So they stayed. This was uncommon, as Julio rarely lasted more than a few days in any single place. But in Empalme, with the well firmly in his control, the friction did not dwindle.
Emilia was consumed by an immense pity for los aldeanos de Empalme. She had seen so much suffering before, but these people … they did not fight back like other aldeas. They believed that Solís would protect them, would save them, and they hid in their homes, avoiding Julio and his men, as if he would fade away if they ignored it all. It filled her with a terrible sadness.
She refused to show it, though, because she knew that if Papi saw even a shred of sympathy on her face, he would lash out at her as he had back in Solada. So her face became as a mask, a cold, terrible thing, and she buried her feelings deep inside her so that they were a tiny stone, one she could ignore, could pretend wasn’t even there.
And then Julio struck back.
Oh, Lito. Emilia had watched it happen, knowing that, once again, there was nothing she could do to stop it. Should she have defied Julio? What other choice was there? She had never seen un sabueso up close; they had existed in the shadows for so long. Yet here one was, and its power was so much more terrifying than she could have ever expected. When it returned with Lito’s arm, she refused to look at it.
Julio had not touched her since they left Solado. Not one embrace, not one graze of the fingertips, nothing. But now his hand whipped out, grabbed her by the back of the neck, and he forced her to watch the carnage.
Emilia decided, right then, to leave. She had no idea how to survive on her own, how to subsist on the land, how to thrive under Your gaze, but she couldn’t stay anymore. She couldn’t be a part of this, and she knew that as terrible and frightening as it was, she did have a choice.
That night, she wore her lightest clothing to bed, hoping it would keep the heat off her body. She waited to sneak out until after Julio, drunk off tesgüino, ordered his men to gather their supplies and begin packing for the next aldea. Somewhere to the south, he had said. There was more to conquer.
He had never smiled wider at her.
She did not escape that night, however. She wanted to make sure Papi was long gone, that he would not come after her, so she found an abandoned home and buried herself in old clothing and rags. She waited there, the stench of rot and decay unbearable, until Empalme became quiet again.
When You appeared in the east the next morning, and she was confident she could finally leave, she bolted from that shack, desperately hoping that Julio was not looking for her, and headed for the north gate, and—
She found me trying to escape as well. She was terrified, too, Solís, and in her mind, I was going to reveal her to Julio, a final act of spite so that I could depart unscathed. But she watched me run off, let me get ahead of her, and then she began to follow once it was safe. She took it as a sign and obeyed the feeling that gripped her, that compelled her toward me.
She lost sight of me a few times, unable to see my fleeing body as I crossed over hills and down into ravines. She knew this sudden plan made no sense, that there was no real reason to follow me. But she saw a girl fleeing for her life, and it felt like a sign, as though You were telling her that she was not alone. Here was someone else, shunned by those around her, alone in a crowd, and she believed that, at the very least, I would understand.
She always found me, no matter how long she went without a glimpse of my long hair, my dusty clothing. She thought she had lost me for good when I climbed las bajadas, but then she whispered another prayer to You.
That was her, wasn’t it, Solís? It wasn’t Lito hiding behind a saguaro. It was her.
But her journey was even more fraught than mine. Emilia had a visitor, too: la mujer de La Palmita, who stretched her hides in the sun, who spilled her blood on them as Julio sliced her down. She walked behind Emilia as she climbed la montaña, and she wouldn’t speak. She tried to keep her eyes ahead of her, and then she looked back again—
She shouldn’t have looked back, Solís.
La mujer, nameless and bloody, opened her mouth wide, wider, until her jaw cracked, and a hand reached out of that gaping hole, and then an arm, and the hand grabbed at anything, hooked its fingers on the woman’s ear. He pulled himself out of her, covered in the remains of his own mother, and her body collapsed in a heap and poured into the cracks of the trail. He stood up, and there was the long blade, still stuck in his stomach, and he looked down at it.
Then at Emilia.
Then he pulled it out.
Then he showered her with blood, so much of it that it filled her mouth, hot and bitter, and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, and she fell to the road and clawed at her arms and her throat, and then
then
It was all gone.
The woman,
her son,
the blood.
Except for her arms, where Emilia had clawed at herself, and as she bled, she blamed herself. She blamed herself for what someone else had done.
And then she found me.
Forgive her, Solís. She didn’t know. But she is here now, and she wants You to
