Charlie Hernández & the Castle of Bones

by Ryan Calejo

  “What’s wrong?” Violet wanted to know.

  “The little one is scared of the monster. He saw the castell, and now he worried it’s coming back. I already told him to stop listening to what the crazy brujos are saying, but… he young.”

  “What are the crazy brujos saying?” Violet asked.

  “They saying the monster will soon return. That he resurrecting himself like the last time.”

  “How do they know?” she wondered out loud.

  “Because of the castells. They always signal his coming.”

  I felt my insides tighten even as I asked the question. “What do you mean always…?”

  “He’s been killed many times, hermano… once in Mexico, once in Spain, and the last time was in Portugal. Each time he return from the dead even more powerful, and each time the castells announce his return. His followers build them over his grave, you see. And then… then he performs his dark magia, and he brings himself back.”

  Which meant is was probably some of his followers that had kidnapped Joanna. But why? What did she have to do with any of this? “So he’s coming for sure then, yeah?” I asked.

  “No, no, no, no… there is no coming back for him,” Mario assured me.

  “I don’t understand. Why not?”

  “Because the last time he was killed, it was by a very powerful sombra—a bruja.… She spread his body into four coffins, cursed the coffins, and then hid them throughout the earth so his followers cannot find.”

  I stared at him in shock. That was exactly what I’d seen in the bowl! Those had been the necromancer’s coffins, El Dark Brujo’s… and the hooded figure must’ve been the witch Mario was talking about.

  “So then why are castells popping up everywhere?” Violet asked.

  “I think his followers doing it,” Mario said. “They building them again, but this time its un truco—you know, a trick. They want everyone to believe he’s coming back so everyone stay scared—so no one wanna join La Liga. Because now that there’s a Morphling in the world again,” he said, looking right at me, “now that you are here—there’s hope again, and evil always try to crush hope.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  None of us spoke for what felt like a long time.

  “What do those castells do, anyway?” I asked finally.

  “They the most basic piece of resurrection magic,” Mario answered. “They—how you say?—amplify El Dark Brujo’s magia so he can resurrect himself, raise the dead.”

  There was another silence. Shorter this time.

  “Mario,” Violet said, “you mentioned something about an explorer who made it out of El Dorado alive, right?”

  The anchimayen nodded. “Sí.”

  “Do you still remember the story?”

  “Some, sí.”

  “Do you remember how they did it? How they made it out alive?”

  He grinned, his teeth bone-white in the spotlights of his eyes. “Ay, sí, was the best part…”

  “So how’d they do it?” I asked.

  “With an alicanto egg.”

  The word tickled a memory somewhere in the back of my brain. “An ali-whatto egg?”

  “Alicanto. It is the only thing the inhabitants of the golden city fear more than death itself.”

  “An egg?” I said, shocked. “The inhabitants of El Dorado are terrified of an egg…?”

  The anchimayen nodded again.

  “That’s all we need, then,” Violet said. She glanced at Mario. “Do you know where we can find one?”

  Suddenly he burst out laughing—and I mean really laughing, like V had just told the funniest joke of all time. “You can’t just FIND an alicanto egg! ¿Estás loca? They the most precious treasure on this planet! Some brujos spend they lives searching for one, but only a few ever even seen one.… They made of the purest gold.”

  Violet’s eyes grew to the size of Frisbees as she turned them on me. I had just opened my mouth to say What? when it hit me, too. “Wait,” I said, whirling to face Mario. “So you’re saying they look like they’re made of pure gold?”

  He gave a quick little nod. “Sí.”

  “And are they a little bigger than, say, a chicken egg?”

  “Sí.”

  “And do they sometimes glow a little?”

  He chuckled. “Amigo, how you know so much about alicanto eggs?”

  “Because we had one!” Violet shouted, smacking her hands on the tabletop.

  Mario—along with the rest of the fire kids—burst into laughter again. “You two are muy funny, ¿saben? ¡Son de los más graciosos!”

  “No, it’s true!” I said. “We found one back in Miami!”

