“Lita,” Yadriel said sharply. He didn’t want to get lumped in with the kids doing arts and crafts. He belonged with the adults. “I’m not a kid—”
“I know that!” Lita huffed, coming to a stop next to the crates.
Yadriel scowled, not believing her for a moment.
“But you’re the best at decorating the calaveras!” she argued, snapping her skirt.
Yadriel looked down at the boxes of blank sugar skulls and the mess of neon icing tubes that littered the table. The older kids sat around, looking bored out of their minds, maybe five completed calaveras between them that were lackluster at best.
Meanwhile, Leo and Lena, the six-year-old twins, sat on the end, squeezing neon blue and green icing into each other’s mouths. They laughed uncontrollably, their eyes wild, completely jacked up on sugar.
Decorating the small skulls made of white sugar was Yadriel’s favorite part of Día de Muertos, but right now, he had more important things to worry about.
“Lita, do I have to?” he said, trying really hard not to sound like a whiny child.
“Only two days to Día de Muertos!” Lita lamented, sitting heavily in the chair at the head of the table. “Still so much to cook and bake!” she continued.
The teen brujx kept talking among themselves. Leo and Lena were now chasing each other around, smearing icing on their arms.
Yadriel wanted to get out of there and go back to the house, where he could talk to Julian. He was probably still pissed off, but Yadriel hoped he’d had enough time to cool off and listen to reason.
When no one responded, Lita scowled. “Ay, yi, yi, how my back aches!” she announced, louder this time and with a big sigh. She looked around expectantly.
Alejandro, a thirteen-year-old brujo with a big ego and even bigger attitude problem, rolled his eyes. “Aye, Lita,” he said dismissively, taking a large bite out of a sugar skull.
With surprising swiftness, Lita had her chancla in her hand. “¡Cállate!” she snapped, whacking Alejandro in the back of the head.
“Ow!”
The others laughed.
Yadriel inwardly sighed. He wasn’t going to get out of there until he satisfied Lita’s demands. So he sucked it up and gave her a smile. “We appreciate all your hard work, Lita,” he told her, doing his best to sound as sincere as possible without being sarcastic.
“The supplies for the ofrendas this year are even more beautiful than last. You work so hard,” he repeated, sitting down and bringing forward a box of sugar skulls.
Satisfied, Lita smiled and waved a hand through the air. “¡Oh, gracias, mi amor! But I would never complain, I am happy to do it.”
Alejandro snorted, but it quickly turned into a cough when Lita’s eyes narrowed on him.
Yadriel picked out an assortment of neon-colored icing in tiny piping bags and got to work. The sooner he got some calaveras done, the sooner he could sneak out of there. With painstaking precision, Yadriel traced yellow flowers, purple eyelashes, and green spiderwebs onto a sugar skull for his mom.
There was one for each ancestor they would be welcoming back on Día de Muertos, their names written across the forehead of their calavera.
“You still need to help me look in the rafters,” Lita said to Yadriel, drawing his attention. “Still can’t find la garra del jaguar.”
“The what?” asked Ximena, a short bruja whose quinces would be happening next summer.
“¡La garra del jaguar!”
The younger brujx exchanged confused looks.
Yadriel shook his head but continued to work. He always knew when a Lita lecture was coming. He piped swirls of yellow and light blue onto the calavera’s bony cheeks.
Lita huffed, fully offended now. “Four sacred blades! They are ancient artifacts, used to perform the forbidden sacrifices.”
Alejandro gaped. “The what?”
Lita preened under the sudden undivided attention.
Yadriel carefully wrote his mother’s name in loopy handwriting over the calavera’s forehead in red icing.
Camila.
Gently, Yadriel put it in the box with the other completed calaveras. He picked out his next sugar skull to decorate, cradling it in his lap as Lita dove into her story in Spanish, not having the patience to stumble through the nuances of English for such an important retelling.
Lita had been telling the legend of Bahlam, the jaguar god, ever since he was little. He knew the story practically by heart.
Bahlam, the jaguar god, was the ruler of Xibalba. When you died, you had to travel through Xibalba to reach the peaceful world of the afterlife, where Lady Death ruled. Some people were granted safe and direct passage to the afterlife by