Cece Rios and the Desert of Souls by Kaela Rivera (online e book reading .txt) 📕

(it was a bit too small, but I loved its blue and green stripes), determined to set off for the library, the Sun Sanctuary again, or anywhere that might have the answers I needed. Just when I was about to head back downstairs, I noticed Tía Catrina’s red leather diary.

I stared at it hesitantly. When someone in your familia became a bruja, you were supposed to burn all their old belongings and bury them in the desert cerros, to plead for forgiveness. Mother Desert hated brujas, Mamá said, because they enslaved her children, the criaturas.

Legend said the world had been peaceful before brujas came into the world. Coyote created animal criaturas—humanlike beings with strange-colored eyes and the ability to shape-shift into the animals they resembled—shortly after the Sun god made us. And for a while, criaturas and humans shared the desert peacefully.

But one day, an early group of humans stole a few animal criaturas’ souls and enslaved them. These were the first brujas.

At first, this story confused me. Mamá had always counseled Juana and me to take a criatura’s soul if we ever faced one, so we could command them to leave us. But the great difference between this action and a bruja’s, Mamá emphasized, was that you always had to return the criatura soul to the desert after you were safe. If you didn’t, and kept it instead, you would bring down Mother Desert’s wrath.

It was after some of the first humans became brujas that dark criaturas appeared. They were monstrous and more powerful than their counterparts, and they came from the desert to take revenge on all humans because of the brujas’ greed. We’d been enemies ever since.

And that’s why we hated brujas, too. If brujas had left well enough alone, criaturas might not have become our enemies at all.

But I couldn’t resist checking inside the journal—just out of curiosity. It fell open to a random page near the middle.

I hear them whispering all the time now, she’d written.

Everything around me has a voice. Axochitl—oh, that was my mamá—says that I’m messing with old magic I don’t understand. But I’ve tried to ignore them, and the voices don’t stop. The stones in the cerros speak of days long since past. Animals warn me danger is near. The plants whisper of weather to come.

Axochitl doesn’t understand. She’s afraid to. She ignores my voices, and she ignores the way Papá hurts Mamá, and she ignores how Mamá’s mind is going because of it. She wants me to ignore it all too.

The desert’s voices are not so passive. If something hurts them, they fight back. If a coyote stalks a rabbit, the rabbit runs. It doesn’t lie down and accept being eaten. I don’t want to either.

I say this all of course because Carlos asked Papá for my hand in marriage today. Papá doesn’t care that I’ve refused. The wedding is set for after the criatura months are over. But he will find I am no rabbit—I will fight back. I don’t care what it takes anymore.

My fingers trembled as I turned a bunch of pages, landing near the end of the book.

Papá will burn this journal if he finds it. He refuses to understand how my becoming an official bruja tonight is better than the life he wants for me. He would never listen if I tried to tell him about my criatura. My criatura is good. He values me. He protects me with the power I give him, and it is right that he does because I am powerful, and I will never let anyone take that power from me again.

I’ve made him so strong that we’ve won all three rounds of the Bruja Fights. No one has been able to stand against us. And once we win in the finals tonight, even the rulers of Devil’s Alley will see and respect me.

Soon, I will enter Devil’s Alley—and there, I will be a queen.

It ended there. That was the last entry.

I set the book down. Chills ran from the roots of my damp hair to my newly dried toes. The house felt extra quiet as realization hit me.

If all she said was true, my tía, a human being, went to Devil’s Alley.

I snatched the book up again and flipped back through it, suddenly hungry for everything she’d written down. How hadn’t I thought of it before? In school, they’d taught us how to spot brujas who’d lived in Devil’s Alley by their glowing eyes or fangs, but each bruja or brujo was originally human. That meant if I became an official bruja by winning the Bruja Fights, I wouldn’t even have to sneak into Devil’s Alley. I’d be welcomed in. Where Juana was waiting.

This is what I had to do. It was the perfect plan.

Okay, maybe “perfect” was the wrong word. Everyone in town already hated me, and things would be a thousand times worse if they discovered that I was trying to become a bruja.

The first light of the sun slanted in through the window. I lifted my head from Tía Catrina’s journal. The light settled on the concrete sill, where a large red silk rose rested. Juana had made it yesterday while I’d prepared the one she’d worn.

“It’s for when you’re older,” she’d said, when I’d looked confused. “I’ll wear yours this year during the Amenazante dance. And when you dance, you’ll wear mine.”

My throat nearly closed up as I took in Juana’s last gift. My fingers clutched Tía Catrina’s journal. Yeah, this wasn’t a perfect plan. It wasn’t even a good plan.

But if this was the only way I could bring Juana home, then it was worth it.

A few hours later, I plodded through the Ruins outside of the town proper, winding closer and closer to the first stop on my mission.

My knees shook a little with each step. If the graffiti and strange signs painted on the abandoned adobe houses around me were any indication, I was definitely getting closer. I checked Tía Catrina’s journal