Alebrijes

In a post-apocalyptic future, the Cascabeles, descendants of San Joaquin Valley workers named for the rattlesnakes they sheltered alongside when the world ended, have wandered the wasteland for over a hundred years searching for a legendary sanctuary called La Cuna, meaning "the Cradle." Three winters ago, they stumbled into Pocatel Valley, a walled city controlled by the Pocatelans, descendants of copper miners. The Cascabeles were given food but have since been forced into an oppressed labor class, working potato fields for meager rations and living in a shantytown of dome shelters called pocks, known as the Pox. A deep gorge called the Trench surrounds the city, and massive burrowing creatures called wyrms hunt at night, stirring up lethal spores.

Leandro Rivera, a resourceful 13-year-old Cascabel, narrates from the Pox, where he lives with his younger sister Gabi and Tía Lula, an elderly woman who took them in after their mother died but exploits them for labor and pickpocketing. Leandro and Gabi work the fields daily under armed guards. Ari, an older Cascabel girl, quietly slips healthy potatoes into Gabi's bin, while Jo, the oldest person in the Pox, tells stories of La Cuna. A black rot spreads through the crop. Leandro and Gabi secretly save bronze coins called stags, planning to escape in a Monger's wagon. Mongers are traders who travel between the Outlands and Pocatel's market.

Their plan accelerates when Tía Lula is arrested after a Director called El Bastón discovers stolen goods in their pock. Leandro and Gabi flee, retrieving their hidden stags and hiding behind the Tree of Souls, a memorial tree at the edge of the Pox. El Bastón finds them and marches them to the orphanage, a converted Old-World library. Leandro discovers Lula's horror stories about the orphanage were lies. He meets Andrew, a Pocatelan boy brought in after his mother Celia Stone's arrest, whom Gabi comforts by dancing the traditional Cascabel rattlesnake dance.

On market day, Leandro and Gabi sneak out. Gabi dances as a distraction while Leandro pickpockets stags from a Pocatelan couple. But Gabi lingers at a fruit stand and reaches for a strawberry. The Monger rings his alarm bell. Leandro takes the crushed berry, eats it in full view of the crowd, and is seized by the Patrol while Gabi slips back to the orphanage.

Inside the Center of Banishment, the Regime's trial and exile facility, Leandro sneaks to a cracked door and overhears a secret Directors' meeting led by Imperator Wallace, Pocatel's supreme leader. Wallace announces "the Thinning," a plan for mass Banishment targeting those the Regime considers least useful, including orphans and the weakest Cascabeles. Celia is sentenced to exile and walks onto the trail. Wallace sentences Leandro to three years but, instead of exile, directs a Director named Dolores to take him.

Dolores leads Leandro through a hidden passage lined with preserved Old-World animal drones. In her laboratory, she reveals the Spark, a neural link that can transfer human consciousness into a drone body. She has been secretly placing banished youth into drones instead of glass vault prisons, replacing the real Sparks with decoys. None have returned. She needs Leandro to find her daughter Selah, who is among them, and promises to protect Gabi in exchange. Leandro agrees, and his consciousness transfers into a hummingbird drone.

Flying over the wyrmfield, Leandro witnesses a wyrm erupt from the ground and kill Celia. Shaken, he continues east into the Outlands. His charge drops to 1%, and he crashes in a dry riverbed. He wakes clamped in the beak of Jovi, a great horned raptor drone inhabited by a banished Cascabel youth, who has carried him to a torchlit cave. The cave opens into La Cuna: a massive underground cavern with irrigated fields, fruit trees, a winding river, and an ancient pine at its center. The legendary sanctuary is real. It is home to drone-banished youth Leandro calls Alebrijes, a term for fantastical animals. Selah, inhabiting a hawk drone, enforces one rule: No one leaves.

Jovi confides that the Cascabel Alebrijes have been growing crops to return for their families, but Selah and two eagle drones, Rose and Ezra, threaten to destroy the fields if anyone tries to leave. Leandro tells Jovi about the Thinning. Overnight, Leandro and Charlie, a color-shifting lizard drone, pollinate rows of crops while the Pocatelan drones patrol.

In the Outlands, Leandro follows Nathaniel Barrett, a fruit Monger, to a hidden outpost where Nathaniel's family lives in exile. He discovers that the wyrms are not living creatures but Old-World drone machines operated by Mongers using wyrm controllers, all on the Imperator's orders. When Nathaniel reports Leandro's signal, Wallace remotely buries the outpost in sand. Leandro takes control of a wyrm drone and digs Nathaniel's family out alive.

Back at La Cuna, Selah, Rose, and Ezra have uprooted the crops. Then Rose plummets from the ceiling, her Spark destroyed remotely by the Imperator as a warning. Selah reveals she is Wallace's daughter, exiled for challenging his authority. Grief-stricken and resolved, she agrees to return to Pocatel.

Leandro, Jovi, and Selah fly to Pocatel and infiltrate the Center of Banishment, where they find Dolores imprisoned. Using Dolores's surgical instrument, Leandro extracts his Spark from the hummingbird and reinserts it into his human body through his eye socket, losing the use of his left eye. He restores Jovi and Selah to their bodies as well.

In the Banishment room, they hear Gabi being sentenced to exile. She walks defiantly onto the trail but returns with Andrew rather than flee alone. Selah confronts her father before the assembled crowd, declaring that the wyrms are machines and the Directors have deceived everyone. The Imperator orders the Pox set ablaze and summons wyrm drones into the city to herd Cascabeles, orphans, and Pocatelans toward the Trench.

Leandro transfers back into the hummingbird and activates thousands of pollinator drones stored in the building. With Selah in her hawk drone, they command swarms of bees, butterflies, and moths against the Patrol and Mongers. Moths jam gun barrels; guards flee. Leandro wrests control of the wyrms and turns them against the Imperator. Wallace grabs Leandro's hummingbird body and begins twisting its head. Selah launches herself into his chest, knocking him into the Trench, but the impact dislodges her Spark. With seconds remaining, Selah asks Leandro to tell Dolores she loved her. Selah's consciousness dies in both her drone and human bodies.

In the aftermath, Dolores stays in Pocatel to atone. Nearly 300 people, including Cascabeles, orphans, Pocatelan families, former guards, and Mongers, join a caravan of wagons led by Jo. On the 13th day, they find Nathaniel's starving family and take them in. They arrive at La Cuna, where the remaining Alebrijes have replanted the fields. Leandro leads Gabi blindfolded through thriving crops and places a ripe strawberry in her hand. She finally takes a bite.

In an epilogue set over 450 years later, an old Gabriela Rivera transmits a holographic message from La Cuna, which turned out to be a concealed ship. She describes how the Alebrijes helped restore Earth and invites anyone listening to return. She performs the Cascabel rattle and announces she will tell the story "of Leandro the Mighty," framing the novel as a tale passed down across generations and told across the stars.