"I'm sorry, Manny, but your condition is…well, I'm afraid it's terminal," the doctor said to Manny and Camila felt everything she'd worked for come crashing down like it was a physical blow. Beside her, Manny looked like he was bearing the blow with stoicism. But it was an exceptionally good act, Camila could tell. She knew her husband inside and out. Sometimes, it was like he was an extension of her, they were that close. Soulmates, she'd often joked to her family, and that really wasn't much of an exaggeration.

Camila had fallen in love with Manny…well, not at first sight. Their first meeting had been awkward to say the least, given that she'd punched him in the face because she'd thought, mistakenly, he'd been graffitiing her locker back in high school. But she'd definitely fallen in love with him at second sight, during that college party where he'd rescued her from social humiliation after that fiend Christina had tricked her into thinking she was attending a costume party. Manny had played along, assembling an impromptu Cosmic Frontier costume and literally riding with her into the sunset.

From then on, the two of them had been hooked on one another, despite pursuing almost literally opposite career paths. Camila had studied veterinary medicine while Manny had joined the army. Their jobs didn't allow them to be together nearly as often as she wanted, but they were still happy and madly in love, and they got together often enough to get Luz out of it. Manny was honorably discharged from the army shortly after Luz's birth. He then took on a civilian government job, the details of which were extremely classified. It bothered Camila sometimes, all the secrets he was keeping. But Manny loved his country and she could not deny him the opportunity to continue to serve it in what was presumably a far less risky manner. It paid well anyway, and Manny was happy, even if it did mean they had to move to the out of the way small town of Gravesfield, Connecticut.

There was something savagely ironic about Manny getting cancer. Camila had spent the entirety of his military service petrified he'd get hurt or killed, but he'd walked away without so much as a scratch. He'd even walked away relatively mentally healthy. Camila knew in the back of her mind that there would be a price to pay for such marvelous luck, but she never imagined in her most horrid nightmares it would ever be this.

The doctor was prattling on about treatment programs and how they could probably give Manny four to five years of continued life with certain new medications, but Camila was only barely listening to him. She was just paralyzed. Aghast. Furious. Manny believed in God. He went to church every Sunday like clockwork, prayed on a regular basis. And this was how the Almighty had decided to repay him? By giving him a slow and agonizing death? Camila hoped for God's sake he didn't exist, because if he did, there was going to be a lot to answer.

For a man who'd been given a death sentence, Manny seemed to be keeping his cool more than Camila was, calmly asking various follow-up questions, but it was clearly and obviously an act. He was just in shock, that was all. Soon, he'd break, and Camila would have to pick up the pieces. But how could she do that when she was coming so close to breaking herself?

The rest of the appointment seemed to go by in a haze. Before Camila knew it, she was in her car. She barely remembered walking back to the parking lot. Manny put his head in his hands. He was trembling. Not with fear. With anger. "It's not right," he said softly. "You don't deserve this." Despite the dire circumstances, Camila couldn't help but grin. Even after being diagnosed with terminal cancer, Manny was still putting Camila first.

"Surely there must be a mistake," Camila said desperately. She knew very well there wasn't. She was just grasping at straws. "I mean…what are we going to do? How are we going to tell Luz?"

"We're just going to have to tell her the truth," Manny said firmly. He was a fundamentally honest man in just about every aspect of his life except for his work. In fact, Camila speculated his inability to divulge the secrets of his job was what made him value integrity in all other areas of his life. "That her papi is sick and he won't…won't be with her eventually."

Camila let out a sob. "Manny, I can't lose you! I don't know how I'll go on without you."

"Oh, honey, don't lose hope," Manny said, stroking her hair gently. "Four years is a long time. Maybe there'll be a new treatment in that time! We can't…we can't give up. For Luz's sake."

"For Luz's sake," Camila echoed, but her heart wasn't in it.

In truth, Camila worried a lot about Luz. She was one of the most rambunctious people Camila knew, an endless well of enthusiasm. Luz had was only eight years old, but they'd been the best eight years of Camila's life. Camila deeply loved her daughter's more…eccentric qualities. Unfortunately, Luz's peers and certainly her teachers didn't. Luz had extreme difficulty making friends and found it nigh impossible to keep them. Was it Luz's fault? Maybe. She didn't have much of a filter and she had a lot of weird hobbies and obsessions. But then again, what eight year old didn't?

