A Kingdom Beneath the Waves

by Bowles, David;

  Garza Twins: Book 2

  A Kingdom Beneath the Waves

  by

  David Bowles

  This is a work of fiction. The events and characters portrayed herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places, events or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author do not necessarily represent the opinions of the publisher.

  A Kingdom Beneath the Waves

  David Bowles

  Copyright David Bowles 2016

  ISBN-13: 978-1-925496-00-0

  Version 1.1 US

  Published by IFWG Publishing International

  This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  IFWG Publishing International

  ifwgpublishing.com

  Acknowledgements

  First and foremost, my sincerest thanks to the Pura Belpré committee of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association, and the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-speaking (REFORMA). Their selection of The Smoking Mirror as a Belpré Author Honor Book was a humbling honor that made the editing and publication of A Kingdom Beneath the Wave especially exciting.

  Of course, the book’s success is not just due to my efforts. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to many people who have supported the Garza Twins series, believed in my work, read early drafts, reviewed, and otherwise given publicity to this quirky fantasy tale of shape-shifting Latino twins from a small Texas town.

  I should single out Gerry Huntman and Louise Zedda-Sampson of IFWG Publishing, who believed in the project when two years of unsuccessful pitches had me losing hope. My friends Xavier Garza, Guadalupe García McCall, René Saldaña, Jr., and Jason Henderson were especially awesome in giving me tips and boosting my confidence, as were other authors and illustrators like Malín Alegría, Viola Canales, Carolyn Flores, Lupe Ruiz-Flores, Jan Seale, Jeanette Larson, and many more.

  Exposure is key to a work’s success, and I would be remiss not to tip my hat to the people who reviewed or otherwise helped promote the book: Rudy Ch. Garcia and La Bloga, Sabrina Vourvoulias and AL DÍA News, Olivia Fowler and GeekaChicas, Ernest Hogan, Gabino Iglesias and Amy Cummins. A very special shout-out goes to the entire community of Texas authors/ illustrators and to the guy who often wrangles us together: Pat Anderson, who put copies of this book in the hands of a bunch of people. The community of librarians in the Rio Grande Valley deserves a huge hug, especially María Elena Anzaldúa Ovalle and Priscilla Celina Suárez. I cannot forget, of course, all the teachers, librarians, administrators and other staff at Donna Independent School District, with a specific mention of Efrén Ceniceros, who along with his wife Dora has always given my writing the moral support I needed from my town (and the town of the Garza twins).

  Above all, thanks to my wife Angélica and my children: Helene, Charlene and Angelo. Without you guys, I’m nothing. Thanks for putting up with my long hours locked up in my study with the computer, typing away like mad. I love you more than life itself.

  A note to readers: I have once again taken elements from Aztec and Maya mythology and built a fantasy universe from them. While the gods and creatures you’ll find in these pages spring mainly from Mesoamerican belief, I have taken substantial liberties with their roles and stories. It is my hope that you will become as fascinated by them as I am, going off excitedly to research and read as much as you can.

  Water was sacred to Mesoamerican peoples, not only because it sustained life, but because they saw rivers and lakes and oceans as a porous border between human and divine.

  Are you ready? Go on, then—dive deep into the sea with Carol and Johnny. They have wonders to show you.

  To Anaís and Missael Domínguez, los mejores sobrinos del mundo

  Chapter one

  Pablo Limón was a recent immigrant, short and very dark-skinned. The perfect target for a loser like Cody Smith, who stood looming over the kid in the main hall of Veterans Middle School, just outside the library, on the last day of classes before the Christmas break.

  “I’m sorry, what was that, you dirty mojo? Learn freaking English, punk. You’re in the US now.”

  Johnny Garza shook his head and walked up, throwing his arm around Cody as if they were best friends. “Hey, guys, what’s up! Pablo, my cuate. ¿Cómo te va en las clases?”

  Pablo looked up at the taller boys. A smile crossed his face. “Bien, Johnny. I do fine.”

