And Pao, limited by her own closed-mindedness and embarrassment, hadn’t pushed it.
But she should have.
Because there is no one stronger, or more resourceful, or more ruthless than a mother who believes her children are in danger.
No matter who she is or what she herself has done…
Franco had underestimated the thin, ragged, wailing spirit who’d held the world in thrall for generations. He’d believed himself stronger, thought he could dispatch the ghost of a mother and laugh about her afterward.
Pao knew that mothers don’t go down easy. They wait, build up their strength. They never give up.
“Franco, you foolish, arrogant boy…” Pao said, not realizing she’d spoken aloud until Ondina’s gaze snapped to her face.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing…”
“Whatever you’re thinking, just spit it out, okay?” Ondina snapped, her smooth, sarcastic exterior gone, her nerves exposed. “The mumbling mad-scientist routine is getting old.”
Pao looked at Ondina, who met her gaze, unflinching.
“La Llorona.” Pao tried to keep her voice even, and watched Ondina’s face for a reaction. For proof that she wasn’t wrong. “That’s who stuck us in here. Your mother is La Llorona.”
Ondina didn’t deny it, and in Pao’s bloodstream, dread battled with the thrill of discovery.
“But that means…” Pao said, peering closer at Ondina, at her old-fashioned clothes, at the wariness around her eyes. “That means she’s not just trying to bring you back to life. It means…It means…”
“It means she killed me,” Ondina said, her voice as dry as a cactus spine. “Yes. She killed us all.”
“We have to get out of here,” Pao said, getting to her feet. Sure, Ondina wasn’t exactly alive, but Pao had seen her in the cactus field in the full light of day. They’d find a way. They had to.
But Ondina didn’t move.
“Ondina, she’s dangerous. How can you possibly believe anything she says? We have to go! You can come with me!”
The not-quite-ghost girl sat eerily still, but when her gaze turned on Pao, it was obvious: Pao’s pushing and prodding had backfired. Ondina’s confession had only made her extra determined. Less human, not more.
“There’s no way out,” Ondina replied as she stood up. Her voice was calm, all traces of her hiccupping sobs gone. “Not for you, anyway. We’ve been looking for you for such a long time, Paola.”
“What do you mean?” Pao asked, backing away slightly. “Why me?”
“You said it yourself earlier.” The green glow in Ondina’s eyes was manic as she surveyed Pao. “We’re relentless, you and I. Mother and I needed a match. Someone whose energy would be at home in my resurrected body.”
Pao continued to walk backward, even though she knew there was no exit door. No window. No secret escape hatch. Ondina was wavering between the almost-human girl Pao had only seen glimpses of and the dead-eyed heir to the glass palace.
“The boy was immortal and timeless—clever, too—but he was too much a part of that wretched campfire brigade. His heart wasn’t his own.”
“Franco?” Pao asked. “You took Franco? Where is he now?”
“And the girl was smart, cunning. She had style. But she was too naive. She hadn’t seen enough of the world….”
“Emma,” Pao choked out, her heart sinking. “What did you do with her? With Franco? Where are they?”
“The other boy was never a match, but he charged in here looking for you, and Mother knew—we knew—we could use him. That you’d do anything to save him. Even walk right into the last place you should have.”
Dante. They had taken Dante to lure her in. And it had worked.
Pao would have laughed if fear weren’t choking her. She had accused him of being the dumb hero, but look who had stormed the haunted palace looking for the dude in distress in the end.
“But you…” Ondina approached Pao like she was a dress in a shopwindow. “You were different. I could tell from the first time I visited you. You had something the others didn’t….”
Pao watched Ondina, transfixed by the longing in her eyes. Hundreds of years of waiting, gathered right there on the surface.
“You weren’t just smart, and cunning, and a little rebellious. You were wicked. There was something in you that you tried to repress. A secret rage smoldering away. That was the final ingredient.”
