The Smoking Mirror

by David Bowles

  “Well,” Carol said, trying to follow Xolotl’s advice and inject a little humor, “the Hobbits crossed Mordor in their bare feet, so you’ve got to keep perspective, no?”

  “¿Qué? Did Carolina Garza just make a funny?” Johnny rolled his eyes, but smiled.

  “Excuse me, but…what is a, ‘Hobbit’?”

  Carol dropped to the ground and patted the hellhound reassuringly. “Literary allusion. A sort of big-footed elf.”

  “Dude, that’s sacrilege! Hobbits are not elves!”

  She waved him away dismissively. “Whatever. You never even read the books, Johnny. Just watched the movies obsessively.” She leaned toward Xolotl. “You know what movies are, right?”

  “Certainly. I visited several nickelodeons in San Francisco and Los Angeles before I left the realm of men.”

  “Huh?” The only nickelodeon Carol knew was the cable station.

  “Whoa, that was a long time ago,” Johnny muttered. To Carol he added smugly, “Nickelodeons were the first movie theaters, way back in the early 1900s.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up.” She gave an exaggerated sigh, but was inwardly happy. We can still josh around. Good sign. “But, yeah, going back to your footwear problem…”

  Xolotl walked away from them and shook himself vigorously, sending a spray of cold water in all directions. “I keep telling you,” he growled once he was dry enough to stop, “that you don’t need shoes. You need to learn how to shift. You won’t make it through the Nine Deadly Deserts otherwise.”

  “But the truth is,” Carol insisted, “that we can’t control the transformations. I mean, the last time I was sort of half aware of what was going on. I was asleep, and then I felt this pressure build up inside of me, and I just, you know, let go, let it remake me. I was able to sense through my tonal and stuff, but I wasn’t the one that caused it to happen, you see?”

  Xolotl nodded his enormous head. “Of course I see. What you are failing to realize is that your animal self is always there, waiting, anxious to step forward. There’s not much you have to do to convince it. Simply look for it, just beneath the surface of your conscious mind, and call to it. It will respond eagerly, I assure you.”

  The hellhound looked at her with an expectant gaze. When she did nothing, he scuffed his right front paw against the sand.

  “What…now? You want me to try to transform here?”

  “No time like the present, Carolina. You, too, Juan Ángel.”

  Carol closed her eyes, attempting to focus, searching for that glowing, vital, hungry part of herself. But her mind kept snapping back to their predicament, to her concern about her mother, to her confusion about the trials ahead.

  Gritting her teeth in frustration, she groaned and stomped her foot. “Gah! I can’t do it. I can’t focus.”

  “It isn’t about focus, girl, but about a lack thereof.”

  Carol glanced at Johnny, whose face was twisted up so comically that she almost laughed despite herself. After a few more seconds, he muttered a curse and opened his eyes. “Forget it. I got nothing.”

  Xolotl bared his teeth in a feral gesture. “What you need is to confront the perils of this place head-on. That’ll knock you free of your comfortable mindsets.” He sounded positively angry. Carol was rather taken aback. “The danger you’re in, that your mother is in, that we are all of us in, hasn’t really penetrated your barely adolescent brains. You act as if this were a game. You’ve never had to face a real trial in your lives. You’re complacent.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Johnny was livid. “Complacent? No trials? What do you think we’ve been living the last six months, huh? Not knowing where our mom is, watching our dad get drunker and drunker every day…you’re not being fair, man.”

  “Fair? Johnny, fairness is irrelevant. If you can’t transform, you can’t save your mother. If you think I’m being unduly harsh, I suggest you imagine her dying in the dark, all alone, because you couldn’t free yourself from your own self-control.”

  They stood in silence, regarding one another. So much for humor and joy, huh?

  “Well, come on,” the hellhound said finally. “Let’s begin. First you will cross this range, the Tepeme Monamictia or Crashing Mountains. Then come the deserts: blackness, bats and jaguars, cold, haunted ruins, lava plains, ashes, heart-eating demons, obsidian winds and a putrid lake. Then you stand before the Lord and Lady of Death, and once past them you finally confront the villain who holds your mother prisoner. The tzapame have given you some tools; I am providing you some assistance. But in the end it is the two of you who must rise to the challenges and overcome the obstacles.

