by Rena Barron
The kishi spun around so that his human side faced us again. “I knew her,” he said, finally accepting that Frankie was telling the truth. His voice was still deep, but his tone had turned regretful. “I lost track of Zala after she left Azur.”
“My mom lived here?” Frankie asked, surprised by the news.
“Yes. Zala was the head peacekeeper for centuries in Azur,” the kishi said. “She hunted down rogue magical creatures across the universe. Most were out to seed chaos or incite wars. She and I worked on many cases together. I considered her a friend.”
Frankie bit her lip and asked in a daze, “What else can you tell me about my mom?”
“Zala went to earth after a rogue fugitive,” the kishi continued. “After she completed the job, she settled there.” He scratched his head, shifting on his heels. “She . . . um . . . fell in love with a human . . .” His voice trailed off like he was thinking hard about his next words. “I don’t know what happened to your mother,” the kishi said, “but celestials are not prone to accidents.”
Frankie considered him for a moment, unable to speak. Silent tears slid down her cheeks, and I squeezed her shoulder to let her know that she wasn’t alone. I felt helpless and didn’t know what to say.
“My name is Charlie, by the way,” the kishi said. “If you need anything, give me a call. I owed your mother some favors, and by extension, I will grant them to you.”
At that, he turned again, and his hyena face winked at us as he strolled off into the crowd. Could we trust the kishi, or was this a trick? It wouldn’t make sense for him to lie about Frankie’s mom.
“I knew it wasn’t an accident,” Frankie said, her voice full of defiance and anger. She pushed up her glasses that had slipped to the tip of her nose. “It never made sense to me, you know? Especially after I found out that she was a celestial.”
I couldn’t stop thinking about how the kishi—Charlie—told Frankie to call him but hadn’t given his number. He had to know more than he was letting on. Worse than that, if Frankie’s mom’s death hadn’t been an accident, that meant someone—or something—had killed her. We didn’t know who or why, but we knew one thing for sure. The Lord of Shadows wasn’t the only enemy in the universe powerful enough to kill a celestial.
I had a bad feeling that one day, we’d have to face this new enemy, too.
SEVEN
Where do lost souls go?
Frankie ran after the kishi, but he disappeared into the crowd. When Eli and I caught up with her again, she was breathing hard. Her shoulders heaved up and down as she turned in a circle looking for him. We looked too, but the market had gotten busy fast. We ducked out of the way of an Azurian with four arms and eight tentacles balancing twelve spools of cloth. He was yelling at a group of people carrying baskets of gold fruit with little brown spikes to get out of his way.
“Where did he go?” Frankie said, her voice raw.
A knot balled up in my belly. Charlie said that Zala’s death hadn’t been an accident. I didn’t blame Frankie for wanting to know what happened to her mom. “We’ll find him again,” I said, remembering how we’d used my staff to track down the gateway into the Dark.
An aziza boy with iridescent wings stuffed a powdered donut in his mouth as he ducked through the crowd. A woman with three eyes—two that wandered, one that stared straight ahead—pushed a cart past us. When she saw Eli gawking at her, she tossed him something that he caught in one hand. “Tell me my pixie-dust-infused mints aren’t the best in Azur,” the woman challenged him. “Come to Booth 479A and try some of my more exotic flavors. There’s even one to fix your eye problem.”
Eli’s cheeks reddened as he rubbed the center of his forehead, where her third eye had been. Then he unwrapped the candy and popped it in his mouth. Between smacking, he said, “It reminds me of rainbows and sunlight and picnics.”
Frankie quirked an eyebrow at him, but I could tell that she was still thinking about the kishi.
“There you are,” Papa said, waving for us to hurry up. Gavet wasn’t with him anymore. “My favorite ice cream is up ahead. I thought we’d grab some before we head to see Obatala.”
“Should we say something about Charlie?” I whispered to Frankie.
She shook her head. “Not until I get a chance to talk to him again first.”
