Paola Santiago and the River of Tears

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  The boys whooped in their game, drawing Pao’s attention again. Sal, she remembered when he pulled ahead of the others, laughing, taunting them. She wondered how he had gotten separated from his parents.

  Had anyone ever even noticed he was missing?

  Dante snorted in his sleep, and Pao took the bowl from his lap, setting it carefully on the ground while her eyes scanned the rest of the kids sitting nearby.

  Most looked content, though tired and bedraggled. Almost all of them wore small knives on their hips, and patched-together clothes, and if they hadn’t been so young, Pao would have called them an army.

  But since when did she live in a world with enough lost, neglected children to make up an army? How many of these kids had families somewhere waiting for them, people desperately trying to find them?

  Pao would do anything to find Emma. Ondina might have disappeared, along with the knowledge they were seeking, but there was no reason Pao couldn’t get information elsewhere. She knew there was plenty Marisa wasn’t telling them. And, tired as she was, Pao didn’t intend to rest until she found out what it was.

  She had a feeling mining the Niños for intel would be frowned upon, but Marisa couldn’t get mad if she didn’t know Pao was doing it, right?

  Besides, Pao had a theory to test.

  Sal’s friends had run off, chasing each other through the cacti with real knives the way ordinary little boys played with sticks or toy swords. Instead of joining them, Sal stayed behind and settled close to the fire, staring into its depths.

  “Be right back,” Pao whispered to Dante, who was still asleep. She felt a little strange walking away and leaving him vulnerable, but he needed his rest, and she wasn’t planning to let him out of her sight.

  Pao approached Sal with as little fanfare as possible. “Hi,” she said when she was standing beside him. “Mind if I sit?”

  There was no question about it—Sal’s eyes widened when he saw her. He recognized her.

  He gestured to the open spot next to him, but his expression wasn’t welcoming.

  “It’s Sal, right?” Pao asked. “Do you remember me?”

  Sal shook his head and closed his mouth in a tight line, as if worried that a sound might escape.

  “What about the Riverside Palace?” Pao probed further. “Do you remember it there?”

  Another head shake.

  “I live in apartment C, and you lived next door. With your parents. Do you remember them?”

  This time, he didn’t shake his head. He froze, his eyes still fixed on the fire.

  “I was there that day,” Pao said gently, looking straight ahead, too, remembering the sinking dread she’d felt. “What those men did was wrong, taking you all away like that. I’m really sorry that happened.”

  Sal sniffed, and out of the corner of her eye, Pao saw him nod slightly.

  “I bet you really miss them,” she said, turning to face him, her heart squeezing in her chest. She missed her mom, and they’d only been apart for a few hours.

  “I do,” he whispered, his chin quivering.

  “So you do remember?” Pao asked as softly as she could.

  “We’re not supposed to talk about it,” he whispered, his big dark eyes darting around the camp. “About home or our families or anything.”

  “Why not?” Pao asked.

  “She says home is gone. That we’re better off here. That, if we go back, the monsters will get them all.”

  “What monsters?” Pao asked, too quick, too eager.

  Sal shrank into himself a little, and Pao cursed herself for the mistake.

  “It’s okay,” she said, smiling. “We don’t have to talk about that. It’s just that I’m new here. I don’t know much, and I was hoping someone could fill me in….”

  Sal shrugged, but his eyes darted between her and the fire again and again.

  “How did you get here?” Pao asked. “Can you tell me about that?”

  “After we were taken, and my parents…” He swallowed in a way that reminded her of Dante when he was trying not to cry. “I ran away. But I got lost. Marisa found me and said I could stay at the camp if I learned how to fight.”

  “Did these other kids get lost, too?”

  No response.

  “Sal, do you know what the third quarter is?” Pao asked, undeterred.

  He nodded.

  “Can you tell me?”

  Sal thought for a minute, and Pao waited, not wanting to scare him back into his shell.

  “The third-quarter moon,” Sal said at last. “Naomi says that’s when the veil gets thin. It’s when the monsters can get through.”

  Monsters again, Pao thought.

  “You mean the chupacabras?”

