Maya and the Rising Dark

by Rena Barron

  “First, I’ve heard your father sing,” Eli said. “He’s got a voice out of this world, and well, I guess that it’s because he is from out of this world. Must be an orisha thing. Maybe for the singing to work you need to . . .”

  “Sing on key?” Frankie finished with a question.

  My cheeks warmed, not as hot as my backside but close. I took a deep breath to calm my nerves and started again, slower this time, and not as far off-key: “For though I must fight to hold the beasts at bay, no mountain or storm or foe will keep me away, for I’ll cross raging rivers and bend hyperspace just to see a smile on my sweet baby girl’s face.”

  “That’s kind of sweet,” Eli cut in.

  “Stop interrupting,” Frankie said. “Let’s try again together, Maya.”

  Because my friend was a genius, she’d learned the lyrics after hearing the song only once. We started together, singing from the beginning, slow at first, to make sure that our voices were in tune. The elokos slowed but didn’t stop completely.

  The fourth time through the song, Eli joined in and our voices synced, the melody on beat finally. We didn’t sound half bad. We weren’t good exactly, but we weren’t first-round-singing-competition bad either. This time the elokos stopped cold. The ones who’d been in the middle of stooping down to put more wood on the fires froze in place. Some were bending over pots and pans, and it made me wonder where they had gotten dishes from. Had they enchanted some poor campers and taken their cookware as a parting gift?

  As we kept singing, the three of us tried to wriggle our way free. Whenever our voices were out of sync, the elokos twitched and gritted their teeth. My sweaty palms slipped on the rope as I worked my fingers between the tight knots.

  Frankie loosened the rope around her wrists enough to unclasp her hands. Once she did, she flung a bolt of energy at the ground next to the fire beneath me. At first I didn’t understand what she was doing, and I was more than a little annoyed when dirt splashed in my mouth. I spat out the dirt, but Frankie and Eli kept singing. And Eli had a little more amusement in his voice than I thought necessary.

  Before I could tell her what a bad shot she was, I realized that she had perfect aim. Her magic had knocked a mound of dirt on top of the fire and put it out. Eli disappeared and became a disembodied voice. He sounded muffled, like he was eating, or . . . chewing at his ropes.

  As I untied my hands, splashes of dirt landed on the fire underneath Frankie. Eli had freed himself. He faded back into physical form and helped Frankie down while I un­raveled the rope around my ankles. Luckily, we weren’t too far from the ground, and my feet landed on top of the smoking mound.

  The elokos shook, but our song kept them frozen.

  “I have an idea,” Eli said, wiggling his eyebrows. “Let’s eat them instead.”

  I could’ve sworn I saw tears swell in some of the elokos’ eyes.

  Frankie scooped up some loose rope. “I am hungry.”

  The eloko closest to me whimpered.

  We weren’t going to really eat them, but they didn’t have to know that. There wasn’t enough rope to tie them all up, but we tied up as many as we could.

  “Serves you right,” Eli said, leaning in close to one of the elokos. “Next time eat a salad.”

  The three of us ran back to camp, singing the entire time. When we arrived, I almost dropped to my knees. I stumbled over my feet, taking in the campsite with horror. Someone had ransacked our things. Cotton from our sleeping bags was everywhere. My backpack had been emptied and the contents scattered on the ground.

  Frankie bent over, breathing hard like she was hyper­ventilating. “Crap.”

  I frantically searched the campsite up and down, my whole body shaking. But it was no use. Papa’s staff was gone. I’d lost the one thing that he needed to repair the veil and keep the Lord of Shadows at bay. The one thing that could bring him home.

  Twenty-Four

  I learn a new trick

  Frankie, Eli, and I lay our heads on one another’s shoulders against a tree, half asleep. We had fought to stay awake all night, and my throat was sore from singing. The elokos’ bells chiming in my dreams had jerked me awake at sunrise, and I felt groggy and confused. I reached for Papa’s staff and grasped a handful of dry leaves and dirt. The memories flooded in as I stumbled to my feet. I swiped away the tear prickling my tired eyes. I could cry later; now I had to do something . . . anything.