“I don’t know, Frankie,” Eli said. He wasn’t smacking on the mint anymore, and his voice dropped low. “Can we really trust a man with two faces? You shouldn’t get your hopes up.”
“I have to find out if he knows more about what happened to my mom,” Frankie said before we reached Papa.
Papa stood in front of a woman with pink hair in three buns stacked on top of each other like strawberry ice cream. “Long time no see, Guardian Elegguá,” said the woman as she nodded to Papa. “Would you like the house special for you and your young charges?” The woman flashed a smile at me, and she had more platinum teeth than a rapper.
“You know it,” Papa replied, grinning.
The woman opened the freezer in front of her and scooped up gray ice cream onto a waffle cone. Papa thanked her for his cone, and she fixed one for Frankie, Eli, and me.
“What flavor is it?” I asked, skeptical. I couldn’t imagine any world where gray ice cream tasted good.
The woman quirked one eyebrow at me like I’d asked if the sky was up and the ground was down. Now that I thought about it, that was a complicated question for a city in the clouds. The sky was both up and down. “It’s the house special.”
“Oh, okay, thanks,” I said before we set off again.
“So, who’s going to try first?” Eli asked, but Papa had already started eating his ice cream.
Frankie took one lick from her cone and closed her eyes. She smiled as she tilted her head to the sky, and I could’ve sworn her brown skin soaked up the light itself. A single tear slid down her cheek. “It tastes like my mom’s pecan pie.”
When she said mom, I knew that she meant her orisha mom. I smiled too, happy that the ice cream had dug up a good memory, especially after the news from the kishi.
Eli sniffed his cone, and his jaw dropped. “Caramel popcorn.”
“The ice cream will become any flavor you wish,” Papa said, down two scoops already. “If you don’t pick a flavor, then it’ll pick for you. That’s the fun part.”
“Fun part, hmm,” I said, giving it a try. At first, the ice cream tingled against my tongue. I smacked my lips a few times, and it tasted like a warm chocolate donut fresh out of the oven. “Mmmmm.”
When we finished eating our ice cream, we headed out of the market. We passed outside the gates of the palace we’d seen from the sky. High hedges shielded the grounds from the public. “What’s this place?” I asked Papa.
“The school,” he answered as we walked across cobblestones that looked like puddles of water. The way he said the school made me think it was the only one in Azur. I wondered what it would be like to go to a school where you didn’t have to hide your magic. That had to be either fun or a complete disaster if there were bullies like Winston around.
We stopped at a little cottage on the edge of the city with shovels and rubber boots leaned against the beige walls. Brown straw covered the roof, and some of it blew away in the wind. From the outside, it didn’t look like much—just a one-room shack—but I knew better than that. The gods were masters at making extraordinary things look mundane. Before Papa could knock, the door creaked open by itself.
“That’s not creepy at all,” Eli said. Frankie grumbled her agreement.
Papa seemed unfazed that we were staring into a pitch-black room. He stepped inside first, and we followed him. The door slammed shut behind us, and I squeezed my staff for reassurance—not that it helped. The symbols would usually glow under my touch, but they were dark here.
Torches on either side of the room flared to life. Their flames cast light on the dusty rug that led down a hallway. Our footsteps echoed as we walked, and I sensed the cottage was even
bigger than the school.
“This place is weird,” Eli said, louder than he should have, considering that Obatala had to be nearby.
“Sky Father has always been eccentric,” Papa said.
Eccentric was a nice way of putting it. Obatala and Oduduwa made the darkbringers. Maybe if they hadn’t, the Lord of Shadows would’ve never crawled from behind his planet. Maybe I wouldn’t exist either, because Papa would still be with his first family. I pushed that thought out of my mind.
“And you’ve always been quite the storyteller, little brother,” came a voice from the shadows. “Eli, isn’t it?” he said, addressing my friend. “Some call you weird for loving ghosts and the spirit world. You call it paranormal, but nothing in the universe is not normal. It’s a work of art from the divine.”
“How do you know that?” Eli asked, his cheeks bright with embarrassment.