  “Words of warning: you will neither feel hunger or sleepiness. You may nonetheless be tempted to eat or sleep. Do not. Even though you will become physically very tired, you cannot afford to rest much. The time is short. Your enemies know you are here. Move quickly and face them with courage.”

  He began to lope toward the hills. The twins exchanged a look and dashed after him. At first they kept a decent pace, crossing the sandy plane with flying strides. At the hills they slowed somewhat, bounding from rock to rock, avoiding fissures and scree. As the hills began to become the roots of the obsidian-rich mountains, their path grew steeper, and they had to use their hands more and more, nicking themselves occasionally on sharp points and edges. Carol heard more and more muttered curses coming from her brother, so she looked down at his feet. His socks were stained red with blood.

  “Stop!” she ordered. “Johnny, your feet! My God…Xolotl, look at his feet!”

  The hellhound gave a low snarl. “I told you what you needed to do. That you refuse to comply is another matter entirely.”

  Johnny sat down heavily on the flinty slope and examined the soles of his feet. “This sucks, big time.” He closed his eyes, lay back, and folded his arms across his chest.

  “What are you doing?” Xolotl demanded.

  “Going to sleep, man. That’s the only way I know to shift.”

  “I’ve told you, you can’t sleep in Mictlan, child.”

  Johnny’s eyes shot open. “You know, I’m getting real tired of your freaking attitude. I mean, yeah, you’re the shadow soul of Quetzalcoatl or whatever, and you helped us cross the humongous river, but could you just back the heck off?”

  Xolotl’s blue eyes seemed to glow like burning alcohol. “I see that what you require are very drastic measures.”

  The hellhound reared up on his hind legs. Oh, crap, thought Carol. He’s going to attack Johnny to force a transformation.

  But instead, Xolotl began to quiver and shrink, fingers emerging from the tips of his ever-smaller paws, his snout pulling back into his face, red hair falling about him like autumn pine needles. Within seconds a man stood before them. He had medium-length blond hair sweeping back from his lined forehead and blue eyes surrounded by a network of fine wrinkles and scars. Wrapped around him was a red-furred animal skin that covered most of his sun-toasted flesh.

  “Let’s see how long you manage without my guidance,” he said in a cultured, old-fashioned voice. Spinning curtly on his heel, he stepped behind an outcropping and was gone from sight. Carol followed, but there was nothing. He had disappeared without a trace.

  “Fantastic. He vanished.”

  “Figures. Whatever. Who needs him? Here, give me a hand.”

  Carol helped her brother to his feet. Wincing, he leaned on her and together they made their way up the winding, steep path that the passage of a million souls had only faintly carved into the obsidian mountain. Soon Johnny was leaving bloody footprints behind.

  This is insane. You’d think that the Lord of Creation or whatever would have enough compassion to help us out. We’re twelve years old, Quetzalcoatl, in case you’d forgotten. Cut us some slack, okay?

  Johnny had begun to whimper softly when they finally reached the top. A flat defile stretched before them, wide enough for three people to walk abreast, lined by glittering crags that loomed darkly abov
e. A stiff, moaning wind blew toward them from beyond the passage. Thousands of years of erosion had worn the floor smooth and level, and a smile of relief spread across Johnny’s face as he took his first few steps.

  “Oh, man, that feels good. Nice and cool, too. Like the Saltillo tile at home when mom mops. Mopped. You know what I mean.”

  Carol nodded and rubbed her brother’s back. “Well, according to ‘Clifford the Big Red Dog’ the deserts start just beyond this. What did he say the first one was? Blackness, right? Doesn’t sound too bad.”

  They walked another thirty feet or so when a horrible crashing sound made them draw up short.

  “What the…” Johnny began. They walked a few more paces, and the sound came again, accompanied by a tremor beneath their feet. Johnny gingerly extended one reddened sock and CRASH!