And now, at last, Pao understood. All this was her fault. Her anger was the perfect breeding ground for this supernatural bacteria.
“She’s going to use me to bring you back to life,” Pao said, her voice hollow.
“It’s an amazing technique,” Ondina confirmed. “Although she was always a gifted healer, even in life. For centuries, she has been draining the life force from people, hoping that the combination of their souls and the void’s power would enable her to bring her children back.” Ondina shook her head, like it was a silly thing to believe. “She’s given me a physical form, allowed me to retain my mind and my memories, made me stronger than any other fantasma—”
“That’s for sure,” Pao muttered, rubbing the bruises their fight had left on her arms.
“But I’m still tied to this place until we find the right soul to make me fully human again,” Ondina continued.
“And I’m the lucky winner,” Pao said, trying to remain deadpan despite the terror freezing her throat and chest.
Ondina’s eyes flickered between those of a human and those of a monster. She didn’t reply.
“Because you feel like you’ve earned it, the right to take someone’s life. The right to take all these people’s lives.” Pao was getting mad now, the kind of mad that made her want to cry. “You want to walk free knowing that someone’s daughter had to die, someone’s friend, so you could flounce around showing off your hair?”
Ondina looked at her, humanity winning out for a moment. “It’s not personal. I just—”
“You’re just doing what Mommy tells you to,” Pao cut in. “Have you even asked yourself if you want it?”
The other girl’s eyes went dark, and Pao knew she’d hit a nerve.
“It doesn’t matter what I want.”
“But if it did…” Pao said, and a ray of sunlight burst into the cold night of her fear. A path through the darkness.
She’d been so focused on the ways she was like Ondina, but if that were true, didn’t it mean Ondina was like her, too? That there was something brave and righteous in her like the feeling that was burning in Pao’s chest?
“If it mattered,” Pao began, ready to roll the dice, “what would you want?”
“To be free,” Ondina answered without hesitation. Then she looked startled, like she hadn’t meant to say that.
Pao held her gaze, vindicated. “And you think you’ll be free once she does it? That you can just go and live your life? Do you want an eternity of facing her disappointment, Ondina? Because it doesn’t seem to be making you very happy now.”
“Stop it,” Ondina said, trying to hitch her unfeeling persona back into place. But there were gaps in it, Pao knew, and she went for them. Relentlessly.
“You deserve to be free,” Pao said, keeping her voice soft. This time she was the one walking forward while Ondina backed up. “You deserve to know you were good, because you were—I can see it. And all the people who will die if you do this—the Niños, Dante, Emma, Franco, me—we don’t deserve it, Ondina. Just like you didn’t.”
“It was my fault,” Ondina said, looking away from Pao. “I deserve to be punished. It was my fault she did it. I started to cry, and—”
“That’s not true,” Pao said, and she thought of everything she’d forgiven herself for as the rift closed in on her. All the times she’d distanced herself from her mom, rejected her, betrayed her beliefs. “Your mom is supposed to love you, no matter what.” Her heart was in her throat now. “She’s not supposed to hurt you. It’s not your fault.”
Ondina’s mouth was open, but no sound came out. Tears, black this time, coursed down her ghostly face. “Stop it,” she sniffled. “It’s too late. There’s no way out.”
“We can find one,” Pao said, her own eyes watering. “Together. I’ll help you.”
“Why would you want to help me?”
“Because I want to do what’s right,” Pao said. “And I think you do, too.”
She was close enough now to reach out and take Ondina’s hand, and she extended hers, waiting as the ghostly girl battled internally with something Pao could tell was much older than this moment. Something she’d buried that was now being dragged up.
“I can’t,” Ondina said, taking a tentative step back. “I don’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” Pao said, catching her eyes again and holding them. “I’m going to try, with or without you, but I think we both know I don’t have a chance on my own.”
“You don’t,” she said. The hint of a smirk even under her sniffling made Pao bolder.
