Each of Us a Desert Page 7

  Hadn’t You?

  Were the others next? Ofelia y Lani y Omar … I had their stories inside me, and it was only a matter of time before they were taken away … and then me.

  I had to find Mamá y Papá. They would understand me, wouldn’t they?

  I ran faster, ignoring the sound behind me. I was determined to make it home.

  If Empalme didn’t kill me first.

  I was nearly home when I saw them. Huddled together, arguing, and Mamá was furious, inconsolable. I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but when Papá looked up at the sound of our approach, his expression told me everything I needed to know.

  They had seen Julio’s display, too.

  I stood there, swaying, and I couldn’t bring myself to get closer.

  I did this, I thought. I brought this upon us.

  “No, no!” Papá shouted, and he knelt down as Raúl plunged into his arms. “Tell me that isn’t true, mija! Please!”

  Mamá sobbed. “Xochitl, he was lying, right?”

  Mamá examined my face as she came close. What could she see upon it? Did she know what I was thinking? I couldn’t tell, but her eyes searched me, over and over, and I tried my best to shove it all down. To hide in plain sight.

  But she knew the truth. She knew that Julio had not made anything up.

  “How could you?” she said, her voice low, hurt. “Inez told you how important your power is. Why we need it.”

  “But, Mamá—” I began.

  Papá loomed in my vision. “Please tell me you’ve given them back now. That Solís has cleansed us.”

  I couldn’t look Papá in the eye, but I longed for that touch of his. His tenderness. His understanding.

  I started crying, and I worked up the courage to look at him. His hands hung at his sides. No touch. No comfort.

  “Xochitl,” he said, barely a whisper. “What have you done?”

  Raúl sobbed, and it was a bitter, distraught sound, one that echoed outside our home.

  He would not come near me.

  The three of them gathered, facing me. I had no means to explain my decision. I had kept the story because I thought I could change what was coming. I had made a mistake, and now, Manolito was dead.

  * * *

  That night, my family ate dinner in silence. No one else had come for me, as I had feared—I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t really process it all. I can’t even remember what we had; it all blurred together. No one said anything to me, even though I could tell they all ached to. I caught them glancing at one another, as if daring someone to break the terrible quiet first.

  They could not bring themselves to do it.

  I helped Papá clean up after dinner, still silent, still tormented by everything racing through my mind. Hadn’t others done so much worse than I had? Wasn’t Julio’s murder of Manolito a far more terrible thing? Solís had not punished him. I couldn’t believe that what I had done was so unforgivable.

  And Julio had corrupted everything it meant to be a cuentista. He stole stories out of the bodies of others!

  Where was his punishment? How had You let him survive—and thrive—for so long?

  There was a voice at the door. I thought it was Rogelio, come to ask me to absolve him once more, but it was la señora Sánchez, hunched over, and she coughed, her white hair pouring over her face.

  Papá rushed over to her and tried to help her, but she waved him away. “I won’t be long,” she said, “but you need to know, Beto.”

  “Know what?” Papá said.

  “They’re gone.”

  “Julio?” Mamá said. “Did they finally leave?”

  She shook her head, then wiped at the tears on her face. “No, Lupe,” she said. “The guardians. Los lobos. They’re all gone.”

  “That can’t be true,” Papá said. “Gone?”

  “Their den is empty. The blood has dried.” She paused, sucked a breath in deep. “We might be alone out here.”

  Papá glanced at me, and I must have looked miserable because he asked la señora Sánchez to step outside. She gave me one last look before she did.

  Raúl sidled up to me. “Are we going to be okay, Xochitl?”

  “I’m sure we’ll be fine.” Another lie. “This will all solve itself soon.”

  Each lie easier than the last.

  “Why did you do it?”

  Mamá was standing behind Raúl and shushed him. But I knelt down before him, ruffled his bushy hair. “Do you trust me?” I asked.

  “Always,” he said. “But aren’t you supposed to give the stories back?”

  “I found out the truth about Julio,” I said, “and I wanted to do something about it.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  His words were a fist to my chest. He didn’t mean to be cruel, so I gave him a weak smile. “I thought I could do something.”

  Raúl smiled back. “You’ll figure it out,” he said. “You’re our cuentista.”

  He meant it as a sign of solidarity, as an expression of hope.

  It felt more like a curse.

  * * *

  When Papá returned, he didn’t want to talk about what else he had spoken of with la señora Sánchez. He made for the back of our home, and Mamá followed him. Their voices were muffled but sharp. They were arguing. About what? I never found out.

  I lay down on my sleeping roll and tried my best to ignore them. I could hear Raúl next to me, trying to do the same thing.

  My mind raced, uncertain what the immediate future would hold. I brushed my fingers over the hiding place in the floor, las poemas so close to me. I wanted to find the person who had been able to reach inside me so delicately, so wholly.

  But that wasn’t me. I had my whole life mapped out before me. Take, consume, return. Tuve que honrar a Solís. Proteger mi aldea. Amar a mi familia. That was it. I protected others, but who protected me? Who listened to me? Who cared about the things that made me scared, worried, or angry?

  How could I tell any story of my own?