  They stood still for several minutes. There were no more explosions or tremors, so they started ambling down the defile. They’d crossed some fifty feet or so of passage that curved gradually toward the left when, without warning, the crags on either side not four yards ahead slammed into each other with a deafening smash and a hail of splintered rock and obsidian dust, then pulled back to their original positions.

  “¡Hijo de su Pink Floyd!” Johnny screamed, using one of their mother’s favorite nonsense curses. “Dude! If we had been standing there…”

  Carol’s heart pounded mercilessly. “Oh, Xolotl, you jerk. You couldn’t have mentioned the dangerous smashing rocks?”

  As if in answer, the walls a little further ahead slammed into each other. Carol gripped her brother’s forearm.

  “Johnny, I think that…”

  SLAM! Less than a foot behind them, the crags collided, coating them both in fine black dust and leaving their ears ringing.

  “Oh, my God, Johnny! We’re going to be killed!”

  There was a weird expression on her brother’s face. He was counting on his fingers and mumbling to himself.

  “What? What are you doing, Johnny?” Her voice was strained by panic.

  “Hang on, Carol. Relax a second. It’s like…it’s like a video game.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah. There’s a pattern. You figure it out, and you can get through. One crash, followed a minute later by another and then one more just a few seconds after that. Then something like four minutes passes and the pattern starts again.”

  Carol suddenly understood. “Which means…”

  “Which means we have less than three minutes, dude, so RUN!”

  Chapter Eight

  Johnny’s feet pounded the slick rock, every step sending shudders of pain along his legs. Next crash could happen anywhere. Got to keep moving. The blood on the soles of his feet made him slip every few yards, and he was certain that at any second he would end up on his back, the crags slamming into him. But then the last explosive collision came from far behind them, and he slowed his pace, putting a hand on Carol’s shoulder to let her know the danger had passed.

  Breathing heavily, the twins emerged from the passage on the other side of the mountain. A smoother, more gradual slope greeted them, promising an easier descent down into a valley shrouded in thick mist. Leaning against a boulder, Johnny took a rest.

  “Looks like regular granite and sand on this side,” he mused, rubbing a hand against a rock. “Which is, you know, impossible in the real world. I guess this…place? Dimension? Gah, this Underworld has different laws of physics and stuff. But it should be easier on my feet.”

  “What you need is something to bind them up.” Carol looked herself up and down. “But we’re just wearing jeans and t-shirts, so there’s not much material to use.”

  Johnny nodded. “Yeah. This is one of those times when I wish I listened to Dad. He’s always bugging me to wear a belt, like it makes me more of a man or something dumb like that.”

  The image of their father that came to him wasn’t of the present drunken, broken man, but of Dr. Oscar Garza, decked out in his suit and tie, hair a little unruly, a book tucked under one arm, a cheesy joke on his lips. The memory was poignant, almost painful. Johnny realized with a start that he didn’t just miss his mother. He missed the man his father used to be, the man he admired despite their differences. His eyes burned with the realization.

  “Maybe we’ll find something down at the bottom,” Carol mused. “We could tie wood to the bottoms of your feet with my shoelaces. You really shouldn’t have thrown away your other shoe, Johnny. We could’ve…”

  Before she could finish with her irritating scolding, the slope in front of them exploded into the air in a geyser of sand and rock. Towering above them, its body coiling free from the ground, a massive white serpent hissed loudly and opened wide its dark red mouth. Two enormous fangs, each the length of one of Johnny’s legs, glinted bone-white and deadly in the gloom.

  “Run!” Johnny screamed, shoving his sister ahead of him. They went stumbling down the side of the mountain as the serpent twisted around and dove, headfirst, after them. The ground shuddered violently beneath its weight. Risking a glance back, Johnny saw the infernal reptile slithering toward them, shoving boulders out of the way effortlessly, sending them flying into the air or tumbling in the direction of the fleeing twins. Pain was a distant memory. The journey’s objective was forgotten. All that existed was the ineluctable danger behind and the boy racing to survive. In that purely instinctual drive for self-preservation, Johnny felt his tonal scratch at the edges of his mind, and with a sigh of relief, the boy stepped aside.

