Summer of the Mariposas Read online

  “Be careful, Pita!” I pushed her back onto the safety of the cart with all my might.

  “You hurt me,” she complained, rubbing her arm where it had scraped the side of the wagon.

  “We’re already in all kinds of hot water,” I said, refusing to apologize. “I don’t want to have to explain to Mamá how I lost one of her daughters.”

  The business with Pita took all of my attention, but I did notice that the donkey had pulled the cart off the trail and stopped. I was grateful for it until he took off again, speeding up ahead of me, bearing left, crossing a field full of daisies and heading up a hill at a trot too fast for me to keep up.

  “Whoa!” Juanita called out, pulling on the reins. In her distraction, Juanita had obviously given him too much rein. He must have been instinctively just going off in search of something good to eat — right? However, my fear that this was the nagual Teresita warned us about kept me on edge. I ran as fast as my legs would take me, keeping an eye on them as I went, and hoped the donkey wouldn’t take them too far astray. I just worried that my legs wouldn’t take me very far after all the walking we’d done today and yesterday, after the car broke down. And all the while, as I ran, I tried to remember the song Teresita said we must sing if we came upon the warlock — the song of the birds and the rain. But my mind was blank. I had no idea what the song might sound like. Not even a single lyric came to me as I dashed after the girls in the cart.

  “Whoa! Whoa!” Juanita kept calling, but no matter how loud she called, the beast just kept cantering along, ignoring her. They pulled so far ahead I worried they’d disappear over the next hill and I’d never see them again. I considered the ear pendant, but there was nothing to use it on, and Teresita had said to save it for our most dire circumstances. I would have to use my wits. I kept running, but even as I ran I couldn’t help but notice the beast was running awfully fast for a lame donkey.

  Finally, after about five minutes, he slowed from a canter to a steady trot — slower, but not slow enough for me to catch up. It was also fast enough that none of the girls could jump off the wagon safely. Even though they weren’t saying much, their faces reflected the horrifying recognition that even if this wasn’t the nagual, they might be in great danger. When the donkey did finally stop, it was so abruptly that my hermanitas lurched forward and caught themselves against the rails in order not to fall off.

  “Holy guacamole, that was a close one,” Velia said, jumping off the back of the wagon and walking around as if her legs were going to give out from under her. My legs felt like soggy fideo noodles too from all the walking and running. After running almost a quarter of a mile, I caught up to the wagon and stood with my hands on my waist trying to catch my breath. I needed that breath so I could give the girls a piece of my mind.

  “Where are we?” Juanita asked as she helped Pita off the edge of the old cart. We looked around and saw that the creature had brought us to the mouth of a small cave on the side of the hill. “What is this?”

  “I don’t know, but it looks scary,” Delia said from her seat in the wagon. “We should keep going. This place gives me the creeps.”

  “Don’t go . . . in there,” I started, winded to the point of stuttering. “Stay away . . . from it. . . . We don’t know . . . what’s in there.” Where had I put the map that Teresita’s husband had given us, warning us of places to avoid? I had a creepy feeling this place was on that map. I searched through my pockets and found it, but before I could gather my thoughts, Pita interrupted us.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Charrito says it’s a good cave, and we should rest here. Night’s coming.”

  I looked up at the sky and realized that she was right. The sky was darkening, but the girls had been so content just letting the donkey pull them up the dirt path, and I’d been so distracted by having to keep up with them, that we hadn’t even noticed dusk was upon us. A dark, foreboding feeling took hold of me then. I had failed to convince my sisters to stay away from the creature and now we were being invited into his cave. I could feel it — something terrible was about to happen. If only I could remember the song of the cave, but it was useless. I had no idea what it was.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Velia said. “I’m not sleeping in a cave. There’s probably vampire bats in there.”

  “Velia’s right,” I said. “We should get back to the dirt path and try to find the next mark on this map. Teresita’s husband said the path led to an old abandoned barn. We could rest there.”

