The Smoking Mirror (7 page)

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!
”

“Huh?” Johnny looked up, and towering above them was a gigantic lizard, something like a cross between an alligator and a komodo dragon, its eyes yellow and malevolent, its many rows of teeth sharp, crooked and dripping with poisonous saliva that sent waves of fetid odors pouring over the twins.

“You,” the reptile declared, its voice booming like the raging flames that destroy forests, homes and families, “have slain my brother Chalmecatl! Living intruders prepare to meet your doom in the jaws of Xochitonal!”

As it opened wide its maw, a shape came bounding down the mountain, hurtling at Xochitonal. It was the hellhound, Xolotl. They came together with an earthshaking thud, their forelegs wrapping around each other as they struggled, jaws reaching for each other’s throats.

“Dude,” Johnny muttered reverently, “it’s like Godzilla versus King Kong or something!”

Xolotl flipped the great lizard onto its back, turning briefly toward the twins. “What are the two of you waiting for? I can only hold this creature off for so long! He can’t follow you into the first desert…” the
tonal
of Quetzalcoatl leapt onto the reptile’s belly “…so get yourselves down this mountain as fast as you can!”

Without waiting to see how the epic battle turned out, the twins began running down the remaining stretch of dark gray granite sand that lined the narrow confines of the Black Road. From behind them came apocalyptic sounds of struggle and destruction, but Johnny focused on the dark fog rising before them from the valley at the foot of the mountain. It seethed and swirled ominously, like virulent smoke from a witch’s cauldron.

Blackness,
he mused.
That’s okay. I’m not afraid of the dark
.

They reached the bottom. Carol grabbed his hand, and together they plunged into the roiling mists.

Chapter Nine

They stepped into the dense fog and were immediately blinded. It was the most absolute darkness Carol had ever experienced, and it surrounded her. She lifted her free hand in front of her face. Nothing. She brought it closer, and closer, till her palm touched her nose.
Nothing.

Johnny’s grip on her hand tightened. “Carol.” His whisper was deafening in the absolute silence that surrounded them. “I can’t see a thing.”

“Me neither. Don’t let go. It would be so easy to get separated in this place.”

They walked slowly forward, a few cautious steps at a time. The silence was overwhelming. Carol wanted to talk to her brother, hear his voice, wince at his stupid jokes and awkward laughter. But the darkness was too absolute. And, it seemed to grow, creeping into her mind.

Suddenly the black mist cleared, and she was looking…up the slope of the mountain they had just descended. The snarls and thuds that reached her ears, providing an ironic relief, indicated that Xolotl and the massive reptilian demon were still fighting.

“
Ah, que la…”
Johnny spat. “We walked in a damn circle! Come on, let’s turn back around.”

Carol quailed at the idea of re-entering that dark stillness. She suspected, not that something horrible awaited her within, but that the pitchy quiet itself would do something to her.
How long did Dad say souls took to cross Mictlan? Four years, I think. Xolotl keeps pushing us to hurry, but what if we get stuck wandering in circles in this mist for days? Weeks? Months? Is he going to come guide us out? Probably not.

As Johnny pulled her into the desert again, she decided against sharing too many of her doubts with her twin. Instead, she tugged on his hand till he stopped.

“I think we should shift. Our
tonales
can probably navigate this place better than our human senses. Mom needs us. We can’t afford to waste time.”

“Okay. You’re probably right. What about our clothes?”

“Take them off, stuff your shirt and underwear into your pants pockets, and tie the legs around your waist or neck. When you shift, the bundle should stay with you like your bracelet does.”

Johnny cleared his throat a little awkwardly. “Yeah, okay. But we really
need to get Big Red to teach us how to keep the animal skin after shifting back, like he did. That’d sure make life easier. Okay, I’m letting go of your hand. Don’t wander off or anything. It’s not like I can see you in this mess.”

Carol nodded foolishly.
Hello, he just said he can’t see me
. “Got it.”

When he let go she felt completely unmoored in the darkness. Not even a single star for company. Utterly alone, filling up with silence.

“Hey, I’m right here.” Johnny’s voice was tinged with concern.

“Huh?”