  They knew. Whoever wrote las poemas, they would know why I had done what I had done. They would understand the deep well of emotions that churned in me. They would understand my curiosity when I learned what Julio was. They knew what it was like to feel contained … and they had broken free of that.

  Soy libre.

  I had to know. I had to know why these words held such an immense power over me.

  I had to leave.

  There was one person en la aldea who could help me. I took a waterskin bag, filled it halfway with water from my hunt the day before, and then looked upon Raúl. I couldn’t tell if he was actually asleep or pretending to be.

  I left my home and was met with the cool air of the early evening. You, Solís, were nearly gone from the sky, and the soft glow was settling in. Soon, las estrellas would light our path at night. Would we still have our celebrations? I wondered. Or had Julio ruined that? Had I ruined that?

  How could we celebrate when Manolito was dead?

  I walked to the west. I went straight for Marisol, one of the last people ever to talk to Manolito.

  She would have the answers I needed.

  * * *

  I had not seen Marisol during Julio’s terrible display, and by the time I crossed over Empalme—down dark alleys, cutting through abandoned plots of land, wary of how quiet and eerie the evening was—I worried that this plan wouldn’t work. What if Marisol had left la aldea already? What if I was truly stuck here? What if los aldeanos got to me first?

  Marisol had come far from the north, from a distant aldea with a name I did not know, whose people had survived La Quema by burrowing deep into the ground. I had heard Marisol tell of her upbringing there, of the complicated network of tunnels that kept la comunidad safe from the scorching sun during the day.

  Maybe she had left Empalme and gone home.

  Maybe this was a horrible idea.

  What am I doing?

  These thoughts tormented me as I came upon her home, du
g into the arid soil. Only a small bit of it sat aboveground. If you didn’t know where it was, it was impossible to see at night, even in the glow of starlight. Rogelio was known to trip over the edge of it and fall asleep on the roof after our celebration until the baking sun forced him to seek shelter in the morning.

  That night, though, Marisol was sitting on the edge instead, and her lit cigarillo glowed in the darkness, its ember orange, red, sparkling. She took another long drag from it, lowered it to her side. “¿Qué quieres, Xochitl?” she asked, and her voice was deep and musical. “What can I do for you?”

  Marisol knew things. People. Places. That was her role in Empalme. She was one of the few who regularly traveled in every direction, and she brought information back with her. La Reina del Chisme. Who had work available in the surrounding granjas? What was the latest chisme out of la capital? Which aldeas were still thriving? Which had died out? If you had a question, you could pay Marisol, and she was dependable. For the right price, she could give you an answer for practically anything.

  Her features came into view as I stepped up to her. Her hair was bushy and full, and her tight curls fell dramatically down the sides of her face, most of them gray and white. She was stunning, really, but it was the feeling I got from being around her that captivated me the most. She seemed so sure of herself, of her place within the world. As I was born to be a cuentista, she was born to be La Reina del Chisme. And in an existence so scattered, so desperate to cling to life after La Quema, information was valuable. Powerful.

  She had been here for nearly fifty years, before my own parents had been born, and it was hard to imagine Empalme without her.

  And now I needed her. After all this time, I had a reason to talk to her. To ask the questions.

  “I need to leave Empalme,” I told her, choosing to be as direct as possible.

  “And go where?”

  I hadn’t thought that far. “¿Obregán?”

  She smiled, blew smoke out of her nose, and it was so intoxicating to watch. “Ay, niña, you cannot make that journey. Do you think you can survive the desert and its horrors all on your own?”

  “I have to,” I said. “I don’t have a choice.”

  She laughed, a throaty sound that cut through the silence of the night. “You always have a choice,” she said. “We often don’t like what one of the choices is, so we ignore it, pretend it is not there.”

  She blew more smoke out. “Why must you leave, Xochitl? Why are you not asking your parents for help?”

  “You don’t know?” I said. “Were you not here?”

  She squinted at me. “I know everything.”

  “So you saw what Julio just did?”

  The ember flickered in front of me, and seconds later, she blew smoke up into the air. “Did what?”

  “Manolito is dead.”

  The cigarillo stopped moving. “Dead?” More smoke. “Don’t joke with me, Xochitl. I don’t find that funny.”

  “I’m telling the truth,” I said, and then a pang of guilt hit me. Maybe about this I am, I thought. “Julio killed Manolito for stealing from him. He’s a cuentista, and he took Lito’s story right out of his body.” I paused. Swallowed. “And then he had him torn apart by this creature that could track him. With his blood. He called it ‘un sabueso.’”

  The effect was instant. Her cigarillo hung in the air, and it burned down as she stared at me. Her dark eyes were wide, so intently focused that a chill rushed over me. “Marisol? What is it?”

  “Esa palabra,” she said. “Otra vez.”

  “Sabueso,” I repeated. “Julio brought it out and—”

  The cigarillo plummeted, tumbled over the ground, and Marisol swore. “I have to leave,” she said. “Now.”

  She reached out and grabbed my hand, and a piercing pain shot up my arm. “Let me go!” I shouted, and I tried to yank my hand back, but she only held on tighter.

