Paola Santiago and the River of Tears

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  Marisa was sure to know. There was no doubt in Pao’s mind that Marisa was in charge—it was painted on the faces of all the kids around them. Pao saw it in the way they looked adoringly up at her, or gave her a wide berth, or oriented themselves to her as she passed.

  Why were they following her? Pao wondered. Were they all the same kind of cactus-field ghosts?

  Pao hated to admit it, but Marisa was a little bit magnificent as she stood before her and Dante in her patchwork regalia, with her long braids and freckled, no-nonsense face. The look was a far cry from the short dresses, hair extensions, and makeup she’d worn in Silver Springs Middle School.

  But Pao had more important things to do than admire her old rival.

  “What is this place?” she asked Marisa. “What are you? I need to know how it is you’re here when you’re supposed to be at the bottom of the Gila.”

  Marisa arched an eyebrow at Naomi like Pao was speaking a foreign language.

  “I told you not to talk until I gave you permission!” Naomi hissed, but Pao ignored her, looking at Dante for support. His nod gave her the jolt of courage she needed.

  “It’s not about you, or you stabbing me, or anything like that,” Pao said, fighting the urge to look down at Marisa’s shoes when she spoke to her, like she’d done throughout fifth grade. “It’s about my friend. She disappeared near the river, too. And if you’re a ghost—if you’re all ghosts—that means…”

  “I’m not a ghost,” Marisa said, her voice aloof and impatient, like she had much more important things to do. “I’m as alive as you are. We all are.”

  “You mean this place isn’t haunted?” Dante asked, some color returning to his cheeks, which had gone pale when he saw Marisa.

  She made a sharp, impatient noise. “Not that it matters, but I didn’t drown. I was…taken, and I escaped. It was a long time ago.”

  “Escaped from who?” Pao asked urgently. “A kidnapper?” She looked around the camp. “Were all these kids—”

  “If you escaped,” Dante interrupted, “maybe our friend did, too. Is she here? Emma Lockwood, she’s about as tall as me, blondish-brown hair—”

  “Stop.”

  Pao had the distinct impression that she and Dante weren’t the first people to fall silent in the face of Marisa’s authority.

  “Your friend isn’t here,” said Marisa. “We haven’t taken in any newcomers lately.”

  “If anyone could get away, it’s Emma,” Dante said, as if he hadn’t heard her. “She’s alive—I know it!”

  “You couldn’t fill a teaspoon with what you know,” Naomi snarled. “You’ve been here for what, all of three minutes?”

  “Then help us,” Pao pleaded. “If Emma isn’t here, where could she be? Where do we start looking?”

  “I don’t know,” Marisa said, shaking her head slightly to silence Naomi. “Not everyone who disappears from Silver Springs is lucky enough to end up here. And if she’s not here…” Marisa and Naomi exchanged a dark look. “Let’s just say there’s no place as friendly as this camp for kids who have been taken.”

  “Which brings me back to my original question,” Pao said, trying not to let their pessimism crush her. “Taken by who?”

  For an endless minute, no one spoke. Pao’s restlessness and frustration built to a fever pitch. Beside her, Dante clenched his hands into fists.

  “You can’t expect to just walk in here and ask any question you want,” Naomi said, glancing at Marisa for confirmation. The other girl didn’t disagree. “We don’t know you. We have no reason to trust you. That takes time.”

  But time, Pao thought desperately, was something they didn’t have.

  “What brings these tourists here, anyway?” Marisa asked Naomi, as if Pao and Dante weren’t perfectly capable of answering for themselves.

  Naomi jerked her chin toward Pao. “She was about to get her face ripped off by a chupacabra, and her friend showed up later, after I’d taken care of it.”

  Chupacabra? Pao mouthed to Dante, who had gone a little pale again.

  Pao’s mom had raised her on stories of the red-eyed creatures that prowled the desert, draining the lifeblood from goats through vampiric incisions in their throats. More lizard than dog, more demon than creature of God.

  Pao had always considered them the stuff of legend, of course. It was yet another thing Pao had been wrong about. She felt vaguely ill.