  “Listen to the child,” a deep male voice said, and we all turned around to look at the animal, who turned around to look at us. I couldn’t help but notice the bit was no longer in his mouth and he was not hooked up to the wagon anymore.

  “Donkeys shouldn’t talk,” Velia whispered, stepping away from the beast.

  “The barn’s no good. The roof leaks and it’s out too far.” The creature’s lips were moving and the words were coming out of its mouth as he moved toward us.

  I pushed Pita behind me and shoved Juanita out of the warlock’s way. “It’s the nagual! Velia, Delia, get our things!” I said, slowly stepping away from the donkey. “Listen, whatever or whoever you are, we don’t want any problems.”

  “Aramés, aramás, todavía nada más, ven aquí, ven acá.” The donkey’s words stirred up something fierce and feral in me and I grabbed the nearest stick I could find on the ground. It wasn’t big enough, but I could wield it like a sword to the eye if I had to.

  “Let’s go! Move it,” I told the girls as they cowered behind me.

  “Let me go!” Pita squealed, as she squirmed inside Velia’s locked arms. “You’re being stupid. He wants to help us! I know he does. He told me so.”

  “Pita,” I said, pulling her into my arms. “You have to stop being so childish. He isn’t a storybook character. He’s an evil man, a sorcerer, not a donkey, and he’s trying to trick us. We have to get away from him before he hurts us.”

  “Aramés, aramás, todavía nada más, ven aquí, ven acá, aire frío, aire mío, aramés, aramás,” the nagual continued, even as his eyes rolled into the back of his head and his long ears perked up and flapped loudly.

  Suddenly, the last rays of sun disappeared from the horizon and darkness descended upon us like the shadow of malevolence. The night air grew thick and sulfuric around us. Our breathing became shallow, and I felt sick and lightheaded.

  “We have to get out of . . .” I didn’t finish my thought. My tongue was twice its normal size, and I couldn’t make out the words.

  “Aramés, aramás, todavía nada más, ven aquí, ven acá, aire frío, aire mío, hazlas mías, cinco hermanitas, cinco estrellitas serán mías, aramés, aramás . . .” The nagual kept chanting different verses of the same spell, and before we knew it we were all on the ground, weakly looking at the donkey as he shifted from animal back to his human form and stood — a dark-clad figure looming tall and menacing above us. Regret was the last thing we saw in each other’s eyes before we all passed out.

  LA MUERTE: “Jugando con la muerte,

  nadie tiene suerte.”

  THE DEATH: “When playing with death,

  nobody has any luck.”

  It was dark in the cave. I tried moving but my arms were aching. Then I realized my hands were securely tied behind my back as I lay on the dirt floor in a corner of the cave. Juanita was still passed out beside me. Looking around, I saw that all of us were in the same predicament. Every one of my sisters was tied up on the floor beside me.

  All around us, on the dirt, lying sideways over jutted rocks and tangled in the dusty threads of the telarañas, the webs of a hundred black widow spiders, lay the corpses of our beloved friends, the snout-nosed butterflies. Their delicate winged bodies, prone and limp, were snarled in the girls’ hair, attached to their clothes, even stuck to their bare arms and legs, like dried
pressed flowers.

  No longer disguised as a domesticated donkey, the nagual, dressed in a soiled black robe, was standing over a huge bubbling cauldron. His long, white hair hung from his face in a stringy disheveled mess along the sides of his lean, angular face. He moved slowly and hunched over the cauldron like he was a hundred years old. I watched him without making a sound as he chanted something vile and wicked, something that made my heart flinch in my chest.

  “Well, hello. Welcome back, preciosa,” the nagual said, showing his green-gray teeth as he grinned at me. “I see you’re ready.”

  I rocked myself into a sitting position. My head was spinning from the effort, but I managed to sit up on my knees and face him. His eyes were two small, dark slits that glittered with amusement as he watched me struggle. His skin was so sallow and dry, he looked like an old rattlesnake. I half expected him to lick his lips with a forked tongue. “Ready for what?” I asked.

