The Lightning Queen Read online

  For Bran, who lights up my world

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CRACKLE: Mateo; The Hill of Dust, Oaxaca, Mexico; Present Day

  1: Tug of Magic

  RUMBLE: Teo; The Hill of Dust, Oaxaca, Mexico; Long, Long Ago

  2: Secret Path

  3: Fortune

  4: True Fortune

  5: Duckling

  6: Scream

  7: Thunder’s Poo

  8: Invitation

  9: Squash Head

  10: Curse

  11: Romani Business Appreciation Event

  12: Storm

  DROP: Mateo; The Hill of Dust, Oaxaca, Mexico; Present Day

  13: First Intermission

  GUST: Teo; The Hill of Dust, Oaxaca, Mexico; Long, Long Ago

  14: Spark and Flash

  15: Surprise

  16: Something Stupid

  17: The Heartless Woman

  18: Letters in the Dust

  19: Meeting Her Match

  20: Unexpected Visitor

  21: Stolen

  22: Unlikely Thief

  23: Second Annual Romani Business Appreciation Event

  24: Uncle Paco’s Story

  25: Scream Stream

  26: Berries

  HUSH: Mateo; The Hill of Dust, Oaxaca, Mexico; Present Day

  27: Second Intermission

  BOOM: Teo; The Hill of Dust, Oaxaca, Mexico; Long, Long Ago

  28: Catching Death

  29: Turning Away

  30: The Silver Thread

  31: A Tickle, A Nibble, A Song

  32: Head of a Lion, Wings of a Bird

  33: Journey

  34: A Dream, Dead

  35: Sing

  BURST: Mateo; The Hill of Dust, Oaxaca, Mexico; Present Day

  36: Hidden Things

  37: Tales from the Old People

  38: A Piece of Magic

  ZAP!: Mateo; Suburban Maryland; Present Day

  39: Raindrop, Flame, and Esmeralda Rayos

  40: Contact

  41: The Mission

  42: Ribbons

  Author’s Note

  Mexican Spanish-English: Glossary and Pronunciation Guide

  Mixteco-English: Glossary and Pronunciation Guide

  Romani-English: Glossary and Pronunciation Guide

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  At the brink of every summer, something yanks me toward the Hill of Dust. Something like fishing line, spooling out from the heart of the hill, across Mexico and all the way up to Maryland, zipping through cul-de-sacs, searching me out, trailing bits of magic all the way. It doesn’t even matter if I’m holed up in our basement rec room, lost in Xbox with my buddies … somehow the string finds me and ties itself to a place smack in my center.

  Then it reels me back in.

  Its pull is strong on the first airplane, even stronger on the second, and stronger still on the bus bumping its way into the mountains. And at the foot of the Hill of Dust, the pull is so strong, my sneakers barely touch the ground, and I’m nearly floating up the dirt path to the very tip-top. Finally, I lurch straight into its heartbeat.

  Which is where I am now, sitting on a small wooden chair across from Grandpa Teo in his healing hut. I’m missing Xbox already, but mostly just buzzing from the journey. Mom’s right across the muddy courtyard, inside the adobe kitchen, catching up with her great-aunts and great-uncles. You’d think a robotics engineer might feel out of place here, but she always settles right in. After all, this is where she grew up with Grandpa and Grandma before she went to college in Maryland, before she married her American boyfriend, before they had me.

  Since Dad has to work, it’s usually just me and Mom who come here. Every visit gives me that swooping, soaring feeling, like a Ferris wheel ride. And somehow, this space here—Grandpa’s small, old healing room—is the hub.

  It’s dark, cave-like, and mostly empty except for an altar covered in ancient things like tin-framed saints, and fresh things like white flowers, and glowing-sweet things like candles. It all feels outside of time—the packed dirt floors and clay walls and film of incense smoke coating everything. I bet I could’ve been sitting here fifty years ago and it would’ve felt the same.

  Grandpa and I stare at each other, which is both weird and not weird. It’s like looking into a mirror, seeing myself when I’m old, only subbing an Orioles cap for his palm hat, and a Ravens jersey for his white collared shirt. All my gray-haired relatives say he was my spitting image when he was twelve, especially the crazy-thick eyelashes.

