by Mark Oshiro
More years passed. She forgot about Delfina and what that woman had done for her. So when Jovana walked by a stall in El Mercado and Delfina sat there, her face twisted in shock, it took a moment to remember who la vieja was. Jovana drifted forward, a smile on her face, and she stretched out her hands. “Do you have a story to tell, señora?”
Delfina jerked her body away from Jovana and said nothing.
Jovana never saw Delfina again.
Years passed again, and then one day, Jovana knew she was ready. The people of Obregán, of aldeas near and far, were desperate to see “la madre e hija,” las cuentistas reunited by the power of faith, and both were busy taking stories, selling salvation, and using those stories to give themselves a life of comfort and extravagance.
But Jovana knew she could get even more. She knew she could be more if she eliminated her final obstacle. She found the solution in Cruz, a man who crafted fine metal blades and knives, who had given his stories of volatile rage and anger to Soledad for years. Jovana found him at night, when El Mercado was still open but much quieter. He was drunk, as he usually was when he’d had a bad day of sales. He was unaware that it was not the quality of his work that drove people from him, but his demeanor.
Jovana knew that he was perfect for this.
She walked up to his display, and he grunted at her. “Tell Soledad I have nothing for her today,” he said. “Maybe next week.”
“I’m here for you,” she said, and she fluttered her long lashes at him.
He grunted again. “Not my type.”
“I have a story for you, Cruz.”
He raised an eyebrow. “No soy cuentista. And I have Soledad. What use are you to me?”
She looked around her, to sell him on the idea that what she was about to say was a secret. “I took Soledad’s story.”
He said nothing; his eyebrow was still raised.
“I have not given it back to Solís, because … well, it doesn’t feel right to. Not when I know what she did.”
“Chica, please tell me what this has to do with me.”
She leaned in.
She breathed out.
“She has never returned your stories to Solís. She kept them all.”
Then she leaned forward, even closer. She told him a small detail, something that she herself had heard Cruz tell Soledad barely a week ago, while she was hiding behind their stall.
He didn’t move at first. Then he set his drink down and stood up. He looked at her, his face blank and unresponsive, and then he reached up and picked the longest, sharpest blade off his wall.
Jovana stood there for nearly a quarter hour. Waiting. Then she slowly walked back to Soledad’s stall, each step powerful, sure. When she entered it, Cruz was long gone. She stepped over the body, then picked up a sage candle that rested on Soledad’s—no, her—altar. She licked her thumb and used it to wipe away the splash of blood that had trickled down the side of it.
I think I’ll change my name, she thought.
She is sorry, Solís. But only now. Only because she got caught.
Soledad crumpled there, sobbing and wheezing, and she kept saying that she was sorry, that she had thought los cuentistas died out, that I had to tell Solís that she was never going to do this again.
But I remained motionless. I had kept stories. They surged in me again: Lito’s terror, Marisol’s guilt, Emilia’s rage. I had not returned them either. Did it matter that I had not made money from them? Did it matter that I was not turning one person against another for my own gain? How was I any better?
How had she not been punished, when it felt so obvious to me that You were punishing me?
That emotion overpowered them all. A rage, pure and fiery, ran through my veins, overpowering the others.
What was real anymore? Were the stories of Solís y los cuentistas even true? Was everything in my life a lie?
I tried to say something, but the words would not form on my tongue. I swayed as I stood, my world spinning around me.
Soledad cried out again, implored me to stay, to teach her what she did wrong. “Please,” she said. “Don’t leave me.”
Emilia was still standing there, shaking as she tried to hold me upright. “We have to go,” she said.
My head was still swirling and reeling, still trying to process what I had learned.
“What do you want? What can I give you?” Soledad stood and searched her altar. “More coins? Please let me give you something.”
“You don’t have what I need,” I spat out, the anger finally getting the best of me. “How could you? How could you take something so sacred and ruin it?”
She spread her arms, and her cheeks were still wet and puffy from the tears. “At least let me try to make things better, señorita. Please.”
She held her hands up to me.
It was so pitiful.
But was I any better than she was? Hadn’t I lied, hadn’t I kept secrets from those who loved me?
I looked at that portrait of misery and regret.
“Xochitl, please.” Emilia tugged on my arm. “We have to get going now.”
“Do you need a coyote?” Soledad asked. “I can get you one. A guide. Are you going north?”
Emilia and I stilled.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Eduardo!” she yelled at me, and spit dribbled out of the corner of her mouth. She didn’t even seem to care. “If you keep this to yourself, I will tell you where to find Eduardo, and I’ll make sure he takes you on, free of charge.”
“What’s a coyote?” Emilia asked.
I looked to Soledad, as I wanted the answer, too.
Soledad seemed to think she had an opportunity to win us over; her face lit up with excitement. “A guide,” she said. “There are many of them here in Obregán, all willing to guide you to any aldea in the world … for a price, of course.”
“And this Eduardo can take us to Solado?” I asked. I had some money that Marisol had given me. Perhaps it would be wise to use it.
