by Mark Oshiro
para detenerme
There are no walls
to stop me
But I had left. I had ventured out into the desert, out into the unknown, and what had I learned?
That the truths that I had been told were stories.
It was ironic, wasn’t it, Solís? I was not even aware that the rigid rules of my life were stories, passed on from generation to generation because that’s all we knew. Tía Inez believed it, and la cuentista before her did, too. And so, we gave every cuentista of Empalme the same rules, the same restrictions, and we held them down, and we forced them into a life they couldn’t possibly have chosen.
The idea came to me while staring at Emilia, watching her contemplate her new existence, her life without Solado.
I had to go back home.
And I had to break the cycle.
I got up and crossed the room to the bed, and I sat next to Emilia, took her hand. She gripped it tight, and then I told her everything.
All the stories I took.
All the lies I had told.
The truth—part of it, as much as I could allow myself to face.
“They’re consuming me,” I said, and a lightness settled over me. It was not everything, but it was enough for relief to flow. “These stories … they were never meant to be kept this long. I can still feel them. They’re alive.”
“So … give them up,” she said. “Do you need them anymore?”
“I need to go back. To Empalme.”
She frowned. “Do you have to?”
“I need to be somewhere familiar,” I explained. “Have you ever seen the ritual?”
She shook her head.
“It’s intense. Exhausting. Kind of … violent.”
I told her why. I told her of the bitterness that poured out of my mouth, of the way the earth drank it up. I told her of forgetting, of the disorientation, of the lingering sensations that remained.
“Sometimes, I can sleep for ten hours after a story, and even then, I can feel lost. It takes so much out of me.”
“I’m sure I can find some food or water,” she said. “Or I could—”
“No, you don’t get it, Em,” I said, and I brought her hand to my stomach and I let her feel it, let her touch the roiling stories as they fought within me.
She jerked her hand away. “Is that them?”
I nodded. “I don’t know what will happen when I give up all these stories. I’ve never had more than one at a time.”
Omar.
Ofelia.
Lani.
Lázaro.
Lito.
Marisol.
Emilia.
Soledad.
Eliazar.
Eduardo.
Their stories lived on within me.
And they were changing me.
Who was I but a collection of their emotions and experiences? They were eating me, desperate for company, and how much longer could I stand that?
And would my suspicion come true?
“Can you last three more days, though?” she asked. “It’s a long journey back to Empalme.”
We both heard the thudding near the entrance, and they slunk into the space, their black fur blending in with the shadows. I had not seen the guardian since they had brought us here, but the others loomed outside.
Waiting.
We can help, Amato said. We brought you here. It is only fair that we take you back.
“But how?” I asked.
Do you wish to return to Empalme, cuentista?
After all this time, could I go back?
You will return, yes?
“They have to know what I know,” I said.
I rose from the bed and I extended my hand out to Emilia.
Unsure if she would take it.
Unsure if this was the right choice.
But I wanted it.
“Will you come with me?”
She didn’t hesitate.
She took my hand.
“Let’s go back,” she said.
Emilia lingered in the entryway of her home. Was she trying to remember it all? To commit it to her mind?
Because it was not lost on me that I was now going to return home, but Emilia had no reason to come back to Solado ever again.
She said nothing. There was so much unspoken grief in her, over her lost home, her lost people.
So we left that dark and terrible place.
I still kept the truth from her, Solís. I wasn’t ready to tell her everything. Did that make me a bad person? Or can you understand why I did what I did?
It took me a long time to figure it out, though. As we came out of the darkness, the stars around us, you were gone for the night. We were alone, comforted by the glowing estrellas, and I thought of the nightly ritual in Empalme.
We saw no such thing in Obregán or in La Reina Nueva.
And it was because they didn’t need it.
You did not punish them because … well, you didn’t punish anyone anymore.
It all made so much sense to me.
You burned the world.
You gave las cuentistas and the guardians our powers.
And then … you left. We were all alone down here. What we did with that power … well, that was up to us.
I used it to cleanse Empalme.
Julio used it to mimic what los pálidos had done.
Soledad used it for her own purposes.
The guardians believed they were honoring you.
My people, the people of Empalme, believed en las pesadillas so fiercely that they made them real.
Eliazar’s people did not.
Téa helped their community as best as they could.
And Ximen chose something else.
Now it was time for me to do the same.
I could be exactly the kind of cuentista I wanted to be. I could follow my own rules. And I did not have to worry about you.
Because clearly, you were not worried about us.
Knowing that I was returning home, knowing that this journey had a new purpose, it kept me alive. Thriving.
We crossed the expanse of ash, and when we reached La Montaña de Solís, I attacked it with a ferocity: I had pushed my body so hard. My legs were still sore, my head still throbbed.
But I didn’t care.
