I looked at that portrait of misery and regret.
“Xochitl, please.” Emilia tugged on my arm. “We have to get going now.”
“Do you need a coyote?” Soledad asked. “I can get you one. A guide. Are you going north?”
Emilia and I stilled.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Eduardo!” she yelled at me, and spit dribbled out of the corner of her mouth. She didn’t even seem to care. “If you keep this to yourself, I will tell you where to find Eduardo, and I’ll make sure he takes you on, free of charge.”
“What’s a coyote?” Emilia asked.
I looked to Soledad, as I wanted the answer, too.
Soledad seemed to think she had an opportunity to win us over; her face lit up with excitement. “A guide,” she said. “There are many of them here in Obregán, all willing to guide you to any aldea in the world … for a price, of course.”
“And this Eduardo can take us to Solado?” I asked. I had some money that Marisol had given me. Perhaps it would be wise to use it.
“I know the way,” Emilia reminded me, cutting down my excitement. She pulled on my arm once more. “Are you able to move? Because we have to.”
“Please,” Soledad said. “Let me send you to Eduardo. Or to another cuentista. Anything, please. Let me be la cuentista you need, Xochitl.”
“I don’t need you,” I said. “And unlike you and your mentor, I keep my secrets.”
She begged me profusely, her hands running up and down my arms, and my skin crawled as she did so.
“Vámonos, Emilia,” I said, hoping my dizziness would pass.
But Soledad held me tightly. “Can you teach me?” she asked, imploring me with those eyes of hers. “Can you show me how to be a cuentista?”
I didn’t answer. I got away from her as fast as I could.
The sounds of El Mercado rushed back in. More cuentistas offered their services, but I ignored them, too. Why did Soledad say she believed we had died out? Did las cuentistas of Obregán all behave the same? Was it all an elaborate lie?
My world continued to expand. Bigger and bigger, and as it did so, I felt smaller. Less consequential. Less like I mattered. Less like all the stories I had ever been told about Solís were anything more than that: just stories.
I didn’t know what sort of person I was if all those stories weren’t real.
By the time we got out of El Mercado de Obregán, You were straight up above me in the sky. I was surprised by the sight of a group of children standing under a torrent of water being pumped from an old stone well off to the side of the road I was on. I watched as an older man, his hair graying and hanging down his back, laughed at the children, then stuck a metal canteen under the stream. Water was available everywhere here. No hunting for it, no worries of thirst.
No Julio.
I did my best to blend in, to seem as though I knew what I was doing, and refilled my goatskin bag as casually as I could, then motioned for Emilia to do the same.
“We didn’t get supplies,” said Emilia. “Only a meal.”
“I know,” I said after taking a deep drink of water. “I just needed to get out of there.”
She nodded. She understood.
Did she, Solís?
Because as I waited for her to fill up on water, I wasn’t even sure I understood myself.
A flash of a memory hit me:
Emilia, swaddled and terrified, being taken aboveground, learning that los pálidos had lied to her people.
Maybe she understood me better than I ever thought she could.
We walked, my mind buzzing, and I didn’t know what to do next. I let Emilia lead me for a while, and she paused next to a red structure that was built of some sort of clay, smoother than what we used in Empalme. I could smell salvia from the nearby doorway, and the aroma calmed my nerves. I breathed it deeply, letting it fill my lungs, imagined it running through my veins and to every part of my body. There was a man in another of those wooden chairs with wheels, and he waited behind another man who was being fitted with an arm, much like the one that la señora Sánchez had gotten.
This was a center of healing, and enfermeras flitted about from person to person, asking what people needed, then taking some of them indoors, while others received medicinas or potions before handing over coins or trinkets as payment.
Did Emilia need something from this place? I looked to her, and she was paler, sweat dripping down her face.
“Emilia?” I stepped closer to her. “¿Estás bien?”
“Hold on,” she said, annoyed.
I closed my eyes and took another deep breath of the salvia. I am going to find Simone, I told myself. I had to. I couldn’t turn back empty-handed at this point, not after all I’d gone through. I allowed my anger at Soledad, at the stories I’d been told, to swim through me. It was refreshing to have a focus, something to direct my ire at.
“Should we get some supplies?”
I opened my eyes. Emilia did not look any better. “Probably,” I said. “Let me think.”
“I don’t know that we have much time.”
I frowned. “Are we in a rush?”
She was breathing harder than before, and her next words were quiet. Frightened. “Oh, Solís, help me.”
“Emilia, what is going on?”
“We need to go now.”
The last word was a blunt force, and I backed away from her. “I am confused. Is something wrong?”
“Please, Xochitl. NOW.” She clutched her hands to her chest and winced. Then her eyes bulged and she spun about, like she was trying to find something.
“Can you just tell me what—?”
“He’s here.”
I stilled. A chasm ripped open between us.
No.
No.
My instincts had been right. This was a trap after all. There was only one person she could have been referring to:
Julio.
“How do you know?” I yelled, and all the calm that the
