The Lightning Queen Read online

  Your mind plays tricks on you when you’re alone pasturing goats, way out in el monte. Among the spiky agave and fanning palms and rock outcroppings, you hear things that aren’t there. Voices, wails.

  My sister, Lucita, used to wander el monte with me and our goats. We’d been doing it for years, nearly every day, since we were six or seven. As twins, we’d looked alike—wide faces and strong cheekbones and those muddy, reedy eyes. She’d always been the more fragile one—smaller, slighter, prone to sickness.

  But what she’d lacked in physical strength she’d made up for a hundred times over in spunk and imagination and curiosity. She’d been the one who’d come up with the crazy games we’d play along the dried, cracked riverbeds. She was the one endlessly interested in the world, peering at petals of succulents and insect wings and glittering mica. She was the one who was most alive.

  Until she wasn’t.

  Today, as always, I tried to keep my goats away from the swath of green that meandered with the river, down the mountainside, all the way past my village. Giant trees with thick, bright canopies lined the water, precious shade in the otherwise roasting-hot hills.

  Despite its promise of a cool drink or a refreshing foot soak, I stayed away from the stream. It was narrow now, at the end of dry season—just an arm span wide—but I’d seen it transform into something raging and terrible in mere minutes.

  That day, nearly one year ago, Lucita had yelped and sputtered, flailing her limbs, struggling to keep her head above the waves. It had been a flash flood, at the seam between dry and rainy season. Trying to save our baby goat, she’d been swept downstream. I’d leapt in and grabbed for her, but the water tore her away. The spirit of the stream pulled her under, and I tried, I tried, I tried, but I couldn’t save her.

  My grandfather found me unconscious on the riverbank. Hours later, Lucita’s body floated up, caught on a fallen branch, lifeless.

  And now, every day, her screams lived on in the rush of the stream, a reminder that I hadn’t saved her. That maybe if I’d paddled harder, searched longer, I could have.

  In three days, it would be her cabo de año—the first anniversary of her death. My family was supposed to honor her along with our entire village. The idea made me queasy. Another reminder I’d let her die.

  I lowered the brim of my palm hat over my eyes, licked my dry lips. But today, instead of Lucita’s wails, I imagined Esma’s voice, echoing through the mountains. Friends for life! Nothing is impossible!

  Of course, that wasn’t true. Bringing my sister back to life was impossible. And being lifelong friends with a Romani girl? Even if her people didn’t frown on friendships with outsiders, how do you become best friends in a couple days? And what about saving each other? I wasn’t strong enough to save anyone.

  My goats refused to stay away from the stream. They were thirsty and I had to let them drink. As they lapped at the water, I stood twenty paces away, just in the outer fringe of shade. Ignoring my parched throat, I scanned the bush-straggled hills for Esma. Maybe she would come out here to search for me.

  A noise rose over the water’s wails and the echoes of Esma’s words.

  Squeaking. High-pitched and rhythmic and urgent.

  It was coming from the shore. I took a few tentative steps toward the river to investigate. A tiny baby duck, no bigger than my fist, was stumbling in a circle on the sandy bank. It had no true feathers yet, only furry down, brown with splotches and stripes of gold. Its shiny black beak was open wide, emitting loud cheeps. It tried walking, but something was wrong, and its legs buckled after a few steps.

  Strange. I’d rarely seen ducks on this river before, and never baby ducks. I searched the brush for its mother, or siblings, but none were in sight. For a long time, from my spot high on the banks, I watched it getting up, wobbling, then falling down, squeaking the whole while. As it stumbled dangerously close to the water, I held my breath, whispering, “Move, move. Away from the water.”

  And then the baby bird tumbled in, and a small current engulfed its body. “Swim, swim!” I urged, but it fell over and squealed in panic. Downstream it floated like a tiny, battered twig.

  Without thinking, I scrambled down to the water’s edge, reached in, and pulled out the duckling. It was shivering and squeaking, and looked even tinier soaking wet. And then, realizing what I’d done, I started shaking. I wrapped it in my shirt, then sat with it, both of us trembling, waiting for its mother. She would help; she’d protect it.

