by Mark Oshiro
This is what the people of Solado had done to survive.
It filled me with awe.
We picked up the pace soon after that. “I know where I am,” Emilia said, breathless, excited. “We aren’t far.”
We passed other caverns. Passageways. Rooms carved into the stone and dirt, with furniture constructed of rocks and mud: sillas, mesas, estufas built into the wall.
Another room to my left. It arced upward. There was a small hole at the top, and what little sunlight was left was pouring through it, illuminating the rows and rows of something that had once grown but was now wilting, dying.
A passage veered off to my right. I could see more entries to homes, recognized them from the stories that Marisol and Emilia had given me.
Another home. Furniture strewn about.
“Emilia…”
She rushed forward, let go of my hand, ignored me.
My eyes continued to adjust to the limited light belowground. Where was it coming from? I saw no torches, no fires, nothing.
A room opened to my left.
A trunk, upturned, contents spilled everywhere.
“Emilia!”
A stain.
Dark, spreading from the debris and over the ground.
The stench hit me next: bitter and sharp.
I had smelled it before.
Outside Chavela’s.
At home, when it fell from the sky.
When el sabueso brought part of Manolito back.
I looked up and Emilia was gone. Panic tore into me, but there was a guardian—their coat a dull brown, their eyes a piercing yellow—who stood at the end of the passageway. They sped around a corner, and I ran after them.
I heard her yelling first. She called out, her voice high, echoing throughout the various chambers and passages. I rounded another corner, right behind one of the guardians.
“¿Hay alguien aquí?” she screamed.
I was closer.
More rooms.
More destruction.
More stains.
Another turn in the passage.
She stood at the edge of a large cavern, and beams of light fell from above her, poured over the ground, revealed the columns of maíz, their leaves browned and dry and dying. To our right, stalks pressed against the ground, as if something enormous had landed on top of them.
The stains were everywhere, and in the light of the setting sun, they had a color I could not see before.
A terrible dark red.
“Emilia?” I approached her carefully, avoiding sudden movements, unsure if I should touch her. “What’s going on?”
“Gone.” Her arms hung at her sides, limp.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Gone?”
“They’re all gone,” she said, a whisper to the dying fields, to me, to herself. “Everyone is gone.”
“How is that—?” I began.
She spun to me, and there were lines of tears dripping down her face. “Xochitl, they’re all gone. And we came here for nothing.”
She collapsed on the spot, and I stood there, numb and useless, staring at the remains of Solado.
We wandered from room to room, our eyes dancing from every terrible stain to the next, from every bit of proof that those who had lived here were now gone. There was clothing piled about the floor, seemingly at random, the red blotches a stark glimpse of some horror that had transpired. We came across more areas where small crops grew in limited sunlight, and everything was limp and dying. How long since they had last been watered? How long ago were they abandoned?
Emilia ran her hands over the walls.
She knelt to touch the bloody camisa left behind in one hallway.
She sobbed the entire time.
I stuck close to her, my own body numb, unsure how I could help.
We had so much to grieve.
Emilia brought me to a large cavern, the ceiling stretching high above us, and here was a gathering place of sorts. Long mesas of stone stood in front of us, and food rotted on ceramic plates. A swarm of flies flew off as Emilia picked up one of the dishes, then she let it crash to the floor.
The sound echoed around us.
No one responded.
We were truly alone down here in Solado.
Come, Amato said, and they came into the cavern and strode right up to Emilia, rubbed their head against her leg. Your answers are close.
“Did you know?” I said, fury boiling to the surface. “Did you know that this had happened?”
They ignored me, and instead sauntered off down the passageway.
“I thought I knew what I was doing,” Emilia said, still gaping at the death before her. “I thought Solís was guiding me here.”
“Maybe They still are,” I said. “Maybe there’s a reason the guardians brought us here.”
She wouldn’t look at me, though. I couldn’t blame her. My reasoning was pathetic and useless. Why would you give her so much suffering? What possible explanation could comfort someone in so much pain? So I understood why she headed after the guardians, leaving me there in that cavern, alone, afraid.
What did this place once look like? I had seen it in Emilia’s stories, and even less of it in Marisol’s. But it didn’t feel real anymore. Those images were distant, blurry.
I gave the hall one last look, then followed after the others, followed after the sound of Emilia crying.
The passage twisted and turned, and if it weren’t for Emilia, I would have gotten lost. Solado felt endless, a labyrinth with no sense or organization.
I had never been in a place so empty. What of the original inhabitants? Or los pálidos? Could all of them truly be gone?
I should have been distraught, but I was too exhausted to be anything but numb.
I slammed into the back of Emilia; she was rooted to the floor, unmoving, stone still. It nearly knocked the wind out of me, so I huffed in air as best as I could while I tried to—
I recognized this passage.
I saw it again as it awoke within me:
Emilia, held by the arms and legs, stolen from the darkness. Luz, behind her, fighting Julio’s men.
The guardians had brought us back to Emilia’s home.
