by Mark Oshiro
“I know,” I said. “I’m almost ready.”
He went quiet, shuffled through the dirt, and we crossed La Reina. Whenever I looked back, he was there, moving along at the same pace, his body bloody and torn apart. At the other side, the next pass waiting for us, Emilia cleared her throat. “Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
One last look behind me.
Manolito had followed us, but now, he could cross no farther.
“Tell her,” he said.
He was whole again. For a moment, he was the Lito that I loved. His boyish face, his mustache, that glow that resonated from his kind eyes. He had appeared like this before, on the first day of my journey, and I smiled at him.
But it did not last. I did not tell her the truth.
We kept going. I knew what I had to do, but I still couldn’t find the courage. I focused on the journey, tried to quell my racing heart. But each movement forward brought me closer to the inevitable, closer to the truth I could not ignore.
The pain returned. Reminded me. Tormented me.
I had to push on.
Our ascent was long, and the sun was dropping out of the sky. It was faster than on foot, and our horse did not complain as she carried the two of us up, up, and up. I hung on to Emilia with one hand and used the other to pull out a water bag for us.
We did not say much at all, and neither did the guardians. They formed a line behind us, snaking down the trail, and it was the only time I got a sense for how many of these gorgeous creatures were following me. I couldn’t see the end of them. They stretched far behind us, a procession of power and mystery.
We crested the hill in the late afternoon, and the drowsiness brewed behind my eyes. My stomach rumbled. Was it hunger? Nerves? Were they awakening again?
They had been quiet since La Reina, and I don’t know if that comforted me, or if it unnerved me.
Maybe it was both.
La Reina shone brightly behind us and I shielded my eyes as I looked upon it. It was so small from here. I dismounted and walked to the edge again. Was Manolito still down there? Would I ever see him again?
His story shuddered in my stomach, sending a wave of revulsion through me. Why had he cheated on his—?
No.
No, that was Omar.
Definitely Omar.
The nausea twisted my gut, and I bent over again. Emilia ran her hand over my back. “Are you well? How bad is it getting?”
I brought myself upright, breathed in deep. “Estoy bien,” I said. “Just a quick rest.”
I needed more than that, but … no, I couldn’t do it.
Not much longer now.
* * *
It hurts so much, Solís. Please, listen a little bit longer.
* * *
You were disappearing. We descended.
It sat in the distance, and it was odd seeing them from this side: a smaller rise, then, farther in the distance, Obregán. I remembered that first night, upon la montaña, and how enormous Obregán seemed. It was still so far away, but la ciudad burst up from the earth, beyond the other ridge. It was a sign of hope that we were even closer to home.
What would that home look like? Would Empalme seem different because of my absence? I remembered the morning I left, how mi aldea had taken a new shape, twisted by what I had seen and what I had done. It couldn’t be the same, could it? The miles and miles of tunnels underneath the ground … would they look any different?
Our horse made good time down la montaña, as she was far more comfortable descending. Emilia had to work hard to keep me awake; I kept leaning into her, and my eyes were so heavy.
“Not yet, Xochitl,” she said. “Tell me.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about your friends. Someone. Anyone.”
I told her about Rogelio first. I don’t know why I thought of him, but that led to Doro, led to Ana and Quique, and I asked Emilia if we could find them someday. El Mar first, then Obregán. I wanted to see them again.
Would they want to see me?
Then I told her about la señora Sánchez, about el guisado she loved to cook, and how I would help her offer it about at our celebration because of her bad arm.
“Her bad arm?” Emilia said, leaning back into me.
“Sí,” I said. “You know, since she hurt it in Obregán.”
Emilia bristled, but did not explain it.
I imagined my return to Empalme. The look on Raúl’s face. Papá gazing up from his book and acting as if I had been gone for only a few hours. Mamá, with her braids draping down the front of her, asking me if I had found what I was looking for. That’s all I wanted: for them to accept me as I was, nothing more. To ask less of me—to let me be my own.
And then the stories awoke again. There was no complicated shape to them. When I reached down, ran my fingers over my stomach, I could feel it. A hard mass, something solid and horrifying and not my body. It had grown, hadn’t it? It had gotten bigger, had fed off my fear and shame. Just like Lani’s. Why had she read Julio’s mensaje? Why had she disobeyed him?
Emilia sensed something, and she squirmed in front of me. “I have an idea, Xochitl,” she said. “Can I give you something? Something to help?”
“We will reach Obregán soon,” I said. “And then it’s not much farther.”
“It’ll only take a moment,” she assured me.
I leaned into her back, used our connection to tell her that I trusted her.
She gave the horse a kick, and she broke into a gallop. She took the corners with such mastery, Solís, and I held on to Emilia tight, our comfort flowing back and forth.
You will have to tell her soon, Amato said, bounding behind us. We are getting closer.
“I know,” I said.
Soon.
She took us to the west once we reached las bajadas, arcing away from las granjas and from Jorge’s home.
