Paola Santiago and the River of Tears

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

  “I don’t know if you can kill a sentient severed hand,” Pao said practically. “But, I mean, crush the heck out of it, yeah.”

  Dante hoisted the club over his shoulder like a baseball bat. Then he hesitated. “Do you want to do it?” he asked her. “Using it was your idea.”

  From a distance, Pao could hear battle sounds back at camp. She and Dante would have to hurry if they wanted to go to the Niños’ aid.

  “Nah,” she said, even though the club was awesome and, if she was being totally honest, she did kind of want to be the one to wield it. “It’s your smelly old shoe—you do it.”

  He grinned at her, and her stupid stomach swooped. It had been her idea, but it wouldn’t kill her to let him have a moment of triumph.

  This time, when he pulled it back, he swung without hesitating and landed a heavy blow.

  The Mano let out a strange, high-pitched shriek, almost like a boiling teakettle. Then it exploded into a disgusting puddle of lime-green goop.

  “Cool…” Dante said, even though a lot of it had landed on his shoes. “Abuela never mentioned the gross green stuff.”

  “Oh, now you like gross green stuff?” Pao asked, thinking of algae. But she smiled to let him know she was joking.

  “Maybe it’s growing on me,” he said, looking at Pao. He was smiling, too.

  Another clang interrupted the moment. “We should probably…” said Dante.

  “Yeah,” Pao said. “Let’s go.”

  They ran back toward the camp, the torchlight growing brighter as they got nearer. Pao shuddered when she thought about the darkness they were leaving behind, and how that heavy, inky blackness had felt in her throat. They’d come so close to losing light altogether.

  When they reached camp, there was no time to dwell on what they’d just gone through. The Niños de la Luz, for all their bravado and battle stations, were in way over their heads.

  More hairy hands skittered across the ground—at least ten of them.

  “Guess there was more than one mean rich guy in Silver Springs back in the day!” Pao shouted to Dante, who was already charging forward.

  He stopped short at the only thing more terrifying than a demon hand: Naomi.

  “I thought I told you two—” she began, but Pao stepped out of the way so Dante’s club could be seen in the full light of the bonfire.

  Naomi stopped in her tracks, her mouth hanging slightly open.

  “You were saying?” Pao asked.

  “Swing that thing at any hand that isn’t attached to a body, and do it now.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Naomi ran off, but Dante turned to Pao, holding out the club.

  “Ready for a turn?” he asked, his smile confident, and Pao couldn’t help it—she reached out for the weapon.

  “Maybe just one.” Then she hesitated. “But it’s your club…. Do you think it’ll work for me?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  A few yards off, Pao saw Sal climbing the stone barrier around the bonfire as he tried to escape a Mano. His expression was frozen in terror.

  The club was warm and heavy in her hand, and Pao felt heat spread through her muscles. She ran faster than ever before, her strides longer, her braids trailing behind her.

  She reached Sal in seconds, and as the Mano gained the top of the first tier of stones, Pao thought, randomly, of playing T-ball at the YMCA in kindergarten. Her team had always won.

  She pulled the club back and, with a strength she didn’t know she had, smashed the Mano to bits just inches from the ragged hem of Sal’s black jeans. Some green goo got into the fire and exploded, scorching the pristine white stone.

  “Thanks!” Sal said. He stared at her with big, round eyes, and Pao saw herself and the Arma del Alma reflected in them.

  “No problem,” she said, feeling like a superhero in a movie. “Now get somewhere safe, away from the hands and the goo.”

  “Pao! Over here!”

  Three of the monsters were swarming Dante, and Pao ran again. When she was ten feet away, she tossed him the club. Marisa, who had been busy slashing away with her knife, stopped to watch as the weapon soared straight to Dante, end over end, like it was attracted to his hand. He caught it and took out all three Manos with one swipe.

  Pao stayed close to Dante as he made his way around the fire’s perimeter, smashing interlopers into that same disgusting goo. She would never have admitted it aloud, but she felt a little empty without the club now, like a light in her chest had dimmed.