  “Órale, pues. Why don’t you head on to class, buddy? Don’t want Mr. Torres getting on your case. Social studies is holy to him.”

  Pablo nodded, trembling with relief, then hurried toward the sixth-grade wing.

  “What’s your freaking problem, Johnny?” Cody asked, trying to pull away.

  Johnny leaned in close to his rival. “You need to stop picking on the little ones, you jerk. Feel me? And the next time you throw around racist remarks…”

  “What? You’ll beat the crap out of me? Whatever. My dad’s the mayor, you freak.”

  With a smile, Johnny reached up and snatched a strand of hair from Cody’s head.

  “Ow!” the other boy hissed, rubbing his skull. “The hell did you do that for?”

  “I need a strand of your hair for the curandera I’m going to hire to jinx you, moron, if I ever hear you call someone a mojo or wetback again.”

  “Yeah, you and your crazy family, you all probably know a ton of witches and weirdoes like that. No wonder your mom got kidnapped by the cartels. Just stay away from me, dude.”

  Johnny watched Cody stamp off down the eighth-grade hall. Deep inside, beast-like ferocity squirmed, hungry to leap out and exact justice.

  Juan Ángel “Johnny” Garza, like his mother and twin sister, was a nagual—a shapeshifter capable of transforming into a jaguar. Right now the jaguar within wanted to pounce on the stuck-up blond jerk, give him the scare of his lifetime. But Johnny calmed his tonal, his animal self.

  I’ve got a better idea.

  Johnny could use the savage magic available to him as a twin shapeshifter to assume the shape of any creature if he touched its DNA—even a human. Ducking into the boys’ bathroom, he stepped inside a stall and concentrated on the strand of Cody’s hair, coaxing his tonal into taking on the new form.

  A flood of confused emotions staggered him—he could feel the popular boy’s insecurity, his parents’ lack of affection toward him, his unrequited crush on an unexpected mutual friend. The cadences of his speech, his sneering way of looking down at everyone; these things were instantly accessible. If he wanted, he could dig deeper. But that wasn’t the point of this particular prank. He had no desire to get to know the mayor’s son any better than this.

  After winking at his disturbing new reflection in the mirror, Johnny sauntered out, heading toward the portables on the far side of the school, where he would very likely bump into Aniceto Sainz, better known as “Hot Cheetos.” Sainz had taken over the position of chief bully vacated by Miguel “Mickey Mouse” Maldonado, who had finally been promoted to high school after five years at Veterans.

  Sure enough, Sainz was smoking a cigarette in the shadow of an empty portable classroom, sheltered from the light December drizzle by the rotting eaves.

  “Hey, loser,” Johnny called in Cody’s higher, more grating voice. “Nobody smokes any more. It’s pretty ghetto.”

  Hot Cheetos snapped his head up, glaring at Johnny/Cody. “Pinche gringo. You want me to rip your face o
ff or something?”

  “I’m just saying, homie. Don’t get all salty on me. Think about your health, Hot Cheetos.”

  Tossing his cigarette aside, Sainz balled his hands into fists. “Güey, ahorita vas a ver que your health ain’t all that good, neither.”

  “Boys?”

  Rounding the corner came Ms. De Los Ángeles, a special education teacher. She crossed her arms across her chest and shook her head. “Aniceto, you know I come have tacos out here with Mrs. Paz during first period. Every day. How many times do I have to bust you smoking before you learn your lesson?”

  “Chale, miss. I ain’t smoking.” He stepped on the cigarette, which had put itself out in the damp weeds already.

  “Sure you’re not. Get on to class, sir. Now.”

  As the hood grumpily complied, the tough but kind teacher turned to Johnny/Cody. “Mr. Smith, your father may be the mayor, but that certainly doesn’t give you carte blanche to skip class and get into fights with dangerous boys. What were you thinking?”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. De Los Ángeles. It won’t happen again.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Impressive. Your Spanish pronunciation certainly has improved. Just last week you were struggling with my last name.”

  Oops!

