The Smoking Mirror (6 page)

“I believe the danger has passed.” The hellhound turned its head and examined them with one wise blue eye.

“Leaving me with just one shoe,” Johnny muttered.

“You’ll not be needing shoes, for the most part.”

“Uh, do you see all those sharp rocks over there? You planning to let me ride your back all the way to the Lord and Lady of the Dead or whatever?”

Xolotl sighed heavily, causing the twins to shift. “You’re
naguales
. Your journey will largely be made in animal form.”

“But we can’t even control it!”

“You’ll have to learn.”

Carol turned and looked at him. Her eyes were full of tears. “You have trust me, Johnny. If I tell you to do something, you’ve got to just do it.”

“What?”
Drama queen. Like always.

“You could have
died!
That thing might’ve pulled you into the river, and you’d sink and keep on sinking, and what would I do then, huh?”

She turned her back on him, stifling a sob.

The long silence that followed was suddenly interrupted by Xolotl’s rumbling, growly voice. “After that attack, you’re probably wondering why such a place as this even exists. What sort of a god would put souls through such torture just to move Beyond?”

Several snide comments ran through Johnny’s mind, but he kept his mouth shut and listened.

“From the very beginning, the oldest gods appointed a pair of brothers to oversee the development of life on your world, to ensure the balance of growth and decay, creation and destruction, life and death. Twins. They’ve had many names, but the Aztecs called them Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca. Well, as is sadly often the case, one brother’s envy of the other destroyed their friendship. Tezcatlipoca, hating the joy that creation brought Quetzalcoatl, began to undermine or outright destroy those creations, upsetting the balance. Time and again he wiped out life on earth. Quetzalcoatl, undaunted, would simply begin again.

“Finally, human beings came into existence and Tezcatlipoca, for some reason, decided to twist humanity to his purposes instead of obliterating it. One of the tools he used was fear, especially fear of death. But humans needed something tangible to fear, so the Lord of Chaos went to his brother the Lord of Creation and proposed a deal: he would not destroy man as long as he could create a way station for their souls, a stopover on their journey beyond all gods’ reach. Quetzalcoatl agreed, because he believed people’s faith and hope would be more powerful than their fear of the Underworld and its trials.”

Johnny leaned back a little, reflecting on the strange story.
Is that why there’s evil in the world? Because one brother is crazy jealous of his twin?

Carol cleared her throat and reached up to rub Xolotl between the ears. “You’re his
tonal
, aren’t you? Quetzalcoatl’s.”

The hellhound said nothing for the space of several seconds, then murmured, “Yes.”

She doesn’t get it, though. She’s all relieved and teary-eyed. But if Xolotl, Quetzalcoatl’s animal self, is helping us, then that probably means Tezca-whatever has got mom. Which means we’re stuck in the middle of the oldest family feud in the universe.

Wonderful.

Chapter Seven

I’m pretty sure Johnny doesn’t get it. Xolotl is trying to
warn
us about what will happen if we can’t trust each other. The
menso
nearly slipped into the depths because of the chip on his shoulder. Why can’t he just understand that I would never do anything to hurt him? That my advice is for his good?

As Xolotl crossed the final mile or so to the inner shore of the river, Carol contemplated ways of broaching the subject with her brother without making him mad. He had their mother’s explosive personality, her tendency to make snap judgments and rush to conclusions without all the evidence. Most of the time, because of how insightful and perceptive the two of them were, those conclusions were correct, which made it even harder to convince them to slow down and review the evidence.

Carol and her dad, on the other hand, took their time when making decisions. Perhaps they even took too much time. They listened carefully to other points of view, read all sorts of material about a subject before slowly synthesizing a response. Carol understood, of course, that there were situations in which time just didn’t permit that sort of thoroughness.
And that’s why we were such a good team. Our family balanced itself. If Johnny and I are going get mom back, we’re going to have to find that balance again.

Before she knew it, they had made it across. Xolotl’s broad paws stepped carefully onto the shattered gray stones that lined the river bank. After a few minutes, they found themselves on a sandy plain on which strange, stunted trees twisted like palsied hands. Before them lay low, rocky hills that built gradually toward a steep mountain range whose slopes glittered blackly in the eternal gloom.

“Obsidian.” Johnny muttered, slipping from Xolotl’s back. He stood on one leg, pulling off his other sneaker. His white socks contrasted starkly with the slate-colored sand. “That is just freaking great. We’ve got to scale mountains of sharp volcanic rock, and I’m in my stupid
socks
.”

“Well,” Carol said, trying to follow Xolotl’s advice and inject a little humor, “the Hobbits crossed Mordor in their bare feet, so you’ve got to keep perspective, no?”