The guardians were panting by the time we reached it: la huerta, the long grove of árboles that stretched up and out from the earth, rows and rows of them in even order. All of them paloverdes, all of them twisting out of the earth, casting thorny shadows. “This is where I camped with mi papá and his men for a while,” she said, hopping off the horse and moving off toward los árboles. “Papi was a monster, but he was clever. He knew this would keep us in the shade and that there’d be a source of water nearby, enough to keep us alive until we found the next place to go.” She smiled. “I met Chavela the week after that. Did I ever tell you what I did?”
I shook my head as she helped me down.
“It was a test,” she said. “Papi wasn’t paying attention to me, so I took the horse I had been on, and I rode to the lights in the distance. I didn’t know what it was; I had never even heard of Obregán. That’s how I met Chavela. I left una poema here, not long after that. Chavela … she inspired me.”
She knelt on the ground near the edge of la huerta, and then she dug into the soil with both hands, flipping it to the side. The guardians gathered and watched her, silent, their eyes glowing bright in the growing evening. The leader looked to me, interest in their eyes, but they said nothing.
Emilia came to me, her hands outstretched, her gift in her palms.
A leather pouch.
How could I not sense this one? Was my connection fading? Or did it not matter anymore?
I hurriedly opened the little pouch as Emilia stood next to me, her hand on my leg, pushing warmth into me.
It was in my hands.
It was real.
She is real.
I read it aloud:
Mi esperanza es un pájaro
que vuela sobre la tierra
Y en la distancia
tú brillas más brillante que
las estrellas
más brilliante que el sol
Te seguiré solo si
me sigues.
My hope is a bird
that flies over the land
And in the distance
y
ou shine brighter than
the stars
brighter than the sun
I will follow you only if you
follow me.
“I didn’t know what Obregán was that first night,” she said. “It was just this glowing light in the distance, and … I don’t know.” She ran her hand up and down my leg. “I imagined it was a sign, from Solís. Meeting Chavela. Discovering Obregán. So before we left, I wrote that.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said, and my throat ached, the tightness threatening to set loose my tears.
“But a sign wasn’t enough,” she said, grasping my leg tighter. “I was so tired, Xochitl. So tired of hoping for a better future. I wanted to believe in Solís, but … well, I also wanted Solís to believe in me.”
“‘I will follow you only if you follow me,’” I repeated.
She nodded. “I hope it helps,” she said.
“Gracias,” I said. “For stopping.”
I ran my hands over the drawstring pouch. Was this how love began? Is this what it felt like? Eliazar woke in me; whatever was left of him recognized what was surging through my body, and I saw him, hand in hand with Alegría, sitting around the fire, his face full of joy.
Emilia helped me up on the horse first, and then she claimed her spot in front of me. “I think we can make it over the next pass tonight,” she said, “especially with the guardians protecting us.”
We took off at a brisk gait, and their leader was astride, keeping pace. She is an interesting one, they said. She surprises us.
“She surprises me,” I said.
Then you must tell her.
“Not now,” I said. “She can’t know now, not after that.”
The hum hit me, and it dislodged the stories in my stomach. I winced and held back a cry, waited for the pain to pass.
“Hold on, Xochitl,” said Emilia. “We’re so close.”
Tell her.
Soon. I would tell her soon.
We passed by Obregán that evening. We did not pass through it. We joined the few traders and merchants who were leaving or entering la ciudad that late, and they gave us a wide berth as we passed. They nodded their heads, a sign of respect for the guardians, and then they went along with their travels.
I wanted to stop. To come back. To visit El Mercado, to tell Soledad about her son Eduardo, to taste all the foods I had never tried before. I wanted Emilia there at my side, and I wanted—
No, I couldn’t. I sucked air deep into my lungs. One more pass. One more climb. We would probably make it home by morning.
I did as I had imagined Amato had done so earlier. I tasted the word “home,” rolled it around in my mouth, and I wasn’t sure I would be welcomed, that I would be wanted, that I could find a place there. My daydream from earlier twisted in my mind. What if Raúl thought I was a monster? What if Papá believed that I had become corrupted? What if Mamá resented me for what I had done?
I had kept my first story in Empalme, and in the span of those days, a change took place, like the cocoons that sometimes hung from our doorways or on the ceiling, bursting one day to reveal some new creature, one unrecognizable from what it used to be. That is what waited for me: a transformation. I did not have to be what others wanted me to be. I could be free.
Soy libre.
I am free.
I knew as we began our climb, that final rise, that I could never be the person I once was, not for anyone.
* * *
At the top of the final ascent, the whitethorn still stood proudly, its trunk a stark lightness against the backdrop of night and las estrellas.
I was shaking then. The pain tore at me, and Emilia had to guide me carefully off the horse, who still remained gracious and kind throughout it all. She trotted off to the edge of the vista to the south and began to munch on grasses.
The leader came back to me. You are running out of time, Xochitl, they said, and they pawed at my leg, pushing me into Emilia. What is your decision?