  “An alicanto egg in MIAMI?” He screamed as his laughter turned hysterical. I could see trails of grayish smoke drifting out of his ears. “You gotta be the funniest Morphling ever!”

  “He’s not joking!” Violet yelled. “We literally held it in our hands!”

  “C’mon, what you think? I stupid or something?”

  “But it’s true!”

  The anchimayen went silent for a second. Then he just sighed and threw his hands up like he’d just given up. “Bueno, bueno… let’s say I believe you.… Let’s say you actually find an ALICANTO EGG in MIAMI.… One question: ¿Dónde está ahora?”

  “We don’t know where it is,” I admitted. “It was stolen from us.”

  “STOLEN FROM YOU?” Mario screamed. “Do you know how VALUABLE an alicanto egg is? You could buy this entire island! No, you could buy THE AMERICAS!”

  “Yeah, well, we didn’t know we were being robbed. There were these whirlwind thingies and stuff was blowing everywhere and… whatever.” I honestly didn’t feel like reliving it.

  “They stole everything from us,” Violet told him. “All our money. Our passports. Then they filled my backpack with dirt and his with rice. I guess so we wouldn’t feel the change in weight while they jacked our stuff.”

  Mario’s eyes flicked from me to Violet, startled. “Espérate. So this person who stole from you, who you no see, also filled your bag with dirt and his bag with rice?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “And you smelled something, ¿sí? Something terrible…”

  I frowned, remembering. “Yeah… yeah, I did smell something terrible. Wait. How the heck did you know that?”

  Mario exploded into laughter again. It was starting to get seriously annoying.

  “What? What’s so funny?” Violet said.

  “Lemme guess—this happen in Brazil, ¿sí?”

  “Yes!” I burst out. “And how the heck did you know THAT?”

  “Because it’s obvious!”

  “ ’Twas Saci!” said the baby-faced anchimayen. He grinned at me, showing those piranha’s teeth again.

  “Who?” I shouted.

  “Saci Pererê!” Mario shouted back. “Have you no heard the legends?”

  “Of course I’ve heard of Saci.…” I mean, who hadn’t heard of the one-legged, magical-cap-wearing prankster? Stories of his childish antics have been told throughout Brazil for generations. He’d been depicted in TV shows, comic books, songs—in fact, dude was so famous, a soccer team had made him their mascot, and he even had his very own holiday in Brazil! Plus, he was, like, one of my all-time favorite mythological characters. Growing up, I’d practically beg my abuela to tell me his tales, because I used to think his pranks were the funniest things in the world. Now? Not so much… “But how do you know it was him?” I said.

  “ ’Cause his fingerprints all over it! The whirlwind. The rice. And it happen in Brazil, hermano! Brazil! ” Mario took a breath, smiling a little to himself like he found this whole thing absolutely hilarious. “But I guess you should feel complimented in a way.…”

  “What? Why?” Now, this I had to hear.

  “Because he make special effort for you. Entiende, most the time he just destroy your crops, spill your milk. You know, kids’ pranks. But on special occasions, when he take something of great value from some
one he truly hate, he leave behind a pile of rice. That’s where the saying ‘Y te dejó un saco de arroz debajo de la cama’ come from. He left you a sack of rice under you bed. Like making fun of you. Saci a very naughty boy…,” Mario continued. “A very, very naughty boy. You know he even pranks las brujas and los brujos? Yeah… he take they lienzos—those painting memories I show you? He take some and replace them with finger paintings. By li’l kids! He even did that here one or two times.” Mario smirked. “He think everything one big joke—the whole world—and he always trying to prove it.”

  “He sounds hilarious,” I grumbled. And when I get my hands on him, I thought, I’ll show him just how funny I can be.

  “But why would he target us?” Violet asked.

  “It’s obvious, no? You carrying an alicanto egg! Now, how he find that out, who knows. But he a special guy.” Mario hesitated for a moment, like he was considering something, then leaned toward us with those bright eyes and said, “You two really gonna risk you lives and enter the golden city?”