  “Mateo,” his voice rumbles, deep as the engine of Dad’s old pickup truck. His eyes widen, like he’s been waiting all year for this moment. “I need your help.”

  Whoa. My help? This is new. I just got here and we usually have small talk first. School, soccer, and guitar lessons on my end. Corn harvest, baby goats, and weather on his end. “Sure, anything, Grandpa.”

  He takes something from his shirt pocket, raises it in the candle’s glow. It’s some sort of necklace … a string of coins. Coins that flash here and there, kind of shimmering like far-off city lights.

  I peer closer. The coins are freshly polished but old, the stamped faces worn smooth, the words foreign, nothing like Spanish or English.

  He holds the necklace before me, letting it swing back and forth. I wonder if he’s mesmerizing me like one of those old-fashioned hypnotists with pocket watches.

  Sure enough, with every sway of the coins, the heartbeat of magic grows stronger, louder, ringing in my ears, booming through my blood. “Um, what’s going on, Grandpa?”

  His face beams like a little kid’s, all fresh and new. “It’s a long story,” he says. “A path paved in wonder. A path that stretches to long, long ago.” He speaks Spanish, which I know, thanks to Mom, but his words are so much different from hers. Hers are about car pools and errands, while his are lines that sound snatched right from poems and songs.

  He leans closer, the coins shining spots of light onto his face like a field of fireflies. “Mateo, can you believe in the impossible?”

  The pulse is growing louder, moving lower, then higher, practically a full-blown melody now. A picture of swirling, silver ribbons pops into my head. Something’s happening, and it’s awesome and crazy … but mostly awesome, I think. Can you believe in the impossible? I ask myself.

  “Open your hand,” he says, and lets the necklace spiral into my palm.

  And now my heart’s really thudding because sure, I’ve seen magical stuff here, just more like glimpses from the corner of my eye. But these coins crackling in my hand—well, this is something different. Sparks are jumping into my palm, zooming through my arm like tiny fireworks, and exploding in my chest.

  Now sweat’s dripping from my cheeks and an earthquake’s rolling through my bones. I manage not to freak out, just barely, because Grandpa Teo’s voice is comforting, like syrup streaming over pancakes, promising something delicious to come.

  “Now turn away from the movie of your own life, Mateo. And look at the movie of mine.”

  As he speaks, his words somehow beam light onto an imagined screen, flooding the room with people and places from long, long ago. “Mijo, you are about to embark on a journey of marvels. Of impossible fortunes. Of a lost duck, three-legged skunk, and blind goat—all bravely loyal. Of a girl who gathered power from storms and sang back the dead. Of an enchanted friendship that lifted souls above brutality.”

  He pauses, tilts his head. “Perhaps there will even be an intermission or two. But as of yet, there is no end. That, mijo, will be up to you.” He winks, clears his throat, and begins.

  “There was once a girl called the
Queen of Lightning …”

  I hang on to the humming, zapping necklace, and just before I slip completely into his movie, I wonder: Okay, just what kind of help does Grandpa Teo need?

  Esma, Queen of Lightning, rolled into my life like the first wild storm at the end of dry season. Her caravan wound up the mountain in four horse-drawn wagons, kicking up clouds of dust all the way through the valley. I watched it with the other children, all of us parched as the earth, thirsty for … something.

  “Who is it?”

  “Are they coming here?”

  “All the way out here?”

  “But why?”

  The who, we soon discovered, was the Gypsies.

  The why was uncertain; no visitors came here, just the occasional patient hoping to be healed by my grandfather. Yucundiachi—the Hill of Dust—was a cluster of adobe and wood huts surrounding a single stone cathedral, perched on the peak like a lonely bird, waiting. Our village was not on the way to anywhere. And there was little reason to seek it out.

  Yet by some miracle, the Gypsies must be headed here. Like fate, the road led only here. There was simply nowhere else to go.

  On bare, calloused feet, we ran toward this ribbon of dust snaking up, up, up to our village. The closer we came, the more the caravan’s colors shone through the haze—royal greens and golds and reds, painted blooms and swirls—a brilliant relief to the dry, cracked grays and browns that life had become. I drank them up, these Gypsies who came like sparkling raindrops, a thrill of colors and flowers, a pulsing promise.