  Luckily, she didn’t have much time to think about the scary flash she’d seen in Marisa’s eyes when she’d thrown the Arma del Alma. Unluckily, it was because Naomi was on fire.

  Silver Hair rolled on the ground, extinguishing the flames on her back, but they had spread to a nearby couch, and Pao raced over to put them out. She picked up a dirty rag and bent over the cushions while she beat them with it. That was a mistake.

  A single hairy knuckle between the pillows was all Pao saw before a Mano sprang up and locked with surprising strength around her throat.

  Her first reaction was shock. She couldn’t breathe. And the fighting around her was so intense, no one even noticed her plight. Dante was a few yards away, defending Sal and some of the other younger boys.

  Pao scrabbled at the hand on her neck, trying to dig her fingernails into its hairy flesh, to fasten her own annoyingly small hands around it and pull it off as her lungs screamed for air.

  But she couldn’t. It wasn’t going to budge.

  Dante, she thought desperately, though she realized he wouldn’t be able to help. What was he going to do, swing the club at her throat? Probably not a good idea. And even if he did manage to hit it with something, the goo would burn right through her skin.

  Pao pried and pulled, and tried not to panic, but it had been thirty seconds by now, if not more, and she thought she remembered that forty-five was the longest she’d ever held her breath during swimming lessons at the Silver Springs community pool.

  Think, she told herself for the second time that night. But there was no magical shape-shifting weapon to help her now, and she couldn’t scream, and her arms and legs were getting tingly and numb.

  Since she’d always paid such close attention in class, she knew that her brain wasn’t getting enough oxygen, and soon it would shut down to conserve function. She would pass out, and the only person here who knew her name was also the only one with a monster-busting weapon that everyone wanted on their side, and no one would even notice she was gone until it was way too late.

  How long can a person last without air? she wondered almost sleepily as her arms fell to her sides like they’d decided on their own to stop fighting. The body’s shutdown, she remembered, would happen in stages.

  After a minute, brain cells would start to die. That was probably now-ish.

  After three minutes, there would be serious brain damage. Or was it five? Why couldn’t she remember? There was a huge difference between two more minutes and four more minutes.

  She felt her legs give out next, and she fell facedown onto the couch cushions. They smelled like smoke. She couldn’t move her arms, and everything was so, so fuzzy.

  Really? Pao thought, her snarky inner monologue reminding her absurdly of Ondina. After everything I’ve been through today, this is how it ends?

  On a smelly couch, being suffocated by a disembodied, hairy hand?

  It was barely even a good story.

  Okay, it was a pretty good story.

  But just as the black spots were starting to take over her vision, the most ridiculous thing happened. Pao heard a voice. Ondina’s, she was almost certain.

  Not her, it said.

  The Mano’s fingers gripped her throat even tighter.

  NOT HER! came the command, louder, and this time the Mano Pachona, fearsome folktale monster, obeyed.

  It released her.

  Without the pressure on her trachea, the peaceful feeling created by the
lack of oxygen dissipated immediately. Pao gasped, all the sounds and smells and pains of the battle rushing back like a tidal wave to the ramshackle coastal town of her senses.

  She reached for her throat and took long, gasping breaths, heaving and sobbing as snot and tears ran freely down her face.

  “Pao?”

  It was Dante, but she couldn’t answer. She was on her back, half on the smoldering couch, half off it, still clutching at her tender throat, every breath like swallowing hot metal.

  “Are you okay? What happened?”

  His voice was coming from too far away, as if there were cotton in her ears, but everything else was so loud. Her heart had never beat this fast.

  Finally, the metal in her throat cooled and became liquid, and each breath came easier and easier.

  The moment feeling returned to her limbs, she dug savagely through the ruined couch until she found the Mano, lifeless now, because it had been deactivated. But by whom? A ghost girl Marisa claimed to have dispatched? Pao looked around, but there was no sign of Ondina or anyone else who could have intervened.

  It made no sense.

  But right then, it didn’t matter. With a disgusted snarl, Pao flung the vile thing into the fire, wanting to see it turn to ashes.