  With a thrusting twist of magic, his animal soul reshaped his flesh, and his clothes fell away as the jaguar dug ebony claws into the gravel and wheeled about the face the giant snake. The white reptile shot past him, continuing its pursuit of the girl. The jaguar roared in anger and leapt onto the slick, cold skin, snapping his jaws and clawing viciously. Enraged and confused, the serpent curled back with a snap, its tail whipping about and sending the human girl sprawling in the sand. The jaguar clung tightly and sank his teeth into the snake, its strange, cold black blood squirting into his mouth. Hissing hoarsely with pain, the serpent tried to shrug the jaguar off, but coiled back around when it found its struggle useless. Opening its jaws impossibly wide, it flung its diamond-shaped head toward the girl, who had just rolled over and was regarding the demon rushing at her with wide, frightened eyes that closed for a moment before the wolf snarled its way to the surface of her being and scrabbled out of reach.

  Johnny came forward a little, bonding with his tonal so that he could guide it with his conscious, human mind. He roared at Carol, who had run down the slope in her lupine form, the strange tzapame necklace still snug around her neck. She looked back and saw him struggling to hang on to the massive serpent. With a short, barking howl, she turned around and ran at the hellish reptile, leaping at the soft flesh below its head. Realizing that his sister had found the beast’s weak spot, Johnny used his claws to clamber up its side. Together they ripped at the snake with their deadly teeth until great gouts of black began to squirt all over. They dropped to the ground and backed away, their hackles raised. The snake quivered for a moment and then fell, thudding like a dead weight against the mountainside.

  After a few moments of staring at the twitching corpse of their enemy, Carol walked over to her clothes, nuzzling them into a pile that she picked up with her narrow snout. She ducked behind a boulder, and soon Johnny heard her speak.

  “You should probably shift back and get dressed, Johnny. I don’t particularly feel like seeing your naked butt walking around through Mictlan.”

  And how am I supposed to do that? Johnny was stumped for a second, staring down at his paws, at the mysterious bracelet that encircled his left foreleg, but then he realized that all he needed to do was to come forward, totally inhabiting his body. The tonal obediently backed off, and his body stretched and snapped itself back into the form of a twelve-year-old. To his delight, his feet were completely healed. He pulled on nearly all his clothes, abandoning only the bloody
socks, which he was covering with a medium-sized rock when Carol emerged from behind the boulder.

  “Wow.” There was a look of wonderment on her face.

  “I know, right? I guess it’s good Xolotl’s not around. He’d be all ‘see, I told you it would be remarkably easy’ and stuff. I really don’t want to be chewed out right now.”

  Carol giggled. “Yeah, we’re kind of all chewed out, huh?”

  That cracked Johnny up. He doubled up with more laughter than her cheesy joke deserved, partly because it was nice to see her loosen up, partly because he had been so on edge that he needed the release. “That was pretty good,” he managed to say after a few seconds. “All chewed out. Heh. Funny Carol.”

  He showed her his feet, and she gave him a hug for the first time in months. Feels good to click again, like we used to. Nothing like killing a demon snake to bring a family together, I guess!

  They continued down the slope, laughing and comparing their impressions of the fight, what each had sensed in their nagual forms about the reptilian titan and the strange new landscape. They had both noticed the absence of the living web they had discovered they could perceive in their own world. “It’s probably because, uh, yeah, this is the Land of the Dead,” Carol ventured.

  “Well, hello, but not even that snake seemed alive. Did you notice it had no scent? And what the heck was that black stuff? That sure wasn’t blood. Didn’t taste like a regular lizard or snake…and my tonal has eaten a bunch of those.”

  “Maybe it’s some sort of demon, made out of weird, I don’t know, supernatural stuff. And, Johnny? Lizards? Really? Gross.”

  “Uh, didn’t you snack on a tlachuache?” He made a face and feigned a stuck-up fresa accent. “Guácala. O sea, qué asco, en serio.”

  Carol sputtered with laughter. “Yeah, I guess an opossum is about on level with a…Holy Mother of God!”