  A pause, and then a nod.

  “But there are others, too?”

  Sal didn’t answer.

  “What’s past the veil?” Pao asked, her curiosity sizzling again. “Where do the monsters come from?”

  But this time she had pushed too far. Either that, or Sal just had the typical short attention span of an eight-year-old boy. He got to his feet. Interview over.

  “I remember you,” he said, and then he scampered away to join his friends in their chase.

  Pao walked back to Dante, who was rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

  “What was that about?” he asked when she reached him. “Wasn’t that the kid from apartment B?”

  “Yeah,” Pao said. “He ran away, and Marisa brought him here to fight. And there’s more—”

  But before she could tell him about the monsters, a horn blew, shattering the cozy quiet of the night. Around them, chaos erupted.

  “To your stations!” Marisa shouted, leaping to her feet.

  Her face was all lines and angles, her braids whipping to and fro as she drew her knife and began rounding up stragglers.

  “What’s happening?” Pao asked, dread spreading like molasses through her veins.

  “I don’t know,” Dante said. “Maybe we should—”

  “Get outta the way!” Naomi said, approaching from behind them. “That’s the only thing you’ll be doing.”

  “Naomi, what’s going on?” Pao asked as the older girl seized her elbow and began dragging her away from the fireside. “Is it the chupacabras again?”

  “These things make the chupes look like lazy, snoring porch dogs,” Naomi said, reaching a tent on the outskirts and shoving the two of them inside. “Trust me. Stay out of the way. We’ll come for you when it’s safe. And before you even say it,” she said, noting Pao’s mouth falling open in protest, “no smelly water is gonna help you now.”

  Before they could ask any more questions, Naomi left Pao and Dante alone in a musty tent full of holes patched with duct tape. It looked like a storage place for extra cots and bedrolls.

  The moment Naomi was gone, Dante turned to Pao, his eyes blazing. “We’re not staying in here.”

  Pao had been thinking the same thing, but when Dante said it, the frustration back in his tone, the idea sounded more reckless than it had in her head.

  He sensed her hesitation. “Oh, now you want to stay out of it?” he asked. “I don’t get you, Pao.”

  “Because I’m not charging out there to fight something I have no knowledge of just to prove my worth to complete strangers?” she said, her anger rising to meet his. “Not everyone does whatever their temper tells them to do, Dante. Or didn’t they teach you that at soccer practice?”

  “It’s always gonna come back to that, isn’t it?” he said. “Like, I dare to make a friend who isn’t you, and suddenly I’m your enemy. I like soccer, Pao! It’s not a crime!”

  “It’s not about soccer,” Pao said. “And if you don’t get that, you’re an idiot.”

  Pao stormed out of the tent, her blood boiling. How dare he? She didn’t resent his new friends, and if he believed that—

  A shriek interrupted her train of thought, and despite her protest just a few seconds ago, she couldn’t stop herself. She ran toward t
he sound. She had helped Naomi with the chupacabra, why couldn’t she help now? The shopping bag was back in the tent, but Pao pulled the flashlight from her pocket, not stopping to wonder how it might be useful.

  The sky had turned a reddish color, casting an ominous glow over everything. The single shriek had quickly become a cacophony of battle sounds, and Pao followed them back toward the center of camp.

  Just before she reached the bonfire, Dante jogged up beside her, determinedly looking anywhere but her face.

  “I don’t need your help!” she said, jogging faster out of spite.

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” He kept pace. It infuriated her. Almost as much as the fact that he kept patting the chancla in his back pocket, like he was afraid to draw it but still wanted to know it was there.

  “Watch out!” he cried for the second time that day, and Pao jumped aside, narrowly avoiding a dark shape coming toward her on the ground, hating him for seeing it first.

  It was like a massive, hairy spider, and she almost screamed, but upon closer examination, the reality was much more chilling.

  Scuttling toward her was what looked like a human hand, covered in dark brown hair as thick as fur, its exposed fingertips wrinkled like it had been in the bath too long. It stopped in front of her, and Pao kept a wary eye on it, backing away.