This news would knock all the fight out of her. That beautiful light Camila had named her for would drain out of her eyes and Camila feared it would never return again once it did. But what was the alternative? Keeping the news that her father was dying until he was too sick to function? Of course not. The very idea was ludicrous. Camila would just have to pray she would be okay. Not literally, though. After this nonsense, she didn't owe God any favors.

"I'll miss her quinceañera," Manny realized. "I'll…I'll never get to dance with her!" And then the tears started flowing out of his eyes like a river. Camila joined him, shamelessly. Each time one of their tears seemed to stop, they spotted the other crying and the tears resumed. It was…draining. And necessary. And, as paradoxical and perverse as the idea seemed, she did actually feel better when it was done.

"I will do everything we can to make sure our lucecita is well taken care of," Camila vowed. "I'll make sure she's happy and well loved. No matter what happens, Luz will have my everlasting support. Even if she…I don't know, marries one of those elf creatures out of those fantasy books you love."

"For the last time, they're the Seelie Fae," Manny said, rolling his eyes.

The ride home was solemn and silent and Camila hated it. She hated the awful, stifling silence that seemed to have infected their lives. Their family was a near stranger to quiet. Between Luz's constant chatter, Manny's insistence at holding impromptu musical numbers for a wide variety of occasions, and Camila's own intense debates about Cosmic Frontier, there always seemed to be something going on in the Noceda household.

In the end, there was only one honorable way to decide who got to break the news to Luz, and that was through the noble art of rock paper scissors. Camila knew Manny's distinctive tell, though, and she ended up winning. Or losing, depending on your perspective.

The two of them sat Luz down at the dining room table. Luz must have sensed something was amiss, because she had a panicked look on her face. "I swear I didn't know Mrs. Salzmann was afraid of platypuses!" Luz said nearly in one continuous breath. "I mean, who's scared of platypuses?!"

"Honey, it's not about that," Camila said. She could beat around the bush, but no one's interests would be served by that. Not her own and certainly not Luz's. "Lucecita, we just got back from your doctor. Your papi is sick. He's very sick. Sweetie, he has…he has cancer."

"W – what?" Luz stuttered. "There has to be a cure, right? He can get…therapy? Coma-therapy?"

Camila sighed. "It's chemotherapy, and, no, it's not that kind of cancer. He's not…he's not going to get better." Luz let out a gasp. "Now the doctors say he has two to three years where he can live a quality of life similar to what he has now. So that's…that's good, right?" She cringed. Good?! What the hell about any of this was good?

Manny placed a hand on Luz's shoulder. "I'm going to fight it with everything I have, but it's…the doctors don't think it's going to be enough. They say in four to five years…I…I'll be gone, lucecita."

Luz closed her eyes and when she opened them again, they were filled with a jarring and atypical fury. "Liar," she hissed in an ice-cold tone. "You're lying! It's not possible! You can't die like that, papi! I won't let you!"

"Luz, the…the only thing we can do for Papi right now is pray," Camila said. "I wish it was a trick. I wish it was a prank. But it's not."

Luz stood up from her seat, practically vibrating with fury. "You're both lying to me! I can't believe you would do this to me! Just because I'm not good enough doesn't give you the right to…to do this!"

"Luz, why would you ever get the impression we thought you weren't good enough?" Manny asked, seeming to be as bewildered as Camila was. To the best of her knowledge, they were regularly giving Luz praise and encouragement. Not for the first time since they'd moved to Gravesfield, Camila wondered if there was more going on behind the scenes of Luz's school than they knew. But that was a later problem.

The now problem was that before their very eyes, Luz was running out of the room, out of the house, tears threatening to spill from her eyes. Camila was almost tempted to let her run and get it out of her system were it not for the fact she was, you know, eight and there were dangerous animals who roamed the woods.

"I'll take care of this, mi amor," Camila told Manny. "I think this is a situation that calls for a mother's touch." Manny had been through enough for one afternoon anyway.

Camila had a pretty good idea where Luz was going. She knew her daughter quite well. She would run to someplace where she was sure no one could see her cry, neither human nor beast. She would run to the old abandoned house in the woods, the one said to have been built by the town founders, the Wittebanes.

