I See Fire | Wattys 2021/22 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Thirty-Five

I landed on a beach in near-darkness, with a cave wall looming behind me and the vast river ahead. I rolled behind a boulder and crouched there, trying to quiet my breathing and hear but the hammer of my pulse in my ears. Human figures wandered the shore, just silhouettes against the faintly glowing water. I hadn't noticed the glow last time I'd seen this view. The souls stumbled in the obsidian sand and gathered at the edge of the river like someone would come for them. No one was coming. If a Coyol-backed Cihua had the power to turn Emma nearly human and wipe her memories of being a goddess, she had the power to lock Xolotl from his work.

I had an immediate problem. The canoes the dead souls used to cross the river were absent, either tied to Xolotl or deliberately removed by Coyol. I clenched my fists. Did I want to risk an attempt at magic? Already there was a tingle in my hands that made my palms sweat. Not all magic needed grounding, Chal had said. If you wanted something badly enough and had the power to make it, sometimes that was enough.

Before I could try, there was a woof from the river. Tochtli stood at the river's edge beside the silhouette of a single canoe. Could she summon them, too? The dead converged on it, and she growled fiercely. They barely slowed.

"Grifo, vení!"

I sprinted for the river. Grifo leaped into the boat as I hit it with both hands and drove it into the water, scrambling aboard as I went. Tochtli's jump sent us skimming away from the shore. I clung for dear life to the canoe's sides. I had never been on a boat in my life, let alone one this narrow. It was tippier than it looked.

The current drifted us sideways as the shore retreated. When I could let go of the canoe sides without kissing the water, I eased my hands off and looked for a paddle. There was one in the canoe's bottom. Chew-marks pocked its handle like acne scars.

"Did you make this?" I asked Tochtli.

The dog wasn't listening. She pinned her ears back and hunched low in the boat as a light appeared far down the shore. It moved with a purpose that didn't belong to a soul.

I grabbed the paddle and plunged it in the water like I'd seen the souls doing. I was pitched forwards by the force of my own stroke. The canoe didn't move. How did this work? Panic scrambled my brain as I lifted the paddle again. Flat. It was flat like a shovel, or a hand on a long arm. I knew how paddling with a hand worked. I adjusted my grip by a quarter turn, then tried another stroke. This time, the water met the paddle's blade with significantly more resistance, and the canoe surged forwards. It curved sharply to one side. I swung the paddle to my other hand and found that resistance again. With a smaller stroke, I was able to straighten our path.

We weren't moving fast enough. I spun the canoe from side to side, making moderate forward progress, until I discovered that a long stroke with a hook at the end—made completely by accident—mitigated the weaving. I found that rhythm on both sides of the boat, and our speed doubled. It still could not have been fast enough for me if there had been three more paddlers at my side. The light moved closer and closer to where we had left the shore. Beneath the torch, I could see the garb of a Centzonhuītznāhua. I didn't see a bow, but that didn't mean there wasn't a sling. Why hadn't I stopped to erase our tracks?

I lifted my paddle from the water and held still as the Centzonhuītznāhua stopped. Visible now in the torchlight, a mass of souls gathered on the beach where the canoe had been. At least that would wipe out the tracks. The Centzonhuītznāhua lifted his light and peered out over the water. There was no room for me to lie down in the boat. Never in my life had I felt so vulnerable.

But the torch lifted higher, then bobbed back and forth, and I realized I must be out of range of its glow. The dogs and I held our breaths. We continued to drift with the river, and the Centzonhuītznāhua did not move to follow. He lowered his torch and wandered back the way he had come. Only when the darkness swallowed him did I return my paddle to the water.

It occurred to me after several hours of paddling that I had no idea just how wide this river was. Or what lived in it, for that matter. The water idled in mesmerizing swirls, nearly opaque and coloured in a pale version of obsidian's smoky purple. I startled hard as Tochtli's nose poked my back. My hands had stopped mid-stroke, still holding the paddle. I had not even noticed. I kept my eyes off the water as I resumed with arms that shook for want of rest.

I paddled until I could not sink another stroke in the hypnotizing water. I laid the paddle across the canoe, pulled my knees up to my chest, and rested my forehead on them. Tochtli whined. She licked my bare elbow, then prodded me with her nose. When that failed, she wedged her face under my arm and levered it up again.

"What?" I moaned.

She licked me again, and the ache in my muscles lessened a little. Grifo put my paddle in my lap. Did I not have time to rest? I supposed time spent resting was more time spent half-dead, and more time before I saw Jem and Emma and the gods again. But the water soothed my fear and made me just want to put my head back down. The river just went on and on. Maybe there was no end.

Tochtli headbutted me, then growled and bit my arm.

I shot upright with a yelp. I had nearly fallen forwards, my eyes half closed and my body loose like I'd been drugged. I seized the paddle and broke the water's patterns with a fierce stroke. That woke me up a little. The harder I paddled, the more I realized just how close I had been to falling asleep. Fear drove me onwards, and Tochtli licked my arms or put her chin on my knee when I tired.

Travel on the river became such a trance, I was flung forwards when the canoe hit gravel with a fearsome crunch. The dogs' paws pattered around me as I jumped ashore and ran up the beach until stones became soil. I dropped to a crouch to catch my breath. This far from the river, the water's patterns blended back into a faint glow. I was awake and alert again, though it must have been at least half a day since I'd been roused from my tent in Tepepia. How fast did half-death set in? Was this an early warning sign, or just a side effect of being in the underworld?

This beach edged a field of balding soil and withered grasses. The sky was no longer black, but a rusted red like old coals a breath away from crumbling into ashes. I could see the land by its light, but nothing had a shadow. Darkness lurked in every corner. Maybe two hundred meters ahead, the landscape's bare profile heaved up into lumps and bumps that gave me flashbacks of a camp among hills and a single shooting star. Foothills. In place of a mountain chain beyond them was a single, twin-peaked mountain. Or maybe it was two mountains smashed together. Mictlan seemed compressed around them, and I sensed somehow that the only way past them was between their peaks. A different instinct told me this would not be as easy as it looked. I patted my leg for the dogs and set out towards the pass.