“Emilia, maybe she’s still alive!” I said, wheezing. “Emilia, we have to go in there.”
“No, I can’t,” she said, and her hands trembled. “I can’t have come this whole way just to—”
Emilia.
I heard the voice in my head, like Amato’s. But this was a new one.
“Luz?”
Emilia staggered there, her sobs breaking out anew as she called out her guardian’s name.
“Is that you?”
There was a pause.
In a manner of speaking, she said.
Emilia rushed forward, down the passage, around the bend, and I followed. Maybe this was not so hopeless as I had thought.
The guardians gathered outside Emilia’s home. Amato rubbed against my leg and spoke as they did so.
It is not as she thinks.
Amato, do not be so cruel, Luz said, and Emilia reached out, gripped my arm. Emilia, I am sorry you traveled so far for me. Please, come into our home and learn the truth.
Emilia walked slowly forward, past the line of guardians, into the doorway, and I was right behind her.
The room was empty, rid of all the details from the story that Emilia had told me. Empty except for a chair.
A guardian.
And a man, seated beside them.
He was young, perhaps only a few years older than I was. His skin was waxy with sweat, and he barely moved, staring at us with dark eyes that seemed overjoyed to see us by our arrival. His hair was matted against the side of his head, and as we approached, tears fell down his cheeks.
“You made it,” he said.
The time has come, said the guardian next to him.
I recognized her.
It was Luz.
But something was wrong. She seemed to be both here and no
t here, existing in between life and death, light and shadow.
You can see the truth, cuentista, she said to me.
I moved forward. I couldn’t stop myself. I knew that look. I’d seen it more times than I could count.
Eduardo, said Luz. You know what to do.
Eduardo.
It was him.
He smiled at Luz, then at me.
He stuck his hands out.
Palms down.
“Luz, what is this?” Emilia cried. “What happened to Solado?”
Luz did not answer her.
“Cuentista,” said Eduardo. “Will you take my story?”
I hesitated, and he smiled again.
“Was it worth it?” Eduardo asked.
“Was what worth it?” I asked.
“This journey. The choices you made.”
My lips parted, but I kept the answer to myself. I did not know this man. And I did not know how he knew.
“I ask you because this will be the last story you will ever need to take,” he continued. “Once you do, you will understand why. You will have freed me from a terrible burden. And you will be able to make your own decision.”
“Luz, please,” Emilia said. “Tell me what is going on.”
She moved toward her guardian.
And Luz growled.
I cannot, she said. We must not make contact.
Emilia began to sob, and I hated the sound, the sharpness of her inhalations, and that I could not help her. Luz backed up a step, but still stayed at Eduardo’s side.
“Please, cuentista,” said Eduardo, and his eyes implored me. “Uno más.”
But it wouldn’t be the last one for me, would it? There was no Simone; there was no means to get rid of all of this; there was nothing here for me. How could this man be so sure of what he had said?
Someone or something brought me here, though. Was it you? I wondered. The guardians? Something greater?
I let instinct take over; I ignored Emilia’s screams; I fell to my knees in front of Eduardo, and my leather pack slid off my back.
I placed my palms under his.
I felt the surge.
And then I knew.
Let me tell you a story, Solís.
Eduardo was raised to believe that he was nothing.
As long as he could remember, his mamá, Sofía, was distant. He wondered if she secretly despised him, too, because he looked so much like the man she married, a man she truly hated. Was it because he and Fidel had the same nose, the same dark eyes, the same long, flowing hair? Did he remind his mamá of the man she mistakenly chose to trust? At a young age, he began to daydream about finding his mamá in another aldea, much, much later in life, when she had left Fidel behind and married someone else, and they would reconnect and love one another again, far from Fidel and his infidelities and excuses.
It was a dream that could never come true. Eduardo’s family moved frequently from one aldea to the next, sometimes in the same month. Fidel was a blacksmith, but he never lasted long whenever he was. In their first aldea, he was caught stealing ore from his boss, and so he moved them all to another one after a hellish two-day journey across the desert. There, Fidel learned how to assist the local mercado, keeping track of all the shipments, all the food and supplies. He was good at it. He excelled at it. But after a year, Fidel woke his son and wife in the middle of the night, urged them to pack what belongings they could, and then told Eduardo that they were going on an adventure. It was only when the men started chasing them out of la aldea, shouting out that word over and over again, that Eduardo realized what his father truly was.
Ladrón. Ladrón. Ladrón.
This was their life. They would flee from one place to another, resettle, integrate slowly into another community, and then it would begin again. Late-night escapes, days gone hungry, and stories crafted so that the next aldea would take pity on them, would take them in, would believe that they were helping a poor mother and father escape the vicious guardias of the previous aldea.
And Eduardo’s mother took it out on him. She never hit her son, never laid a finger on him, but she lashed him with her tongue, told Eduardo that he was useless, that he should have been earning his keep at home, that he should have stopped his father from drinking, that he should have forced Fidel to change. Eduardo tried, but his father was impenetrable, unmovable, convinced that he was the victim, that everyone he met only wanted a scapegoat.