And sure enough, there she was outside the house, her face blotchy with tears, the true weight of the situation having crashed down upon her. "Luz…" Camila called out softly.

Luz turned around, looking defeated. "It's really true, isn't it?" Camila could only nod. "Why?! Why did this happen?"

"I don't have an answer," Camila admitted.

"God shouldn't let these things happen," Luz pronounced. Camila agreed wholeheartedly. "Papi is good. He doesn't deserve to suffer. Bad people should get cancer like murderers and the girls who tease me on the playground."

Well, Camila wouldn't go that far, but now wasn't exactly the time to nitpick. "Oh, Luz. You'll still have me. And even after he's gone, he'll still live on in your heart."

Luz scowled. "It's not the same."

"No, it's not," Camila agreed. "But it's what is. Your papi is going to be very sick and he's going to be very scared, even if he doesn't show it, so he's going to need you to be strong for him, okay, sweetie?"

It took a long time before Luz could muster up the strength to nod. "I wish there was a way to fix him," Luz said. "I wish I could open this door and there'd be…be a magical land on the other side like Narnia! And Dad could be given the golden apples like Diggory's mom and everything would be fine. But there isn't."

She opened the door and there was a magical land on the other side of it.

Camila did a double take, absolutely certain she was hallucinating. Through the door, she was looking at what appeared to be at first glance a kind of renaissance fair, except inhabited by some of the strangest looking creatures Camila could even consider thinking of. A sizable number of them looked like humans except with pointy ears, but there were representatives of creatures from dozens of mythological species, including a wide variety of species no one had ever come close to imagining before.

It was clearly some sort of holographic projection, Camila's brain desperately tried to tell her. In sharp contrast with Manny's boundless love of fantasy, Camila had always been a rational person, grounded in worldly matters. Yeah. For some reason, someone had set up an incredibly advanced holographic projector in a shack in the middle of nowhere. That was clearly the only rational explanation. Or maybe she'd just hallucinated the whole afternoon. Maybe she was dreaming! Maybe she'd dreamed up the diagnosis too!

But then Luz stepped through the door, an awed, almost worshipful look on her face, and Camila followed her, driven entirely by maternal instinct. And it was no projection she found herself in. It was a real world, a world entirely different from her own. For reasons that were completely unfathomable to Camila, there was an interdimensional portal near her house. She was in a real other world! And it wasn't even a science fiction one! Where the heck was the justice in the universe?

"Don't you see, mami!" Luz said, her eyes wide with hope. "We were brought here for a reason! To save Papi!"

Camila opened her mouth to try to dissuade Luz, but then she closed it. Now that she thought about it, maybe Luz was right. Maybe there could be a magical cure to Manny's cancer. It seemed so very unlikely, but a few minutes ago, she'd considered other worlds and interdimensional portals to be impossible, so what did she know?

"Well, let's see what we can find then," Camila said, trying to keep hope in her voice. The more she thought about it, the more she wondered if Luz had a point. It seemed very, if not astronomically, unlikely for them to just stumble upon a magical land the exact moment they required a magical solution. If this was God's solution to their conundrum, she'd take back all of the many, many things she'd said about the so-called omnipotent deity. "Do you see any…potion makers around here?"

"And that's my cue!" a woman's voice called out. Camila let out a yelp as a beautiful redheaded elf woman with chalk white skin of about her age stepped out from seemingly nowhere. "Please allow me to introduce myself! I'm a witch of wealth and taste. Okay, I'm not wealthy. Or tasteful. But I am a witch, and the name's Eda the Owl Lady, at your service."

"Oh, good afternoon," Camila said with a nervous laugh. "I'm Camila and this is my daughter Luz. I was wondering, Miss Eda, if you could direct us to a potion maker. Or someone who can magically cure diseases."

Eda rubbed her hands together. "Well, as it happens, I do happen to know the most talented potioneer outside of the Potions Coven. Yours truly! And as it happens, there's a discount for attractive single mothers such as yourself."

Was that…was that seriously a blush appearing on Camila's face? No, surely not. Or if it was, it had to be a blush of embarrassment that Luz was watching some total stranger flirt with her mother. "Unfortunately for you, I'm quite happily married. In fact, it's because of my husband I need a potion. He's ill. Sick with cancer."

