Each of Us a Desert

by Mark Oshiro

  “No, I can save you!” he said. “I left our home to find a cure!”

  She was ghastly, skin clinging to bone, but her voice was still soothing. “I am gone, Eliazar,” she said, and tears prickled my eyes. “You have to let me go.”

  “But it isn’t fair!” he cried out. “I don’t know how to live without you, Gracia.”

  He pushed himself up from the ground, stood directly in front of her rotting face. “It makes me feel close to you to do this,” he explained. “If I’m suffering, it means you’re still here.”

  In an instant, she was normal again. “But love is not suffering,” she said, and she reached out and touched his face, ran her fingers through his beard. “I know you want me back. I know you want to see me again. But this is no way to honor me.”

  “Please come back,” Eliazar croaked, his cheeks damp with tears.

  “You know I can’t. Deep down … you’ve known the whole time.”

  “But I don’t know how to do this,” he weeped. “I don’t know how to do any of this without you.”

  “You already have been.”

  She stepped back. “I am gone, Eliazar.”

  His shoulders drooped.

  “I know,” he said. “You died.”

  Gracia smiled at her love.

  She faded, became a thin dust of ash, and then she was gone.

  Silence returned.

  The dead watched us.

  And the four of them stared directly at me.

  I was all that was left.

  But there were no shadows. No pesadillas. No sounds. Nothing.

  “Is it over?” said Felipe, and there was the smallest hint of hope in that voice, the tiniest spark of potential.

  Emilia moved closer to me, and I was surprised when I felt her hand brush against mine, felt her fingers interlock with my own, and I didn’t care that anyone could see us.

  She understood me, didn’t she?

  It was still silent.

  “Mami, what’s happening?” Felipe asked. “Why is it so quiet?”

  “Maybe they are sparing Xochitl,” said Rosalinda.

  “She is a cuentista, after all,” said Eliazar. He brushed the tears off his face.

  I let go of Emilia’s hand. “We should leave, then,” I said. “If this place has nothing for me, then we shouldn’t stick around.”

  I walked forward, heading north, and then—

  I couldn’t.

  I stilled, and it was as if the very will to move had been ripped from me. I tried to turn around, but I couldn’t. “Emilia,” I said, and the terror went up my throat, came spilling out. “I can’t move. Something’s happening.”

  She moved quietly around my rigid body, floated right in my eyesight, her brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  I could move my eyes. Only my eyes.

  Nothing else.

  And so I saw them coming.

  They advanced from the north, as if they were going to join the dead behind us, and panic pressed my lungs, made it hard to breathe.

  “What do I do? Am I—?”

  “Mami, who are they?”

  No. No.

  I knew them.

  Lani. Omar. Ofelia. Soledad. Lázaro.

  They all woke up inside me.

  “When will you tell them?” Lani said as she approached. She sneered at me. “Or will you continue to let them think you are one of the chosen ones?”

  “Are you judging us now?” Omar asked, and he circled me as the others stepped back. “Do you think you’re better than us because you know what we’ve done?”

  “No!” I cried out.

  But was that true?

  “You defied Solís,” said Ofelia. “How are you any better than us? How are you not worse?”

  Soledad laughed as she came upon me. “You knew what I had done, and yet you still thought of yourself as superior. You thought you were pure.”

  And then there was Emilia. Something was wrong: there were those cold eyes of hers, the ones that were so uninterested, so uncaring. They were not part of whom I had come to know. It was the old version of her, the one I had despised.

  “You’ve been keeping our stories,” she said. She smiled, pure malice and spite and hatred.

  They began to rot, slowly at first, their skin turning dark, then bubbling up, then falling off, and I held back a scream as I watched them fall apart. Their bodies crumbled, revealed who had been standing behind them.

  Rosalinda. Felipe. Eliazar.

  “Is it true?” said Felipe. “Did you really keep them?”

  “How many?” asked Rosalinda. “How many?”

  And then Eliazar was there, his mouth downturned, and more so than anyone else’s, his expression broke my heart. “I know you did not have time to complete the ritual, but … were you going to keep mine, too?”

  “I had to,” I said, but it lacked all confidence. “I had to keep the stories. I would have forgotten what Lito … what he…”

  They didn’t know anything about Lito. Or Julio. Or Empalme. None of that mattered to them.

  I remembered that afternoon in the center of mi aldea. How they all turned their backs on me once they’d discovered what I had done.

  It was happening again, wasn’t it?

  “Why?” asked Felipe. “Why would you do that?”

  I knew the answer. But I was still stuck in that spot, unable to move, unable to escape their gazes.

  “Tell the truth, Xochitl. Say it aloud.”

  Emilia. She touched me. Once she made contact, I nearly collapsed, free from the terrible force that had bound me. The others took a step away from me, as though I were something to be feared.

  The dead remained, watching.

  I sucked in a deep breath and choked, and then it all came out. All of it. I told them of that first story, the one Lito had given me, of what I found in Soledad, of the promise of Simone. And then I paused—Emilia nodded, urging me on—and I told them why this was so important.

