#pixar coco

The boys plunged into the cold water with their hands still clasped, but had to let go so that they could swim. In the darkness it was impossible to tell how deep it was. They were just going to have to trust that this would work. Elio and Tommy took deep breaths, and began swimming down.

They could not see Miguel ahead of them, and it got darker and darker as they descended, until it was hard to even tell which way was up. It was less like being underwater and more like zero gravity – something both boys had experience with. Elio’s lungs began to feel like they would burst and he had to wonder: if this didn’t work, would he be able to get back to the surface in time to breathe?

Then suddenly they were headed up, and came gasping to the surface. The night sky arched over them as they panted for air, ablaze with stars, but nothing else was visible above the lip of the cenote. Elio and Tommy couldn’t tell if they were in the same place, or somewhere else entirely.

“Up here!” called Miguel.

They looked in the direction of his voice, and found him climbing a rope ladder out of the water. The boys swam over and followed him up, and came dripping to the top, where they found themselves in the literal middle of nowhere.

There was no other way to describe their surroundings. It was a flat, dark plain that went all the way to the horizon in every direction. There were no trees, hills, or buildings, just occasional scrubby bushes among featureless long grass waving in the breeze.

“Now what happens?” asked Elio.

“Now we meet Xolotl, the Gatekeeper,” said Miguel. “Don’t let him scare you. He’s just had to be extra strict the past few decades, ever sine the...”

A low snarl got everybody’s attention. Three heads turned to see a pair of eyes glowing blood red, their owner hidden in the long grass. A moment later a second appeared, and then a third.

“Stay where you are,” said Miguel firmly. “If you run, they’ll chase you.”

“Wh... what are they?” asked Tommy, gripping Elio’s hand extra tight.

“Chipotlis,” said Miguel. “When they get out, which they’ve done a couple of times, people in the realm of the living call them las chupacabras.”

Elio recognized the name, although he wasn’t sure what they were supposed to look like. ‘Chupacabras’ were a mythical beast like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. They were dog-like things that sucked the blood of farm animals, and some people said they came from outer space...

The grass parted, and one of them became visible. It walked on all fours, but didn’t trot like a dog – it crawled like a person moving on their hands and feet with the knees sharply bent. It was impossibly thin, almost skeletal, just warty grey skin stretched over bone and a man of porcupine-like quills down its neck and tail. Huge teeth glinted in a lipless mouth, and its eyes glowed like two red coals.

For a few seconds, Elio could only stare at this horrible beast as it crawled towards him. Then he realized there was another behind it, and another, and another... and when he looked over his shoulder, they were coming from that direction, too. They were surrounded.

“Stay still...” Miguel repeated.

There was no choice but to obey. There was nowhere to go. Tommy clung to Elio’s hand so tight he felt like the bones in his fingers would break. The first chipotli was tensing up, ready to pounce...

“Hold!” shouted a booming voice.

The beasts perked up, listening, and then backed away into the grass as there was a tremendous splash from the cenote. One giant wet paw gripped the rim of the hole, then another, and the chipotli turned tail and fled as an even bigger monster, this one like an axolotl bigger than any crocodile, hauled itself onto the flat. Then it stood up, and transformed into a humanoid shape, dressed in bright-coloured cloth and a feathered headdress, with the face of a dog.

“Oh,” this apparition said. “It’s you again.”

“Hola, Lord Xolotl,” said Miguel cheerfully. “Me again. Just stopping by to see la familia. I brought a couple of friends.”

“So you did.” The psychopomp came closer, his nostrils flaring as he took in their scent. Elio couldn’t spot his eyes, which seemed odd after those of the chipotlis had been so obvious... and realized in horror that Xolotl didn’t have any. His sockets were empty. “What do you children seek in the Realm of the Dead?”

“W... we want to find out if Tommy has a soul, Sir,” said Elio. Even Lord Grigon at his most threatening hadn’t been this scary. He’d been intimidating, but he didn’t have Xolotl’s aura of existential dread, as if this being could bring about the end of the world at any moment, just by thinking about it too hard.