  I circled around the camp, looking for the staff again, hoping that we’d only missed it in the dark. It made no sense. The thieves hadn’t taken our money or food. From what I could tell, the only things missing were the staff and Eli’s prods. I clutched my hands into fists and kicked at an empty water bottle lying on the ground.

  “You think it was darkbringers?” Frankie asked from behind me.

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to talk. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs.

  “Maya?” Frankie whispered. “It’s going to be okay.”

  I spun around. “It’s not going to be okay,” I said, my voice trembling. “How are we going to stop the Lord of Shadows and the darkbringers? Maybe you think it’s okay because you have magic, but for someone like me, a godling with no powers, how can I do anything to help without the staff?”

  Frankie squeezed her lips tight and shook her head. She couldn’t explain away hard facts with another one of her theories. Nothing would change the fact that the staff was gone and I’d failed my father. I’d failed everyone.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked, raising her voice. “Are you going to give up because you don’t have the staff? After all we’ve gone through, are you going to quit?”

  Between the three of us, Frankie was always the most even-tempered and logical. So when she snapped, I was stunned, but I squared my shoulders and quickly recovered.

  “Of course not!” I yelled back, giving her my meanest death stare. Eli jerked awake against the tree behind Frankie. His eyes stretched wide as he looked around for danger. “Did Oya quit all those times Dr. Z and his cronies had a new way to nullify her powers? No. Did Mama quit when she got transferred to the night shift and had to work ridiculous hours? No. Did Papa quit guarding the veil when he saw the first tear—”

  “Okay, then.” Frankie beamed at me. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

  “It’s not a good look,” Eli said, coming up beside Frankie.

  “What is this?” I threw up my arms in frustration. “An intervention?”

  Frankie cocked her head to the side. “Do you need one?”

  “You don’t get it because you have magic,” I said.

  Frankie squinted at me. “I think you do too.”

  “What?” both Eli and I said.

  Frankie adjusted her glasses. “I have a theory.”

  I moaned and glanced up to the treetops like they could save me from another one of her theories. I really wasn’t in the mood, but all the energy had drained from my body like air leaving a balloon. There was no point in this argument, and we were wasting time. As soon as I could find a tear in the veil, I was going back into the Dark, staff or no staff, to save my father.

  “This isn’t the time,” Eli muttered under his breath. “Not everything requires a theory.”

  “There’s where you’re wrong again, Eli,” Frankie snapped at him too. She really was on a roll, and despite being mad, I liked seeing this side of her. My friend with the highest IQ of our school, straight-A student, and biggest science nerd in history. Without her and Eli at my side these past few days, I didn’t know where I’d be. “There’s always time for science.”

  “You’re exaggerating now,” Eli said with a dismissive wave.

  When Frankie shot her own death stare at him, he instantly stopped talking. She turned back to me, daring me to say anything else to interrupt her. With that look, I wasn’t about to make the same mistake.

  “I think the staff is a conduit,” she said. “Like a channel to carry something from one place to another.�
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  “What’s your point, Frankie?” I asked, impatient.

  “What if the staff doesn’t have any magic on its own?” she said, after biting her lip. “What if its actual function is to help you channel your own magic? That would mean that you do have magic after all, and the staff only amplifies it.”

  “That’s a great theory in theory,” I said, pleased with my play on words. “But the reality is that without the staff, I have no magic. When you two were in danger, your magic showed. We were about to be eaten by elokos, and I couldn’t do anything to help us escape but sing.”

  “Think about it, Maya,” Frankie begged, and she might as well have said, Be logical for once. “None of the darkbringers can open a wormhole into the human world; it’s a rule of the veil so they can’t get out. The only reason they’ve been able to escape is through the tears. So that means one of us had to create the wormhole that saved our butts from the darkbringer army.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Eli said. “I didn’t even know what a wormhole was until you told me.”

