by Mark Oshiro
“Who are you talking to?” Emilia asked, but I raised a hand for her to be quiet.
We are, cuentista.
“You protect this place.”
We do, they said. We also protected La Reina many years ago, before it was lost in La Quema.
“La Reina?”
You passed through it before you arrived here. It is la ciudad of truth.
I nodded. “We were tested.”
No. They put their head down, pawed at the ground. The truth is never a test. It is only the truth.
“Then why? Why show us all that? Why make us go through it?” I couldn’t hide the anger in my voice. “What if the others had rejected me like my own aldea did? The truth could have harmed me!”
The lead guardian gazed into my eyes and would not break contact. You have a journey ahead of you.
I laughed at that, and I didn’t even care that the others were staring at me, wide-eyed. What must that have looked like, Solís? To see me speaking to a guardian, laughing at them like that?
“You must be mistaken,” I said. “I’ve already been on a journey. We’re almost done.”
It was as though they didn’t even hear what I said. We lost Carlito, but we found something else. We have taken care of it, but there is a last piece. You and the other—the one from Solado—you must play your part.
Those words could have been spoken to me by Tía Inez. Mamá. Papá. Any person in Empalme. It was what I had done my entire life: play my part.
I, the obedient, faithful daughter, la cuentista de Empalme, had done everything that was asked of me.
No. I was done playing that part. So how could they ask this of me?
“I am going to Solado to help Emilia,” I said. “And to find Si- mone. That’s all.”
There was silence once more, and someone shifted nearby. Gabriela and Pablo approached us.
This was their guardian. I could see the reverence on their faces.
“Amato,” Pablo said, and they smiled wide, joyful. “It is good to see you again.”
Amato bowed to them, brought their head close to the ground, then looked back to me. Eres cuentista, Amato said.
“I am.”
Then you will be needed.
I considered them. The other guardians sat behind Amato, all with their gaze to the ground, unmoving. But then they each brought up their head, their yellow eyes piercing me.
We know what you are trying to do, Amato said.
“Are you going to stop me?”
No. The guardian licked a paw. This will be the last thing we ask of you.
One more.
It was always one more thing, wasn’t it?
My stomach rumbled, both from hunger and from the stories rousing from their slumber.
But … I could take one more, couldn’t I?
One more, and then it would be over.
Forever.
“I’ll do it,” I said. “Just this one, and that’s it.”
We accept, Amato said, and then the guardian bowed to me. Gracias, cuentista. We will keep you safe as you journey to Solado.
I nodded and twisted to face Emilia. “They’re all coming with us,” I explained. “To protect us as we enter Solado.”
“That makes me feel better,” she said, “but what’s going on?”
I addressed Gabriela and Pablo. “They haven’t found Carlito, but apparently, everything has to do with Solado.”
“Then we should get going,” said Emilia before the others could speak. “If I’ve learned anything from you, then we want to be far along the trail before Solís is directly above us.”
I looked to Rosalinda for confirmation, but she was frowning at me. “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t risk it anymore. This is so much harder than I thought it would be, and…” She sighed. “… we can’t. We’re staying.”
“Staying?” said Emilia. “Here?”
“I already talked to Felipe about it,” she said. “We have been trying to find a home for weeks now.”
“I’m tired,” said Felipe, and his face drooped with sadness. “I don’t want to leave you, but…” He reached out, and Pablo was suddenly at his side, holding his outstretched hand. “… I made a friend last night. I think I want to stay.”
“Rosalinda…,” I said, and the urge to convince her to come with us, to tell her that we could figure something out, it all died once I saw that she’d made up her mind. Felipe moved to her side and held her tight, and in his face, I saw Raúl.
“They need someone,” Rosalinda said. “They’ve survived this long on their own, but these children need help. We can build something here, Xochitl. Are you sure you don’t want to stay?”
“I have to keep going,” I said. “A little bit more.”
“You’re always welcome here,” she said. She hesitated. “And I understand why you did what you did, Xochitl. I think you need to hear that.”
She truly wasn’t leaving.
And I had to accept it.
I hugged Rosalinda, then Felipe, and I was surprised by the well of emotions I had for them. How long had I known them? Two days at best? And yet I was sad to leave, and that sadness found companions within me: Lito. Omar. Emilia. Their stories were still eager for someone to join them, to understand them. Eliazar’s spoke loudest to me, and the image of him climbing the hill from his home, refusing to look back, to see Gracia’s body behind him on the beach, filled my mind. I shook it off, disturbed at how easy it was to recall what others had lived through. Their memories were still more like my own.
I knew it was not a good thing; I would not mention it to anyone.
We packed quickly. Quietly. Refilled our water bags and canteens. We said our goodbyes to those children who were awake, and they waved at us as we walked north. I looked back at Rosalinda and Felipe, the ones who had chosen to stay behind, and there was an anticipation on their faces, as if they expected me to change my mind, to rush back to them and stay.