“You’re the god of death and misfortune, fire and lighting,” said Miguel. “And the god of twins, aren’t you? Wouldn’t your twin bother want you to let them through?”

“Quetzalcoatl? Of course he would,” Xolotl snorted. “He’s always been far too indulgent with humans. Fine, go ahead, but the rules are the same as always: return to the Realm of the Living before sunrise, or spend eternity among the dead.”

Lights began to wink on all around them – first one, a glowing square floating in midair like an upper window. Then several more, and suddenly instead of an empty plain they were in the middle of a street. All around them were brightly-lit buildings, under a purple twilight sky. People in bright-coloured clothing were coming and going, but before Elio and Tommy could take in any details, yet another unknown creature dropped from the sky and attacked Miguel.

Miguel yelped in surprise, and the two boys grabbed each other and screamed. Elio would have panicked completely, but fortunately Tommy was good at keeping his head.

“We gotta help him!” Tommy said. He grabbed the animal by one back leg, and Elio took hold of the other so they could drag it away from Miguel. They had no plan for what they would do after that, of course, and so they were completely unprepared when this latest threat turned around, opened its mouth, and went for Tommy’s face.

“Dante!” Miguel said, laughing as he picked himself up. “Down, boy! Sit!”

The colourful beast stopped short and sat down, right on top of Tommy.

“Good boy,” said Miguel, and knelt to rub the creature’s head and neck. Seeing the expressions on the twins’ faces, he laughed. “Don’t be afraid of Dante! He’s not even one of the big ones.”

Upon a better look, the animal named Dante was not in fact particularly scary. It was a skinny, hairless creature a bit smaller than a retriever and approximately the same shape, with large ears, slightly lopsided wings far too small to carry it, and a tongue lolling out one side of its mouth. Its skin was covered in bright, intricate patterns, and its tail was wagging furiously, whacking Tommy in the face as he tried to push it off of him.

“What is he?” asked Elio. He took Tommy’s hands to drag him out from under the animal.

“He’s an alebrije,” said Miguel. “Kind of like my guardian angel. Everybody’s got one, you just can’t see them in the realm of the living. Sometimes they’re invisible, or sometimes they look like normal animals. If you want to see a scary one, you’ll have to meet my Abuela Imelda.”

Dante sat up and thumped his tail and looked at Elio and Tommy eagerly. Tommy was still picking himself up, but Elio offered a hand for Dante to sniff – the animal did so, then started licking his fingers.

“Why, it’s Miguel!” a woman’s voice exclaimed.

Elio and Tommy looked up to see who this was, and both gasped in horror. The speaker was a small woman wearing a deep blue dress, with a pink scarf tied around her hair... but she was nothing but an animated skeleton. There wasn’t even any skin, as there had been with the chipotlis, only bleached white bone, in spite of which she somehow had a smile on her face. Elio was not done taking this in when Dante decided three seconds was too long to be ignored, and pounced to start licking him again.

“Hola, Frida,” Miguel said, not bothered by the woman’s appearance at all. “Sorry I missed you in March.”

“I hardly noticed,” she admitted. “I was so busy with my work.”

“You have work in the afterlife?” asked Tommy, taking his turn to help his brother with the over-friendly dog.

“Only if we want to,” Frida replied, then did a double-take as she realized Miguel’s companions were also flesh and blood. “Are these yours? It can’t have been that long, surely...”

“No, no, these are just friends of mine,” Miguel assured her. He got a hold of Dante’s collar to pull him off Elio. “We’ll catch up sometime, bt right now we have to find somebody who can answer questions about souls.”

“You’re probably in the right place, then,” she said pleasantly. “I’ll hold you to that promise, Miguel!”

With Dante now under control, Miguel motioned for Elio and Tommy to follow him. “This way,” he said. “You can meet Tío Óscar and Tío Felipe – they’ll love hearing you’ve been playing them in a movie. Then we’ll talk about your soul, okay?”