  “This. The final stop on your journey,” he said, stirring the contents of his cauldron so furiously that it spun like a whirlpool. The fuming concoction sent swirls of steam up to the cave ceiling, where bats flapped their wings, clinging upside down from their claws, and pit vipers uncoiled themselves from thick iron hooks.

  “And what is that?” I asked as I tried in vain to loosen the ropes at my wrists.

  “This? This is my masterpiece,” said the nagual. “My own personal recipe, perfected over the last four centuries. A potion so strong, so powerful, you won’t feel a thing as you perish. Once I put you inside and close the lid, you’ll cook almost instantly. Then you can take your place in my favorite collection, the lovely bones of a thousand children, sacrificed with Cecilia’s blessing. Your death will release me from this curse. No longer will I have to dwell in a cave. No longer will I have to wander the earth in the shape of a beast. With you — las cinco hermanitas, las cinco estrellitas — as my sacrifice, I will become more powerful than that cretin Huitzilopochtli ever was.”

  As he said those final words, talking about someone with an ancient sounding name — an Aztec deity perhaps, the nagual reached up to caress the collection of bones, both long and short, thick and thin, hanging from the wall behind him. Horrified, I wondered why I hadn’t noticed them before. Their shapes and sizes made it impossible to mistake them for anything else — they were obviously human remains. His fingernails tickled their dry ivory exteriors, making the bones clang against each other with a hollow sound that echoed through the cave. It was the sound of death looming over me and my sisters, who were still unconscious on the ground beside me.

  I tried rousting them by leaning into them and whispering, “Velia, Delia, wake up. Wake up girls,” but they were out cold, so I closed my eyes and prayed. And as I prayed, I thought about Mamá sitting outside looking up at that full moon, wondering where we were. I thought about Papá sitting somewhere oblivious of our misfortune. I thought about Teresita and her husband, who warned us about the nagual and tried to tell us how to get away. Why didn’t we pay more attention?

  What was it she had said? Sing the song of the rain, the song of the cave, or was it the song of the butterflies? I tried to remember if Mamá used to sing to us in our youth, but it was no use. Nothing came to me now. If only I could remember, everything would be all right.

  I shut my eyes tightly and concentrated. The song of the cave, the song of the birds, the song of the rain . . . My inner voice repeated Teresita’s instructions again and again, but nothing made any sense. My mind was empty of songs. I couldn’t even remember if Papá, who was a músico, had ever put us to bed with a lullaby. It must be a spell, I told myself. The nagual must have wiped my mind clean when we first met him.

  I watched the warlock move about the opposite side of the spacious rectangular cave. He ignored us as he inspected jars filled with dark disgusting liquids and dirty sprigs of herbs on the shelves behind the cauldron, deciding what else to throw in the concoction simmering within. And all the while I wrestled with the tight ropes at my hands, working them loose slowly, carefully, until I was able to free my right hand. I was about to peel the loosened ropes off my left hand when I felt the warlock’s grip upon my shoulder. It was disarming how he’d disappeared from the corner of the cave only to reappear directly in front of me in the beat of a second.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” the nagual said, using my elbows as leverage to lift me from the ground.

  My head spun like a carnival ride, but I twisted myself out of his grip and pushed him away. He grabbed at my free hand, but I turned around and kicked him in the stomach with such force that he fell to the ground. He lay on his side entangled in his own robes, struggling to get up.

  I spun La Llorona’s ear pendant with a dramatic flick of my hand. “Aztec queen, Tonantzin, Holy Mother of all mankind, lend me your magical assistance!”

  “Noooo!” the nagual screamed, reaching for me.

  For a moment, I thought he might be casting another spell, but no power stopped me, so I called to Tonantzin. “Sing to me, Mother Queen, sing me the song of the cave,” I chanted as the ear pendant quivered against my cheek.

  At my words, the earring began to hum as it spun. The humming became louder and more rhythmic. I watched the nagual, fascinated by his inability to move. He lay on the ground helplessly paralyzed by the musical notes emanating from the pendant.

