I rolled my eyes. I wanted nothing to do with her.
So I turned around once more and leaned my head upward, my back to the fire, and I watched las estrellas. I stuck my fingers into the waistband on my breeches and felt the edges of the small drawstring pouch I always carried with me.
One touch was all I needed.
I watched las estrellas. They watched me back. I stood like this until my neck ached, until I had drowned out the noise of Empalme. Our nighttime celebration faded around me as exhaustion crept into our bodies, pulled us back to sleep, and soon, Papá was asking me to help la señora Sánchez home. I agreed, but it was mostly because I knew she would keep to herself.
So I enjoyed her quiet presence as I pulled the cart back, the crunch of the wooden wheels on sand the only sound between us.
But I needed to know. As we pulled up to her home, crafted of bricks made of mud, I sighed. “Do you think we will be okay?” I asked. “Have the guardians said anything to you about Julio?”
“No sé,” she said. “I have never known the guardians to be so silent. And I’ve lived in Empalme for nearly seventy years.”
“Am I doing enough?”
She smiled, caressed my arm with her fingers until they looped with mine. Then she gave me a gentle squeeze. “Niña, sometimes I think you do too much for us.”
She took her empty pot indoors without another word, and I walked the rest of the way home, my eyes drifting up to las estrellas every so often. I was alone underneath them.
They comforted me. They always did.
Rogelio called my name. It drifted in our home like a wind, like a lost calf bleating for its mother, and I bolted upright from the floor. He called it out again, and I cast a glance down at Raúl, who slept soundlessly on the ground. As he always did. Nothing ever seemed to wake him, and I sent up a silent prayer to You, thankful that he would not have to hear this.
Mamá and Papá were asleep, too, not far from us, and Papá’s soft snoring filled the room. Mamá rustled in her sleeping roll, and I sneaked out while I could. She was the lightest sleeper of them all, but that night, I was thankful she did not wake. I pushed aside the burlap curtain that crossed over our doorway, and he swayed there, his arms drooping at his side, and my name slipped off his tongue again, jumbled together.
“Xochitl.”
I stepped out to Rogelio and reached forward, intending to direct him away from our door, but the smell hit me. I choked. Tesgüino, his favorite.
Despite how drunk he was, he still saw me shrink away from him. “Lo siento, Xochitl,” he said. “Pero te necesito. He hecho algo terrible.”
He slurred all of it, the words coated in alcohol and regret. It was always the same with Rogelio: the sadness. The numbness he sought in drink. The begging. Even if I hadn’t been a cuentista, I would still know his secrets. He wore them on his clothing, on his breath, on his face.
I shook my head. “Now, Rogelio? Do I have to now? It’s the middle of the night.”
“I won’t make it to morning,” he said, and then his eyes focused on me. They were glassy in the bright starlight, and dust clung to the tracks of his tears, road maps of misery and loss.
He knew. Everyone did. Your body told you when your lies, your secrets, the terrible things you had done, were about to take form in our world. Las pesadillas, we called them. Night terrors made real.
I glanced behind him, and there they were. Five men shrouded in the shadows, each of them with their arms outstretched. They were not in solid form, as if the darkness itself had conjured up these beings. At the ends of their arms, blood dripped to the ground from stumps. Someone had taken their hands.
They moved closer.
I stepped back again, shuddered.
It was time.
I was taught that, too. That if a cuentista did not take a story, las pesadillas would gain power, would lash out, would harm others.
So I couldn’t wait any longer.
I reached down and grabbed one of Rogelio’s sweaty hands. “Ven conmigo,” I said, and I directed him behind our home. He shuffled along, and if I had not held his hand, I am certain he would have gotten lost walking those few feet. I guided him toward the firepit in the back, still warm from the tortillas we had made, and had Rogelio sit on a rough cobija placed next to it. He didn’t sit so much as collapse on the spot, and then he started humming. I didn’t recognize the melody, and then he lifted his hands up as if he held his guitar, and he started playing, and it was one of the saddest things I’d ever seen.
I pitied him. So I sat across from Rogelio, and I took his hands, and I asked him to tell me his story.
As I did, they surrounded our home.
Shuffled toward me, their feet dragging on the ground.
Closer, closer.
I started because I had to. They were almost upon me—and these pesadillas looked furious.
This is what I think happened. I don’t actually know. I gave it back to You, as I had always done, so I like to imagine what happened as I performed my duty.
He put his hands out, palm down.
I put mine out, palm up.
I placed mine underneath his. I took in a deep breath, and I closed my eyes, opened my heart and my stomach.
He stared at me, and then he opened, too. His story was a deluge from his mouth, and as he spoke, they entered my chest. I gasped; that first rush was always the hardest to deal with. Even if I gave You these stories back, I had a sort of memory within