He led them through the twisting streets and rickety stairs of the necropolis. The sky was dark but there was light everywhere, shining out of windows and glowing from colourful lanterns. Elio would have pictured the Land of the Dead as a sombre place, but the skeletal inhabitants were talking and laughing, going about their business as if being dead was no problem at all. Alebrijes in the form of every possible animal, real and imaginary, ran underfoot and soared overhead.

It seemed like Miguel was a celebrity here, too. Some people just stared as he and the boys passed, but others called him by name and waved to him. He waved back, shouting out greetings to individuals named Jorge and Rodolfo and Selina.

“They don’t see a lot of live people,” Miguel said to the boys, as a group of skeletons gasped and pointed.

“I didn’t think so,” said Elio. An alebrije resembling a goat was sniffing at his shoes. Should he shoo it like he would a dog, or what?

A flash of colour announced another one of these spirits – a tiny one that buzzed down for a closer look at Tommy. He stared a moment as it hovered in front of his face, and then he grinned.

“A hummingbird!” he said. “Elio, look!”

Elio looked up from the goat and watched as Tommy put out a finger. The tiny alebrije fluttered multiple sets of wings as it landed, and turned its head to preen blue and gold feathers before zipping into the air again. It circled Tommy’s head, and then was gone in the blink of an eye.

Elio felt a tug, and looked down to see the goat taking a bite out of the hem of his shirt. “Hey!” he protested.

“Come on, hermanos,” said Miguel. “Up here.”

They climbed a spiral staircase that balanced on a knife edge between whimsical and dangerous, prompting Tommy to observe that people didn’t need to worry about falling when they were already dead. At the top was a house that looked as if it had started off much like Aunt Juana’s, but bits had been added on wherever they fit until it became a rambling, precarious mansion in a dozen architectural styles, reminding Elio of the time Aunt Olga took him to the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. Dante flew ahead, barking for the occupants’ attention.

“Hola!” Miguel called out. “Guess who’s here!”

A door opened and a skeleton leaned out. All skulls technically had grins on their faces, but this one was somehow more so than any other they’d seen. “Miguel!” he exclaimed, and hurried to give the young man a hug. “You’ve got to stop getting taller!”

“Sorry I haven’t been by for a while, Abuelo Héctor,” said Miguel, as the skeleton thumped him on the back. “I have exciting news!”

Héctor held him out at arm’s length, eye sockets wide. “They’re making my movie?” he asked.

“They’re making your movie!” Miguel beamed.

Héctor laughed for joy and gave him another hug, this time almost lifting him bodily off the ground. “Imelda!” he said, as a skeleton in a purple dress emerged from the house. There were half a dozen others behind her, eager to see their guest. “They’re making my movie! Who’s playing me?” He turned back to Miguel, apparently not even noticing that Dante had attached himself to Héctor’s lower leg.

“Guess,” said Miguel.

“Gael Bernal Garcia?” Héctor said hopefully.

“Nope!” Miguel grinned. “I am!”

“You? Héctor looked skeptical a moment, then delighted. “My great-great grandson, the movie star!” he crowed.

Elio and Tommy hung back politely as the whole skeletal family gathered around to congratulate Miguel and ask him questions. Elio would have gone and joined them, interested in meeting the twin uncles, but Tommy took his arm and held him back.

“Don’t interrupt,” he said.

Elio would have replied that Miguel had said he would introduce them, but was distracted by something bumping his shoe. He looked down, and saw an armadillo alebrije, banded in a dozen shades of green, unroll and begin sniffing the ground. A moment later, a buzzing sound announced the return of the hummingbird, flying circles around them. It landed momentarily on Tommy’s shoulder, then darted off and flew partway down the street before hovering there looking back at the boys. The armadillo rolled to the same place and then sat up – as if both animals were waiting for them.

“Do they want us to follow them?” asked Elio.

“We’ll get lost,” Tommy objected.

“Hey, Miguel!” Elio said.

Miguel turned as if he’d only just remembered they were there. “Oh, right,” he said to his family. “These are Elio and Tomás Solìs. They’ve got some questions about...”