“But together…together we could do this. We could save them. We could get you your freedom, Ondina. I can help you. Will you help me?”
The battle raged, the human girl still inside Ondina at odds with the monster the void wanted her to become. Pao left her hand extended, waiting, willing her to cross the boundary, believing she could, because here was Pao, despite her anger, wanting to do what was right.
Ondina folded her arms. “Even if we wanted to, it’s not like we could just waltz out of here.”
“So we take it one step at a time,” Pao said. “What’s first?”
Ondina hesitated. “I could…make a door,” she said. “But it won’t go straight to her. There’s only one way to get through if you’re not escorted, and it’s not a picnic.”
“And everything we’ve done so far has been such a picnic.”
“Shut up. I’m trying to tell you I’ll make the door, but I’m not going through it with you. You’ll be on your own after that.”
“She’ll know you helped me. There’s no halfway when you fight a villain. Haven’t you ever read a book?”
“Do you want the door or not?”
“Will you meet me on the other side?”
“If you even get to the other side,” Ondina muttered, a wrinkle between her eyebrows. “This is what I can do for now,” she said at last, decisively. “Don’t count on me being there.”
“You’ll be there,” Pao said, smiling at her. “And thank you in advance.”
“Ugh, this would be so much less distasteful if you were…literally anyone else.”
“You know that saying You only dislike about others what you dislike about yourself or whatever?”
“Stop.”
“It’s especially true in this case.”
“Okay, now I’m just making the door to get rid of you. I hope whatever’s in there eats you.”
“You don’t know what’s in there?” Pao asked, alarm bells ringing in her head.
“Do I look like the kind of person who goes the long way?” Ondina replied, her nose in the air.
“Stupid princess.”
“Stupid hero complex.”
Pao smiled. There was that word again. Hero. She didn’t hate it as much as she used to.
“My friends…” Pao said. “They’re still alive?”
Ondina nodded. “They’re…needed. For the ritual. They’ll be with her.”
The smile was gone as quickly as it had come.
“What if I can’t…?”
“I don’t have time to babysit you right now, Paola. Do you want to try to save them or not?”
Pao gritted her teeth. “I take it back. I dislike you, and it has nothing to do with disliking myself.”
Ondina didn’t answer, just rolled her eyes once more for good measure before laying both hands on the wall and closing her lids.
For a moment, nothing happened, and Pao’s stomach twisted with fear. But of what, exactly? That it wouldn’t work? Or that Ondina had betrayed her, and this performance of hers was just a distraction?
Pao was about to say something when, at last, there was movement.
It was almost too subtle to notice at first—a section of glass, warping and swirling until it looked like a face. And then, beside it, another visage formed, and another, until there were more faces than blank wall.
They were grotesque, their features becoming more animated the longer Ondina pressed her hands against the glass, their many eyes forming and opening wide, their mouths gaping in terror.
Pao shuddered and took a step back, but it was too late to abandon the plan now.
Beneath Ondina’s hands, one of the mouths yawned wider than the others. Wide enough to walk through.
This time, even Bruto looked afraid.
“Come on, boy,” Pao said, but he whined and sat down. “Bruto, come on!”
“He won’t go,” Ondina said quietly. “He was made here—he knows it’s not safe.”
“He’ll come,” Pao said, but suddenly she wasn’t so sure.
“He’s a monster, Paola,” said Ondina, looking at him sadly. “You can’t trust them.”
She was saying more than that, Pao knew. She was saying Pao couldn’t trust her, either. And she was right. But Pao didn’t have any other choice.
The way ahead was as dark as the rift had been, and Pao glanced at Bruto once more, then at Ondina, verifying that it was time.
“Take care of him for me,” Pao said, and she stepped into the darkness without waiting for a response.
All the false bravado that had propelled Pao into the mouth in the wall was torn away as she walked through it.
