I See Fire | Wattys 2021/22 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Thirty-Six

Only something as old as the underworld could be as worn as the path up the mountains. A fine patina of dust captured my footfalls like imprints in clay. I wanted to brush them out, but that would leave just as conspicuous a mark. Why wasn't the dust swept clean on a trail used by hundreds of souls a month? They left marks on this world; I had seen their footprints all over the beach.

I crouched down on a broader stretch of trail and sifted through the turmoil of tracks under the dust. The freshest ones were deep but far from crisp, like a stamp made in loose sand. I breathed a sigh of relief as I recognized one. Emma's tiny feet were distinctive on their own, and moved with a force that was as good as confirmation. Jem's long stride kept pace beside her. Further off, I found tracks with one foot that fell just a little differently than the other. Tezcat. The gods were here, too.

Not knowing how far ahead the group was injected my steps with a fresh urgency. I couldn't let them cross the whole of Mictlan and stand waiting while I caught up; waiting gave Coyol time to find them. But I had no idea how fast they were travelling. I stopped noticing where my feet fell until one caught something and sent me face-first into the dust. Under my toe was a round, brownish rock. It lay embedded in the soil like a turtle rising from water, an image broken by the cracked ground around it. It looked for all the world like it had worked its way out through something more than erosion.

Rocks did not have patterns like that.

My already jumpy body buzzed as I recognized the serpentine lines of bone joints scribbled over the not-so-rock's surface. The scuff from my boot gleamed white. I scrambled away and sprinted up the trail until the half-interred skull was out of sight. Was that from a soul? Or from another living, breathing human like me, claimed by whatever terrors lurked in the perpetual half-darkness of this dead world? My feet rooted me to the ground at the thought, and for innumerable long heartbeats I could do nothing but stand with my hand on my knife and my heart in my throat, scanning the scraggly bushes for danger.

Nothing lunged from the shadows, rose from the soil, or dropped from above. The balance of my fears tipped back to the gods, and I lurched forwards like a half-corpse already. Were there things living in the river? How close to death might I have come while crossing it? Or was I safe here unless Coyol found me? Were her minions roaming Mictlan at this very moment, looking for us? Did Mictlantecuhtli even allow that? Could he stop it if he tried?

I fell to my knees again, scrabbling in the dirt. My head ached from switching my gaze back and forth between the tracks on the ground and the view over my shoulder. I found Emma's and Jem's tracks first again, but they were both tense, their footfalls light, with sharp scuffs at the toes. Which of the gods would be calm if they weren't in true danger? Not Tezcat; I doubted he would rest easy until either Coyol was dead, or he was. Quet was beside him here, the lightest of the gods besides Emma. His tracks looked even, but given that his usual walk was a bounce, that was just as bad a sign.

Where was Xochi? I had seen her prints in the salt of the lakeside circle in Tlalocan, and she had been calm then. I found them again, keeping pace beside another set that must belong to Chal. Both stepped lightly, but easily. Now and then a track of Jem's nearby would bias to one side as he looked over his shoulder, but neither goddess was doing the same.

I breathed out what felt like a year's worth of tension as my shoulders slumped. The gods were not concerned about danger here. Not yet. Were the stories right, then, about the length of the underworld? Souls had to cross the whole thing before they met Mictlantecuhtli and his wife at the end of it. Unless the lord and lady of the underworld could sense other gods in their realm, and from this distance, they would not be around. If Coyol was smart, she would not be either. She would wait for us to come to her.

I got shakily to my feet again. Grifo and Tochtli circled me, their eyes worried as only a dog's could be. Heat crept up my face. I was losing my grip on rationality. The dogs were my best gauge of what was safe, and right now, both looked more concerned about me than about their surroundings. We were not about to be attacked.

"Get it together, Adriana," I mumbled, sinking my fingers into my unkempt hair. I had let it out for night when I bedded down in Tepepia. I stuffed my hat back over it and kept walking.

The mountain pass looked less and less like a friendly dip between peaks the closer I got. Where the mountains met, their slopes dropped into sheer, parallel cliffs like they'd been cut with obsidian. The path narrowed to a slit between these walls. Dust coated everything, and I wished I had something to cover my nose and mouth as I edged towards the roofless tunnel.

The moment the toe of my boot passed between the stone walls, the ground rumbled. I leaped back. Dust puffed from rock cracks and rose from the soil as the mountains stopped their advance and slid back to their original distance. The whole crossing was an illusion. These two walls would slam together like the world's biggest tortilla-maker the moment I set foot on that path.

Gods, was this what all the dead had to go through before they could rest? How many trials did this place have?

Tochtli had not backed away from the path. As the rocks settled back to immobility, she adopted a sprinter's crouch and took off between them like a shot arrow.

"Tochtli!"

The mountains sprang into motion. The dog vanished around a curve with the path before her growing thinner by the second. Stone walls connected with a rumble that someone in the foothills would probably have felt.

From the ensuing silence came a bark.

"Thank Ōmeteōtl," I murmured. "Stupid, stupid, stupid dog."

My legs were weak. I crouched to regain my stability and keep myself from backing out of this whole operation. I had to make that dash. Tochtli had shown me how, but I was not a dog. I couldn't run that fast. I considered trying to block the way with rocks to slow the mountains, but the only thing that would likely accomplish was the creation of more rock flour. I hoped to anything and everything above that whatever the gods had done to cross this pass, Jem and Emma had made it through.

Jem's face hovered in my mind. His smile—the one I treasured when it turned on me, warm from his indiscernible blush—slid from my mental grasp, replaced by a look of horror. I shook it from my vision. The path had reopened as soon as Tochtli was through. Before I could second-guess myself, I sprinted for the gap.