“Your breathing got shallow and fast, like you were panicking. I haven’t forgotten your fear of the dark, Dude. Don’t worry. We’re going to be alright.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Slipping out of her sneakers, Carol pulled off her t-shirt and jeans, shoving the thin white cotton into a pocket. Her sports bra and panties were next, leaving her feeling somewhat silly but mostly vulnerable, standing naked in the dark. Shoving her socks into her shoes, she strung them from belt loops beside the small clay water bottle, and she tied her jeans around her waist.

“Okay, I’m going to shift now. Don’t go anywhere yet. We don’t know how our senses are going to react to this mist.”

“Got it.” Johnny’s voice cracked.
He’s probably trying to shift already.
As she released control of herself to the hungry energy within her, her body writhed and was remade, bringing a whole new set of senses online. She could feel the faint thudding from the mountain behind her, a slight vibration beneath her paws. She could smell the jaguar not three feet away and hear his easy breathing clearly. And though she still could not see, a strange magnetic pull tingled in her mind.
North. I can sense which way is north when I’m shifted. But if this place is circular…North must mean toward the center. Good. We won’t get turned around this time.

With a short bark of warning, she began to lope in that direction. Beside her, Johnny’s heavy paws padded soft on the granite sand. His breath moved nearly imperceptibly in and out of powerful feline lungs. And all around them, thick and unyielding, was the silent dark. The jaguar’s faint noises faded gradually, the hypnotic rhythm of his gait becoming part of the stillness, the absence in which a sound rumbled.

No. I know there is no sound in the silence. I was just a silly, sick little girl back then. There was no gurgling, creaky voice.

But there it was, all the same. A droning, low and constant. She tried to focus on something else, the texture of the sand, the tapping of her shoes and water jug against her ribs, the feel of her lupine teeth as her tongue draped across them. The silence crowded against her senses all the same, oozing its way inside, filling her mind with nothingness. Every fear was amplified. Every bit of self-doubt a reality.

It was the same as that summer five years ago. She and her brother were seven years old, and it was the first time they’d been apart for more than a day. Uncle Nando had taken Johnny on a fishing trip with him and his two sons. Carol had felt a little under the weather, and even if she’d been perfectly healthy, she probably wouldn’t have wanted to spend the weekend in a tent in that south Texas heat.

The first night she had been unable to sleep. She was drawn to the night, like her mother, enjoying late hours. But this was different. It was genuine insomnia, made worse by the fever that was sinking its claws into her bones. She had slipped into the living room to watch TV quietly, but at 2am the parental controls had kicked in and turned their cable off. Carol had sat quivering in the dark, of which she was deathly afraid, and then she had begun to hear in the vast silence of their rural home the thrumming whisper of despair.

She hadn’t slept at all that night.

Her mom had taken her across the border the next day, to their doctor in Progreso. The long wait, heat, and medicine had kept her from taking a nap. She’d managed to sleep a couple of hours in the evening, but by midnight her eyes had been wide open. And that sound, that impossible sound, had grown audible
again
as she sat there in the dark, its oscillations getting sharper and sharper till they had felt like hammer blows. Leaping to her feet, wild with fear, she had run down the hallway to her parents’ bedroom and thrown herself on their bed.

“What is it, Sweetie?” her father had groggily asked as she’d snuggled trembling into his shoulder.

“It’s…it’s the silence,
papi
.”

“The silence? What do you mean?”

She had swallowed hard, understanding even at the age of seven how crazy she was going to sound. “There’s a sound. In the silence. It…it wants to eat me up, I think.”

Her father had sat up and placed his palms against her cheeks. “Oh, God, you’re burning up with fever, Carolina. Stay here. Let me get some medicine.” He’d brought her liquid analgesic and electrolyte water and placed a cool rag across her forehead. As he’d lain beside her, cradling her shaking body in his left arm, she’d felt safer, but still menaced. Her whimpering voice must have stirred something in Dr. Garza, because he had begun to hum a melody which had gradually become a strange, soft hymn:

A song I sing to Tonantzin
Asking her for guidance.
I sing for hope, I sing for joy
And drown out the silence.

She’d been lulled into a deep sleep by his gentle crooning, and when she’d awakened nearly twenty-four hours later, her fever had disappeared. As had the thrum of the silence. Her doctor had explained about vibrations in the skull caused by this and that, but she had been sure that there was something…supernatural about her experience.