  They didn’t look like us, not Mixteco, or like other country Oaxacans. They didn’t even look like the city Mexicans I’d seen … no, these visitors were something else entirely. The women were walking gardens, wearing long, flowered skirts, flowered shirts, flowered scarves in their hair. And the men glinted, sporting gold necklaces, coins galore, and mustaches as large as small animals.

  But that’s not when I first noticed Esma, Queen of Lightning. It was that night, the night of my first movie, when I truly saw her in all her electric glory.

  And nothing was ever the same again.

  That night, the projector beam sliced through the air as if a square had been snipped in the sky, channeling light from some secret place, as if these Gypsies knew of a hidden tunnel straight to the stars. The beam stretched to the side of the cathedral, where a makeshift screen of white sheets was hung, illuminated and dancing in the breeze. The clicking of the projector accompanied the chirping of crickets and flutter of moths. The generator hummed and croaked like a giant toad.

  My entire village had gathered in the dusty plaza—the adults on wooden chairs they’d carried from their houses. The women shone in their nicest huipiles, woven with red zigzag patterns, and the men wore gleaming white shirts and pants, their freshly washed faces bright beneath palm hats. Children darted around, wild with anticipation. I sat in the dirt, hugging my knees, watching it all, thinking of secret paths to the moon.

  “Teo!” my cousin Lalo shouted at me. “Come sit back here with us!”

  I pretended not to hear. I wanted my front-row view, away from the silliness of my cousins. I was only eleven, still young enough for silliness, but the events of the past year had made me weary. My cousins called me a few more times, then gave up.

  A Gypsy man my grandfather’s age stood before the crowd. He twirled the tip of his massive mustache, patted the waterfall of glittering coins tumbling across the lapels of his ragged suit jacket. Once all eyes were on him, he removed his strange, tall hat with a flourish and gave a deep bow. “May I introduce myself to you, kind people. I am Ivan, Master of the Traveling Cinema, Duke of the Impossible Caravan. And we shall bestow upon you, dear friends, magic beyond your wildest dreams.”

  That was the gist of it, at least. His thick accent made his Spanish words as garbled as turkey squawks. Since most adults in the audience spoke only Mixteco and barely understood Spanish, his meaning was lost on many. But the words didn’t matter because the dramatic curves of his mustache were enough to enchant us. It was as sleek as a muskrat, an elegant creature perched on his lip with a graceful life of its own. As the mustache danced over the Duke’s mouth, two other men attended to the projector, and the Gypsy women wove through the audience, collecting our fifteen centavos. For those of us who had no money, which was nearly everyone, they kindly accepted freshly woven hats or baskets as payment.

  The Duke bowed again, and we clapped and whistled in anticipation. He pulled something from his pocket, a white orb—an exotic fruit, maybe—and munched on it as he breezed back to the projector. A sharp, biting smell pierced the air.

  Now came voices, crackling from the speakers, then words on-screen that few of us could read. Hardly anyone had gone to school, and those of us who had only attended for a short time. Six years ago, a one-room schoolhouse had been built in a nearby town, but along with it had come a beautiful, cruel teacher. She’d scared off every child on the Hill of Dust within a year. Although I’d lasted longer than most, I could only pick out a few easy words here and there on the screen. It didn’t matter; soon enough, the story started and swept me away.

  My pulse raced and I tried not to blink so that I wouldn’t miss even a second. It was my first-ever movie, Nosotros los Pobres—We the Poor. It starred Pedro Infante—whose neat little mustache didn’t hold a candle to the Duke’s—and his spunky daughter, Chachita, and the dramas of their village, far more exciting than our Hill of Dust.

  During the songs, a girl’s voice joined the actors’. A real girl’s voice, from somewhere in the back. No one from my village, I was certain; it had to be a Gypsy. Her voice sounded surprisingly right, completing something that had been missing. At the funny parts, her laugh rose above others, a cackle of wild abandon.