  “Once I kept a story, I saw what it did to the others,” I explained. “How it gave them the freedom to make the same mistakes all over again. How I was nothing to them but a means to an end. And when I found out there was another cuentista in the world—one who had actually left their aldea—I had to know more. I had to know how he left his home and had survived.”

  But …

  I chose this. It had not merely happened to me.

  And I did not regret it.

  So I said that aloud, too.

  “And I need to end this,” I added. “I know our world values las cuentistas, but … this life is so exhausting. I have no choice about what I am to do for the rest of my life. This is what was forced upon me, and I kept the stories for … for…”

  I sighed.

  “I kept them for myself. So I could find my own story. So I could rid myself of this power. That’s why we’re going to Solado. For a curandera named Simone.”

  The sun was gone, and the soft glow from the stars began to illuminate the earth. I stood there at first, dirt all over my clothing, stuck to my skin where I had been sweating, and I swayed. I wanted to give up, to collapse back down to the earth, to let it consume me.

  I looked up.

  Dos estrellas, right above me, fat and bright.

  They twinkled, as if they knew they were being observed. This had always been a time of celebration for mi gente, for mi aldea, but since Your eyes were absent, theirs were now on me, examining me.

  Judging me.

  There was a shuffling behind me.

  The dead were leaving. I watched them as they climbed back the way they had come, as they left us alone.

  Each of us a desert.

  “Vámonos,” I said, unsure where I was heading, unsure if I was worthy.

  But I had chosen to do this, and I would do anything to see it through.

  Night arrived.

  And the others did not abandon me, as I expected them to.

  Did they hate me? Despise me? Were t
hey silent as a punishment? I considered every possibility, and in that act, I assumed the worst of myself. How could I not?

  But as we walked away from my secret, now spilled forth for all of them to consume, Rosalinda gripped me by the arm, a gesture of tenderness.

  “You have been through a lot, chica,” she said. “I cannot imagine what it was like to take so many stories for that length of time.” She offered me a smile. “I cannot judge you for what you want to do. I would probably feel the same.”

  “I had no idea,” Eliazar added. “I thought you were like Téa. That you took a story only every now and then.”

  “Are you sad, Xochitl?” Felipe looked up at me with that round face of his.

  “Sometimes,” I answered. I shook my head. “More than I like to admit.”

  “Will this Simone you are seeking make you happy?”

  I gazed at Emilia; she nodded.

  “I think so,” I answered.

  “Then you should do it,” he said. “Sometimes I am sad about Papi, but I’m much happier with Mami, even out here in the desert.”

  I like to think that Rosalinda felt comforted by that. That Felipe was thankful that Your gaze was gone. That we were together under las estrellas.

  We passed out of la ciudad, left its bones behind.

  And as soon as we were beyond it, Eliazar crumpled into a heap on the ground.

  He dropped so quick that none of us could have stopped it, both his fall and what followed after it.

  He gasped for air, and Rosalinda was at his side, and it wasn’t enough. “Breathe, Eliazar!” she cried out. “You’re okay. Just breathe.”

  He laughed. His elation cut through the quiet night, and he didn’t even try to get up.

  “Leave me here,” he said. “I am not taking another step.”

  “Eliazar, don’t say that!” Rosalinda pulled her canteen out and tried to hand it to him.

  He pushed it back. “She loved me, you know? She always loved me.”

  I knelt at his side. “And you loved her,” I said. “Get up. Finish the journey. For her.”

  “I already did.”

  He gazed at each of us, peace and acceptance soothing his features.

  His eyes were glass.

  He went still, then he fell to the side, slowly, inevitably, as if he knew the earth was waiting for him to return.

  And Eliazar died with a smile on his face.

  Rosalinda broke out in sobs, hit his chest, asked him to stop joking, screamed that this wasn’t funny, and Felipe was crying, too, and I fell back on my hands.

  A shadow.

  Above.

  I looked up.

  Dark shapes blurred out las estrellas. They swooped around and around, and I could hear the air in their wings. We scrambled to our feet, and Emilia yelped in alarm as one of them nearly landed on her head.

  They descended in droves, their wingspans enormous. Their necks were wreathed in white feathers, the rest a terrible shade of black, as if they could devour any light that shone around them. And those beaks, so awful and sharp, snapped open and shut, the creatures anticipating the meal that awaited them.

  I had seen them only once in my life, when someone had died hunting outside of Empalme.

  Zopilotes.

  They swarmed around him until we could no longer see his body.

  Could no longer see the smile on his face.

  “We have to go,” I said. “We need to find somewhere to camp.”

  The feathers ruffled, and I tried to ignore the ripping, tried not to think what that was.

  We were weak and frightened and so very tired.

  We left Eliazar behind.

  And once again—we suffered.

  You were silent. You answered no prayers, sent us no signs of any sort, did not comfort us once.

  We walked away from Eliazar’s body, and doubt consumed me—permeated our whole group. One of us had died. Was any of this worth it if one of us didn’t make it? My journey, las poemas, my decisions, all of it? Was this a punishment? Did You hand those out and hope we knew why they had occurred?