  “Xochitl, you need to take my story,” she said. “You can’t let them get me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She dropped down to her knees, nearly pulling me down with her. She had both my hands in hers, and they were slick with sweat.

  I had never seen her like this. Marisol, La Reina del Chisme, now looked more frightened than even Raúl had earlier that night.

  “Marisol…,” I began.

  “Take it,” she said. “Then you’ll know.”

  I took a step back. Marisol had never sought me out in all the years I had been a cuentista. She said she had her own that she used, somewhere in Obregán. Why now? Why did she have to ask me now?

  “I can’t!” I screamed. “You don’t understand—”

  “It won’t matter,” she said. “I have seen los sabuesos before, and they only bring devastation.”

  I breathed in deep, and when I said, “Tell me,” her terror burst up through me, up my arms and into my body. It was one of the quickest connections I had ever made with someone during the ritual, and her desperation to tell me the truth flooded my body and—

  Let me tell You a story, Solís.

  Marisol never wanted to leave her home. She had been born underground, had lived her life in the complex tunnels and chambers of Solado, the tradition she was taught to survive Your rage. It was a land far, far to the north.

  Her fathers, Josué and Ricardo, had let her run the tunnels, and she spent her days getting to know the other people who lived underground with her. She would come home late in the afternoons, and she would tell her parents about all the stories she had been told that day. Josué in particular loved hearing them, and he would sit with Marisol in his lap, asking all the right questions, always interested, always loving. Even Ricardo, who worked overnight to help collect food for his aldea, soon became enamored with how much information Marisol was able to get in only one day.

  They were the most knowledgeable family in Solado, and Marisol thrived most when she sat quietly, listening to the words and stories of those around her.

  She stayed there for years, and it became her responsibility to teach the other children: about how to farm underground, when best to harvest vegetables, which aldeas nearby were best to travel to for supplies. She told stories, of a sort, to explain to others what it was like to live in Solado.

  She never thought they were perfect, that they had no problems. Solado had to depend on Carmilo to the north for meat and cotton. While it was not forbidden to go above-ground, it was highly discouraged, and Marisol could recall only a handful of times that she stood on the earth itself, gazing up into the sky, at Solís and Their light. She had seen las estrellas at night even less, as angry bestias roamed the land above when darkness fell. Sometimes, if you crept close to the entrance, you could hear the creatures above them, snarling and growling outside.

  But Marisol loved la comunidad. She loved the ways they survived in a universe that seemed so hostile and frightening. She loved her place in Solado, and by the time she was twenty, she was trusted. Believed. It was told that Marisol could get anyone to open up to her in her presence.

  And it was around that time when they had ruined everything, stole it all from her.

  They came in the night. She had her own home by then, carved out of a tunnel on the end, and she heard the shouts. The echoes. The snarls. Marisol sat upright in her bed, her heart beating in her throat.

  A shadow passed by the entry. It was impossible. They wore masks with elongated snouts so no one could see their faces. Long white cloaks flowed behind them, stretching their shadows into frightening shapes. Every bit of their skin was covered. They seemed to be from some other time, some terrible place.

  At first, she believed she was dreaming, and then she heard the screams, heard the tearing of flesh, and then she saw them.

  They skulked behind their monstrous owners in the passageway, and the shape seemed impossible. She rose from her bed to get a better look, crept slowly to the edge of her door, tried to stay quiet, tried not to scream in panic, and she watched a
s they dragged a man out of his home. He fought, hard and fierce, and then a knife sliced at his arm, and one of the creatures jumped, stuck its snout in his blood.

  There, in the light, she saw what had descended upon Solado. Their eyes glowed, and their bodies were twisted, dark, their snouts so terribly long, the horns on their heads hideous and sharp.

  Then … they fed.

  The man was nothing more than shredded remains, a sickly pile of gore and blood, when los sabuesos lost interest in him.

  She kept her mouth covered, backed away from the door, and tried to make it back to her bed, an irrational thought consuming her: If she buried herself underneath la cobija, it would all disappear. This was a dream. She could wake in the morning, and it would be nothing more than her imagination.

  Then a shadow from the doorway fell over her.

  La bestia stood motionless, then twisted its misshapen, nightmarish head to the side, that awful snout filling Marisol with dread, and then it took a step forward.

  These people conquered Solado. They stole la aldea from its inhabitants in only a few hours.

  But that was not what haunted Marisol, what drove her to Empalme. No, when that thing stepped into her home, Marisol leapt up and knocked it aside, shoved into it hard with her shoulder, and she rounded the corner, into the passageway, past carnage, past destruction, past those she knew and loved and respected as they were torn apart.

  She did not stop for their screams.

  She did not stop for those who begged her to help them.

  She was so afraid, Solís, and she couldn’t think. She just reacted.

  Marisol was close to the entrance to Solado, so close that she could see the glowing light of las estrellas seeping down below.

  He called out her name.

  “Marisol! Marisol!”

  She stopped, spun around, saw Ricardo, the light from a torch behind her reflecting off his bald head.

  He was pulling himself forward on his arms. Something was wrong with his legs, something she couldn’t make out, something she could focus on and—