MARIBELLE
There’s a chill in the darkness that feels like the wintry winds the day Mama and Papa were killed, and then Sera Córdova manifests out of nowhere. She’s stunning. She has my brown skin—I have her brown skin—and while my hair is usually braided behind my head, she wears hers fanned out and it trails to the middle of her back. She’s in a white blouse with a beautiful blue ring and silver bracelets. As the darkness shrinks around me, I can smell flowers and herbs, and hear a cauldron bubbling and a baby crying.
Sera picks me up out of a crib—baby Maribelle. I must be a couple months old. She’s softly singing me a song about a girl who makes a crown out of branches from her garden, and I’m so upset that I’ve never heard this before that rage builds in me so quickly that I might burn down this room that appears to be an alchemist’s lab. But serenity and an urge to comfort wash over me, even though those don’t jive with how I think I should be feeling. It’s as if I’m somehow tapped into Sera’s and baby Maribelle’s feelings too. The baby settles against Sera’s breasts, like a mother’s song and touch is all she needed.
“You want to help your mother, my sunflower?” Sera asks. I’ve never heard that nickname before, but I can feel how lovingly she uses it as much as I can see it in her warm brown eyes. She points at the steel cauldron and herb-loaded mortars on the polished counter. “I am making a potion for your tía Aurora to help her feel better. She’s been ill lately ever since losing a loved one. I can’t bring back her loss, or make her instantly happy, but I can make her body kinder to her during this sad time.”
“Aurora isn’t my aunt,” I say aloud, but Sera doesn’t hear me.
I want Sera to speak more about Mama’s loss and sadness. Is this around the time that her own mother passed?
The door bangs open, and I instinctively hold up my fists to fight, but I’m settled down by Sera’s cool composure. A man I quickly recognize as Bautista appears, looking pretty grimy, as if he’s been fixing up a car. I always remember him as the leader of the Spell Walkers, and I would salute him if he could see me, but wrapping my head around him being my father is a whole other matter. If I couldn’t clearly read the excitement in his face, I feel some triumph in his heart. I must be able to feel him as well because we’re all a family, and as Wyatt said, that’s one of the two lifelines phoenixes have. Juggling four sets of emotions at once is dizzying.
He steps fully inside, and Emil walks in after him. We see each other, and thank the stars I’m not feeling whatever he’s got going on inside. He’s muttering something to himself, eyes closed in concentration.
“It worked!” Bautista says.
Tears are brought to Sera’s eyes as glee and pride soar within. “The Starstifler worked?”
He puts down the journal on the counter. “You did it, my beautiful vision!”
Sera and Bautista kiss, love exploding so fiercely that I imagine my own family with Atlas as if he were still alive. This was going to be us in the future. Heroes and parents.
Bautista kisses the baby on her forehead. “You hear that, Maribelle? Your parents are making a better world for you.”
“I pray to the stars the potion isn’t used against our kind,” Sera says. “We have to be selective about who we introduce it to. Maybe only the other Walkers so it stays in the family. I wouldn’t even trust the government right now. They could use it on Maribelle whenever she comes into her powers.”
“If she does,” Bautista says. “My blood may have ruined that for her.”
“I know she will.”
“You’re the seer. I’m sure she’ll take after her powerful mother.”
“She would be lucky to have your fire, my sunray.”
“Once these streets are mine, I’m putting my fire out. Full-time dad,” Bautista says with a smile as he kisses baby Maribelle’s forehead again.
What would my life have looked like if they weren’t killed? Would the Blackout have ever happened with Sera around to predict the catastrophe clearly instead of my nagging gut feeling that I couldn’t make sense of? Would we have all transformed the world for the better by now so we could’ve had our own home after the streets were cleansed of violent specters?
Sera’s eyes glow like one full moon bouncing between her left and right eye. We’re being warned of a danger so intense that we feel it in our bones, picking at our skin; this is what my power should feel like. Even though I can’t see what she’s seeing, I have history to define the moment she’s dreading. Terror squeezes at her throat and she can’t speak their fates. One moment she was imagining a hopeful future, the next she was seeing that none of it would ever happen. Death may move quickly, but there’s solace in knowing she can prepare.
If only I could’ve braced myself for Atlas.
“Sera, what did you see?” Bautista has never been more frightened either.
“Our end,” Sera whispers. “But only mine and yours. There’s still hope for Maribelle. My mother can never know she’s my daughter. She’ll hunt her down and use her powers like she used me.”
Bautista is trying to stay strong, whereas Emil is crying like this is his own family. In a way, it is.
“What do we do?” Bautista asks as his own tears break through. “It was hard enough hiding your pregnancy this year.”
“I have a plan,” Sera says. She’s sobbing, her lips quivering as she plants a long kiss on baby Maribelle’s cheek. “I’m sorry I won’t be around, my sunflower.”
This is the apology I heard during my first attempt at retrocycling.
“How much time do we have?” Bautista asks.
Sera almost doesn’t want to answer, but time isn’t on their side. “Minutes. My mother and her forces will be breaking in as we speak.”
Rage takes over Bautista as his eyes burn like an eclipse and gray flames burst around his fist. “She isn’t coming anywhere near our daughter. Not unless Luna wants to die with us.”
Even though I can’t feel Emil’s shock, I know we’re the only two people in the room feeling it.
Luna is Sera’s mother—and my grandmother.