“It’s no more supernatural than atoms or energy or gravity,” he answered. “All things that you believe in . . . Isn’t that right, Frankie? Your hard science can never be disproved, except when it can . . .” He left that last point to hang in the air like it was a challenge for Frankie to try to prove him wrong.
“And, Maya, daughter of Elegguá, guardian of the veil in training,” he said. I swallowed hard. “You claimed to have read every volume of Oya: Warrior Goddess. Yet there are three special-edition volumes in my possession that you haven’t read.”
“Really?” I said, almost forgetting the fact that this god knew way too much about us for my comfort. “So, you can . . . um . . . read minds or something?”
“Something like that,” he answered as he swept out of the shadows. He was an older man in a white flowing robe with a trimmed beard, nothing like Eshu’s brushy white one. He was much shorter than Papa, but not frail-looking for his age, with brown skin that shimmered with light. Miss Lucille had said that he’d been one of the universe’s first children. That made him close to fourteen billion years old.
“It is good to see you again, Obatala,” Papa said, bowing his head to the god, who returned the gesture with a big smile.
“I’m happy that you have come to visit, little brother,” he answered. “And to meet Maya, Frankie, and Eli finally. There’s been much talk about their antics on earth.”
“Antics?” Eli grumbled under his breath. “We’re heroes.”
“I wish that I’d come under better circumstances,” Papa said.
Obatala clasped his hands behind his back and walked alongside the torches. The flames flared up when he passed by them.
“It’s no news to you by now that the veil is failing,” Papa said. “I poured much of myself into its creation, and as much as I have tried, I can’t make a new one.”
“The veil is an extension of you, Elegguá,” Obatala said, still pacing. “It has always been like a book on loan from a library that would eventually have to be returned.”
Okay, that was a weird analogy, but I got what he was saying. When Papa made the veil, his magic split the earth into two halves—the human world and the Dark. And that part of himself would have to return one day.
“But that’s not why the veil is failing, no,” Obatala said, rubbing his chin.
“The Lord of Shadows has found a way to tap into its energy and drain it,” Papa explained. “The same way that he killed so many of our kind.”
Obatala stopped pacing, and then suddenly, in the span of a breath, he was standing in front of Papa. I had assumed his white hair and beard were from old age, but he looked younger than Papa. He had ice-white eyes that made me think he could, in fact, read my mind. If he could, then he’d know that his eyes really freaked me out.
“Are you always so squeamish, young guardian?” Obatala asked me.
I forced myself to look into his crystal eyes that formed a complex pattern. “No, Sky Father,” I said, using the name that my father had.
“Good to know,” Obatala said, smiling, “since your future is not for the faint of heart.”
“You can see into the future too?” Eli interjected. Frankie nudged him in the side. When Obatala raised an eyebrow, Eli added, “Let me guess—‘something like that.’”
Instead of answering, Obatala turned to my father again. “There is something wrong with you, brother. I sensed it the moment you reached Azur.” He frowned.
“I haven’t been myself since I got back from the Dark,” Papa explained. “Eshu says that my balance is off, but he cannot see why.”
Obatala’s eyes began to glow, and the light from them filled the entire room. Out of reflex, I buried my face in the crook of my arm. The light was warm against my skin, but it also seemed to go straight through me. I felt weightless, almost like I could float away. When the light finally faded, I stumbled a bit. Frankie and Eli looked dazed and confused from it, too. Well, Eli looked confused and like he was itching to crack a joke, but he only rocked on his heels.
Obatala’s eyes were wide with shock and fear. “A part of you is missing, little brother.”
“What do you mean, missing?” I interrupted him.
Papa gave me one sharp look, and I bit my tongue.
“To put it in terms that you’ll understand, young guardian,” Obatala said. “His soul is gone.”
My heart thundered against my chest. That couldn’t be possible. Could it? Papa’s face crumpled like balled-up paper, and his dark eyes looked hollow.