Eda winced. "Yowch. That's…not going to be an easy cure to brew." Camila's mouth dropped open. That implied there was a cure! A real cure! A magical cure that could make Manny well again! That could save their family!

Luz looked at Eda with big, adorable, pleading eyes. "Please, Miss Eda! I'll give you my whole collection of shed snakeskins."

Eda whistled. "Wow, that would fetch a ton of snails." She did not appear to be saying that ironically or sarcastically at all. "Yeah, that'd be more than enough to cover the price of the potion. But…there's a problem."

Camila rolled her eyes. Of course there was. "See, this potion, well, the ingredients are really rare," Eda went on. "You can't just buy them at the night market. I'm gonna have to procure the ingredients myself. And that means I'm gonna have to go on long expeditions to very dangerous locales."

"We wouldn't ask you this if there was another way, Eda," Camila said. "But Manny's cancer is incurable with human medicine."

"Yeah, see, you're not the only one looking after a kid," Eda said. Then she reached into her hair and somehow managed to pull out a small, absolutely adorable creature. It looked like a dog except it had horns and an exposed skull.

Luz let out a high pitched squeal of excitement. "AY, QUÉ LINDO!" Luz screeched.

"This is King and I'm, well, I'm looking after him," Eda said, looking a bit uncomfortable with the idea. "I can't just leave him in my house alone. And I sure as hell can't leave him in the Human Realm with you."

"What if we came here?" Camila suggested. "We could stay with you, help you sell…whatever you sell here." Other than the commonality of all of Eda's merchandise being human items, there seemed to be no tangible pattern to them. "You could make more money and we'd look after King for you whenever you were off gathering the ingredients."

Eda tilted her head, looking intrigued. "I do like the idea of more money. All right, Cammy. You got yourself a deal! Don't suppose you'd be willing to make an Everlasting Oath?"

Camila did not know what that was, but she didn't like the sound of that one iota. "Don't push your luck. And if I ever found out you've made Luz make one of those, I'll bash your face open."

Eda gave a seductive growl. "This cat's sure got claws, don't she? You sure you and your hubby aren't looking for a third person? Maybe just a one time thing to spice up –"

"Miss Eda!" Luz said, sounding scandalized. "You can't flirt with Mami! Only Papi can flirt with Mami!"

Camila covered her mouth to hide the huge grin on her face. "That's my girl. Eda, please try to keep things professional. My husband was a soldier. You won't like him when he's angry."

"Hey, a gal has to shoot her shot with a gal as beautiful as yourself," Eda said with a wink. "Okay, professional, gotcha."

Before Camila could say another word, Luz practically bowled Eda over with a hug. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, Miss Eda!" Luz nearly shouted. "You're such a good, nice person!"

"Heh," Eda said. "Think that's the first time anyone's called me nice since I was a kid. All right, Cammy, tell your husband about this arrangement and meet me back here in an hour and I'll bring you to the Owl House."

Despite the dire circumstances, Camila couldn't help but grin like a crazy person, because now she had hope. Hope Manny would be okay. Hope their family would continue to be together. Even if it meant she had to spend a summer in a land unlike anything she could have possibly imagined.

Camila was proud that she had the presence of mind to take pictures with her phone of the strange new world, which she learned was named the Boiling Isles, a part of the Demon Realm. The idea of demons scared her at the core, but she quickly learned they weren't literally fiends from the infernal realms, but rather that it was just a catch all term for creatures who weren't witches. They seemed very nice for the most part, including a very kind woman whose entire face solely consisted of an eye and her daughter who both happily agreed to be in a selfie with Camila and Luz.

Luz came running into her house at top speed. "Papi, papi, it's amazing! Mami and I found a magical land! And there's a witch named Eda and she's going to brew a potion and it'll cure you and everything will be okay!"

Manny ruffled her hair. "Oh, Luz. I'm proud of you for holding fast onto your imagination. It's always been one of your greatest strengths and I don't want to see this get you down."

"Manny…as bizarre as it sounds, Luz is actually telling the truth," Camila told him. Manny stared at her, looking as if he believed her to be insane. "We found a portal to a dimension called the Demon Realm." A panicked look formed on Manny's face and he made the sign of the cross. "It's not like that, Manny!" she hastened to assure him. "It's not hell. It's just another world."