  “Another chupacabra?” Marisa asked, a very adult wrinkle appearing between her eyebrows. “That’s the fourth one this week.”

  “I know,” Naomi said, shaking her head. “Third-quarter problems. We just have to get through tomorrow.”

  “First of all, we fought it together,” Pao said, more irritated than she wanted to be about the older girls ignoring her. She hadn’t come all this way and been basically traumatized by weird monsters, ghosts, and disappearing girls just to be treated like a middle school outcast. “The…chupacabra—if that’s even a real thing—I helped her defeat it. And second of all, what’s the third quarter? We need to know. To help us find our friend.”

  Naomi’s glare was almost as sharp as the knife Marisa had stuck between Pao’s ribs, but Pao gave her a pretty good glare of her own.

  “A tourist fighting a chupacabra without a weapon?” asked Marisa, interrupting their eyeball showdown. “I’m almost sorry I tried to banish you earlier.”

  “Don’t be,” said Naomi through gritted teeth. “All she did was pour some smelly perfume stuff on it, which didn’t even work, and then I—”

  “What perfume?” Marisa asked, finally looking directly at Pao.

  Pao didn’t want to show it to her, but what choice did she have? She pulled the half-empty bottle from her bag and handed it to Marisa, who glanced at the label before unscrewing the top and sniffing the contents.

  “Florida Water?” she asked, handing it back to Pao. “That’s old-school. I mean, that’s not what it’s for, and it never would have worked, but still. Where’d you learn about old energy wards?”

  “It’s…a long story,” Pao said, her knees feeling weak again, her head pounding from hunger and exhaustion. It seemed like a week had passed since she’d woken up with the half-baked plan to grab Dante and find the kidnapper.

  And how did that jewelry-stealing creep fit into all this, anyway?

  “That’s not all,” Naomi said to Marisa, turning her back on Pao and Dante. “They have an Arma del Alma.”

  Marisa raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

  “Show her,” Naomi snapped at Dante.

  Dante glowered. “Why should I trust you if you don’t trust us?” he asked. “I don’t know what this thing does, but you guys obviously think it’s pretty powerful, and you want me to just hand it over?”

  Marisa met Naomi’s eyes, and some kind of wordless communication passed between them before the leader turned to Dante. “We don’t know who’s been taking the kids,” she said with irritation in her voice, though for once it didn’t seem directed at them. “We know how it’s happening, and where, but we don’t know who’s giving the orders.”

  “How is it happening?” Pao cut in before Marisa changed the subject.

  “The ahogados drag them into the river,” Marisa said, her voice haunted.

  “Ahogados?” Pao asked, remembering the sandwich jingle again. “Like Ondina?”

  “There are too many to remember them by name,” Marisa said tiredly. “They come; they take. We banish as many of them as we can.”

  “But you think someone else is behind the drownings?” Dante asked.

  “Most of the ahogados are barely sentient,” Naomi said disdainfully. “They don’t know how to plan anything. Someone is sending them.”

  “So they’re…ghosts?” Pao asked.

  “What’s your obsession with ghosts?” Naomi asked.

  Pao wanted to laugh at the sheer irony. Until yesterday, she would have been the last person on Earth ever to be asked that question.

  “The ahog
ados have a physical form,” said Marisa, “but they are…drained. Husks of the children they once were. And they’re not the only monsters in the area.”

  As if she knew Pao was about to pounce on this newly opened line of questioning, Marisa turned her sharp eyes on Dante.

  “We’ve given you information about our enemies in good faith,” she said. “Will you insult us by refusing to return the confidence?”

  Dante looked like he wanted to argue, and Pao couldn’t blame him. After all, the girls had barely told them anything, and certainly nothing useful.

  But if they returned the gesture, Pao figured, they might learn something they needed to know to save Emma.

  When Dante glanced at her for approval, Pao nodded once.

  He pulled the chancla out of his back pocket. His jaw was clenched, and his knuckles were pale against the blue corduroy when he handed it over.

  “So, what’s an…Arma de Alma or whatever?” Pao asked, trying to lighten the mood.