Now, surrounded by interminable swaths of dark stillness, she was under attack again.
An attack. That’s just what it is. This is the first trial. Whoever has Mom knows my weaknesses. He’s trying to break me…isn’t he?

All about her, the silence seemed to swell, blotting out even the muted, rhythmic padding and breathing of her brother. She slipped further and further down into herself, trying to escape. Her
tonal
, unbridled and exulted, began to run as the silence chased her into the depths of her being, relentlessly drowning all contact with anything other than her own fears and inadequacies.

Alone in the existential dark, she was like a flame, guttering in a quiet gale.

And in that absolute loneliness, that darkness and that
drowning
, she realized she was not alone.

A voice, full of love and tenderness, whispered one word:

Sing
.

From within her, past all her foibles and fears, the words came flowing like a crystal stream, noisy and joyous and pure.

A song I sing to Tonantzin
Asking her for guidance.
I sing for hope, I sing for joy
And drown out the silence.

The Little People in a ring,
The sky begins to brighten:
They dance and chant before the dawn
And drown out the silence.

With mighty guards the sun comes up
And shines on the horizon:
The warriors loose a victory cry
And drown out the silence.

The quetzal and the mockingbird,
The dog and mountain lion,
Their voices join in raucous praise
And drown out the silence.

With every verse, she pushed back against the suffocating stillness until she had thrust it completely out of her. She reined in her
tonal
and slowed her pace, broadcasting her song into the dark, fighting back against her unseen enemy. Soon her perception was clear, but there was no one to perceive.

Johnny was gone.

It’s my
tonal
. Without ties to my human soul, it became a pure wolf. Wolves and jaguars…yeah, no. Not normally allies. The wolf ran away from Johnny. As far away as it could.

Lifting her head, she scented the cold, still air. She couldn’t sense him nearby. She opened her muzzle and howled loudly, but the mist muted and distorted her call. Johnny wouldn’t be able to find her. He might even get turned around and wander, lost, searching for her.

I’m not giving up, do you hear me?
She sent her thought like her song into the dark.
You’re not going to win that easy, whatever the hell you are.

The silence around her seemed to thicken in response. Then it curdled. She pictured some horrible creature smiling at her mockingly.

Wait. If I was able to use my song to defend myself…

Tensing herself inwardly, she tapped the inner well of music and bent the melody into a name.

Johnny!

Johnny! Come find your sister!

Johnny! Johnny! She’s waiting in the dark!

Pouring every ounce of her love for the annoying boy into the words, she called again and again. Like a faint echo in her mind, she finally heard a response.

Carol? Are you singing?

Come on, Johnny! Come and find your sister!

Dude, what the heck? Either I’m going nuts, or you’re talking
into my brain!

Allowing the song to slide into the background, Carol tried just projecting her thoughts.
More like into your soul. I think I found my
xoxal,
Johnny. The savage magic. Can you track my thoughts?

Yeah, they’re getting louder, like I’m getting closer or something. Where did you go? Why did you just run off like that? I thought for sure I’d lost you. I was pretty mad.

That was just my
tonal,
acting on its own.

And where were
you
, then?

Something was attacking the conscious side of me, my human soul or whatever.

What? What do you mean?

Okay. You remember when I was sick? Five years ago?

Oh, yeah. You freaked out about the dark and how quiet it was. Mom thought you might be schizophrenic or something.

Well, it wasn’t my imagination, Johnny. Whatever has Mom, that’s the thing that tried to eat up my mind when I was little. And it came after me, again. Its power is like…formed out of darkness and silence. It uses it to draw on your deepest fears and to make you feel so alone that you…give up.

A feeling of understanding entered Carol, flowing from her brother. Apparently emotions as well as words could be shared through the
xoxal
link.
Dude,
Johnny thought at her,
that means…that means they’ve been after us for a while. Whoa. We must be really valuable. I thought Big Red was just yanking our chain. Heh. That’s funny. Get it? Chain? Dog?

Carol sent a wave of love and joy at her goofy brother. Even his stupid jokes were a delight when compared to that dark, still, emptiness.