I kept walking.
Emilia and I walked beyond La Reina Nueva, into a morning that was warming up, into a future that was unknown.
The guardians followed us.
They did not speak to me.
A spike of pain tore into my abdomen, sharper than ever before. I pushed it and the stories back down.
What was I doing?
Emilia and I found Carlito not much later.
We came upon his body, splayed between two tall saguaros. Amato sat near Carlito, and I can’t explain how, but I felt their sadness, and that’s how I knew this was the missing leader of La Reina Nueva.
I don’t need to tell you what I saw, Solís. Would you suddenly care? Would the details of a dead child suddenly spark your interest? You must have seen him. You must have known. And yet, you still did nothing.
No explanation of that violence would make Carlito more human for you.
I looked away quickly. I didn’t want this to be my only memory of this poor young man. The horizon blurred, the ground swayed, and nausea tugged at what little water and food I’d had in my stomach. There was a hand on my arm, another pulling my hair back as I gagged. Emilia’s fingers, cool and certain.
Lito. It was Lito all over again. A body torn, potential lost.
Her affection buzzed over my skin. I didn’t understand it, how her nearness had grown to be such a comfort.
As a cuentista, I knew that we formed connections with everyone whose story we took. Is this what happened when a cuentista kept a story? Were we more raw with each other, closer together because she had shared her secrets with me?
I had been a cuentista for half my life, and I still did not feel as though I knew anything about it.
I opened my eyes, blinked away tears. Amato gave Carlito one last bow of reverence, and when they finished, they flashed bloodshot eyes in my direction.
This is what’s waiting for us.
More violence. More tragedy. More death. That’s what Amato meant, right?
We have to keep moving.
I had not stopped since I had made that fateful decision in Empalme. And now I felt so hollow, so empty, so vast.
You have a long climb today. Up Las Montañas de Solís. It will be hard. But you will be almost done after that.
Each of us becomes the desert.
It is important that you make it, cuentista. You must be there.
Each of us so terribly alone.
Amato moved up close, their eyes yellow again. They rubbed their massive head against my own and purred.
Follow me, cuentista. This is the last thing before the end.
I followed because I believed there was no other choice.
Did that count as a lie, Solís? I did not know whether the guardians could lie to others. Were they trying to quiet the panic and terror in me? Were they trying to give me hope?
Did you even care?
I started lying when I was very young. I knew years ago that I had been trapped into a life I did not choose. I couldn’t recall the first time that I dreamed of an existence beyond the gates of Empalme. But I still knew to keep those thoughts to myself, to bury them like the stories in my gut, because to speak the truth was to speak the truth of you.
I don’t know how many lies I was told either. And did those count if the people who said them did not know that what they told me was untrue? The stories of las cuentistas and las pesadillas were core to our beliefs. So were las estrellas that came out at night, that surrounded us, that granted us freedom from you. Maybe our belief is what gave it all power, what shaped our reality for us.
But where did that leave the others?
Julio, who chose to have this power, and then corrupted it.
Soledad, who yearned for the power and ruined lives because of it.
Téa, who was the sole cuentista for so very many people and could not help Eliazar when he needed it.
All our myths were different.
Did that make them lies?
Or were we simply trying to understand the horrors that you had given us?
I had spent most of my life within a lie, and now, when I was so horribly far from home, the truth was revealing itself.
You sat up there, and you did nothing.
Said nothing.
Fixed nothing.
You gave some of us a power meant to cleanse humanity, and then you sat back, and watched it all unfold.
The lies.
The chaos.
The suffering.
I had to keep going, Solís. Do you understand that? I was unattached. How had Mamá put it? Estás inquieta, she had told me. And she was right.
And now I was in your desert, which you created when you burned the world, and I was desperate to be free.
It was all worth it.
I had never been so tired, so desiring of rest. We walked as you continued your path through the sky, and your heat smothered us. I tried to drink more water, knowing that the last part of the journey was here, hopeful that I could stave off another pounding headache caused by the heat. I tore at the sleeves of my camisa to make two strips, and I tied them together at either end, making a loop, and I fitted the loop around my head to keep the sweat from my eyes.
It reminded me of what Eliazar had done for Felipe.
It felt as if he had died a lifetime ago.
My feet were stones, and my legs were on fire, both beneath the skin and over the surface of it. I had never been so scorched, so crisp, not since I was una jovencita, when I had wandered outside at mediodía while Mamá was making la masa in the house. She did not notice that I was gone until too late. By the end of the day, my skin was red and warm to the touch, and she had to spread the inside of an aloe vera leaf over my skin to cool me down, to make it stop screaming at me.
I missed her touch. Her laughter. Her temper. Those sharp, dark eyes. Her braids.
I wish I could tell you more, Solís. You always ask for it all, but that day blurred into itself. We walked and walked and walked, and the guardians kept pace, but we did not talk. Emilia took the lead, and I assumed that meant that you were still guiding her.