  “We don’t have much of a choice,” I admitted. “That’s where they took our friend.”

  “Then you must return to Brazil. You must take back your egg from the greatest prankster the world has ever known. And you better find him before someone make him an offer on your egg—which not gonna take long, believe me.”

  “Great…,” Violet muttered under her breath.

  I sighed. “It’s fantastic.”

  “But I must warn you,” Mario said. “He not gonna go quietly, and he not gonna go willingly. He will be the most cunning, mischievous enemy you have or ever gonna face. He will prank you. He gonna frustrate you every chance he get. He gonna be almost impossible to track.”

  “Wonderful,” I said. “Any more good news?”

  “Sí, one more thing: No one’s been able to capture him in five thousand years.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  It was safe to say that the anchimayen didn’t like our chances. Still, they wanted to help, so they put together a list of all the stuff they thought we’d need in order to capture Saci. At the top of that list was bungee cord. Lots of it. There was also a whole bunch of other stuff, like fruit and candles and milk and those small paper packets of refined sugar—apparently Saci had quite the sweet tooth—and when we explained to them that Saci had taken our money, too, they hooked us up with a sealskin pouch filled with gold coins and said it was the least they could do after trying to broil us. Then Mario showed us a map of the area around Lapa do Santo and pointed out where we could find a market to buy the supplies and the location of a high hill (it was called Cabana Mesa on the map) where we could lay our trap.

  We slept in the Warlock’s Cave that night (something I wouldn’t recommend if you enjoy pillows or bedsheets or snuggling up under a nice cotton comforter; thing is, anchimayen can’t sleep near anything that’s flammable), and the next morning, as the sun rose red over the wild Chilean jungle, Mario and his crew led us back toward the coast, where they said they could arrange travel for us. About halfway there we came upon this strange creature creeping along the banks of a fast-slowing stream. The fire kids told us it was called El Nguruvilu, which I already knew thanks to my abuela. I’d never forgotten its frightening tales: the half-fox, half-serpent sombra that liked to lurk near bodies of water in Chile and cause whirlpools and floods to drown those trying to pass over. Santi said that she hadn’t seen it in years and never this far inland. Mario, for his part, was convinced that the creature was tracking Violet and me, though he couldn’t come up with any concrete reasons why it would be. Just to be safe, though, we all hid in a knot of mangrove roots until the thing slithered into the stream, and then we continued toward the coast.

  When we finally reached the beach, Goyito, the baby-faced anchimayen, brought the sorcerer’s book of spells out of the deerskin pouch he was wearing on his back, waded out a little way into the water, and began to read from its pages, whistling as he did. On his fourth whistle a white, bubbly, frothy scar appeared on the surface of the sea, maybe five hundred yards away. It raced quickly toward shore like a torpedo moving just below the surface of the water; then all at once the ocean seemed to burst apart as an absolutely massive creature emerged from its depths—first a huge, elongated horse head with a wild golden mane, then a ginormous glistening body, also horselike, with forelegs that ended on folded fuchsia-colored fins and a powerful whalelike tail.

  Violet and I gasped as the thing rose to its full height, easily thirteen feet, and let out a monstrous neigh that sprayed seawater everywhere, instantly drenching the gang of anchimayen—and us—from head to toe.

  “El Caballo Marino!” Mario announced proudly, spitting a stream of water out of his mouth. “Dis is how sorcerers leave the island. You two will be traveling in style, mis amigos.…”

  The seahorse didn’t have a saddle or any other safety features that I could pick out, so the fire kids used long strands of brownish seaweed to tie us down. When they were finished, Santi offered us a drink from the husk of a small green coconut. “It’s potion mixed with a little mote con huesillo for flavor,” she explained. “It will calm your body and mind so you don’t get sick from the ride. Los caballos travel very fast, and your bodies not used to this.”