  “My magic is energy-based,” Frankie added. “I can manipulate it, shape it, and use it as a shield or a weapon. You see now?” When I didn’t answer, she added, “It wasn’t possible for Eli or me to create the wormhole because that’s not what our magic does.”

  I remembered the night I followed Papa in our neighborhood and he disappeared. One minute he was walking on the street not too far ahead of me, and then he turned the corner and was gone. At the time, I thought the shadows had swallowed him. Now I knew what my father was capable of, or at least a fraction of it. The orishas were powerful and ancient, and I had a feeling that there was a lot more about them that I didn’t know or understand. Maybe there was a lot more about myself I didn’t know too.

  “Don’t you think if I could open my own personal gateway into the Dark, I would’ve gone back as soon as I could?” I sucked in a deep breath. My whole body was trembling. I was trying to not be too mad at Frankie. She meant well.

  “Try to open a wormhole into the Dark,” she demanded, crossing her arms.

  “What?” I laughed so loud that the birds in a tree nearby flew away. “We’re wasting time. I need to find a tear.”

  “She’s right,” Eli said. I eased out a sigh of relief because I thought he was agreeing with me until he added, “You should try, Maya.”

  They stood there staring at me like I was going to pull a trick from up my sleeve. Both of them made it sound as easy as getting on a bike and pedaling. Sure, you’d fall down a few times, scrape your knee or elbow, but eventually you’d get the hang of it. But this was different. I had tried. Well, not particularly to open up a wormhole, but I’d tried to reach deep inside myself with my mind to see if I had any magic.

  The orisha council said that very few godlings even showed powers. Big help that was. It meant that you could possibly live your whole life waiting for them to come. Maybe they’d come when you were a baby or working the dreadful nine to five, or when you were old and on your deathbed. A hundred-year-old godling was still a young hatchling compared to an orisha.

  Hatchling.

  Papa had called me that once with a goofy smile on his face. I would try for him.

  Heat billowed under my skin. I thought my blood pressure was high, which happened with my anemia, but this was something else.

  I’d felt the same heat when the shadows attacked me in our neighborhood and at every scrape of danger. I hadn’t thought much of it. My skin feels hot wasn’t the most interesting conversation starter, and it didn’t seem relevant.

  “Okay, I’ll try,” I said, giving in. It couldn’t hurt, could it?

  Eli bounced on his toes in excitement, and Frankie nudged his shoulder to stop. I turned away from my friends and faced a pine tree.

  Heat pricked in my fingertips like needlepoints, and sweat beaded on my forehead. It was still early in the day, and it was already hot, but I could feel something else building up inside me. Something waking, a force; okay, maybe that wasn’t the right word to describe it. It was something, though, something that boiled in my blood. I tilted my head forward a bit as my field of vision narrowed to a very small point in front of me. I could no longer see Frankie or Eli out of the corner of my eyes, or anything else for that matter. There was only the spot halfway between the tree and me.

  A spark of light fluttered in front of the tree. Sweat streaked down my forehead now, but I couldn’t break my concentration to wipe it away. Something was happening. It felt like trying to remember a dream that you’d forgotten, having it on the edge of your mind just out of reach. The spark sputtered and went out. I drew in a shaky breath. Instead of feeling discouraged, I turned to my friends, who were grinning at me.

  “Did you see that?” I pointed at the empty spot. “I did that. I made that spark happen.”

  “Give it another try,” Frankie said, her face smug.

  I turned to the tree again. Not only did my friends and the tree and the entire forest fade to the background, they faded to black. Everything around me outside of that one spark of light became an afterthought in my mind. The spark didn’t sputter this time. It grew and grew. It wasn’t like the tears in the veil that looked like a jagged line cut with a dull knife. The spark grew into a black hole with a silver bridge made of glowing god symbols that lit our way into the Dark.