  But You said nothing. So all I had was my imagination.

  I imagined many things.

  What if Simone was not real?

  What if Solado was a mistake?

  What if las poemas were a cruel trick, meant to tempt me and torment me and drive me far from home, from my duty?

  Or maybe the zopilotes would follow me on the path to Solado, would descend upon my body to feast upon it—but while I was still alive, still breathing.

  Or I would return to Empalme, and the gate would be locked. My entrance denied. They had found another cuentista, and I was no longer needed. No home, no purpose anymore.

  We were so alone, Solís. We had discarded our previous lives to find something else, somewhere else, and here we were, placed in the hands of someone we barely knew, who had lost her sense of where we were supposed to go, a sense that You had previously given her. We were without help, without a means of salvation if something went horribly wrong.

  It already had.

  Each of us a desert, each of us a curse.

  We could all die, and no one would ever find us.

  So we walked to our fate, and I stopped praying to you that night. You couldn’t help us anymore.

  No.

  You wouldn’t help us anymore.

  Las estrellas settled in the sky, and because of them, I could see the distant outline of yet more sierras in the north, and it tired me, Solís. I did not want to climb again; I did not want to push my body further than I had ever pushed it. I wanted more than anything to cease, to give myself over to the inevitability of it all.

  But I didn’t.

  I kept going.

  The world came alive around us, and I began to scope out areas that seemed safe enough to set up for the night. Creatures skittered in the underbrush. Felipe nearly stepped on a snake, golden stripes on its vibrant scales, and we all watched as it slithered into the shadows.

  We did not know what caused most of the noise; the creatures darted off when they heard us. I occasionally caught a flash of light in the irises of some bestia, some terrible thing that might have been stalking us. Were we the rare prey that had wandered into the hunting grounds of untold monsters? Las estrellas sparkled, enough for us to have suitable visibility, but without you, it was still a land of shadows.

  Each of us a desert. Each of us alone.

  Especially me.

  I was the first to notice it: a crumbling structure that blended in with the rolling hills behind it. I held out a hand to tell the others to stop, and I focused on the structure, trying to discern more details, and I realized it was much bigger than I had first thought.

  “What is that?” Emilia asked.

  I kept my hand raised.

  It was a wall.

  Much like la ciudad we had passed through, the wall was a mess, a pathetic echo of what it had once been. A ghostly image. The gray bricks and stones seemed to have crumpled long ago and lay in chaotic piles on the ground.

  “Not a very good wall,” said Felipe. “You can walk through it.”

  A whisper.

  Faint.

  Impossible.

  “Stop talking,” I said.

  “Why? It’s not like—”

  “Stop. Talking.” I hissed at Felipe, and I knew I was being harsh, but I had heard it again.

  Felipe shrank away from me and into the arms of Rosalinda, who scowled my way.

  What was out here? What had we stumbled into?

  “Emilia,” I said softly, my eyes locked on the remains of the wall, scanning it for any sign of life. “Did you come across this place on your travels?”

  “No,” she said. “I know we traveled far to the west before we headed south. I think we missed it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I can feel it again. Solís guiding me, that is.”

  I faced her. “You’re going to have to explain that.�
�

  “We came from that direction,” she said, pointing ahead of us, toward las montañas in the north. “But I remember descending in the morning and—” She thought for a moment, then turned her body to the west and pointed. “—we definitely went that way, then headed south.”

  I had no time to react to that. As soon as she stopped talking, I heard something new: the scrape of stone on stone.

  We stilled.

  A head poked out from behind a pile of rubble. All I could make out in the starlight was that the figure was small, with black hair and dark skin. “Eduardo?”

  What?!

  “No,” I said. “I’m Xochitl. Who are you?”

  The person stepped out from behind the stones, and Rosalinda cried out. The piece of the wall behind them was at least three times their height.

  It was a child.

  They came from behind the wall and rushed up to me, but stopped an arm’s length away. They were indeed young—perhaps much younger than Raúl, who was twelve—and then they scowled at me. “Why are you here? What do you want with us?”

  “Us?” Emilia said.

  I couldn’t help the sound I made, the cry that erupted from my mouth. They appeared from all over, tiny heads and faces from behind the ruins, from inside the piles of stones and brick, and they swarmed up to us. Some held stones, and others held weapons crafted from the ruins, from wood, and I saw one girl with a rotted arm of a saguaro jammed over a wooden stick, the needles jutting out threateningly.

  “There are more of us than you,” the boy said. “What do you want?”

  Rosalinda dropped down to her knees. “Ay, Solís, this is all too much,” she said, her head craned back, her prayer spitting up into the sky. “Please, help us, Solís.”

  “What did you need help with?”

  This came from a girl, whose face was stained with some sort of reddish ink in a rough pattern. She held a stone in her right hand, and I completely believed that she could hurt me with it.

  “We need a place to stay,” I said. “We were looking for a place to make camp, but … well, we found you.”

  She examined me. Moved closer. Let her arm down. “What do you think, Pablo?”

  “We vote,” he said.

  All the weapons dropped.

  “Who thinks we should not let them stay?”