I drank water.
I ate dried strips of meat.
I relieved myself, my urine still too dark for my liking, but I couldn’t do anything about it.
I walked
and
walked
and
walked
and
walked.
Until I was certain I would burst into flames, that I would combust under you, that I would get so close to my destination but still end up like Raymundo, like all the others claimed by your heat.
And yet, I kept going.
One last story remained.
One last climb.
I would make it.
I had to.
Time slowed.
Time sped up.
Time meant nothing.
You were already cresting to the west when la montaña was within reach. Las bajadas at the base of Las Montañas de Solís were short and fierce, a dense collection of thorny árboles and dark bushes, the raised arms of the saguaros pointed toward the sky.
How long had it been since we left La Reina? I looked up at you, at your arc across the sky, then squatted low to the ground, my eyes closed, and I shoved it all down. Panic. Fear. The mixture of stories, churning, living, desiring.
“¿Estás bien, Xochitl?”
Emilia put her hand on my back, but I kept my eyes closed, let the wave pass. I thought of Papá, of how often he asked me that question, never as small talk. He truly wanted to know if I was well.
Perhaps Emilia did, too.
You’re so close, I told myself. Don’t give up now.
But I was so terribly afraid, Solís. Afraid that I’d made a terrible choice, afraid that I was barreling toward nothing, afraid that this was all pointless.
The guardian spoke to me in my mind. Cuentista, Amato said. You must rise.
I opened my eyes slowly, and the burning light hurt. I blinked away tears.
“Xochitl…” Emilia’s voice was tentative.
Worried.
I expected to see the leader of the guardians in front of me.
Instead, there was a person.
Their hair was long, tied in thin braids that fell from a brown wrap on their head. I could only see their eyes: Dark. Nearly black. They were tall. Thin. What skin I could see under their flowing clothing—baggy breeches, a light cloth like mine bound around their torso and then cascading back into something like a cape, dark boots—was similar to my own.
Emilia guided me upright with her hand under my arm, and I looked around frantically for Amato, the guardian who had been speaking to me.
And was surprised to watch them walk up to this stranger’s side and nuzzle their leg.
Cuentista, Amato said.
But not to me.
“Who are you?” I called out, my throat parched.
They are with us, Amato said. The other guardians—their coats differently colored but still brilliant in your light—gathered behind the stranger.
“Ximen,” they answered, and they stepped forward, slowly at first, then crossed the space between us. “I think we should talk.”
Emilia gripped me tightly. “I don’t like this,” she said. “We should go.”
“I’m like you,” they said.
I was too tired to be polite to this stranger. “No, you’re not.”
They unwrapped their face to reveal full lips, long lashes. “We are both cuentistas.”
That got my attention, but I still teetered in place from exhaustion, and Emilia steadied me. “I gathered that. But why are you here?”
Then, turning to the guardian, I asked: “Is this what you needed me for?”
No, Amato answered. But you should hear what they have to say.
“I am from far, far to el norte,” they said, brushing a braid out of their face. “Beyond Solado. Beyond the land of ash.”
I felt Emilia stiffen.
�
�Beyond?” she said.
“Sí. Far beyond. Where the land is covered in árboles, tall and green,” they said, and I could hear an accent on their tongue that was unfamiliar to me, one that smoothed out all the parts that would be harder in my own mouth.
“Then why are you here?” I asked. “Why leave that place?”
“Because I had to.”
I held my breath.
My own words, echoed back at me.
“Do you ever feel alone in a crowd, cuentista?”
I exhaled.
“Do you ever believe that the people in your life see you only as a means to an end?”
“All the time,” I said.
“Then you must understand why I left paradise,” Ximen said. “Because even paradise can be tainted by what we are.”
I stepped toward them. “And what are we?” I asked.
They smiled, flashing white teeth at me. “We are an answer. To a question no one has asked yet.”
A new line of sweat broke out over my brow. I looked to the guardian nearest Ximen, but they were occupying themselves with cleaning their sleek coat.
“So what are you doing here?” Emilia asked.
“I’m just passing through. I met the guardians a few days ago, when I first reached the land called Solado and passed over it. We had many conversations about what life is like in the north. It is very different from here in the south.”
“And where are you going next?” I asked.
There was a part of me that wanted to ask them to come with us. I had so much I wanted to know, so many things to ask.
“I don’t know,” they said, and they began to wrap their face up again. “It frightens me, but I find it exhilarating. For the first time in my life, I feel alive. I feel like I can choose who I want to be every day.”
La poema came to me:
cuando estoy solo
estoy vivo
when I am alone
I am alive
“You can be alive, too, cuentista,” they said, and then they started walking, moved right past us, then turned to raise their hand in farewell. “Perhaps we will cross paths again.”
Had I just met—?
The thought spread through me, and I was so tired, Solís, and I tried to will my legs to run after them, to call out their name.