The hummingbird, impatient, came back and took the edge of Tommy’s shirt in its beak to tug on it.

“I think this bird wants me to follow it!” said Tommy. The armadillo also returned, rolling in a circle around the boys’ feet.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Miguel asked. “Maybe it’s got an answer for you.”

“You think so?” asked Elio.

“Yes! Go, go!” Miguel urged.

The hummingbird let go and paused a moment to be sure they were coming, then zipped off so fast they had to run to keep up. The armadillo rolled and bounced along as Elio and Tommy chased the little bird along a winding path through the city, up stairs and then down them again, around corners and jumping over gaps. People and alebrijes cried out in surprise when they saw them, or hurried to get out of the way. Tommy was sure they would never find their way back again. The Land of the Dead was a maze you could get lost in forever.

Finally, with the boys panting for breath, it stopped at the end of a street. Elio and Tommy leaned on each other for a moment as they got oxygen back into their lungs, then looked to see where they’d ended up. In front of them was a house, quite ordinary-looking by the standards of the ramshackle Rivera family mansion, with a collection of small potted cactuses on the front steps.

Elio and Tommy looked at each other, eyes wide. Neither of them knew when they’d last consciously thought about that front step, but it was deeply familiar. They could almost hear a voice telling them, no, Cariño, that’s sharp.

“Do you think that’s...” Elio began.

Tommy pushed him forward. “Go and knock,” he said.

“You think so?” This was what Elio had been secretly hoping for, but now that he was here, he was terrified.

“They’re your parents,” said Tommy.

“They’re yours too.” Elio took Tommy’s hand and marched up to the door. It took a moment to get his nerve up, but then he straightened his shoulders, raised a hand, and knocked.

“Is that Sara?” asked a voice from inside. “I’m coming!” The door opened, and a skeleton woman with shoulder-length hair, wearing a pink cardigan, looked out.

Then she looked down, and froze. The coffee cup she was holding dropped from her bony fingers and broke on the step.

“Um. Hello,” said Elio nervously.

“Elio?” she asked in a whisper.

Her voice hadn’t sounded familiar a moment ago, but hearing his name, Elio recognized it at once. This was Mom. He opened his mouth to reply, but almost choked as his eyes filled with tears.

Chepina Solìs dropped to her knees and threw her arms around Elio as Tommy stepped back to give them room. “Alex!” she shouted. “Come here! Come here right now!”

Another skeleton came running, his bones clattering in his hurry. He stopped short when he saw the boys, then knelt next to his wife with a hand on her back.

“What are you doing here?” he asked Elio. “You’re not dead. Are you?”

“We’re here with Miguel,” Elio managed to choke out in between sobs. “He showed us the magic cenote.” It was uncomfortably poky, hugging bones. He felt like it would leave bruises... but he couldn’t hold on tight enough.

“Who?” asked Alex.

“Doesn’t matter,” Chepina decided. “They’re here.” She released Elio so that Alex could hug him in turn, and turned to Tommy.

Tommy looked at his feet. He didn’t belong here, did he? This was Elio’s reunion, not his. Tommy had the same memories of things that had happened before his creation, but not the emotions that went with them, not the way he had them for his own experiences since. As much as he might like for these to be his parents, he really didn’t have any, and never could. He took a step back, preparing to turn and leave.

“Tommy, wait,” said Chepina, reaching out for him.

He paused, surprised. “You know who I am?”

“Of course we do.” She stood up and came to look at him. “Elio told us all about you in November, remember?” She put a hand on his cheek. “Look at you, you’re just perfect.”

“I look just like Elio,” Tommy pointed out, “so you mean he’s perfect.”

“No, I mean you are,” said Chepina firmly. “Come inside. I’ll make you some hot chocolate. Elio said it’s your favourite, right?”

They brought the boys indoors, to a kitchen as familiar as the front steps. A cat alebrije came and rubbed up against their legs, purring, and a parrot landed on a perch on the table to study them. Chepina got a pan of chocolate started, while Alex sat down with the boys.

“Do you still speak Elioese?” he asked, in his son’s invented language.