  “It’s La Mano Pachona!” Dante shrieked, his voice going up to an octave he hadn’t used since before his eleventh birthday. “You have got to be kidding me!”

  Pao couldn’t help it—she softened toward him. Something about his squeaky voice combined with the prospect of imminent doom…

  “What are you talking about?” she asked in a fearful whisper as she continued to back up. The hand dug its fingertips into the sand like a crab’s legs, and she saw a bone protruding from the place where the wrist should have been.

  “¡La Mano Pachona!” Dante said again. “The demon hand! Don’t tell me your mom never—ahh!” The hand pulled free of the grit and lunged at his foot. He darted away to avoid it, and it landed on the ground behind him, tapping its fingers impatiently.

  Though it was hard to think clearly in this surreal moment, Pao racked her brain. Her mom had never mentioned a demon hand, but it did sound like something she would believe in. The only disembodied hand Pao knew was the one from her dreams, wearing Emma’s ring….

  “Abuela told me the story,” said Dante. “There was this rich merchant guy—he was greedy and gave out loans at really high interest and destroyed a bunch of people’s lives.” His words overlapped as he stood back-to-back with Pao, both of them doing a jig to avoid the hand’s attempts to reach them. “The villagers focused all their, like, bad thoughts or whatever on his hands, because he wore these huge, gaudy rings, and finally he died. But his big hairy demon hand came out of his grave and, I don’t know, terrorized them?”

  As if to illustrate his point, the Mano Pachona swiped at Pao’s ankle. She kicked it away, hearing a satisfying crunch, but it didn’t seem any worse for wear.

  “So how do you kill it?” Pao screeched.

  “She…never told me that part!”

  “Typical! Just don’t get too close to it, okay? I’ll figure out something.”

  “Not a problem!” Dante said, but before he could make good on his promise, it leaped for him again, and this time its aim was true. It fastened itself around his ankle just like Emma’s hand had grabbed Pao at the dream river, and it didn’t look like it was planning to let go anytime soon.

  “No!” Pao shrieked. She clutched Dante’s wrist. “Get off him!”

  “I don’t think it can hear you, Pao!” Dante bellowed as the hand began, somehow, to drag him backward by one leg, as if the strength of its former body was behind it, allowing it to get leverage and pull and do plenty of other things a disembodied hand shouldn’t have been able to do.

  “Right, right,” Pao muttered, yanking hard against it as Dante fought to keep both feet on the ground.

  The Florida Water was back at the tent, and the flashlight couldn’t do anything except…what? Show her how hairy the hand was? Useless.

  Think, Pao! she commanded herself as the hand continued to pull, its knuckles popping. “What does the hand do in the story?” she asked, her voice higher and more frantic than she would have liked.

  “It drags you into hell, Pao! So get it off me!”

  “I’m trying!” Pao said. Of course it had to be hell. Why was it always hell?

  The Mano Pachona was stronger than Pao and Dante combined, and despite their best efforts, they were being pulled inexorably away from the campfire’s light and into the shadows, where God only knew what else could be waiting for them.

  Dante tried kicking at the hand, but all he did was lose his balance, and when he fell, he took Pao—who wouldn’t let go of him—down, too.

  Pao spat out a mouthful of sand, but Dante’s arm was still in her grip.

  Dante began sliding on his stomach as the hand pulled him even faster. “Pao!” he said, his voice hoarse, his eyes wide with pain and fear. “It’s going to break my ankle! I can’t get it off me!”

  “I know, I’m trying! I’m trying!” Unable to rise to her feet, she reached for Dante’s arm with her other hand, trying to get a two-handed grip.

  And then Pao saw it, in Dante’s back pocket:

  The blue corduroy of the slipper.

  “Dante!” she shrieked, cursing herself for not thinking of it sooner. “The Arma…Alma…whatever!”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. His face was twisted in pain.

  “THE CHANCLA!”

  Nothing. He was wincing, and Pao could see the fingers of the hand digging in deep, blood beginning to stain the cuff of his jeans.

