Lucha of the Night Forest by Tehlor Kay Mejia

Author:Tehlor Kay Mejia [Mejia, Tehlor Kay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2023-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Groaning, Lucha found herself on the ground. Her head throbbed. Her stomach tossed like an angry sea. A restless buzzing seemed to fill her chest cavity and spread through every vein.

She wrapped her arms around her chest. She shivered, though the evening was warm.

“Lucha?”

Fingers on her cheek. Cool. She kept her eyes shut tightly as the memories returned: the hare. The song. The vision she’d seen—Salvador’s mother. Her tears. The fight that had gone on and on.

“Lucha?”

A pair of burning eyes. A tree, split in two, jagged end piercing the sky.

The buzzing grew louder. A mouth full of vicious teeth seemed to open wide at Lucha’s center. Hungry. Craving…

“You’re on a sandy beach,” came the voice again. There were fingers combing gently through her hair. Grounding her in her body. “You’re lying in a hammock and it’s swaying in a warm breeze.”

It took a moment for the image to appear, but when it did Lucha clung to it like a lifeline.

“The sun is setting over the ocean. The sky is so wide. Orange and pink easing upward toward the lavender of twilight. The waves are rolling in, frothy at the top. They whisper on the sand.”

Fingers massaged circles on Lucha’s scalp. She could hear the waves. The yawning mouth closed, then disappeared.

“You lean over the hammock and trail your fingers through the sand. It’s soft like velvet. Tiny grains cling to your fingertips. A world inside each one.”

Lucha’s heart slowed. Her breath came evenly. She unwrapped her arms from around her body and opened her eyes.

“Better?” asked Paz, peering down at Lucha, whose head was resting in her lap.

“Thank you,” Lucha said. She straightened up, already missing the feeling of Paz’s fingers in her hair.

Everything was back where it should be. The clearing. The fire, burning low. Even the stump where Paz had prepared the hare. It was almost as if none of it had ever happened. As if it had been a very strange dream.

“Are you all right?” Lucha asked. She brushed the dirt from her clothes. She chanced a look at Paz, who was still peering at her. A tangled mess of emotions warred in her expression. Concern. Wariness. The same longing that had been there the night Lis awoke. And last night, across the fire.

It was too much to process, armorless as Lucha was. Instead, she dropped her eyes, focusing on a bird’s feather that clung to Paz’s sleeve.

“I’m all right,” Paz said. They got to their feet together. “I woke in the grass a few minutes ago. I saw…I saw you, Lucha. I saw us, and…”

She was interrupted by the sound of retching. A few feet away, Lis was bent over a scrubby bush, emptying the contents of her stomach.

Lucha ran to her, but a part of her stayed in that moment, waiting to hear what Paz had seen.

“What did you feed us?” Lis groaned, straightening up at last, wiping her mouth with a shaking hand. “Some goddess to go around poisoning people who sing her songs.

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