  Marisa’s mouth twisted slightly.

  “I mean, besides a slipper that can change into other slippers,” said Pao.

  “You mean…you’ve never used it?” Marisa asked Dante.

  “We haven’t had a chance to,” he said defensively. “My…” He swallowed hard, a little of the fight leaving his face. “My abuela gave it to me before…”

  “Before what?” Marisa asked, her eyes sharp.

  This time when Dante looked at Pao, she shook her head infinitesimally. She had a strong feeling it wouldn’t be wise to show their whole hand to Marisa.

  “Before we left to find our friend,” Pao cut in before Dante’s emotions could get the best of him. She had always been the better liar. Whenever they got caught doing something his abuela had forbidden, he always counted on her to spin a story that would keep them out of trouble.

  His frustration was always so close to the surface, Pao thought, tied to his every worry and fear. It had gotten him in trouble before, and today the stakes were too high to gamble.

  “The point is,” Pao said, “she gave Dante her slipper, and it changed into this as soon as he touched it, but…”

  “But its weapon form hasn’t been revealed yet…” Marisa said, examining the deceptively ordinary-looking blue slipper in her hand. “Interesting.”

  “Well, can you show us?” Pao asked. “Its…other form?” As open-minded as she had vowed to be, Pao still found this almost too absurd to take seriously. Here they were, four middle school–aged kids gathered around an old slipper, discussing its potential properties as a magical weapon.

  “It will only reveal itself when he is in need,” she said, looking Dante up and down. “The Arma del Alma is tied to the soul of the wielder. To their life force. It is a rare and potent thing, usually handed down through bloodlines.”

  “So basically what you’re saying is my abuela’s been walking around with a powerful ancient weapon on her buniony foot for my whole life?” Dante asked in what Pao knew was a heroic attempt at lightheartedness.

  “No wonder you were always so scared of the chancla…” Pao said under her breath, and he shot her a dirty look.

  Marisa didn’t seem to notice. “Strange that she didn’t explain its purpose to you…” she mused, but her eyes were narrowed, suspicious. “It seems a little odd to give you something so valuable without even a word of instruction.”

  Pao shifted under her scrutiny, and Dante’s temper flared again.

  “You said you wanted to see the chancla, and I showed it to you. There’s no need to criticize my family.”

  Pao saw Marisa and Naomi exchange a glance.

  “You’re here because we’re allowing you to be here,” Naomi said, her temper rising to meet Dante’s. “I’d watch your tone if I were you.”

  “Well, you’re not me,” Dante said, stepping forward. “And I’ll use any tone I like.”

  “There’s no need for posturing,” Marisa said, waving a hand in a casual way that made Naomi step back. Dante’s shoulders relaxed just a fraction. Pao, on the other hand, was on guard. Marisa Martínez as a peacekeeper?

  Pao had a lifetime of memories of this girl. Marisa in second grade, stealing a kindergarten boy’s cookie right out of his lunch box. Marisa in fourth grade, telling one of her own best friends that if she didn’t stop wearing scrunchies she’d have to sit at a different lunch table.

  Marisa had been the kind of person more likely to start fights than put a stop to them, but the girl didn’t seem to remember fighting with Pao. In fact, she didn’t seem to remember her at all. Had living in the cactus field done that to her? And if so, what else had she forgotten? Momentarily panicked, Pao searched her brain, making sure she could recall her mom’s face, the green candles on Señora Mata’s living room shelves, Emma and the Lockwoods, and even Mr. Spitz, the science teacher.

  Pao’s memories were all still there. So what was going on with Marisa?

  “How long have you been here?” Pao asked, mostly to break the awkward silence caused by Dante’s outburst.

  It was a simple question, but Marisa’s expression clouded over. “The Niños de la Luz have been here for more than a century,” she said.

  “The what?”

  “The Children of the Light,” Dante translated.

  “Yes,” Marisa said, her eyes faraway. “As long as there have been shadows, there has been light. We keep the darkness at bay.”

  “How did you, um…become one?” Pao asked.

