly didn't seem to have trouble with.
The first problem was that I had no idea where Grillo Negro was. The second problem was that showing up there without Jem or Emma was bound to raise questions I couldn't face. The third problem was that Coyol was still trying to end the world, I'd left Jem and Emma with gods who could barely protect them, and I still didn't have my fire magic under control.
I was so absorbed in my own thoughts, I failed to realize the dog lying beside me had lifted her head until she scrambled to her paws, too. From the distance came a bark that set me bolt upright in a blink. My bedfurs were flung askew as I scrambled out of the tent, slowing only to yank on my boots against the thin powdering of snow that had fallen since evening.
Grifo flung himself into my arms and huddled against me, quaking. Tochtli circled with her tail between her legs. She flinched as I held out my hand. What had happened to them? A terrible sinking feeling was already dragging on my lungs, but I swallowed it back. I had not even been gone a day. Chal must just have realized and sent the dogs out after me. And something on the flats must have spooked them: a coywolf pack, or a hunting owl. Had Tochtli seen coywolves before?
I patted Grifo on the shoulder. "Go tell her it's okay."
He gave me a look with half-moon eyes and didn't move. It took ages, but his familiarity with me seemed to gain Tochtli's trust. She finally approached and let me touch her head.
Images flowed the moment my hand made contact. Every reassurance I'd constructed evaporated like dust in a flame, and the horror of reality punched me in the stomach hard enough to make me gasp. After a week of quiet, a black, oily smoke rose in the distance in a window of the gods' couch room. Xolotl's siblings all gathered to hug him before he left. His dogs milled about anxiously. They left together in a ring of gold fire.
Xolotl could make a passage to Mictlan anywhere he needed to. By the burned village, he made several. Each emerged onto the bank of the underground river, and I sensed that they were miles apart even though their entrances converged. Xolotl split the group of souls and took the most willing first, down to the river that they quickly set out across. The second group had reached their canoes when Chimalli's body skidded across the sand, an arrow in her chest.
I slumped against Grifo, hugging him for stability as my head spun. The scene cut in a whirl of gold fire, and I found myself in the gods' house instead. Xolotl must have teleported Tochtli to safety. The dog woke every god and goddess with her barking. Xolotl's dogs never barked. Quet was first in the room, and dropped to his knees to find out what had happened. But the message switched. The gods now stumbling in went stiff as something else reached them, from someone other than Tochtli.
I could hear it, too.
"Quetzalcoatl," said a voice I knew, with a silken satisfaction that made me retch. If I had once had sympathy for Coyol, it was gone now. "I found your energy source. I'll let you choose. Your brother or your people?"
An image of a village appeared. I could see the people as they moved about their daily lives beneath a cloak of warding. My blood turned to ice and I lost all sense of reality. Emma screamed and hugged Jem, and Xochi moved quickly to comfort them.
Grillo Negro.
Tezcat cursed. "That fucking tracker-necklace."
"You have thirteen days," continued Coyol. Her voice had been smug, but the ice beneath it seeped through as she continued, cutting and cold. "Then your brother dies. Then these people. Then all your people. Then your world."
The message cut. Quet sat stricken. Tochtli nosed up to him, and he hugged her tightly. I could hear Emma sobbing in the background.
I couldn't move. I couldn't think.
Coyol knew where Grillo Negro was. She had known this whole time. How was it still alive? Was she going to kill it now? Or was it too valuable for that—saved for leverage against us or Emma or the gods?
I fumbled in my pocket for my charms. Tochtli whined and thrust her head back into my hands. I didn't want to see more.
An empty house.
My heart couldn't take this. Tochtli waited for me to return my hands to her head. Please, let Coyol not have gotten the rest of them.
Tochtli took me back to where I had broken off.
"Adriana?" It was Chal's voice. "If you get this, we're going to get Xol. This is Coyol's end game. She wants us to come and fight, and we're out of other options, but we're taking a detour first. Mictlantecuhtli doesn't ally himself with anyone, and he turned Coyol down last time she tried to get him on her side. If that still stands, we might be able to convince him to help us."
"This'll be fun," said Tezcat's voice in the background.
Chal ignored him. "There's also a way to the sky-world through Mictlan, and it's just unpredictable enough that it might be unguarded on Coyol's end. Either way, it's our best shot. If you're coming, catch up to us on the way, or meet us there."
She rested a hand on Quet's shoulder and pulled him away. He released the dog.
Chal hung a charm pendant around Tochtli's neck. "Tochtli, find Adriana."
The Xolo touched noses with Grifo, and the land around the two of them turned to desert. They sniffed the air together and set out through the desiccated hills.
Had Jem and Emma gone with them? How long ago had this been? I had left a day ago, and the village that forced Xolotl to leave had burned in the morning. Coyol had planned all of this. She had been one step ahead, or three, or five, for the last fifty-two years. She had told Cihua to hijack Emma's bringing, robbing the gods of precious time while they struggled to find the young goddess, and find villages without her help. Coyol had ordered the planted tracker necklace, to locate the gods when they finally brought their little sister home. She had spared Grillo Negro—maybe as leverage still, but more likely just for dramatic effect. The village she now dangled over our heads was a symbol of her power. When she won, it would be the first to fall.
Coyol had planned the first fight with the Centzon Huītznāuhtin to test the gods' strength, the recent Fuego drought to cut off their energy source, then the second fight to give Xolotl a tracker, too. Probably also to wear the siblings down. If they were defeated now, and Coyol made it to the intersection of the calendars with no one to oppose her, what would she be capable of?
The necklace hit me hardest. Coyol had been following Grillo Negro for as long as Emma had lived in the village. Had it been our fault that she found the settlement Jem and I had investigated? Had she burned it on purpose to lure us out? It could be no coincidence that it had happened just months before the calendars crossed. Had Coyol known about the gods' plan to get Emma back, too? What game was she playing now? How long had we been her pawns?
A shooting star sparked at the edge of my vision, and my head whipped up. There was no star. My mind was playing my paranoia like a stringed instrument. I had to get out of here. What if I also had a tracker? Could I have just led Coyol to Tepepia and roped them into her scheme? Doomed them to a death by fire?
Then all your people. Then your world.
The gods. The gods were travelling through the underworld at this very moment to find support so they could take on Coyol and stop her plans. I had thought this was their battle to fight, but it wasn't just theirs anymore. It ceased to be only theirs the moment Grillo Negro got involved.
And Jem, and Emma. If Coyol got the upper hand, they would die, too. Right now, they were down in Mictlan, supporting the gods with their presence and their belief, just like the gods had asked for all along. If I wanted the gods to have their best shot at winning, I had to join them.
I took a shaky breath and got to my feet. "Heel," I said in Nahuatl, and both dogs obeyed.
Mictlantecuhtli and his wife, the lord and lady of the underworld, were probably the strongest gods left save for Cihua and Coyol herself. If the gods got them on their side, and I added my support, they stood a chance.
I retrieved my bag and belongings, then fingered the charms in my pocket. I was human, not a god. If I teleported to Mictlan and stayed for too long, I would be rendered half-dead, only able to remain in this world for a day at a time before returning with the setting sun. But that was only if I stayed too long. To join Jem and Emma and help this end as soon as possible, I could risk it.
I closed my fist around the first charm. "Mictlan," I said, and the world flashed white.