I See Fire | Wattys 2021/22 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Thirty-Four

The villagers fed and welcomed me that day with a generosity I did not deserve. In a small tent that night, I curled up in my bedfurs and pulled my jacket over my head. I refused to miss Grillo Negro. If I missed Grillo Negro, that would open a whole basket of poor decisions I would have to reckon with. These people were kind, yes. But the food here didn't taste quite right, the songs were painfully unfamiliar, and I moved with the unease of not knowing whose tent I could walk into and whose I should avoid. Was that something I could get used to? Or was going back the only way to regain that comfort?

No, there was still a way to compromise. I needed to bring this village and Grillo Negro together—I could already tell they would get along. That would bring Grillo Negro back to life, inject it with something more than its invented traditions and hundred-year history, and make it worth saving. It would create a place where having children would not just draw out the death throes of a dying population. Maybe it would even lift Grillo Negro out of its curse, and let more of those children survive. That was something Tepepia certainly didn't seem to have trouble with.

The first problem was that I had no idea where Grillo Negro was. The second problem was that showing up there without Jem or Emma was bound to raise questions I couldn't face. The third problem was that Coyol was still trying to end the world, I'd left Jem and Emma with gods who could barely protect them, and I still didn't have my fire magic under control.

I was so absorbed in my own thoughts, I failed to realize the dog lying beside me had lifted her head until she scrambled to her paws, too. From the distance came a bark that set me bolt upright in a blink. My bedfurs were flung askew as I scrambled out of the tent, slowing only to yank on my boots against the thin powdering of snow that had fallen since evening.

Grifo flung himself into my arms and huddled against me, quaking. Tochtli circled with her tail between her legs. She flinched as I held out my hand. What had happened to them? A terrible sinking feeling was already dragging on my lungs, but I swallowed it back. I had not even been gone a day. Chal must just have realized and sent the dogs out after me. And something on the flats must have spooked them: a coywolf pack, or a hunting owl. Had Tochtli seen coywolves before?

I patted Grifo on the shoulder. "Go tell her it's okay."

He gave me a look with half-moon eyes and didn't move. It took ages, but his familiarity with me seemed to gain Tochtli's trust. She finally approached and let me touch her head.

Images flowed the moment my hand made contact. Every reassurance I'd constructed evaporated like dust in a flame, and the horror of reality punched me in the stomach hard enough to make me gasp. After a week of quiet, a black, oily smoke rose in the distance in a window of the gods' couch room. Xolotl's siblings all gathered to hug him before he left. His dogs milled about anxiously. They left together in a ring of gold fire.

Xolotl could make a passage to Mictlan anywhere he needed to. By the burned village, he made several. Each emerged onto the bank of the underground river, and I sensed that they were miles apart even though their entrances converged. Xolotl split the group of souls and took the most willing first, down to the river that they quickly set out across. The second group had reached their canoes when Chimalli's body skidded across the sand, an arrow in her chest.

I slumped against Grifo, hugging him for stability as my head spun. The scene cut in a whirl of gold fire, and I found myself in the gods' house instead. Xolotl must have teleported Tochtli to safety. The dog woke every god and goddess with her barking. Xolotl's dogs never barked. Quet was first in the room, and dropped to his knees to find out what had happened. But the message switched. The gods now stumbling in went stiff as something else reached them, from someone other than Tochtli.