He had no one to talk to. He moved so much that he never got close enough to a single cuentista, and thus had no one to whom he could tell the truth.
It all caught up with them in Obregán. Eduardo was seventeen when they left the last aldea and became a part of La Ciudad de Obregán, and it was there that Fidel was finally captured. He had angered so many people, had stolen so much from every aldea he had inhabited, that a band of people had formed just to track him down.
Fidel woke them up one last time.
Ordered them out of their small home on the southeast edge of la ciudad.
They packed what they could, which was not hard because they had learned never to own too many things, since they would inevitably leave them behind.
They ran.
They hid in an empty building, one managed by una vieja with flowing white hair, whose name Eduardo never learned, who allowed them space as long as they needed it.
They did not need it for long.
When they came for Fidel, it was the next night, and las estrellas shone brightly through the windows. The men burst into the building, yelling Fidel’s name, and the other inhabitants hid underneath the floor.
Sofía held her son back. “Let them get him,” she said. “He deserves it.”
When he told his mamá that they couldn’t let the men take Fidel, she merely said, “I’ll let them take you, too. You’re not any better than him.”
Fidel, who had spent the day getting drunk, was barely conscious as the men beat him. When his nose broke, his blood spilling to the floor, he merely moaned. When his arm was wrenched backwards, his elbow snapping loudly, there were only tears running down his face.
And when they pummeled his head, over and over again, he simply stopped breathing.
Eduardo watched his father die. Fidel didn’t defend himself. Sofía, however, spat on the bloodied body of her husband. She cast one last look at Eduardo. “You’re old enough now,” she said. “I don’t need to raise you anymore.”
She left him behind with these strange men, and one of them lifted him from the floor as he sobbed in grief and terror, and he put his hand under Eduardo’s chin, pitched his face upward.
“His debt is now yours,” he said. “You start working it off tomorrow.”
They left him there. Eduardo considered running away, but where would he go? He had no idea where his mamá had wandered off to, and they had only been in Obregán for a week. But la vieja came out from her hiding place beneath the floor and cleaned him up. She told him he could stay as long as he needed to. She guided him to a small bed in the rear of the building, ordered him to rest, and assured him that she would take care of the rest.
He dreamed of another life that night. Of being wanted, of being needed, of being useful. Of not always running.
He awoke the next morning and could not find his father’s body. La vieja said she took care of it. She told him again that he could stay as long as he wanted. And she offered him acceptance and peace.
But that is not what you gave him, Solís. Those men returned later that morning, dragged Eduardo out from under the filthy cobijas where he hid, ignoring la vieja’s screams, and they took him away. Away from Obregán, out into the endless desert and the saguaros and the heat, and it was there that they trained him, showed him how to find water and to memorize maps and routes, taught him how to get people to follow him out into the desert, to hand over their money and their belongings, all out of their desperation to find a place that valued them, that would give them hope, that would offer them a chance at a be
tter life.
There were many coyotes in Obregán, but the collective Eduardo was forced into cared less about the people they guided and more about making money. Most were not like this, and coyotes were a much-needed force within your world, Solís. Eduardo wished that he had found work for the other collectives, but … well, the realization came too late. Eduardo was told that if he wanted to pay off his debt within a year, he needed to be one of the best coyotes Obregán had to offer, that the other groups would never pay as much as Danilo did. So he was trained, the lessons overflowing with cruelty and suffering, and it all made Eduardo stronger, more ferocious, more willing to do what he had to in order to survive.
And then they showed him the truth.
It took them three days to reach Solado on his first trip there. His coyote, his mentor, was Danilo. He was lanky, all toned muscle and spite. They walked during the day, rested at night, and it broke him. Danilo did not make it easy for Eduardo. No one did, but this man possessed a mean streak that never seemed to end. Eduardo had never felt that kind of exhaustion, that kind of thirst before. But Danilo let him experience it all, told him that it would build him into a better coyote if he knew how much the human body could suffer. Eduardo watched other people shrivel and shrink on their journeys. He watched them turn on one another, watched them imagine bestias in the daylight, watched La Reina torment them when they tried to pass. His own pesadilla formed out of the remains of that ciudad, two beings of bones and rotting flesh, and they tried to devour him, all while blaming him for the very act itself.
And when they had made it down Las Montañas de Solís, when they had crossed that final stretch to Solado, Eduardo saw them waiting in the expanse of ash. They were impossible to miss: their cloaks were white, and they were a horrible contrast to the blackness that surrounded them. They wore masks with long, protruding snouts, and every part of their body was covered. Nothing was exposed to the world outside.
The travelers were handed over to these men.
They paid their price.
And then, one by one, they took a step forward and, in an instant, vanished.
“You can never tell anyone what the cost is,” Danilo had said when the last of the men in white were gone. “They will not come if they know what price they have to pay.”