  I looked back, squinting through the beam of light. A girl stood beside the projector, mouthing the words, every single one. Her face mirrored the expressions on the actors’ faces, only hers were even more dramatic, the way she flung her braids, raised her proud chin, widened her eyes. The night breeze caught her headscarf, made it flutter like wings lifting into flight.

  I hadn’t seen so much … aliveness … in a long time.

  After the movie, the rest of my village was abuzz, wondering what film we’d see tomorrow, because rumor had it the Gypsies would stay two more nights! Parents ushered children back home, some half-asleep on their shoulders, some holding hands. I missed the cozy nighttime feeling of someone’s hand in mine. My sister’s. My mother’s.

  I would never touch my sister’s hand again. And probably not my mother’s. My mother wasn’t dead, not exactly, but she was one of the only people who’d stayed at home that night. For nearly a year, she hadn’t been interested in having fun or holding hands. She wasn’t even interested in the possibility of ever being interested again. As usual, my grandfather stayed with her, worried to leave her alone. I wished he had come, too. This past year, he was the only person who made me feel at ease.

  “Let’s go, Teo,” my aunt Perla said, half-heartedly trying to herd me with Lalo and my other cousins, but I drifted away to the edge of the milpa. Through head-high cornstalks, I watched the lingering Gypsies. Soon, all the other villagers had left. But I wouldn’t let the aliveness of the night end, not yet.

  The Duke was busily tending to the long spiral of film, while the projector’s beam tunneled light through darkness. And the girl—she left the projector and ran toward the screen in a strange, loping gait, carrying a violin with one hand. Standing before the sheet, she tossed up her arms and let them swoop down in a deep bow, then raised her violin and eked out a melody at once mournful and cheerful. She held the bow and moved her fingers over the strings in an odd way, slightly lopsided, the same way she ran.

  She belted out a song in her language, an impossibly huge voice for a small girl. She looked no older than me. Her voice was a storm, rolling in low, gathering strength, spinning and swirling into something high and keening with a life of its own. It
was beautiful and wild and a little scary, as if she were channeling all the power of rainy season at once. I sucked up her raindrop notes like a half-shriveled plant.

  Afterward, she took another deep bow and, in perfect Spanish, announced, “¡Gracias! I am Esma, Queen of Lightning!”

  The other Gypsies paid her no heed; she could’ve been a moth fluttering around for all they cared. They were talking among themselves, carrying the equipment toward their camp. But I lingered in the shadows, soaking her in, wishing I had even a drop of that aliveness inside me.

  It wasn’t until the next morning that I would discover the fate of the Queen of Lightning was already woven into my own. For life.

  Before dawn, I awoke at the rooster’s first cries. For a moment, I lay there on my petate, rubbing my thumb over the woven palm, listening to early birds chirping and my aunts slapping tortillas in the kitchen hut. My mother snored lightly by the far wall. Had last night been a dream?

  Uncertain, I crept outside, into the darkness. Half-asleep, I stumbled toward the Gypsies’ camp by the river. Yes, they were there, asleep inside their circle of wagons around the ash-filled fire pit. A spontaneous smile broke out over my face. It felt strange; my mouth hadn’t arranged itself like this for a long time.

  All morning, along with every other child on the Hill of Dust, I followed the group of Gypsy women and children as they walked from house to house. My eyes kept landing on that girl, the one from last night who’d shot electricity right through me.

  We discovered they were offering to tell fortunes in exchange for food—small bags of beans or corn or eggs. When they made it to our house, I was almost bursting. My cousins and I quieted our dogs, shooed away our turkeys and chickens, darted ahead to clear a path for the visitors.

  Standing in the center of our dusty courtyard, the girl spoke to us in bold and perfect Spanish, just as she’d addressed her invisible audience the night before. “Amigos, I am Esma, Queen of Lightning.” She raised her arms dramatically, speaking with the confidence of a true queen. She wore her dark hair in two thin braids, woven with tiny shells and ribbons and draped over her shoulders, while the rest of her hair was tucked back in the blue-flowered scarf. A fringe of bangs framed her forehead, and around her neck hung strands of beads, shiny brown and black and red seeds, sprinkled with glittering coins. She exuded queenliness.