Treasure of the World by Tara Sullivan (free ebook reader txt) 📕

and I prove to them I’m not an idiot or a criminal, they’ll let me start as a paid apprentice in six months.”

“Victor, that’s great!”

His smile stretches. “Yeah,” he says again. “It kind of is.”

Something occurs to me and I dig in my schoolbag, glad I used it to carry my stuff. Sure enough, there at the bottom is Victor’s notebook.

“Here,” I say, I pulling it out and handing it to him.

Victor runs his fingers over the pages, pausing when he sees his note.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see this again,” he says softly.

“Well, I’m officially giving it back. You might need it for taking notes on cars.”

Victor grins. “Thanks, Ana.”

We sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes. Then something else occurs to me.

“Are you still staying where you were before?”

He nods. “It’s the only place I can afford. Even to stay there, I still have to do fights to make rent. But once I get through my apprenticeship, I should be able to move into a better place.”

“Good.” My cheeks actually hurt, I’m smiling so hard. “That place is a dump.”

Victor laughs.

I hate to think that Victor will have to keep letting himself get beaten up for money, but I’m glad to know that he has a way out, a plan for when it will end.

“I’m not sure which is worse,” I joke, “being a human punching bag or being a guarda. I guess in the fight ring you at least sometimes get to punch back.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” He winks at me, and I see a bit of the sparkle of the old Victor, the one I knew before his papi pulled him out of school to work in the mine. “I hear that sometimes a guarda hits back too—except she does it with dynamite. There’s this one girl I know who nearly brought the whole mountain down last time someone snuck up on her . . .”

“Ha. Ha. Ha,” I say. “Victor Sánchez, you’re soooo funny.”

“Well,” he says, tucking his notebook under his arm and getting to his feet, laughing, “I gotta get going. Catch you later, Ana.”

He turns away, and I realize I have one more thing I need to say to him.

“Victor!”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. For what you did last night. Thank you for staying with me when things were bad, and for taking care of Belén.”

Victor smiles his big crooked smile.

“You’re welcome,” he says simply.

And then he’s gone.

I sit there for the rest of the night, alone with the stars.

On the Mountain That Eats Men, hope is a tree from which life slowly snaps off all the branches: it dies a little at a time, year by year, piece by tiny piece. Some days I feel like there aren’t enough branches left to keep my tree alive anymore.

I remember the hopes Daniel and I used to pass back and forth like a bag of candy. We will run away together. Far away from here. Far away from the mountain and the mines. Far away from the rocks and the cold. For what seems like all of my life, I have wanted nothing more than to leave this mountain. And yet . . . and yet.

As I stare down at the twinkling city of Potosí, I hear the echo of Padre Julio’s reedy voice in my head: Again, the devil took him to an exceedingly high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. He said to him, “I will give you all of these things, if you will fall down and worship me.”

It was the Gospel from church that day I sat between Mami and César, just before he got sick. I had thought, at the time, that it was a judgment on me for wanting a nice life I didn’t have. But now I hear it differently. It’s not a verse saying the kingdoms of the world and their splendor are bad . . . it’s saying that sometimes there is a wrong way to get even the best of things.

The devil knows better than to offer you bad things, I think. He offers you good things, the wrong way. Get money by stealing. Feel better by drinking. It’s only after you take the bait that you see the trap.

Recently, so much has happened that I haven’t really had time to think about anything more than solving the next problem in front of my face. But now, with the icy stars above me and the sleeping city below me, I have plenty of time to think about my life.

I think about mountains filled with devils and darkness, and of sparkling, unreachable cities. I think of Francisco and Guillermo, willing to steal from people poorer than they are, putting my family into even more debt. I always thought I wanted to leave this place no matter what, but now I know that I will not leave those I love to struggle by themselves. I will not steal my future from anyone.

Staring down at the city of Potosí, I trace the stripes of light that outline the roads and count the dark patches of parks and graveyards. Two main roads intersect at Potosí: the 1 and the 5. They loop around a bit in the middle of the city, but the 1 runs in from the south and leaves to the north, stretching all the way to La Paz, one of our capital cities. It’s up on the Altiplano and is the seat of the legislative and executive branches of the national government. The 5 comes in from the west from the salt flats of Uyuni, and leaves to the east, looping its way to Sucre, the judicial capital. From there, it meets up with the 7, which takes it to Santa Cruz in the lowlands, the biggest city in the country and our business center, a third capital city in all but name. Yenni’s mami is to the north, in La Paz, searching for better work. Guillermo and Francisco are to the west, living off their