“I know the way,” Emilia reminded me, cutting down my excitement. She pulled on my arm once more. “Are you able to move? Because we have to.”
“Please,” Soledad said. “Let me send you to Eduardo. Or to another cuentista. Anything, please. Let me be la cuentista you need, Xochitl.”
“I don’t need you,” I said. “And unlike you and your mentor, I keep my secrets.”
She begged me profusely, her hands running up and down my arms, and my skin crawled as she did so.
“Vámonos, Emilia,” I said, hoping my dizziness would pass.
But Soledad held me tightly. “Can you teach me?” she asked, imploring me with those eyes of hers. “Can you show me how to be a cuentista?”
I didn’t answer. I got away from her as fast as I could.
The sounds of El Mercado rushed back in. More cuentistas offered their services, but I ignored them, too. Why did Soledad say she believed we had died out? Did las cuentistas of Obregán all behave the same? Was it all an elaborate lie?
My world continued to expand. Bigger and bigger, and as it did so, I felt smaller. Less consequential. Less like I mattered. Less like all the stories I had ever been told about Solís were anything more than that: just stories.
I didn’t know what sort of person I was if all those stories weren’t real.
By the time we got out of El Mercado de Obregán, You were straight up above me in the sky. I was surprised by the sight of a group of children standing under a torrent of water being pumped from an old stone well off to the side of the road I was on. I watched as an older man, his hair graying and hanging down his back, laughed at the children, then stuck a metal canteen under the stream. Water was available everywhere here. No hunting for it, no worries of thirst.
No Julio.
I did my best to blend in, to seem as though I knew what I was doing, and refilled my goatskin bag as casually as I could, then motioned for Emilia to do the same.
“We didn’t ge
t supplies,” said Emilia. “Only a meal.”
“I know,” I said after taking a deep drink of water. “I just needed to get out of there.”
She nodded. She understood.
Did she, Solís?
Because as I waited for her to fill up on water, I wasn’t even sure I understood myself.
A flash of a memory hit me:
Emilia, swaddled and terrified, being taken aboveground, learning that los pálidos had lied to her people.
Maybe she understood me better than I ever thought she could.
We walked, my mind buzzing, and I didn’t know what to do next. I let Emilia lead me for a while, and she paused next to a red structure that was built of some sort of clay, smoother than what we used in Empalme. I could smell salvia from the nearby doorway, and the aroma calmed my nerves. I breathed it deeply, letting it fill my lungs, imagined it running through my veins and to every part of my body. There was a man in another of those wooden chairs with wheels, and he waited behind another man who was being fitted with an arm, much like the one that la señora Sánchez had gotten.
This was a center of healing, and enfermeras flitted about from person to person, asking what people needed, then taking some of them indoors, while others received medicinas or potions before handing over coins or trinkets as payment.
Did Emilia need something from this place? I looked to her, and she was paler, sweat dripping down her face.
“Emilia?” I stepped closer to her. “¿Estás bien?”
“Hold on,” she said, annoyed.
I closed my eyes and took another deep breath of the salvia. I am going to find Simone, I told myself. I had to. I couldn’t turn back empty-handed at this point, not after all I’d gone through. I allowed my anger at Soledad, at the stories I’d been told, to swim through me. It was refreshing to have a focus, something to direct my ire at.
“Should we get some supplies?”
I opened my eyes. Emilia did not look any better. “Probably,” I said. “Let me think.”
“I don’t know that we have much time.”
I frowned. “Are we in a rush?”
She was breathing harder than before, and her next words were quiet. Frightened. “Oh, Solís, help me.”
“Emilia, what is going on?”
“We need to go now.”
The last word was a blunt force, and I backed away from her. “I am confused. Is something wrong?”
“Please, Xochitl. NOW.” She clutched her hands to her chest and winced. Then her eyes bulged and she spun about, like she was trying to find something.
“Can you just tell me what—?”
“He’s here.”
I stilled. A chasm ripped open between us.
No.
No.
My instincts had been right. This was a trap after all. There was only one person she could have been referring to:
Julio.
“How do you know?” I yelled, and all the calm that the salvia had given me was gone. “Where is he? Where?”
“No, no me entiendes,” she said, and her speech was sloppy, the words slurred as they came out of her mouth. She wiped at her face, and her eyes were red, blurring and glassy with tears, and she wouldn’t stop moving. She shifted from one leg to the other. “I can sense it.”
“What are you talking about, Emilia? Sense what?”
She stepped closer finally, and the tears were now spilling over. “We don’t have time, and I wish I could tell you my story, but—”
“But you already did!” I said.
“I lied!”
It was as if she had slapped me. She might as well have.
I grabbed her hand, intending to guide her from this place, to hide her in Obregán, where Julio could not find her—but it all rushed into me the moment I touched her.
No ritual, no prayer. I cried out, and fear and regret bolted up my arm and—
It was impossible.
