“Go!” Elias screamed at me.
I had one foot in the door. I just needed my mom.Come on. Come on.
Another insurgent swooped down at me, blade ready. I jumped back from the portal.
One of our warriors appeared and knocked him away from me. They rolled on the ground together, struggling. I watched as the insurgent plunged his sword into the warrior.
Elias appeared next to me, breathing heavily, with green blood all over his armor. He held out his hand. I looked around—we were the only ones left. All our allies were dead.
I was just steps from crossing into Biringan.
“MJ! Go!” my mother yelled, even as the remaining insurgents closed in.
No!I wouldn’t leave her.
Then Mom reached into the bag strapped across her chest. When she pulled her hand back out, she was holding a sword.
I stared at her in awe.
She smiled. “Another gift from your father.” Then she raised it up over her head, and it burst into flames. “I’ve got this,” she shouted at me. “Go with Elias!” I could see the sky over us again, dark and swirling, pulsing with electricity.
“What about you?” I couldn’t just leave her behind. She couldn’t take them all on her own.
“I said go!” She turned away from me and charged for the insurgents.
This time, when Elias offered his hand I took it, and we ran for the portal. As we passed through, I looked behind me and saw my mother beyond the closing door, wielding a blade of fire that prevented the hunters from getting to me.
My mother, a warrior and a queen.
5
“Brace yourself,”Elias warned me as I stepped through the doorway. Everything turned pitch-black, and then, immediately, blindingly white. I closed my eyes and held on to him, a little disoriented. I felt a lurch deep inside my stomach, like I was going to throw up.
There was some kind of turbulence, like an earthquake, and then, from beneath my eyelids, I could tell the light had dimmed. Squinting, I started to take note of our surroundings; we were inside some kind of cave. Crystal stalactites jutted down overhead, twinkling. I heard running water somewhere. A river or stream, splashing against rock. Up ahead of us, I saw an opening. On the other side there was sunshine and lots of green.
A minute later we emerged onto sandy shores softly lapped by a shimmering blue sea that matched the bright sky above. I blinked to let my eyes adjust. On the left there was a lush, dense jungle; to the right, a settlement of bahay kubos. I looked over the quaint wooden houses to see a huge structure—a castle, maybe, from what I could make out so far away—looming above the rooftops. It was searingly hot, and the air was thick, but it wasn’t unpleasant. I knew Biringan was the hidden fairy realm of the PhilippineIslands and so shared its climate. And because I was of its blood, I could enter its domain from anywhere in the human world, even from Southern California, where we had just left.
At the beach in front of us, mobs of people gathered—not human people, but my father’s kind, encantos. Elias gestured to them. “They’re here to see you. No doubt they’ve heard about what happened in the human realm.”
“Great,” I said sarcastically. Just what I needed on the worst day of my life. An audience. They stared at me, and some of them were smiling. “Welcome back, Princess,” I heard a few of them say.
Elias pointed to the placid blue sky. “We’re safe here. The insurgents and their storms have been held back, for now. They won’t dare attack you here, under Biringan’s protection.”
Mom had done it. Did she defeat them?
Was she alive?
She had to be. Shehadto be alive.I would know if she was dead,I told myself. I would feel it. She had to have survived.
There was a small wooden boat docked at the pier. We stepped in, and then Elias began rowing across the lake to another dock on the other side. All around us, I could see fish darting through the water around the boat, some staying alongside it and some swimming ahead.
A huge tail splashed at the surface, and then an entire body popped up out of the water. It took me a few seconds to process what I was seeing. The fish had a human upper body and nearly human face, except for the bluish-gray skin and the gills on their neck.
“Mermaids,” I murmured, stunned.
“No, iha, sirenas,” Elias said. Then he whispered, “Much more deadly than mere mermaids.”
The sirena disappeared beneath the water.