  Hours passed. My trembling stopped. The duck’s shivering calmed. Its eyes closed and its peeping vanished and it fell asleep against my chest.

  Its mother never came.

  As the sun started dropping, setting the sky aglow, I thought about what to do. If I left the baby duck here alone, it would be eaten by a fox or die when the temperature fell at night. So I carried it home, nestled against my chest.

  At the outskirts of town, I passed the Romani camp, where women were bent over buckets and pots, washing and preparing food, chattering loudly. Men dozed on berry-red carpets spread out in the shade. I didn’t see Esma but did hear violin notes soaring above the circle of wagons, and I paused to listen, wondering if it was her. If the swirling, jeweled colors of the wagons were transformed into music, this would be it, this vibrant, spiraling melody.

  The baby duck woke up and started cheeping, probably hungry. I rushed home, corralled the goats, and handed the little fluff ball to Grandfather. “Why, I haven’t seen a duckling like this in years,” he remarked, cupping it in his palms. “They don’t often come around here, just a vagrant one, here and there. A whistling duck, I’m guessing.”

  “Whistling?”

  He smiled. “You’ll find out why in a few months.”

  “So we can save it?” I asked.

  He examined it, feeling its wings and legs with gentle fingertips. “Nothing broken. Just bruising, soreness.” He raised an amused eyebrow and pointed to my shirt. “Your reward for doing something bold,” he observed.

  I looked down at my shirt. Yellow-green duck poo covered the front. Reward? “That first fortune the Mistress of Destiny told me—it was true?”

  Grandfather tilted his head. As a healer, he knew things, things deeper and wider than most people knew. It was as though most people saw only a small black-and-white photo of the world, but he saw what was outside the frame, too, and in full, dazzling color. That’s how my mother had explained it to me once, the wisdom of her father. That was before she gave up.

  “Perhaps it was true,” he said. “Or perhaps you made it happen. Perhaps without the fortune, you wouldn’t have saved the duck.” He paused. “I know being near the river is hard for you, son. It took courage to help this creature.”

  I cupped the duck close, a tiny bundle of pulse and breath. I felt the aliveness contained, against all odds, in this chirping ball of fluff.

  “Let’s get some food in our girl!” Grandfather said.

  “Girl?”

  “That’s my guess.”

  “I’m naming her Thunder,” I said over her squeaking.

  Grandfather laughed. “She is pretty noisy.”

  Together, we mixed dried, crushed corn kernels with water and fed it to her in a tiny gourd. We let her splash around at the edge of the narrow irrigation ditch that flowed between the edges of our courtyard and bean field. Then we made her a soft bed with a pile of old rags in a fruit crate.

  Beyond our little courtyard, the pink sunset melted into gold, then cooled into purple shadows of dusk. I drank cinnamon-chocolate atole—corn mush—with my cousins by the light of the kitchen hearth fire. Then I walked with them over to the church plaza, carrying Thunder in my shirt, not trusting anyone else to hold her. She was snug in a sling I made from my sister’s old shawl that had sat untouched, folded in a corner, until now. I’d tied it around my neck and stuffed in plenty of rags to capture the globs of poo that Thunder dropped every few minutes.

  I also brought along a tiny gourd of atole since she sq
ueaked for more food every half hour. I settled with her in the front row and waited for the magic to begin. Even if she made a commotion, the noise of the projector and generator and music and actors would drown it out.

  The film was a western, starring Luís Aguilar, whose tiny, tame mustache paled beside the Duke’s. Esma, Queen of Lightning, knew all the words and songs in this film, too. As she whooped at the exciting parts, I longed to do the same. This time, after the movie, instead of belting out an impromptu song, she walked over to where I sat. Stray bits of light flashed off her coins like lightning. “Hello, my friend for life.”

  “Buenas noches, señorita.” I felt a little nervous and rested my hand on Thunder, sleeping inside the sling, right over my heart. Then, after a deep breath, I said, “Let’s do it. Let’s make our fortune happen.”