“
¿Qué?
Did Carolina Garza just make a funny?” Johnny rolled his eyes, but smiled.

“Excuse me, but…what is a, ‘Hobbit’?”

Carol dropped to the ground and patted the hellhound reassuringly. “Literary allusion. A sort of big-footed elf.”

“Dude, that’s sacrilege! Hobbits are not elves!”

She waved him away dismissively. “Whatever. You never even read the books, Johnny. Just watched the movies obsessively.” She leaned toward Xolotl. “You know what movies are, right?”

“Certainly. I visited several nickelodeons in San Francisco and Los Angeles before I left the realm of men.”

“Huh?” The only nickelodeon Carol knew was the cable station.

“Whoa, that was a long time ago,” Johnny muttered. To Carol he added smugly, “Nickelodeons were the first movie theaters, way back in the early 1900s.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.” She gave an exaggerated sigh, but was inwardly happy.
We can still josh around. Good sign.
“But, yeah, going back to your footwear problem…”

Xolotl walked away from them and shook himself vigorously, sending a spray of cold water in all directions. “I keep telling you,” he growled once he was dry enough to stop, “that you don’t need shoes. You need to learn how to shift. You won’t make it through the Nine Deadly Deserts otherwise.”

“But the truth is,” Carol insisted, “that we can’t control the transformations. I mean, the last time I was sort of half aware of what was going on. I was asleep, and then I felt this pressure build up inside of me, and I just, you know,
let go,
let it remake me. I was able to sense through my
tonal
and stuff, but I wasn’t the one that caused it to happen, you see?”

Xolotl nodded his enormous head. “Of course I see. What you are failing to realize is that your animal self is
always
there, waiting, anxious to step forward. There’s not much you have to do to convince it. Simply look for it, just beneath the surface of your conscious mind, and call to it. It will respond eagerly, I assure you.”

The hellhound looked at her with an expectant gaze. When she did nothing, he scuffed his right front paw against the sand.

“What…now? You want me to try to transform
here
?”

“No time like the present, Carolina. You, too, Juan Ángel.”

Carol closed her eyes, attempting to focus, searching for that glowing, vital, hungry part of herself. But her mind kept snapping back to their predicament, to her concern about her mother, to her confusion about the trials ahead.

Gritting her teeth in frustration, she groaned and stomped her foot. “Gah! I can’t do it. I can’t focus.”

“It isn’t about focus, girl, but about a lack thereof.”

Carol glanced at Johnny, whose face was twisted up so comically that she almost laughed despite herself. After a few more seconds, he muttered a curse and opened his eyes. “Forget it. I got nothing.”

Xolotl bared his teeth in a feral gesture. “What you need is to confront the perils of this place head-on. That’ll knock you free of your comfortable mindsets.” He sounded positively angry. Carol was rather taken aback. “The danger you’re in, that your mother is in, that we are
all of us
in, hasn’t really penetrated your barely adolescent brains. You act as if this were a game. You’ve never had to face a real trial in your lives. You’re complacent.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Johnny was livid. “Complacent? No trials? What do you think we’ve been living the last six months, huh? Not knowing where our mom is, watching our dad get drunker and drunker every day…you’re not being fair, man.”

“Fair? Johnny, fairness is irrelevant. If you can’t transform,
you can’t save your mother
. If you think I’m being unduly harsh, I suggest you imagine her dying in the dark, all alone, because you couldn’t free yourself from your own self-control.”

They stood in silence, regarding one another.
So much for humor and joy, huh?

“Well, come on,” the hellhound said finally. “Let’s begin. First you will cross this range, the
Tepeme Monamictia
or Crashing Mountains. Then come the deserts: blackness, bats and jaguars, cold, haunted ruins, lava plains, ashes, heart-eating demons, obsidian winds and a putrid lake. Then you stand before the Lord and Lady of Death, and once past them you
finally
confront the villain who holds your mother prisoner. The
tzapame
have given you some tools; I am providing you some assistance. But in the end it is the two of you who must rise to the challenges and overcome the obstacles.

“Words of warning: you will neither feel hunger or sleepiness. You may nonetheless be tempted to eat or sleep. Do
not
. Even though you will become physically very tired, you cannot afford to rest much. The time is short. Your enemies know you are here. Move quickly and face them with courage.”

He began to lope toward the hills. The twins exchanged a look and dashed after him. At first they kept a decent pace, crossing the sandy plane with flying strides. At the hills they slowed somewhat, bounding from rock to rock, avoiding fissures and scree. As the hills began to become the roots of the obsidian-rich mountains, their path grew steeper, and they had to use their hands more and more, nicking themselves occasionally on sharp points and edges. Carol heard more and more muttered curses coming from her brother, so she looked down at his feet. His socks were stained red with blood.