And yet—
Emilia had watched me run off from her the morning before, saw me far in the distance, but she did not follow me. Not at first, not as she had told me the night before.
She went back.
She had seen my pack and realized what she forgot; she did not want to venture out into the desert without supplies, without food or water or clothing. So she rushed back to the place Julio had stolen from someone in Empalme. Most of her life had been spent underground, and she had not learned much from being with her father aboveground. But she knew that without food and water, she would die.
There was little left, but she found a burlap sack in a corner of the home, some dried fruit, and a canvas canteen. It was enough. Enough to get her to wherever I was going, enough to allow her to follow me and the foolish plan that she’d assembled only minutes before. She grabbed a small hunting axe off the wall, stuffed everything into the bag, and as she made for the door, she felt a hand in her hair, pressure on her scalp, and she screamed, shattering the terrible silence of that place.
“Did you think you could leave me?” Julio shrieked, and he flung her down on the ground, and she looked up at his towering form. He teetered in front of her, his body a mass of rage and tesgüino. He fell briefly himself, used the wall to push to his feet, and she scrambled away from him, farther into the house.
“No, Papi,” she whimpered. “I was afraid, and I was going to find you and—”
“Don’t lie to me, mija,” he slurred. “Where were you going?” She said nothing, paralyzed with terror, and he shrieked at her. “Where were you going?”
“Away!” she yelled back. She had never before raised her voice at this man, had never dared to risk facing his wrath, but she was so tired, Solís. She was tired of cowering in fear. Of keeping to herself. Of believing that she was the problem. “Anywhere but here! Anywhere without you!”
He swayed again, blinked, wiped at his mouth. “Then go,” he said after a silence. He waved at her as if she were a stray animal. “Leave.”
There was no longer any emotion in what he said. She stared at him, could not believe that he had given up on her, but it wore off quickly. She lifted herself from the ground and moved forward, one step after another, her eyes locked on him, and she stepped past him, to the door, to her freedom and—
His other hand whipped out, and there was a puncture on the underside of her left arm as cool metal bit into her skin.
She strained as hard as she could.
It ended.
He let go of her, and she spun around.
Glass. Metal. A vial. He held it up in the low light of the morning, and he examined it. “I’ll give you a day,” he said. “You’re free to leave now.”
Horror swirled through her. “What have you done, Papi? ¡Soy tu hija!”
Julio ignored this. His old smile came back—sinister and raw—and he directed it at her. “There’s something you don’t know about los sabuesos, about their magic,” he said, his tone informational, as if this were something she’d find interesting and entertaining. “I have wanted one for so very long, but los pálidos … they had very few of them left. But now I know how to make them.”
A malicious grin lit up his face. “Something happens when they are created and corrupted. They have a pull on their prey. When they get close, their victim feels like they cannot resist. They run toward los sabuesos.”
He chuckled. “I wonder if Manolito met his fate with open arms.”
He sealed the vial, turned away from his daughter. “You have one day, Emilia. Goodbye.”
She sobbed loudly, but she couldn’t stay any longer. She ran out the door and did not look back.
She lied to me.
I lied to her.
That’s all this was: nothing but lies.
Emilia let go of me, gasped for air, and then she just moved, brushing past me, and she thrummed with energy. “Now you know,” she said, ignoring the look of confusion on my face. “And I feel it right now, Xochitl. It’s beckoning to me.”
I followed. I f
ollowed because I had no time to think through a plan, to consider that it was dangerous to be anywhere near Emilia. All I could see in my mind was Julio. I began to frantically look around the crowd for his sinister form, his twisted mouth, the sound of el sabueso. But there were too many people. How did people ever locate anyone in this place? My gaze jumped from one person to another, from odd headwear to flowing cloaks, from dark skin to light, from thick curly hair to straight black cascades like my own. No Julio. No sabueso.
How did she do that? How did she give me her story without the ritual?
“They’re closer!” Emilia sobbed out. Then she lifted a shaking finger and turned back toward me as I caught up to her. “That way. They want me to go that way.”
Then she took a step in that direction, walked right into me, kept pushing. I put my hands on her shoulders and tried to steady her, but she continued to walk, crying as she did so, and I almost lost my balance. “Emilia, no! Stop it!”
“I can’t help it!” she wailed.
Another step.
Then she screamed.
I followed the gaze of her wide eyes.
There, right as the crowd parted, I saw them.
They were at the end of la calle.
Julio.
Then, at the end of a leash made of a thick rope:
Un sabueso.
Emilia kept pushing against me, and I uttered a low moan. “Emilia, we can’t go that way, we have to—”
I shoved her in the opposite direction, and a growl rumbled over the sound of Obregán.
I spun back, tried to find them in all those people, and we found one another.
Our eyes locked.
Julio smiled.
He dropped the leash.
I grabbed Emilia’s hand, harder than I had ever grabbed another person, and I yanked her. My voice became shrill and horrible as I begged her to trust me, to believe in me, and I started running. I guided her north and we ran
and ran
and ran.