  Twenty-five

  Something bad is about to happen

  Frankie and Eli slapped me on the shoulder, and my surroundings came back into focus. This time, I didn’t lose the wormhole when my concentration broke. My friends were beaming at me, and my cheeks warmed in embarrassment. If it wasn’t for them, I might have never tried to open a gateway at all.

  Every kid should be so lucky to have friends who believe in you even when you don’t believe in yourself. Friends who accept you exactly the way you are and help you be brave when you don’t know that you can.

  As we stood amazed by the wormhole, I realized that I couldn’t ask them to go back into the Dark with me. Eli had his little sister, Jayla, to watch out for and Nana and bingo night. Frankie was a science genius who could someday cure every problem in the human world if she put her mind to it. Eshu, Oshun, and the rest of the council had called me future guardian of the veil. That meant that I had to protect our world from the Dark, starting with my own family. Besides, Frankie had almost died there twice: first with the poison, then Nulan. I couldn’t put them at risk again.

  “Guys,” I said, my voice small, “I have to do this alone.”

  Eli cocked an eyebrow and looked at Frankie. “Is she trying to leave us behind and take all the credit for saving the world?”

  “Technically, her father would be saving the world; we’re saving him,” Frankie said. “But yes, she’s totally trying to be the epic heroine alone, and we’re not having it.”

  “We’re coming”—Eli rolled his eyes—“and that’s the end of that.”

  “I really don’t think that would be a good idea,” I said. “What if something happens—”

  “Stop trying to do everything on your own, Maya,” Frankie begged.

  “You need us, and we want to help,” Eli said, taking on a serious tone. “Let us.”

  Eli and Frankie stared at me with their eyes narrowed and their jaws set into matching scowls. If their godling magic had been laser beams, I would’ve been in trouble, because their death stare game had reached a new level. I was about to face my worst fears again, and I laughed so hard that I got a cramp in my side. Tears ran down my face. I couldn’t have asked for better friends. They always had my back. But not all the tears were happy tears. No matter how strong I pretended to be, I was scared too. I gave in because Frankie and Eli were right (no surprise). I needed their help, and deep down I didn’t want to face the Lord of Shadows alone.

  “Huddle time.” Eli spoke in his best coach impression, which was to say he sounded like he had a mouth full of cotton. “Bring it in.”

  And we did. We stood in a ci
rcle with our heads together and our arms draped across each other’s shoulders. “I don’t mean to be the one to say this,” Frankie said, wrinkling her nose, “but we smell pretty bad.”

  “That’s the fresh scent of the League of Godlings.” Eli stuck out his chin. “No true hero or heroine smells good after saving the world.”

  “Technically, we haven’t saved—” Frankie said.

  “We need to go before I lose the wormhole,” I said, interrupting their usual bickering. “Or before some darkbringer on the other side decides to come through. We need a plan.”

  “We have a plan,” Eli said. “Kick darkbringers’ butts and save your father.”

  “Maya’s saying that we need a strategy,” Frankie said. “She’s right.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean,” I said, playing along when I hadn’t even thought about a strategy until now. “When I was opening the wormhole, I concentrated on a place close to my father but safe for us to enter the Dark. Our best bet is to search for him undetected. For that, we need stealth.”

  Eli’s eyes lit up, and he grinned. “Or invisibility.”

  With that, we hatched out our strategy, which wasn’t foolproof or particularly clever. It was simple: sneak into the Dark while invisible, avoid the darkbringers, find the epicenter, and get my father out. We gathered what little we could salvage of our gear and food into Frankie’s backpack. Then we stood in front of the wormhole side by side, staring into the black tunnel that would take us back into the Dark. My heart raced, and my teeth chattered. “Ready?” I asked, pushing down my fears.

  “Ready,” Eli and Frankie said, as nervous as me.

  Eli stood between the two of us and reached for our hands. “It’ll be easier to keep you invisible during the trip if we stay connected.”

  “We don’t mind holding your hand to make sure you don’t get lost,” I teased him.

  “I do.” Frankie grimaced. “Your hand is so sweaty.”