  “Juanita, Velia, Delia,” I called to my sisters, who were still lying prone on the ground around me. “Wake up, girls. Wake up and listen.”

  Suddenly, from within the fogginess of my mind, something resonated. A fragment of a chord, a familiar tune came to the front in the form of a tiny sequence of notes.

  “Girls! Girls! Wake up,” I begged ecstatically. “Wake up and sing our tune!” The hum grew louder, and I joined in to sing.

  “Que llueva, que llueva,

  La Virgen de la cueva,

  Los pajarillos cantan,

  Las nubes se levantan . . .”

  As I sang the ancient tune quietly to myself, I realized it was the refrain Mamá had sung to us to soothe our nerves on dark, rainy nights when we were very young. The rest of the song came to me, and I sang it, quietly, almost whispering it. I heard my sisters stir beside me, muttering as they woke, and I knew it was working.

  “Que llueva, que llueva

  El cóndor está en la cueva

  Los pajarillos cantan

  Las nubes se levantan . . .”

  Louder and louder I sang, and when my sisters shook the fogginess from their own minds, they sat up and joined me in the chorus of Mamá’s lullaby.

  “Que sí, que no,

  Que caiga un chaparrón.

  Que sí, que no,

  Que caiga un chaparrón.”

  “Stop! What are you doing? Stop it! Stop singing!” the nagual was screaming. He sat up and began to retreat, crawling on hands and knees to the far end of the cave to get away from us, and so we kept singing. Louder and more forcefully we sang. And when I loosened the ropes from my sisters’ hands, we all stood in the center of the cave, joined hands, and sang louder and with more delight than any group of young girls ever sang before.

  “Que llueva, que llueva,

  La serpiente está en la cueva,

  Los pajarillos cantan,

  Las nubes se levantan,

  Que sí, que no,

  Que caiga un chaparrón,

  Que sí, que no,

  Que caiga un chaparrón.”

  All around us the desiccated corpses of the butterflies glittered and shone. Their tiny bodies quivered in the dust. Their wings fluttered and wavered as they trembled back to life right before our very eyes. Then a celestial light illuminated the door of the cave. Its radiance entered the room and pooled before the wily nagual, who was cringing in the farthest corner of the cave.
r />   As if newly emerged from their chrysalises, the butterflies gathered their strength and began to fly. They flittered up into the air, dancing around the light, thousands and thousands of them, fluttering together, dancing to our song.

  There were so many of them joining in the dance that soon they moved as one. Their bodies became a collective, a tapestry of wing and wind that fluttered with life, transforming into the figure of a young woman with dark hair and dark eyes. She was dressed in a shimmering tunic of gold and green jade. She looked like an Aztec goddess, but her face was that of a Mexican girl, the face of our many friends and cousins, a teenager, like us.

  “Who are you?” Delia asked, dropping Velia and Pita’s hands and stepping forth to take a better look at the apparition.

  “What are you?” Velia didn’t move, but she let go of my hand too.

  Juanita fell to her knees and bowed her head in recognition. “La Virgen de la Cueva,” she whispered as she pulled on the hems of our shirts trying to make us follow suit.

  “Tonantzin! Madre Santa, forgive me,” the nagual begged, as he cowered away from the radiance of the goddess. “I did not know they were under your protection.”

  “How could you not,” the youthful goddess asked in her childlike voice. “Cinco estrellitas — five stars, five little sisters, traveling through my domain in the sky. A warning for all to see, to let them pass unharmed. You are not dumb. You are not blind.”

  “Oh but I am. I am,” the nagual muttered, his lips quivering. “I wasn’t going to harm them. I promise I wasn’t.”

  “Then what spews from your cauldron?” the youthful goddess questioned. “A stew? Or maybe it’s a special offering for us. Stir it, man, before it sticks to the pot.”

  “It is of no consequence, your holy . . .” the nagual began.

  “Stir it, I say!” the goddess ordered. Her command was emphasized by the roar of thunder somewhere out in the distant sky. “Stir it before I take my leave. I want to make sure you do your job as well as I do mine.”