The people behind the grotesque faces she’d seen in the glass clogged the passageway ahead. Long, spindly fingers clawed at her, leaving cold, clammy trails where they touched her skin. Pao tried to keep moving forward, but she spun around every time a new horror appeared, and fear choked her when she realized specters were surrounding her.
Ondina had acted like this was a punishment. But for whom?
A man with a backpack and blank staring eyes grew from the dust at her feet, and Pao screamed. The hallway seemed to catch the sound and bounce it from surface to surface until it turned into a wild, awful wailing that had Pao clamping her hands over her ears.
“Mis hijos…” A voice cut through Pao’s own echoing moans. “Where are my children?”
The dust became water, lapping at her sneakers, soaking them.
Then the faces disappeared. And the walls. Everything was gone except the dark water and a pinprick of light ahead, which expanded to illuminate the ghostly form of a dark-haired woman in a long white dress.
“Mis hijos…¿Dónde están?”
The dread in the pit of Pao’s stomach was cold and sharp. It screamed at her to run, but she knew there was nowhere to go.
Up ahead, the woman clutched at her face, her long, matted hair trailing behind as she cried again and again, “My children are gone….”
The punishing cold of her fear made Pao feel five years old again, listening to her mother’s stories at bedtime and pretending not to be afraid. Afterward, she would stay up for hours with the lights on, jumping at any small noise.
The spectral woman, closer to Pao now, looked at her own hands. They were stained up to the elbows with blood. The ghost screamed in horror, and try as she might to stay quiet, Pao screamed, too.
The water grew more turbulent, rising to Pao’s knees.
That’s when La Llorona lifted her eyes.
“Te llevaste a mis hijos,” she said, her voice a low growl. The green of her eyes turned electric.
“No!” Pao said. She didn’t understand all the words, but there was no mistaking the look in those eyes. Pao backed away, the water getting deeper.
“You were bad,” La Llorona said in a singsong voice. “You were bad, and you took my hijos y vas a pagar por eso.”
Her bloodstained hands reached for Pao’s face, and
suddenly the air was crowded with three ghostly children—two boys and a girl—all wailing, their eyes black as ink.
“No!” Pao shouted. “I didn’t take your children! It was you! They’re gone because of you!”
“I would never hurt my children.” The words were a snarl, and Pao took another step back, only to find herself in water up to her waist.
“You did,” Pao said, the story springing to mind effortlessly, despite the many years she’d spent trying to ignore its existence. “You did hurt them.”
There were many versions of the tale, but Pao knew only one by heart. She stopped backing away. She looked at La Llorona, past her glowing eyes, and saw a mother.
“Their father left,” Pao said as gently as she could. “He said the children were a sin. A crime.”
La Llorona screamed again, a terrifying sound like a thousand saws going through metal, but Pao could hear the sadness beneath it now. She stood her ground and waited for quiet to return.
“They weren’t a sin,” Pao said. “It was just what he believed.”
The silence stretched on, and the monstrous face of the ghost woman eased a little, pink appearing high in her cheeks, her hair smoothing out, then knotting, then smoothing again, like she couldn’t decide if she was a monster or a mother.
Maybe she was always both, Pao thought, waiting.
“We weren’t married,” came a whisper into the space between them. La Llorona’s blazing eyes dimmed just a little, going almost hazel before glowing their too-bright green once more. “Pero quería casarme.”
“Yes, you did want that, but he left,” Pao said, stepping closer. “You couldn’t have made him stay.” There was sadness in her own voice now as she remembered her mom out on the patio, crying when she thought Pao was asleep.
It wasn’t my fault, or Mom’s, that Dad left. She understood it now, in a way she never had before.
“You were grieving for him,” Pao said, not bothering to wipe her wet cheeks. “You were alone, with no one to help you. You were doing your best.”
Tears poured out of La Llorona’s eyes like a faucet had been turned on, and they were black, like Ondina’s. Hija de Lágrimas… Pao figured it out at last: the daughter of tears.
Paola Santiago and the River of Tears Page 25