“Stop!” she ordered. “Johnny, your feet! My God…Xolotl, look at his feet!”

The hellhound gave a low snarl. “I told you what you needed to do. That you refuse to comply is another matter entirely.”

Johnny sat down heavily on the flinty slope and examined the soles of his feet. “This sucks, big time.” He closed his eyes, lay back, and folded his arms across his chest.

“What are you doing?” Xolotl demanded.

“Going to sleep, man. That’s the only way I know to shift.”

“I’ve told you, you can’t sleep in Mictlan, child.”

Johnny’s eyes shot open. “You know, I’m getting real tired of your freaking attitude. I mean, yeah, you’re the shadow soul of Quetzalcoatl or whatever, and you helped us cross the humongous river, but could you just back the heck off?”

Xolotl’s blue eyes seemed to glow like burning alcohol. “I see that what you require are very drastic measures.”

The hellhound reared up on his hind legs.
Oh, crap,
thought Carol.
He’s going to attack Johnny to force a transformation
.

But instead, Xolotl began to quiver and shrink, fingers emerging from the tips of his ever-smaller paws, his snout pulling back into his face, red hair falling about him like autumn pine needles. Within seconds a man stood before them. He had medium-length blond hair sweeping back from his lined forehead and blue eyes surrounded by a network of fine wrinkles and scars. Wrapped around him was a red-furred animal skin that covered most of his sun-toasted flesh.

“Let’s see how long you manage without my guidance,” he said in a cultured, old-fashioned voice. Spinning curtly on his heel, he stepped behind an outcropping and was gone from sight. Carol followed, but there was nothing. He had disappeared without a trace.

“Fantastic. He vanished.”

“Figures. Whatever. Who needs him? Here, give me a hand.”

Carol helped her brother to his feet. Wincing, he leaned on her and together they made their way up the winding, steep path that the passage of a million souls had only faintly carved into the obsidian mountain. Soon Johnny was leaving bloody footprints behind.

This is insane. You’d think that the Lord of Creation or whatever would have enough compassion to help us out. We’re twelve years old, Quetzalcoatl, in case you’d forgotten. Cut us some slack, okay?

Johnny had begun to whimper softly when they finally reached the top. A flat defile stretched before them, wide enough for three people to walk abreast, lined by glittering crags that loomed darkly above. A stiff, moaning wind blew toward them from beyond the passage. Thousands of years of erosion had worn the floor smooth and level, and a smile of relief spread across Johnny’s face as he took his first few steps.

“Oh, man, that feels good. Nice and cool, too. Like the Saltillo tile at home when mom mops. Mopped. You know what I mean.”

Carol nodded and rubbed her brother’s back. “Well, according to ‘Clifford the Big Red Dog’ the deserts start just beyond this. What did he say the first one was? Blackness, right? Doesn’t sound too bad.”

They walked another thirty feet or so when a horrible crashing sound made them draw up short.

“What the…” Johnny began. They walked a few more paces, and the sound came again, accompanied by a tremor beneath their feet. Johnny gingerly extended one reddened sock and CRASH!

They stood still for several minutes. There were no more explosions or tremors, so they started ambling down the defile. They’d crossed some fifty feet or so of passage that curved gradually toward the left when, without warning, the crags on either side not four yards ahead slammed into each other with a deafening smash and a hail of splintered rock and obsidian dust, then pulled back to their original positions.

“
¡Hijo de su
Pink Floyd!” Johnny screamed, using one of their mother’s favorite nonsense curses. “Dude! If we had been standing there…”

Carol’s heart pounded mercilessly. “Oh, Xolotl, you jerk. You couldn’t have mentioned the dangerous smashing rocks?”

As if in answer, the walls a little further ahead slammed into each other. Carol gripped her brother’s forearm.

“Johnny, I think that…”

SLAM! Less than a foot
behind
them, the crags collided, coating them both in fine black dust and leaving their ears ringing.

“Oh, my God, Johnny! We’re going to be killed!”

There was a weird expression on her brother’s face. He was counting on his fingers and mumbling to himself.

“What? What are you doing, Johnny?” Her voice was strained by panic.

“Hang on, Carol. Relax a second. It’s like…it’s like a video game.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. There’s a pattern. You figure it out, and you can get through. One crash, followed a minute later by another and then one more just a few seconds after that. Then something like four minutes passes and the pattern starts again.”

Carol suddenly understood. “Which means…”

“Which means we have less than three minutes, dude, so RUN!”