  There was nothing else for it. She was going to have to let go of Dante, try to get the chancla herself, and pray that the slipper would do something cooler than change color this time.

  “Don’t!” Dante said when he felt her grip loosen. His face was a grim mask, his eyes bloodshot, his cheeks turning gray under their normal coppery brown.

  “You have to trust me,” she said, and she let go of him.

  Pao was on her feet in an instant, chasing Dante, who was being dragged much faster now that her weight wasn’t slowing down the Mano. For a minute, she thought she wouldn’t be able to catch up. The hand seemed to be getting stronger the farther it pulled him. Dante had stopped struggling and was moaning in pain.

  But the slipper was there, folded in half in his back pocket. All she had to do was get to it….

  The second she was close enough, she dove, landing on Dante’s back with her head near his knees, driving the air out of him with a slightly alarming oof sound.

  “Sorry about this,” she said, reaching for his back pocket with one hand, well aware that her weight was compounding his suffering.

  When she finally extracted the chancla, it was unnaturally warm against her palm—almost hot, like it knew its time had arrived.

  But Pao had no idea what to do next. Just hold it?

  She pointed it toward the demon hand and waited for something to happen, recalling the awe with which Naomi had looked at the slipper. And the reverence with which Señora Mata had presented it to her grandson.

  Any second now, Pao thought as the Mano recovered from the addition of her body and pulled faster. The darkness was closing in. She looked over her shoulder to see that the campfire was too far away to spot behind them. Even the circle of light cast by the torches surrounding camp was barely visible.

  The inky blackness made the air thicker somehow, and Pao coughed, trying to rid her lungs of its clamminess while staring in desperation at the slipper. Their last hope.

  Nothing happened.

  Pao yelled a curse word her mom would have flicked her in the nose for using. But these were extreme circumstances, anyone would have to agree.

  “Pao…” Dante’s voice was tight with pain as he said, “Give it here….” He offered his hand.

  Of course,
Pao thought. It wasn’t her weapon—it was his. It had changed for him once; maybe it would do it again.

  She shoved the chancla into his grasp, closing her eyes with hope, as well as against the fear and knowledge that if this didn’t work, they were done for.

  But the reaction was immediate. The shoe began to glow with golden light and emit a faint hum. The Mano Pachona sensed it, Pao knew, because it slowed down, its fingers trembling as it fought to keep pulling.

  The glow was making Dante stronger, too. Pao could feel him resisting the Mano’s pull once again. She clutched his thighs for dear life as the ridges of corduroy on the slipper began to smooth out, the blue turned to black, and the toe lengthened.

  “Hurry up!” Pao yelled at it, but Dante lifted his head farther off the ground and she could see that the corner of his mouth was up in an almost smile.

  Then the shoe exploded like a beaker when you heat it too high.

  Pao screamed, but the sound was lost in the sonic wave that accompanied the explosion. The hand stopped dragging them, though it didn’t relinquish its grip on Dante’s ankle.

  Pao rolled off Dante’s back and he stood up easily, looking straight-backed and strong, while the Mano seemed dazed (as much as a severed body part could seem dazed) as it clung to his bloodstained pant leg.

  But the most amazing thing about the scene in front of her wasn’t the supernatural hand, or her revived friend. It was the weapon he held—a three-foot-long club, narrow at the handle but swelling into a solid mass of formidable, bone-crushing awesome.

  Arma del Alma. Even though the phrase wasn’t familiar, the name seemed perfect. Like it couldn’t possibly be called anything else.

  The club’s surface was dark and swirling, like glass, but shot through with lines of pearlescence that shone white. It was beautiful, and Dante looked completely natural with it in his hand.

  “Whoa,” he said, reaching down to help her up. The Mano was mostly limp, like a dead spider clinging to a dusty curtain. Dante kicked it off him and it skittered across the dust, curling into a fist. He advanced on it, limping just a little on the ankle it had been fastened to.

  Dante turned to ask Pao, “Do I…kill it?”

  Pao smiled. Here he was, an almost man-size boy with a giant weapon, looking bloody and battle-hardened and, for lack of a better word, cool. Yet he was asking her what to do.