  Instead, it exploded, singeing her eyebrows and causing several people nearby to scream and beat out embers that fell on their clothes.

  Typical, thought Pao, and then she puked onto the toes of her shoes.

  The battle didn’t last much longer. Between Dante’s club and the newly discovered knowledge that the hands would explode in the campfire, the fighters made quick work of the rest of the Manos.

  Pao told Dante more than once that she was fine, but he didn’t seem to believe her. He hovered every second his club wasn’t necessary until they had rounded up the last Mano and scoured the camp three times over for any more hidden predators.

  When Marisa and Naomi declared the area clear, everyone in the vicinity seemed to collapse right where they were—Pao and Dante included.

  As the adrenaline ebbed (her glands were getting a heck of a workout today), every part of Pao ached. Her throat and neck were by far the worst. But her arms and legs were sore, too, and her nose was full of the rank odors of singed flesh, green goo, and the former contents of her stomach.

  She had never been so exhausted in all her life, but her mind was still going a million miles a minute. Who made the Mano release me? she wondered as she was surrounded by the sounds of weary Niños recapping the battle.

  Had that voice been real, or just part of her delirium?

  When she could, Pao sat up, finding Dante close beside her. It was both a comfort and an annoyance. She felt like a hairball coughed up by the neighborhood cat. Dante, on the other hand, looked like a hero.

  “You okay?” he asked, getting to his feet and pulling her up after him.

  “Stop asking me that!” Pao snapped, her impatience surprising her.

  “Sorry.”

  Pao saw him deflate a little—his heroic glow seemed to dim. She didn’t want to be happy about that. She wasn’t a monster.

  Was she?

  “It’s okay…. It’s just…” To make up for her crappy thoughts, she was going to tell him about her near-death experience and the weird voice. She really was. But just then, Naomi walked up, looking almost sheepish.

  This ought to be good, Pao thought. Contrite wasn’t a side of Naomi they’d seen before, and Pao didn’t want to miss it.

  “So, Marisa is asking everyone to meet in the mess tent to plan the cleanup.”

  “Did you want to drag us off to a dark corner first so we don’t get in the way?” Pao asked. Siphoning off her confusion and frustration on Naomi was much more satisfying than doing it to Dante. Naomi didn’t wilt in response. She bristled.

  But whatever Naomi initially wanted to say, she swallowed it. “Look, you guys saved us out there. The club, the thing with the fire…We’d never thought to burn the hands before—that was really good. I’m…I’m…”

  Pao was a chronic finisher-of-other-people’s-sentences. It wasn’t her best quality. But this time, she let Naomi wrestle with the words until they finally bent her to their will. That was satisfying, too.

  “I’m sorry,” Naomi said finally, like she was spitting out a porcupine. “I shouldn’t have tried to get you out of the way. I shouldn’t have left you alone unprotected. It was foolish, and it won’t happen again.”

  Pao wanted to say something snarky, but Dante stepped forward before she could. “People make mistakes,” he said, sticking out his hand for Naomi to shake. “They don’t define us.”

  It was a totally hero-y thing to say, Pao thought, and she hated it. She also hated how Naomi took his hand and looked up at him, her smile dazzling against the dark brown of her skin. She shook his hand for a beat too long, and the way Dante tossed the hair out of his eyes and grinned back was utterly nauseating.

  Where was the petulant kid who had yelled at her in the tent before the fight?

  Where was the boy who had cried over his grandma?

  Why did he always insist on changing just when Pao was starting to get the hang of knowing him again?

  “So, cleaning!” Pao said too loudly. They both looked at her in surprise, like they hadn’t realized she was still standing there.

  As if she had anywhere else to be.

  “We’re cleaning, right?” she said to cover her urge to slink off and sulk. “Monster parts and goo and probably blood all over the camp? Sounds like a blast.”

  “You should get your neck looked at,” Naomi said, finally turning away from Dante. “It’s starting to bruise.” She stepped closer to Pao, examining the exposed skin of her throat.

  Pao resisted the urge—just barely—to growl at her like a dog.

