How could You let this happen to her? How could You allow such horrible things in Your world? If You were powerful enough to destroy us all in one blow, one burst of fire and fury, then why could You not take care of one person? One situation? One impossible problem?
Did You ever care about her? Or did You think she had to suffer in order to become worthy of Your attention?
She gave me her story.
And I listened.
When she finished, the breath wheezed out of Emilia’s throat. My arms pulsed with anger, with terror, with resentment, with longing, with all the emotions Emilia had given me, and they were a terrific chaos inside. Her story was a living thing, and it felt Lito’s, Marisol’s, it knew the same horror of los sabuesos, of feeling trapped and alone; it clung to the bitterness of Ofelia, to Omar’s guilt. I sat there on the ground, closed my eyes, ingested this story, let this new truth that felt so at home with its companions make a place within my body.
Solado. That was where Marisol was from. It was the land that was stolen from her people.
As Emilia’s fear and regret clamored for space inside even as they attached themselves deep in my belly, I knew I would have to keep this story, too, and not just because I had kept all the others. Emilia’s anger was too familiar. Her desire for freedom was too close to my own. I was so wrong about her.
And I now had information I needed. Simone. Simone could give my power to someone else.
“I’m sorry,” Emilia said, and her voice faltered. She swallowed. “I had to tell someone. I had to tell you.”
I nodded at her, but I kept my distance. I had misunderstood her. I had seen Emilia’s coldness as something to avoid, to despise.
I had been so, so wrong.
I wanted to reach out to her.
To comfort her.
Was this catharsis? Validation? Were the stories pushing me to do this?
But I did nothing. I couldn’t let myself get near her at all, not in the way that I wanted. How was I worthy of that?
She could not trust me. I was a liar.
I couldn’t trust myself either. Her story was so familiar to me: Her life had been a lie. She had been trapped. But she had escaped. A selfish desire to keep the story, to examine it, to understand it, swept over me. How could she possibly appreciate that?
Emilia was overflowing with shame; I saw it in how she clung to herself, in how she made her body smaller, how she shrank in the hope of becoming invisible.
“Have some more water,” I told her, passing her the goatskin bag.
She nodded.
Emilia looked at me with such earnestness, Solís, and I hated it. I was seeing her as a means to an end, to gaining my own freedom. And I shouldn’t have done that.
I did it anyway. It was so easy.
I scooted back a bit, then stood and walked to the west toward the farthest edge of the vista. From where I was, Obregán glowed to my right, but the montañas stretched as far as I could see that night. I lowered myself to the ground, coughed a few times, and the stories roiled in me, ready for their journey back to the earth.
No, I told them.
As soon as the ritual began, it was over. I held them there with my willpower, urging them to reach into my body and hold tight. I had done as much for days now, and it was so much easier now than it had been that night after Lito’s ritual, when I had made my fateful decision. I just needed to make sure the stories would stay where they were: within me.
A deer, its coat the color of the desert at night, soft blues and grays, appeared to my left. It raised its head, and its antlers twisted in every direction, small thorns jutting off the sides of them, a tangled mess, and its eyes glowed green.
We both were still, and then it turned and slowly trod away.
I gulped, wiping at the sweat now forming along my hairline. I watched the deer fold into the shadows, then shook off a creeping sensation along my skin before heading back to Emilia.
She looked up at me as I returned and handed me the goatskin bag. “Everything okay?” she asked.
I nodded. “A little drained,” I said, and I drank.
“You were so fast,” she said.
I drank again. “What?”
“It’s like you were made to be out here. I could barely keep up with you while you were climbing la montaña.”
I shrugged. “Papá taught me well, I suppose.”
“I have a proposition, then.”
I passed her the goatskin bag, but she did not drink from it. Those eyes—which I had regarded as cold before—bore into me, dark and mysterious. She was trying to see into my heart, wasn’t she? To see if she was safe to suggest what she was about to say.
“I’m listening.”
“I have something you need,” she continued. “Simone. I can take you to Simone.”
I frowned. “… but?”
“I want to go with you.”
I shook my head. “Mira, no te conozco, Emilia. I’m sorry for what has happened to you. But until a few moments ago, I thought you were one of the worst people I’d ever met.”
“I know how to get to Solado. Do you?”
I grimaced, well aware that she had a point. “No, I don’t.”
“Then you need me, too.”
“Wait, why do you need me?”
“I don’t know how to survive out here on my own,” she replied, gesturing around her in the darkness, her brown skin illuminated in the starlight. “If you help me, I’ll help you.”
I lowered myself to sit across from her. “Tell me, then,” I said. “Why do you want to go back to Solado if the place is so awful?”
“Luz.”
There was no hesitation on her part as she uttered the name. I