  Marisa regarded her with a searching expression, but after a second, she closed herself off. “That’s a story for another time,” she said, though her tone implied that she doubted they’d be around long enough to hear it.

  “You may take sanctuary here for the night. Tomorrow, we’ll decide what to do with you. In the meantime, eat, sleep, make yourselves at home.”

  She turned away from them, but Dante cleared his throat.

  “Um, my shoe?”

  Was it Pao’s imagination, or did Marisa’s eyes flash? An uneasy feeling took hold of Pao, but after no more than a moment’s pause, the older girl handed back the chancla.

  “Of course,” she said. “My mistake.”

  Still, as she walked away, Pao’s apprehension lingered. She might not have understood the Arma del Alma, or the rules of this strange place, but she knew one thing for certain: There was much more to this new Marisa Martínez than met the eye.

  And if she and Dante were smart, they wouldn’t trust her as far as they could throw her.

  As she sat near the camp’s central bonfire, Pao ate bean stew with the kind of gusto she usually reserved for Señora Mata’s arroz con pollo.

  She’d never been this hungry in her life, not even on the nights when her mom forgot to make dinner. Every spoonful felt like it was restoring feeling to her limbs, sharpness to her thoughts.

  Beside her, Dante listlessly stirred his bowl, his eyes troubled as he stared into the flames. He still buzzed with the frustration that had flashed in their conversation with Marisa and Naomi, and despite her mind’s renewed clarity, Pao didn’t know what to say to make him feel better.

  So she puzzled over something else instead: the chupacabras.

  Pao had researched the monsters once, in fourth grade. She’d never had the heart to tell her mom what she’d found out on the internet. The so-called paranormal creatures that had decimated herds of goats back in the nineties were actually just coyotes with a severe case of mange, making them too weak to catch wild predators and forcing them to go after the easier prey of livestock instead. The mange had caused their fur to fall off, leaving dry, scaly patches on their skin, and turning their eyes bloodshot and weary.

  Pao had been so sure back then that what her mom called a chupacabra was simply the result of a species falling prey to disease. But today she had seen the Great Dane–size creatures for herself, up close. The murderous, dilated eyes, the scales glinting in the muted light, the tentacle-like spines as green as the river in Pao’s dream…


  Pao had stuffed all her mother’s tales into a mental box and fastened it with a lock of her own irritation. She’d always thought being a scientist meant having to dismiss things that couldn’t be tested or proven.

  But Pao realized now, not without some guilt and shame, that she’d been too close-minded. Scientists had to be open to all kinds of possibilities. Who would have thought, for example, that algae could be a source of fuel? In fact, what major scientific breakthrough hadn’t involved a little faith in something previously believed to be impossible?

  Around Pao and Dante, the campers sat in pairs or threes, talking animatedly or half snoozing over their stew. Pao saw Naomi’s silver head resting in the lap of a long-legged girl across the fire, a content smile on her face as the other girl braided and unbraided her hair. A few yards away, three boys who couldn’t be more than eight years old flung spoonfuls of stew at each other, speaking in rapid Spanish.

  With a stomach-dropping feeling, Pao recognized one of the them: the boy from apartment B. The one who, she thought, had been taken away with his parents.

  Pao hadn’t seen that little boy around the apartment complex since the day ICE came, and he always came to mind whenever she saw stories about tent cities on the news, showing women who looked like her mom crying over lost children who looked like Pao. Eventually those stories went away as it became clear that viewers preferred to pretend that brown-skinned kids weren’t disappearing, being put into cages or taken to places they’d never known.

  And now, six months later, the boy was here, his cheeks still round, his hair long and curling around his ears. He roughhoused with other boys as if he’d never had parents. As if he’d always lived in a world where a lost fourteen-year-old was in charge and the first rule was Stay vigilant in case of fairy-tale beasts.

  Pao was about to point him out to Dante, but then she saw that her friend’s chin was on his chest as he snored lightly, his stew bowl still in his lap. The anger was gone from his face, and he looked as carefree as the little boys playing across the fire. She envied him a little. For her, sleep was never so restful.