  “I’ve never seen anyone get away from a Mano once it’s locked on like that,” Naomi said, shaking her head. “How did you do it?”

  “I’m just that good, I guess,” Pao said, pulling up the collar of her T-shirt.

  Naomi rolled her eyes, but it was almost affectionate this time. “Mess tent, five minutes,” she said. “There will be medics there.”

  “How did you do it?” Dante asked quietly when Naomi had jogged off to round up the stragglers.

  Now is the time, Pao thought, her inner voice stern. She had to come clean, tell Dante about the voice that had saved her. Tell him that, for some reason, she had been given a pass.

  But his face was so earnest, and he looked so impressed, and all Pao could think about was the way he had smiled at Naomi, and how beautiful she’d looked next to him.

  “My mom’s always telling me to cut my fingernails,” she said, holding up the too-long, slightly ragged things for him to see. “Good thing I don’t listen. I just dug them into the hand and pulled until it let go.”

  “Cool,” he said, and there it was. The same grin he’d given Naomi. Maybe even a better one. “We did okay, right?”

  “We did great,” Pao said, high-fiving him.

  The Arma del Alma was still hanging from his left hand, but as Pao watched, it started to change. For one absurd moment, it looked like a plush version of a club, like a toy weapon you’d buy at Target. But in another moment it split open down a seam and got smaller and smaller until it was just a boy’s slipper again.

  “Whoa,” Dante said, and Pao nodded her agreement.

  “You think your abuela ever made it turn into a weapon, just for fun?” Pao asked, an undignified giggle escaping her sore throat. She winced.

  “I can just picture her,” Dante said, smiling and shaking his head. “Walking back from bingo, stopping in a dark alley, swinging it around a little to see how it feels.”

  “I wish she’d had time to tell us where she got it and stuff,” Pao said, as Dante lovingly folded it in half and stuck it in his back pocket.

  “Me too,” he said, his smile fading. “I hope she’s—”

  “She’s fine,” Pao said, before he
could finish. “She will be. We’ll make sure.”

  “We were pretty awesome tonight,” Dante said, holding out his arm for hers as they set off for the mess tent.

  Pao took it instead of answering, another pebble of guilt dropping onto the pile already sitting in her stomach. What would happen if they had to fight hand monsters again? Or even worse ones? Would everyone expect Pao and her fingernails to be able to hold their own?

  Fingernails, she chastised herself as they passed the firepit. Of all the stupid things…

  In the sky above the tent Naomi had pointed them toward, a single star was visible. Pao felt her shoulders relax just a little under the weight of the secrets she was carrying. It felt like a good sign. Tomorrow they would find Emma.

  “Every one of you fought bravely,” Marisa was saying to the crowd when Pao and Dante walked in.

  There were no tables or chairs, just old wool blankets and crudely stitched cushions on the floor. They found a place to stand in the back, and Pao was surprised by how many Niños were stretched out in front of them—at least thirty. She’d never seen them all gathered in one spot before. They seemed to range in age from four to fourteen.

  Now that the danger had passed, Pao felt restless, thoughts of Emma surging in. Surely if all these missing kids had survived, Emma would have, too. But if she wasn’t here, where was she? Was she was out in the choking darkness alone, facing Manos and chupacabras without protection?

  And what if she wasn’t alone? What if whoever was sending the monsters had taken her?

  Pao couldn’t get comfortable, not when she didn’t know whether Emma was safe. She would hear out Marisa, and then she would get her questions answered.

  Naomi sat beside Marisa, her back straight, her chin jutting proudly. But the rest of the kids were exhausted, Pao could see. They limped around, their shoulders slumped, or lay on the blankets, propping their heads on one another’s laps and poking at wounds.

  “Tonight, we will rest,” Marisa said, a ring of authority in her voice. “Tomorrow, we will get the camp in order and prepare to fight again. The third quarter ends tomorrow at midnight, just as the summer solstice begins. They haven’t overlapped this way in twenty-eight years. The barrier will be weaker than ever for a time.” She tossed a half-unraveled braid over her shoulder.