When we approached the line of ash, there was a rustling to my left, and two creatures—their eyes orange, their coats thin and pale, many short horns on their head—shuffled onto the trail, then scurried to the other side.
I breathed in.
Smelled the mesquite.
Let the cool air wash over.
The stories still hurt me, but I was alive.
I would deal with what was coming when it arrived. But for now? I had made it to Solado, I had found la poeta, and I was heading back.
We pressed on, Emilia and the guardians behind me, and we climbed up.
And up.
And up.
It was not long before the excitement began to wane, like your light at the end of the day, slowly at first, and then it was gone in an instant. The pounding in my head reappeared, a fierce, sharp thing behind my eyes, and I kept stopping to catch my breath.
Do you need to rest? Amato came up alongside me, pawed at my leg.
“At the top,” I said. “Let’s just make it there.”
Emilia gave me the last of her water. I tried to refuse it, but she said she could find more. “Where?” I asked. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“You already taught me how,” she replied. “Leave it up to me.”
And then she kept talking. Emilia told me stories of Solado, of life below the earth—the sounds and the tastes and the feel of the walls and the people. It was her way of dealing with the loss. She asked me more about Empalme. About Tía Inez. I realized that she was trying to distract me, to get me focused on something other than the climb.
It worked.
The hours went by quickly, or perhaps they blurred together becau
se of how tired I was. The summit arrived, and I stumbled over to a patch of paloverdes to relieve myself, and as I squatted there over the hole I had dug, I nearly fell asleep.
The others did not have to coax me into rest. Emilia spread out my sleeping roll. She made me eat some dried nopales. And when I was flat on the ground, las estrellas dimming as my eyes closed, she kissed me on the forehead.
“Descansa, mi cuentista,” she said.
I did as I was told.
* * *
I dreamed of Raúl.
He emerged from beneath the wall at La Reina Nueva, somehow older. I knew he had lived there for many years, that his time there had aged him. There were lines at the corners of his eyes, stress wrinkles over his forehead, and he had a light patch of facial hair, dotted with white, growing below his mouth.
The sun lit him from above.
No.
It was not you.
It was las estrellas. They burned so brightly that I had to shield my eyes with my hand, but Raúl did not blink, did not turn away, and the starlight grew, brighter and brighter, until I was screaming at him, begging him to close his eyes.
He would not.
He smiled, and there was a darkness in his mouth, and his lips stretched wider, wider, until they took up the entire lower half of his face, and his eyes began to smoke, to smolder, and then the starlight burned them out of his sockets, leaving behind two chasms of shadow.
I could see forever in them.
They pulled me forward.
They pulled me in.
I fell into that endless blackness, unable to scream, and slept without another sueño.
* * *
Emilia woke me long before dawn.
Las estrellas had not disappeared, so I was focusing on them when she loomed over me. “When you’re ready and awake, I have something for you,” she said. “Take your time, Xo.”
She walked off, and I could make out the shapes of the guardians, who slumbered all around me. Amato was splayed out to the left of me, and they yawned.
We will make it today, they said.
I wasn’t so sure about that, but I was too groggy to argue. I brought my hands above my head, stretched my whole body, ignored the searing pain of my poor muscles. I took my pala with me to relieve myself, then returned to my sleeping roll to find gifts upon it.
A full goatskin bag of water.
A small cloth covered in fresh prickly pear fruit.
A leather pouch.
My body told me to take the first two objects, to replenish myself, but my heart was drawn to the third, that tether gripping me, tugging me down and forward, and I braced myself as the surge hit me when I touched it.
Another poema.
I tore the pouch open, careful not to damage what was inside, and in the dim light of dawn, I inhaled the words.
Por encima de la tierra
No puedo ver la belleza de
lo pequeño
Pero soy igual para Solís
Te elevaste sobre nosotros
Mientras sangro detras de mí
Dejé una pieza con cada paso
¿Quién seré en el otro lado?
Above the land
I can’t see the beauty of
the small
But I am the same to Solís
You rose over us
While I bleed behind me
I left a piece with every step
Who will I be on the other side?
* * *
She stood so silently that I did not notice her there.
“You never found this one,” she said. “I thought you should have it.”
I read it again.
I said it aloud the third time.
Who will I be on the other side?
It was like you were teasing me, reminding me of what I had not shared. I almost told her, Solís. I almost admitted the final truth that I had clung to for so long.
But I smiled instead. I thanked her for the gift, pulled her close with a hug. I wanted so much more, but … no. It was not the right time.
We packed up our meager belongings, and we left.
The walk was an endless descent. The muscles at the bottom of my thighs screamed at me with each step. Stop, stop! they called out, but I couldn’t. I let the momentum guide me farther down, around each corner, and I did not stop. I drank water, I ate more dried fruit, and I kept walking.