“When we were escaping the Dark, one of the Lord of Shadows’ ribbons punched through my chest,” he said, his voice low. “At the time, I felt a sharp pain, but I didn’t think much of it.”
“But can’t Papa make a new soul?” I said, unable to keep quiet.
“For those of us born of the universe,” Obatala said, “the essence of what we are is complicated. Our soul is our bond to the universe—it is our immortality. We cannot forge a new one.”
“What are you saying?” I asked, tears streaking down my cheeks.
Obatala turned to my father to answer. “If you don’t get your soul back from the Lord of Shadows, you will die.” His voice rang in my ears over and over, along with the sound of my racing heart.
“No,” I whispered. That couldn’t be the only answer. Papa was too weak to go back into the Dark. He didn’t stand a chance against the Lord of Shadows, especially not in his current condition.
EIGHT
I hash out a plan
Papa wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me against his side. I sucked in a shaky breath that made my chest rattle. I wanted to bury my face and cry, but he was so quiet and calm that I had to be too. Both Eli and Frankie stood by, looking miserable. Frankie hugged her shoulders, and Eli shoved his hands in his jean pockets.
“This is your fault,” I said, anger burning inside me. I glared at Obatala. “If you hadn’t made the darkbringers and abandoned them, then the Lord of Shadows would have never woken up.”
“Maya!” Papa said, my name sharp on his tongue.
“But it’s true, Papa.” I didn’t care if I got in trouble for speaking up. It had to be said.
“The young guardian is right,” Obatala sighed. Something warmed in his eyes, and for the first time since we arrived, he looked old. Not exactly millions of years old, but old enough to have regrets.
“I don’t regret the darkbringers, but I regret not understanding the nature of life at the time. I’d like to think I speak for Oduduwa too. He thought that we could reason with the Lord of Shadows, but he was so very wrong.”
Sky Father’s voice was sad now, and his sadness filled the room like storm clouds threatening rain. It weighed down on us, and even Papa’s calm face broke. I wiped away a fresh batch of tears from my cheeks.
“You asked me if I could see into the future,” Obatala said as the overwhelming feeling of sadness lifted. “I can take a very educated guess based on the past and data in my possession, but the future is full of possibilities.” He eyed me expectantly, and I thought I understood. He’d said that the road ahead of me
would be challenging. Papa couldn’t go back into the Dark, but I could.
“In any case,” Obatala said, “the celestials from the edges of the universe should arrive soon. I estimate about three more months for the first ones to reach earth. Until then, Elegguá, you must preserve your life by not using your magic. When we do stand against the Dark, our priority will be to retrieve your soul and make you whole again.”
“Three months?” Frankie grimaced and her nose wrinkled beneath her glasses. “How do you know that the veil won’t fall before then? Tears have been happening exponentially . . .”
Eli cast Frankie a sidelong stare as if to say, plain English, please.
“Meaning that they’ve been occurring at an accelerated rate,” Frankie continued without missing a beat. “What calculations did you do to conclude that the veil will last that long?”
Instead of answering her question, Obatala smiled. “I’m pleased to see that you’re so much like Zala.” Frankie hiccuped in surprise and covered her mouth, too stunned to talk. “Your mother never accepted anything at face value either.”
“So,” Eli interrupted, crossing his arms. “You’re making another educated guess.”
I stared Obatala straight in his ice-white eyes. “And you’re guessing about Papa too, aren’t you?”
“No,” he said, his voice firm and far-reaching. His answer seemed to have many meanings. No, he wasn’t guessing. Papa’s soul was missing. He was dying. He couldn’t use his magic anymore if he wanted to survive long enough for the others to arrive.
“I can’t stand by while new tears form in the veil,” Papa said, shifting heel to heel, his hands on his hips. He stared down at me, his long locs falling across his shoulders. “I might not be able to go back into the Dark, but the veil is my responsibility.”
“If you keep using your magic, it will kill you,” said Obatala, shaking his head.
No way. Not happening. “I’ll fix the veil, Papa,” I said, speaking up. “I’ll do a better job so you can rest.”