“Yes!” Elio replied happily, “and now Tommy’s here I’ve got somebody to speak it with!”

“We’ve added some new words,” Tommy said. “For things like cooking and school, so we can talk about that stuff.” He leaned back in his seat to watch Chepina stir the chocolate.

“Good for you,” said Alex with a proud smile.

“How is school?” Chepina asked. “You said you were doing better.”

“You wanna talk about school?” Elio asked, confused. He could talk about school with Aunt Olga if he wanted. These were his parents...

“Cariño, you have no idea how much I wish I could be there to ask you how school was at the end of a day,” she told him. “Just to talk about normal things and be a family.”

“School’s good,” said Tommy. “I’m doing well in math, and we were in the science fair.”

“Yeah, the science fair was fun,” Elio agreed. “We know this scientist called Dr. Sarmiento, because NASA sent him to study Tommy, and he told us all about his research on organisms in Lake Vostok.”

“That’s in Antarctica,” Tommy explained. “It’s been isolated for millions of years. He told us how to set up an experiment about how cells survive the cold.”

Elio nodded. “Life could use the same strategies on icy moons like Europa and Enceladus.”

“Elio drew all the diagrams,” said Tommy, “and I made sure all the hard words were spelled correctly. We got second place in the city!”

“That’s wonderful!” said Chepina, leaving her pot for a moment to give each boy a bony kiss on the cheek. “You must be so proud of yourselves!”

“Aunt Olga took us to Pizza Planet to celebrate,” said Elio.

Tommy continued to watch carefully as Chepina whisked the chocolate into froth and poured it into cups. She gave one to each boy, and they sipped the hot liquid carefully. Elio had been tasting his brother’s various attempts to duplicate the recipe, and all of them had tasted good, but this made him want to burst into tears all over again. This tasted like home. It tasted like being wanted. Alex reached over to rub his back.

“Hmm,” said Tommy. “Is there cajeta in it?”

“A little bit,” Chepina said.

Tommy nodded. “That’s what I’m missing, then.”

“He’s been trying to figure out your recipe,” Elio sniffled.

“Oh, I can give it to you!” Chepina grabbed a notepad and pen. “Don’t share it, though. It’s a family secret,” she added, and gave Tommy a wink.

“I won’t. I promise,” said Tommy seriously.

Elio wiped his nose on his arm and prodded his brother under the table. “Hear that? We told you: you’re family now.”

Chepina pulled the page she’d written off the pad and gave it to Tommy, who read it over, then carefully folded it and put it in his pocket. “Thank you,” he said.

“Aunt Olga said you guys wanted me to have brothers and sisters?” Elio said.

Alex handed him a tissue so he could blow his nose. “We did,” he said with a nod, “and we tried, but...” he looked at his wife.

She patted Elio’s back. “After you were born, the doctor said I probably wouldn’t be able to have any more children. And we did try, but we never managed.” She put her other hand on Tommy’s shoulder. “And knowing how lonely Elio’s been, it’s wonderful to know you’ll be here now.”

“What are you interested in?” Alex asked. “We know Elio’s thing is space. Is it the same for you?”

Tommy glanced nervously at his twin, and Elio gave him an encouraging nod. “Well, I like to cook,” he said, “and I, uh, I like basketball games.” He looked down at his Montez Rockets jersey, a little embarrassed. “Thing is, I tried to play it at school but I was no good at it, so now I just watch other people play.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” said Alex. “I like those ‘making of’ features that come on the Blu-Ray, but I’m not going to make a movie.”

Tommy nodded, and looked at Elio for encouragement.

“You like birds,” Elio reminded him.

“Yes, I do,” Tommy said. “In September I saw a Western Tanager in the park! It was a female so it didn’t have the orange head, but it has the same stripe pattern on its wings as the male. They pass through California when they migrate, and they spend the winter in Southern Mexico and Guatemala.”

“That’s great,” said Alex with a proud smile. “That’s wonderful.”

Feeling a little braver now, Tommy added, “and I think my favourite colour is blue. Royal blue, like they use in false-colour images of the planet Neptune. But I haven’t decided for sure yet.”

