Chapter 36 Ignacio
Ignacio
The ground rumbled under his feet as Camila’s screams tore through the Fun House tent.
“No!” she bellowed. “Help!”
Ignacio tried to find his way to her through the maze of mirrors. With each step closer, he noticed something strange happening to Camila. Her appearance was shifting. Her black hair was graying. Her muscles shrinking. Her skin sagging.
“Somebody help them!” she wailed. Her body went limp in the ratas’ arms, but she continued to scream for someone to help them as the guards holding her up brought her nearer to the mirror.
Ignacio ran hard into an invisible wall. He cursed. Tried to go right. It was blocked. He went left. Red lanterns throbbed overhead like a beating heart. Shadowy fog billowed around his feet.
He found a straight passageway and caught what Camila was seeing in the mirror.
It was a living scene, like the one he’d witnessed of him boarding the train.
Pilar was in this dreamscape. So were Esmeralda and Gabriel and—surprisingly—Ignacio too.
They were running down a small hill. Bolting toward a quaint home in the middle of a meadow that was completely engulfed in flames.
Pilar stopped running and then turned toward the mirror, looking directly at Camila. “Don’t just stand there, Camila! Our family is stuck inside!” She thrust out her hand. “Help me! Take my hand—we can save them!”
But this version of Pilar was off. Wrong. Her eyes weren’t her own. They were black and gold and spun in hypnotizing circles like the eyes of the monster in the mirror.
“Take my hand, sister! Hurry. We can save them!”
The ratas dragged the aging Camila forward. Sobbing, she reached for her sister inside the mirror. Pilar’s face morphed into that of the monster he had seen before.
“No!” Ignacio yelled. “Don’t!”
He cut right again and this time he found the opening to where Camila stood.
He rushed forward and slammed his fist into the face of one of the ratas holding her.
The man stumbled back. The second rata released her and barreled right into Ignacio.
Camila fell to her knees, but didn’t move to escape.
Tears streamed down her face, and she grew older in appearance as she inched nearer to the mirror, her hands extended toward the glass.
“Camila!” Ignacio yelled.
She paid him no mind. Her fingertips hovered an inch away from the glass.
Air rushed out of Ignacio’s lungs when the second rata pounded his shoulder into Ignacio’s sternum.
He shoved his heels into the ground and twisted his body with a fierce cut to the right.
The guard’s hold broke, and he crashed into one of the mirrors.
Glass shattered and clattered to the floor as he crumpled.
“Stop him!” that gravelly voice from within the reflection roared. “Do not let another mirror break!”
The first rata Ignacio had punched picked up a shard of glass. Grinning, he flipped it around until the sharpest point was facing Ignacio. The shard looked different now. It was no longer reflective but shiny black with waves of iridescent colors coursing through.
Blackbird obsidian—the same gemstone used within the soldiers’ daggers and to garnish their badges.
The same stones set in his mother’s ring.
Something clicked inside his mind. He’d heard of a type of obsidian that could be smoothed into a reflective surface before.
His mother had shown it to him in an old fable she used to read to him.
The very book he’d seen in his father’s private office.
The rata swiped the makeshift blade. Ignacio dodged right before the sharp edge found its mark. He dodged again. But he miscalculated the third time, and pain sliced through his bicep. He clasped a hand over his burning skin.
“Do not kill him!” the voice commanded. “We aren’t finished with him yet.”
Sizzling heat lanced through his veins where the stone had cut. He eyed the wound. Those familiar sparkles littered his skin.
Had this been what Esmeralda felt when her gloves scorched her last night?
“Who are you?!” Ignacio yelled.
The voice laughed. “You should be asking what am I.”
Camila’s fingertips pressed into the mirror and the last of her black hair went bone white.
Her head knocked back and she howled in agony.
Holding his injured arm, Ignacio lunged forward. The rata dove after him but Ignacio dipped to the left, sidestepping him. He shoved Camila back and slammed his boot into the towering mirror.
The glass shattered.
The ground shook.
The bulbs dimmed and flickered overhead.
“No!” the monster roared. “Guard! Bring me the girl now. I am not done feasting. I need all of her!”
The rata barreled into Ignacio, and they went sprawling to the ground.
Obsidian shards nicked his flesh and burned with biting heat.
The rata’s grip around Ignacio went suddenly limp and the sound of something gurgling snagged his attention.
Slowly, Ignacio turned his head. His insides recoiled.
The guard had landed face-first on an upturned piece of obsidian.
Panting, Ignacio carefully crawled toward Camila, who was slumped over. He called her name, but she didn’t reply.
“Hey,” he said gently. He put his hand on her boney shoulder. “Let’s get you out of…” She faced him. And all the blood in his body drained to the floor.
She had aged by fifty or sixty years.
A soft cry escaped her lips. “Why?” was all she managed to say.
Fury boiled inside his chest. ángel had sent her here.
“Ignacio,” a haunting voice cooed. That monstrous face formed in all the mirrors that surrounded them. Camila flinched, and he wrapped his uninjured arm around her, shielding her as best he could.
“What are you?!” he shouted. “What have you done to her?”
“Come now, you already know. Your mother used to tell my story before you laid down your little head and drifted off to sleep.”
One of the mirrors blurred and Ignacio saw himself as a boy. He was in his favorite pajamas. He’d loved them because his mother had brought them all the way from the palace just for him. The child version of himself looked up at the mirror, gazing at it with hope and wonder in his eyes.
“Read it to me again,” he said.
He saw his mother’s reflection within his pupils. She had the prettiest smile. The kind that made a person feel instantly at ease. But there was a steeliness to her too, intense enough to command the king’s army.
“One more time,” she said warmly, and he watched himself nuzzle deeper into her lap.
Ignacio’s jaw went slack. He was witnessing the scene unfold through his mother’s eyes.
“This story isn’t too frightening?” she asked. “I wouldn’t want you having nightmares about it.”
Young Ignacio’s face grew serious. “I’m brave like you, Mommy.”
“That you are. But if you do get frightened, know that a man with a silly mustache was selling them on the side of the road. He said it would be perfect for spectaculous boys like you.” Young Ignacio giggled at the made-up word.
“This story is a good lesson for us all, I think. There is evil in this world. Usually, we can spot it right away. But sometimes, when we least expect it, evil comes to us in disguise. Through gentle words, and alluring smiles, and, perhaps worst of all, the promise of magic. That sort of evil can sway even the kindest of men.”
She turned the pages of the book in his lap back to the beginning and read the story once more.