  “Yes, well, practice makes perfect, ma’am! Mrs. Paz is a great Spanish teacher, too. But, uh, I’m really late for class now, so I’ll see you, okay?”

  He turned tail and hurried back inside the building, only to bump into his sister Carol beside the gym.

  “God, Cody, watch where you’re going!”

  Without a word, Johnny kept walking, hoping she wouldn’t suspect anything.

  “Hey, wait!”

  Johnny turned his head slightly.

  It’s you, isn’t it? Carol said in his mind.

  Telepathy was one of the other advantages of being twin shapeshifters.

  Busted. How did you know?

  Cody buys designer polo shirts for his uniform, not the cheap Old Navy stuff you prefer.

  She caught up to him and grabbed his arm, whispering hoarsely, “This is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done, Johnny. Shapeshifting at school? Into another human being? I don’t remember any of our training mentioning that as a particularly good idea.”

  Johnny glanced about. Seeing no one, he let his own human self come forward a bit.

  Ugh. You look like a computer-morphed composite of Johnny and Cody. Come all the way forward, please.

  “Could be useful,” Johnny said aloud in a voice that also blended his and his rival’s. “Dude! Crazy.”

  Before they reached the back hall and its cameras, he had returned to his normal form. He quietly explained what had happened with Pablo and his plan for vengeance.

  “Johnny, I know it seems brave to you—heroic—but we made a deal with Mom and Dad. We’re not supposed to use our magic unless it’s absolutely necessary. You could’ve just as easily reported Cody.”

  “Or punched his lights out.”

  “Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, moron. Anyway, shush: the door’s open.”

  Mr. Zamora paused, his hand pointing at the smartboard. “So you found him, did you, Carolina?”

  “He’s been feeling sick. He was still in the bathroom.”

  People giggled or smirked throughout the classroom. Johnny clutched his stomach dramatically. “Yeah, I may have to run back all of a sudden, sir. When duty calls, duty calls.”

  He made his way to his desk amid the laughter and annoyed redirection of his teacher. Hot Cheetos had made it back before him, and the boy was meticulously carving a gang symbol into his desk.

  “Hey, Aniceto,” Johnny whispered.

  The hood’s hollowed eyes glanced up at him.

  “I just bumped into Cody Smith. He told me to tell you to remember his advice. Whatever that means.”

  The older boy muttered a string of obscenities in Spanish, and Johnny smiled to himself.