  Violet and I each took a sip of the warm, sweet, syrupy liquid—which actually tasted a lot like un cafecito, a strong shot of Cuban coffee my mom and dad always liked to start their day with—then smiled down at the anchimayen as they waved up at us and said they couldn’t wait until we met again. They seemed pretty sure we would, too. Then Mario gave the command, slapping the seahorse right on its big ol’ butt, and el caballo broke into a furious gallop, crashing into the surf with a rush of wind and sea spray, and I felt my eyelids begin to get very, very heavy.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Sometime later—I had no idea if it had been five minutes or five hours (I’d blacked out after drinking the anchimayen’s potion)—my eyes fluttered open as I felt the seahorse begin to dissolve beneath us, its hard, muscular back turning soft and watery, foaming and frothing as its long neck and head fell away in a shapeless column of seawater. One moment we were seated, and the next we were descending gently toward the ground, riding a small wave of greenish water.

  As our feet touched down on the jungle floor, the wave rolled out from between our legs, soaking the carpet of twigs and fallen leaves, and then we were standing in an icy puddle that had once been a majestic seahorse.

  Violet turned to me, shrugging off the seaweed seat belt, her eyes all big and blue. “Coolest. Dismount. Ever.”

  * * *

  The market the anchimayen had told us about wasn’t very difficult to find. More like impossible to miss. First off, it was next to the main road and pretty much in plain sight. And second, the place was so bustling with activity that you probably could’ve heard it from the other side of the continent. I’d never seen so many people in one place; there was everything from fruit vendors selling camu camu and acai to local artists crafting these awesome paper baskets from the pages of recycled newspapers to musicians playing live samba music on improvised drums made of empty water jugs. My abuela had told me about these kinds of markets—the locals called them ferias. She used to say there was no better way to experience all that Brazil had to offer, and finally I understood why.

  But as we walked among the maze of colorful stalls, I noticed V staring hard at some of the signs and posters and making these small, confused, embarrassed faces when any of the vendors or musicians tried to talk to her.

  When I caught her frowning at a display that read CANTALUPO, I finally couldn’t take it anymore and said, “Hey, you okay?”

  She gave a little shrug, shaking her head.

  “No, seriously, is something wrong?”

  “It’s nothing. Forget it.”

  “No, V, c’mon. What’s up?”

  She sighed. “I don’t know.… It’s just that I feel sort of… disconnected, you know?”
r />   “Disconnected from what?”

  “Well, like—we’ve been all over South America these last couple of days, right? And the entire time I haven’t been able to read a sign or understand a single word anyone’s been saying. It’s frustrating.…”

  “But, V, you don’t speak the language. I mean, you’re not from here.…”

  “But that’s the thing—I am. Partly, anyway. My granddad on my dad’s side was Spanish. He was born in Spain. Then he moved down here to Brazil when he was, like, eight. He spoke Spanish and Portuguese.”

  I blinked. “Really?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Wow, that’s… unexpected.” And here I thought I was the foremost expert on all things Violet Rey. “But hold up—if you’re part Spanish, then how come you don’t speak any…?”

  “My parents always discouraged it. They said that we live in the US and that we should assimilate, whatever that means.” She let out another sigh, glancing at a table covered with dozens of colorful handmade ribbons as we passed it. “My dad even made this big stink at school once so I wouldn’t have to take Spanish classes like everyone else. He said it was a waste of his tax dollars.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Tell me about it. But you wanna hear the worst part? In the short time I got to know my grandfather—he died a couple of years ago—I barely even got to talk to the man. He didn’t speak any English, and I obviously don’t speak any Spanish.” She wiped at her cheeks. “That sucks, you know?”

  Hearing that broke my heart. And not only because I could tell how much she cared about her abuelo from the way she was talking, but also because my grandparents—especially my abuela—had been such a huge and wonderful part of my life that I honestly couldn’t imagine growing up without them. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be. It’s not your fault.” Violet looked away, shaking her head, and might’ve wiped her eyes—I couldn’t tell for sure. “But no, I’m fine. I’m okay.… It’s just that being here surrounded by all this beautiful culture, all these beautiful people, it kind of reminds me what I missed out on—what I’m still missing out on. And it’s part of me, you know?”