It was easier at first. I had a destination, an end goal. I had seen these sights before. And Emilia was there, talking to me, encouraging me to keep going, even though she most likely needed my comfort after what she had just been through. When a new pain shot through me, I would tip my head back, dig my fingers in, massage the spot until it faded. They came more frequently; the stories were restless, terrified, furious.
I ignored them because I had to. Because I had to keep going.
Eliazar spoke to me. I don’t know if I imagined it. But he was in my mind as Emilia told me more about Solado, about the isolation she experienced, about how strange it felt to be out in the open air.
That is how I felt, niña, Eliazar told me, his deep voice mournful, singing in my head. Your heart does not know how to deal with freedom when you finally get it.
Are you free, Eliazar? I asked him.
Freer than las palomas, he said.
“Who are you talking to?” Emilia asked
I smiled at her. “An old friend,” I said.
She went silent.
Eliazar spoke to me. Then Soledad. Then Manolito. I listened to them all, let them construct a poetry in my mind, and down, down, down we walked, cast in the dawn light. We pushed deeper into el valle, farther from you, closer to ourselves.
* * *
I stumbled. Emilia caught me before I could pitch over the edge and slip off the trail and then I would be gone, gone, gone, and when her fingers closed around my arm, I could feel her fear, her concern.
I sent my own back.
I sent more.
She could feel my exhaustion, couldn’t she? It had a color—gray, like the stone of the wall of La Reina Nueva. It had a sensation, too. Rounded edges, thick like aloe vera, and she knew.
She knew so much about me when we touched.
What did I know of her?
Her stories woke in me, finally, and I saw a young girl, so eager to explore the world. I saw a daughter, desperate for her father to love her, desperate to know what had happened to her mother. I saw una poeta, a person whose heart could turn feelings into words, into a beauty that could reach across deserts to touch the spirit of someone who needed them. I saw a story, still being told, still alive.
She had been through so much. Missed so much. Did Emilia still think of Alegría? Did she believe she would one day be reunited with her?
No. I think she accepted that loss. She wove it into the fabric of herself, and she moved forward.
Para adelante.
I couldn’t talk anymore. I only listened to Emilia.
* * *
There was silence eventually, and then Emilia spoke again, asked me more questions. About what I knew of Obregán. Of the land south of Empalme. Of my childhood. I tried my best to share myself with her, but my answers became shorter. Clipped. Until I was responding with a single word.
Then, nothing.
“No, Xochitl,” she said. “You cannot fall asleep. Stay awake.”
How?
“Tell me things.”
What things do you want to know?
“Where were you born?”
Empalme.
“What is your brother like?”
Silly. Annoying. Curious. He gets that last part from me. I think I made him like that.
“What was Empalme like before we arrived?”
Quiet. Dedicated. We still struggled. We still fought. We still waited for Solís to save us all. Maybe we waited a bit too long. They never showed.
“What are you looking forward to the most?”
Sleep.
“M
e, too.”
No, that’s not true.
“Well, then what?”
* * *
I don’t remember what I said. But I wanted her by my side, at the end. I wanted us, most of all.
Us.
I liked the way that sounded.
I hope I said something about that.
* * *
She made me drink more water. Gave me her canteen. I guzzled it down, tried to ignore how sick it made me feel, how the stories tried to reject it.
* * *
I’m sorry, Solís. I know I have to tell you the whole story, but this part is hard. I remember images, and I remember feelings, but I was slipping away by then. I stuck a hand out to steady myself at one point, and the needles of a saguaro pressed into my palm, and Emilia screamed at me, ripped my hand from the green, leathery trunk of the cactus, but there was nothing there. Tiny pinpricks of blood appeared, but did not run down my skin.
I had so little water in my body that I could not bleed. I just oozed.
* * *
I’m sorry, Solís. I don’t remember.
She carried me, Solís. By the time we were close to the bottom, I was delirious, babbling about El Mar and stories, and you were so far away, close to the horizon in the east, rising into the world, and I let the darkness in my head get so close to taking me.
Emilia swung her bag around, let it hang in front of her, and then hoisted me up on her back.
She carried me down, Solís.
En las bajadas, she set me up next to a large paloverde, rested my back against it. I don’t know if she said anything. I like to imagine that she kissed me on the forehead and told me to rest.
And I did. She stayed awake to make sure we were safe, and she did this all for me. She did this despite the terrible pain she must have been in herself, aching over the loss of everything.
Was I finally not alone, Solís?
Was this what I had been yearning for?
Emilia was on one side.
Amato on the other.
Descansé porque estaba segura.
I dreamed again. Maybe my spirit was trying to make sense of this journey, of finding the person who had created las poemas, or maybe I had been in so much pain that this was how I coped.