  Justice is a dish best served spicy, Cody old friend. Kind of like Hot Cheetos. Merry Christmas, dude.

  ~~~

  When the last bell rang, there wasn’t much time to enjoy that special feeling of freedom that comes right at the beginning of the holidays. Johnny slowed his hurried pace for a moment as he passed the front office, smiling impishly at the sight of a hangdog Cody Smith, slumped in a chair beside Hot Cheetos. A security guard stood over them, gesturing toward the principal’s office. Cody reached into his jacket for his cell phone, but the guard snatched it away.

  Your privilege doesn’t mean jack today, buddy. That’ll teach you.

  Carol was standing at the doors, gesturing at him. “Come on, Johnny. You can gloat later. Mom’s already packed our bags. She’s waiting for us.”

  As they stepped outside, Johnny rolled his eyes. Their mother was leaning against her friend Angie Rea’s black Ford F450, checking the time on her smart phone.

  Angie was an artist and usually hauled her massive upcycled sculptures around in the gas-guzzler up and down the state of Texas. But today, the Garza family luggage, even with their mother’s ridiculous number of suitcases, seemed pretty meager in the large bed of the truck.

  Carol kissed her mom and Angie on the cheek as they clambered in; Johnny smiled and gave a quick wave.

  “Wow, your son, Verónica!” Angie exclaimed as she pulled away from the school. “Super tall and just a little stuck-up, huh?”

  “Yeah, he dwarfs Carol now, doesn’t he? Crazy growth spurts.”

  Trying to head off the probably embarrassing direction of this conversation, Johnny leaned forward and pecked Angie on the cheek. “Sorry, Ms. Rea. The other dudes. You know how it is. Middle school life is tough without them seeing you give kisses to your mom’s best friend.”

  “No, pos, I understand, Johnny. You kids excited about flying to Manzanillo? I hear the beaches are better than Acapulco.”

  Carol gave a nervous laugh. “Well, I mean, except for the volcano erupting…”

  “…and the drug cartels shooting police helicopters out of the sky…” added Johnny.

  “…and all the hurricane damage along the coast,” Carol concluded, “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  Verónica Quintero de Garza craned her neck around to glare at her children. “And since we all are very excited to see Papá and hear about the discoveries he’s making, none of those things are going to keep us away, ¿verdad, amores?”

  Smile angelically, he muttered in Carol’s mind. He put his arm around her shoulder, and leaned his head against hers, a look of innocence on his face. In unison, now…

  “Claro que no, mamá,” they said together.

  Their mother arched an eyebrow and laid a finger against her nose.

  Other than their parents, no one else had any clue as to the twin’s secret abilities, or how they had used them six months ago to rescue their mother from the clutches of the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca in the bowels of the Underworld. Against all odds, working together and drawing on their family’s deep love, the twins had foiled the god’s twisted plan.

  After they had returned to the living world, Johnny had refused to keep this secret from the man he admired most and he had become a jaguar in front of his father. Dr. Oscar Garza had been both surprised and relieved to learn that his wife and children were shapeshifters.

  Then he had revealed that he, too, had been hiding something from them. At the age of seventeen, Oscar had been admitted into the Charter Palms Mental Health Center due to a nervous breakdown. He had spent more than a year institutionalized.

  “I snapped,” he had told them, tears on his face, “because I had been seeing things all my life. Hallucinations, I thought. Very real ones. After your grandfather abandoned us, things got worse. Weird visions plagued me. Supernatural stuff. And I knew, or thought I knew, that madness ran in the family. I…Forgive me for never telling you, but your Uncle Fernando and I have another brother, the middle boy, Samuel. When he was little, my parents put him in an institution. I haven’t see
n him since. I’m guessing he’s still there. Point is, I figured whatever he had was in me, too.”

  Verónica had hugged him tightly then, and the twins had clung to him as well. Johnny’s heart had ached for the man, adrift without much family, believing himself crazy. He had understood in that moment just how lucky he was to have such loving parents and sister.

  “When I got out, I had to be a skeptic, you see. I had to be very empirical in my dealings with the world. ‘Everything has a rational explanation,’ I reminded myself constantly. So when you disappeared, Vero, pues, how could I allow myself to imagine? It was easier to blame the cartels.”

  “Ay, amor,” their mother had cried. “Forgive me. If only I had been honest with you. Maybe your torment wouldn’t have been as bad.”

  He had shushed her with a kiss; in that instant, life for the Garza family was transformed.

  Back in the Rio Grande Valley, Verónica had done all she could to train her children in their new abilities, even though their magic was well beyond her own. And Johnny’s father had returned to his studies of pre-Columbian Mexico with a new perspective and dogged determination to learn what he could to protect his loved ones from sinister plans, even with the hope of discovering powerful ancient artifacts.

  So, when an amateur archaeologist had discovered a strange network of stone-lined tubes under the ancient ruins of El Chanal in the Mexican state of Colima, Dr. Garza had jumped at the offer to be part of the scholarly research team investigating.

  He had been there three weeks already. In his email to his family, he had described the excitement of discovering that the tubes apparently linked an underground pool at the heart of the ritual complex to nearby rivers and lagoons.

  “I’ll explain more when you’re here,” he had written. “And then we’ll enjoy some sun and surf, heh.”

  First, of course, came the plane ride. Angie dropped them off at the McAllen Miller International Airport, where they boarded a plane for Houston and then—after a ridiculous layover that gave Johnny time to watch a bunch of kitschy old cartoons on his tablet—another for Guadalajara.