“Let me rest,” I said. “Let me rest for a few hours, and when the sun rises in the morning, it will happen.”
Emilia looked to me, her hand on my back. “What are they saying to you?”
“We’ll rest,” I said. “Not long. And then head out at dawn.”
She nodded her agreement, and she took my sack from me, started to set up camp. The guardians were on the north end of the vista, curled up close to one another. I walked over to them, wobbling as I did so, and I called out. “Why did you come?”
Amato turned around, their eyes flashing in the darkness. You can change the world, Xochitl, they said. You can choose something different.
I walked closer to them. “But I’m afraid.”
All change is frightening, niña, they said. We still remember La Quema. Many of our kind perished that day, too, and those who hid in caverns en las montañas mourned for days and days and days.
But we kept going. We chose to adapt. We chose to be something different. And now look at us: we thrive. We are feared and respected. We protect the land, and the one you call Solís protects us.
“Do you believe that?”
They did not answer at first. As I was about to turn back, their voice was in my mind. Sometimes it is easier to believe, Amato said. It gives us comfort. It makes us feel like we are a part of something.
“Each of us a desert,” I muttered.
Yes, they said. But you do not agree. You question. You wonder about your place. You challenge Them.
They all rose in unison and faced me, and their eyes were so gorgeous, so utterly horrifying, and they sent an energy forth, floating amidst that hum of intimidation.
We admire you, Xochitl. You ask things that others are afraid to say.
You ask Them if They watch our suffering.
You ask Them if They care.
You ask Them if They are listening.
We obeyed.
You challenged.
They knelt then, bowing their heads to me, and the tears rushed from my eyes. I choked back something. A cry? A sob? A story?
You challenged us. You made us reconsider what we have done. What it means to have these powers.
Xochitl, you can change the world, Amato repeated. Choose something different.
They curled up again, their eyes closed, and all those yellowish dots of light were gone. I turned back to Emilia, saw her smoothing out one of the sleeping rolls, and I went to her. I let myself fall at her side, and when I did, she was staring at me with eyes that were dark in the starlight, but oh so beautifully warm.
And alive.
I reached a hand out to her face, ran my fingers down the line of her jaw, over her sharp nose, and then I leaned in, and I brought my lips to hers, my tongue to hers, and I kissed her because I had to make a choice. I knew then exactly what I was going to do, and it filled me with an unrelenting terror. But the flash of fear was gone, and I allowed myself to submit so fully to her kisses, to her fingertips on my cheeks, on my breasts, on my legs.
I crawled close to her, everything touching, both of us on the same bedroll, and she embraced me with her body, with her affection. We were warmed by the light of Obregán to the north, the stars around us in the sky, and we were warmed by the existence of each other.
They did not wake me. I woke myself, surrounded by the darkness of night, by the gentle haze of starlight. I carefully untangled myself from her arms, from her legs, so smooth and muscular and strong, and I rose, stretching deep, and I ignored the roaring pain in my torso, ignored that it had spread, that it was now pressing on my lungs, and I ignored the guardians, too, who stirred softly and began to wake up.
I walked to the edge.
I gazed upon Obregán in the north.
It was still an explosion from the earth.
An impossible eruption of light and possibility.
It was still exactly the same.
La Ciudad de Obregán was uncaring. Uninterested. There were so many people who lived there, whose lives wer
e complicated and messy and impossible to define, and la ciudad thrived. It lived beyond death, beyond birth, beyond everything in between.
My life had changed so much in such a small span of time.
Obregán had not.
The indifference comforted me, and the last piece of the puzzle fell into place.
You were indifferent, Solís. I believed you were there, that you had burned the earth in anger and rage, that you had given us the power of la cuentista.
And then you left us alone.
You were never coming back.
You observed us from up on high, and you watched us struggle with the chaos born of violence and destruction, and you did nothing. You never sent us signs; you never planned for anything; you just watched your creation.
Vast.
Alone.
A desert.
I decided then, Solís, that you could hear me, and that there was only one thing left for me to do.
I woke her up, and she turned over, smiling at me, her lips full and delicious and I wanted to kiss her again, but I was so heavy, Solís. I was so full, and it was time.
It is time now. I’m almost done. Please wait just a little longer, Solís.
“Come,” I said. “I have something to say.”
I held her hand as I guided her to the south, and there, on the edge of that vista, Empalme was somewhere in the distance, shrouded in mostly darkness. Here, at night, there were only a few dancing lights, fires and torches lit to the south.
They must have kept the nightly celebration going.
They kept going, I realized.
Without me.
Was that even Empalme? Could I even see it? Was I imagining it?
Yes. This was what I needed to do.
“We’re almost there,” Emilia said. “I bet we could make it before your family goes to sleep.”
“No, Emilia,” I said. “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you. I should have told you everything.”
Those same words again. Manolito had spoken them to me, not far from where I stood. Would he be down there? Would he be gone forever?