“Mine is still green,” Elio added.

“No matter where you go in life, always remember to make time for your hobbies,” Chepina told the boys. “Even if it’s only five minutes a day. Look at the stars,” she told Elio, then smiled at Tommy. “Look for birds. They’re good for your soul.”

That made all of Tommy’s confidence drain away again. He lowered his head.

“What’s wrong?” Chepina asked him.

Tommy didn’t want to answer, to Elio did it for him. “He doesn’t know if he has a soul.”

Chepina patted Tommy on the back. “Of course you have a soul, Cariño.  Everybody does.”

“I wasn’t born like normal people, though,” said Tommy. “I was made out of cloning clay, and then the Liquid Supercomputer stabilized my cellular structure. How would I have gotten a soul?”

“The same way anyone gets one, I suppose,” said Chepina. “We don’t know where they come from, so who’s to say you haven’t got your own?”

“Who’s to say I do?” asked Tommy.

“You must,” offered Alex. “You couldn’t come here if you didn’t.”

“We’re not dead, though,” said Tommy, beginning to get upset in spite of himself. Having actually met Elio’s parents and been so quickly accepted by them made the question feel ten times more urgent. Someday when Elio died, he would come here to be with these wonderful people. If Tommy didn’t have a soul, then he wouldn’t. He would just... end. That was the thing he’d been most afraid of when confronting the goo monster in Montez – that he would just cease to be and the fact that he’d existed would never have mattered.

Alex and Chepina exchanged a worried look, neither of them sure how to comfort him. It seemed like whatever Miguel said, the dead didn’t know any more about souls than the living. That only made Tommy feel worse, and he hated that everybody could tell. Elio got up from his seat and hurried over to take Tommy’s hand, and the hummingbird alebrije flew down to perch on his shoulder.

“There’s got to be somebody who knows for sure,” Chepina said. “Maybe the security...”

She was cut off by the sound of barking, followed by a loud thunk as something bounced off the closed window. Everybody looked up, but were too late to see anything but a flash of bright colours. A moment later there was a pained yipe! as whatever had hit the windowpane fell onto the row of potted cactuses below.

“Stay there,” Alex told his sons, and got up to look outside.

Elio and Tommy couldn’t have guessed what he expected to find, but when Alex opened the door, there was Miguel’s alebrije dog, wagging its tail and looking very proud of itself despite the cactus spines in its back side. Miguel himself was a yard away, hanging onto the terrified armadillo, which was wriggling and squealing in distress at having been chased by this much larger animal.

“¡Lo siento, Señor!” Miguel said quickly. He put the armadillo down – it ran between Alex’ legs to find a hiding place in the kitchen – and then grabbed Dante to keep him from chasing it. “I was gonna give you a few more minutes but Dante took off after the armadillo...” Hearing his name, Dante turned around to lick Miguel’s face.

Chepina stood up and went to the door. “Are you Miguel?” she asked.

“Yeah, that’s Miguel,” said Elio. “The movie star.”

“Then it’s a pleasure to meet you.” Alex helped Miguel to his feet and shook his hand.

Chepina was not so restrained. She threw her skeletal arms around the young man, and thanked him over and over.

“You don’t know what it means to actually talk with them,” she said, “instead of having to be there when they can’t see or hear us! And to meet Tomàs! I thought it was going to be decades and that was good, I hoped he’d live a long life, but I’m so glad I got to meet him now, when he’s still a child!”

“De nada, Señora Solís,” said Miguel. “It’s my pleasure. But actually, we’re here...”

“To find out if Tommy has a soul.” Alex nodded. “He said.”

“Do you know how to find out?” asked Chepina.

“No, but I think the people in security will at least know who to ask,” Miguel said. “They keep track of the offerings and shrines, and they’ve got a census of everybody here. It’ll at least be a place to start.”

“I had a similar idea,” Alex said with a nod. “Can we come along?”

That hadn’t even occurred to the boys. “Can they please?” asked Elio.