  “Of course!” she declared, matter-of-factly. “We should’ve started today. I looked all over for you!”

  She’d looked for me? A warmth spread through me, rich and sweet as cinnamon-chocolate atole.

  “Where will you be tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Pasturing my goats in el monte.”

  Behind her, a young Romani woman was approaching like a furious whirlwind.

  I spoke quickly, pointing east with my chin. “Over there. Follow the river from your camp up to the mountains. But not too close. The water’s dangerous. There’s a boulder shaped like a sleeping dog, just beside a big tree. I’ll meet you there in the morning.”

  She grinned, and then noticed Thunder, who was now poking her beak out of the sling. Esma tilted her head, curious, but just as she was about to speak, the Romani woman grabbed her ear and tugged her away.

  At least she didn’t get smacked this time.

  “Until tomorrow, my lifelong friend!” she called back cheerfully, waggling her fingers like a cinema star. “And your baby goose, too!”

  “Duck!” I called out.

  “Duck!” she called in return.

  It felt like a handshake, the seal of a promise.

  That night, I put Thunder’s crate right next to my petate in the spot where my sister used to sleep. The little duck squeaked and rustled around and tried to jump out of the box. So I laid my hand over her, and she settled down and slept most of the night, with just a few peeps here and there.

  Her noise didn’t bother my mother, who slept across the room with a blanket over her face, as if it could block out the world. Since last year, she wanted to sleep all the time. She would sleep and sleep and sleep until one of my aunts came in and splashed cold water on her face and dragged her into the kitchen. It was hard to remember how my mother had been before—slapping tortillas into circles well before dawn, laughing and calling me and Lucita “lazybones” when we wandered groggily into the kitchen, greeting us with smiles and cups of steaming atole.

  But if I followed my memory back even further, there was another time—when Lucita and I were five or six—that our mother had slept late and let her huipil grow stained and her hair messy. It happened after our final trip to Mexico City to sell baskets and hats with my father, the last time his hand held mine. Months later, when Grandfather found our mother all crumpled to pieces, he moved her and Lucita and me back here, to the Hill of Dust, so he could care for us and heal her sorrows.

  And it had worked. After a year or so, my mother had returned to herself. Mostly.

  But now, looking back, I could see that a piece of sorrow had lodged inside her, waiting for the next tragedy to swallow her whole. And try as he might, Grandfather couldn’t seem to heal her this time.

  The next morning, my mother slept right through the barrage of hungry squeaks that woke me. My hand was still cupping Thunder’s tiny, downy back. It was good to feel something so soft and alive, so close to me all night.

  Outside, in the courtyard, I fed her atole and let her play a bit at the edge of the irrigation ditch, just a trickle of water now. Then I stuck her in the sling with rags, had a breakfast of eggs and beans and tortillas with my cousins, and headed into el monte with the goats. Humming a tune, I meandered toward my meeting point with Esma, weaving a new palm hat on the way—payment for tonight’s movie.

  I was halfway to the rock when I heard a piercing scream. A girl’s. My heart stopped and then started again, wild and panicked. Could it just be the memory of Lucita’s screams? I’d relived her screams before, but they’d never been quite so loud … and real. I kept walking, my pulse jagged, nausea oozing through me. I covered my ears with my palms. Stop, stop, stop.

  But when I released my hands, the shrieks had grown louder, tearing through the valley, coming from the stream. My head spun; black stars filled my vision. My instinct was to run away, shielding my ears.

  And then, a thought: What if it’s a real girl? An alive one? What if it’s Esma?

  I remembered the second part of our fortune. You two will save each other when no one else can. Was it my time to save my friend for life? So soon?

  The fortune made me brave. I drew in a breath, scanned the river for people, but I couldn’t see past the thick foliage along the banks. Cupping my hand over Thunder, I ran toward the screams. They stabbed the air like thin, freshly sharpened blades.

  There, at the banks of the river, in the shade of a giant tree, was Esma, mouth open wide, screaming.

  And swirling. Her long skirt spun out around her; her arms flew out and up. Her hair had burst loose from its scarf and flailed out in a nut-brown halo. Her face was uplifted, her jaw open wide enough to gulp the sky.