"You shouldn't try to encourage –"

Camila showed him the pictures and he just stared at the pictures, at the incontrovertible proof Camila and Luz had been in another world. To be honest, without them, Camila might have started to think herself she had imagined the whole thing. "Eda can brew a potion that will cure you, Manny! But in return, we have to stay there for the summer to help her out with her store and babysit her son while she goes in search of the ingredients."

Manny stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Sounds reasonable enough. And I am owed some favors. I can probably finagle a sabbatical for health reasons with my new diagnosis. I just hope word doesn't leak back to…" He shook his head firmly. "Never mind that. I can't believe I'm even saying this, but okay! Let's do it!"

"YAY!" Luz shouted and she ran around in a circle until she got dizzy and fell down. "I can't believe I'm going to be living in a real magical land for the summer! Oh, I wonder if I can rescue a princess from a dragon like in the stories. That'd be so awesome!" She gasped. "What if I could learn magic and become a wizard like Nita Callahan?!"

"Well, certainly no one's fighting any dragons on my watch," Camila vowed. "I have to draw the line somewhere."

The process of packing proved to be harder than anticipated, what with Luz constantly and almost literally bouncing off the walls. But in the end, they managed to bring everything they thought they'd need in several suitcases. If they needed something else, they could just go through the portal and get it from the house. Camila made the necessary arrangements to temporarily close the practice. She told her friends she'd be spending the summer in the Dominican Republic in a isolated village where Camila's mother lived. In actuality, her mother was long dead and she'd been born and raised in Santo Domingo, but it was a good cover to explain why she'd be totally out of contact.

And then, the three of them were in the Demon Realm. Embarrassingly, Eda appeared to be just as much of a flirt towards Manny as she was with Camila, if not more so. Camila hoped that Eda would get the message that she and Manny were happily married soon, because things could get real awkward real quick if she didn't what with them staying under the same roof for months.

Eda brought them into the woods to the Owl House. As it turned out, the name wasn't just for show. The house's genius loci was a sentient demon named Hooty. To say he was a freak of nature was putting it lightly. But bizarrely, Manny seemed to get along with him extremely well. The two of them were chatting away like they'd known each other their whole lives. It was disturbing, to say the least.

What was just as disturbing was the massive wanted poster proudly displayed in the living room. "I can explain," Eda said, sounding almost desperate. "The government here is a bunch of assh – uh, jerks. I'm rebelling against their stupid, restrictive system by refusing to join a coven. That's all. Oh, and some minor crimes, really nothing big, it's not like I killed – well, not like I murdered someone."

"Don't forget the first degree llamacide!" Hooty yelled.

"That llama knew too much," Eda hissed in a low, menacing tone. "Look, I gotta be blunt with you. You're just gonna have to suck it up. I can think of only a handful of people with enough talent to brew the potion and none of them would ever work with a human. Criminal record or no criminal record, you're stuck with me."

Unfortunately, Eda was right. She had them over a barrel. She was just going to have to trust that Eda didn't have any especially dark skeletons in her past, that she wasn't going to try to eat them like the witches from those stories. "Well, if Luz gets hurt because of you, your life isn't worth anything," Camila vowed. "Otherwise, you're right. We just have to trust you."

"I think I got some sleeping bags among all my human stuff," Eda said. Camila wasn't sure whether or not she'd heard her previous comment. "I'll have to steal – buy some beds for you tomorrow."

All of a sudden, it hit Camila like a ton of bricks. She was really going to do this. She was going to spend the summer in another dimension, in the house of a wanted criminal, in the hopes that said wanted criminal would brew a magic potion to cure Manny. This wasn't some fantastical dream she was having. It was real.

"Well, I'll leave you and Hooty to things," Eda said. She planted a kiss on the back of Camila and Manny's hands in quick succession. "See you around, cuties!" Camila hoped she wasn't blushing as much as Manny was right now.

A silence descended upon the room as Eda walked upstairs. "I think this situation calls for a song!" Hooty announced. "Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip!"

The rest of the afternoon was spent, well, it was frankly spent both trying to get a handle on what life was going to be like in their new home and frantically trying to avoid Hooty. Camila was very successful with the former. Not so much the latter.

As the sun set and Manny and Camila headed towards dreamland, Camila took her husband's hand in her own and gave him a loving smile. "Well? What do you think?"

Manny thought about it for a while. "I think I'm going to like it here," he decided.