  Clearly, she did not need saving.

  I watched her a moment as my heart flip-flopped.

  Then I noticed three small children near her, toddlers playing in the dappled light at the sandy shore. One had a finger up his nose, another was drooling and gaping at Esma, and the third was banging two sticks together. All the while, Esma spun lopsided, screaming in her own revolving world.

  Finally, I stepped into her view, just outside the arc of her arms and skirt and hair.

  Her wails stopped. She slowed and stood still, wavering, wobbling, dizzy, and then her eyes focused on me and she smiled. “Buenos días, Mamma Duck!”

  “You all right, señorita?” I asked, unsure how I felt about my new nickname.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I thought—I thought you needed me to save you. Because of our fortune …” My voice faded.

  She laughed. “Oh, I don’t need any saving. Never have, never will. Just interested in the loyal-friend-for-eternity part.”

  I blinked. What a relief. But I had managed to save a duckling. Maybe I was stronger than I realized, just like my false fortune said. Maybe someday far, far away, I’d actually save the Queen of Lightning herself.

  She bugged out her eyes, then crossed them, then bugged them out again. “Why are you staring at me like that, Teo?”

  I blinked again. “It’s just—you were screaming like it was the end of the world.”

  “Oh, that. That’s just what I do, Teo. See, wherever we go, I find a good place to scream. Not too close to camp. Don’t want the others to hear. Near a stream is good—rushing water drowns out my noise.” She tapped two dented tin buckets lying on their sides. “And it’s a handy excuse—fetching water. Far upstream, where it’s freshest.” She gazed at the stream as if it were her second best friend.

  I glared at the stream, positioned myself at a safe distance, just close enough to rescue any toddlers who might fall in. The stream was calm today, all gentle currents, and no wider than I was tall. Still, you never knew.

  The kids were staring at me, curious. The girl said, “Ga? Ga?” and the boy said, “Da? Da?” and the other boy said, “Ba? Ba?”

  I waved to them, then looked back at Esma, who was flushed and breathing hard from so much swirling and screaming. “Why do you scream?”

  “Try it,” she said. “You’ve swallowed plenty of screams. I can tell.”

  I didn’t try it. Instead, I asked again, “Why do you scream?”


  She picked up the rose-splattered scarf that had fallen from her hair, twirled it in the air like a lasso. “You met the boria at your fortune.”

  “The boria?”

  “The wives of my uncles and father—the ones who enjoy smacking me and calling me squash head. I swallow as many screams as I can—twenty-two is my limit—and then I drag these three little squash heads away from camp—I’m in charge of them—and I let loose the swallowed screams.”

  I furrowed my brow, looked at the ground. “You scared me.”

  “Oh, sorry, Teo.”

  If we were best friends—or even pretending to be—there were certain things she had to know. “Last year, in that stream, my sister drowned.”

  Esma said nothing.

  I forced myself to continue. “She screamed, but I couldn’t save her.”

  For the first time, Esma, Queen of Lightning, was speechless. She sat down on the boulder, rearranging the scarf in her tangled hair.

  I perched beside her, appreciating the cool rock beneath me. I watched the toddlers squealing and tugging on the goats’ tails as they lapped at the water. “Ga! Da! Ba!” the children sputtered, mouths wide open in delight.

  “You shouldn’t let those kids there,” I said. “The spirit of the stream could snatch them under.”

  Esma thought for a moment, then announced, “Teo, my screams scared away every last evil spirit. Even the slipperiest of the sneakiest.”

  I eyed her doubtfully.

  “Look, Teo, I’ve been screaming like this for years now. And I can tell you, at every scream, the bad spirits turn around and run off covering their ears.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You see the spirits?”

  “The Gypsy Queen of Lightning can do anything!”

  She was convincing. “Why are you called that?”

  She slapped her right leg, entirely covered by her long skirt. “You’ve noticed my limp, I presume?”

  I wasn’t sure what the polite answer was. “I noticed you walk like—like you’re dancing.”