Emilia shifted from one foot to the other. “What is it?”
“What happens at the end?”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“When we get there,” I explained. “We go to Solado, and you find Luz, and I find Simone, and then … what? Will you stay there? Am I to find my own way back?”
She shook her head violently. “I can’t stay there. Not one more day.”
“But what of your friends? What about Simone?”
Emilia stayed silent, her gaze focused to the south, then said, “I don’t know if you’ll understand this.”
I stepped closer to her. “I’ll try,” I said. “I have to try. I have to know that I’m not taking a one-way trip.”
She focused those eyes on me. Piercing, as usual, but not cold. They were alight with a fire, an intensity, a conviction.
“Once you’ve been free, you can’t go back to it all.” She pulled her braid in front of her shoulder, and she ran her fingers up and down the tight lines of her hair. “I need to find Luz. And then … I have to leave. I can’t stay there anymore.”
It was like hearing my own thoughts coming out of her mouth. Hadn’t I felt just as she did, but about Empalme? Hadn’t I desired to leave for so, so long? Maybe this was meant to be a one-way trip. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to go back home.
“Then let’s keep moving,” I said. “And if Solís is truly guiding you back to Solado, then They must want me to complete this journey, right?”
Emilia nodded. “They drew me to you, didn’t They?”
I had nothing to say to that.
So we climbed.
We crested the hill as You were finally dropping toward the west, and I paused to take another drink of water, short and calculated so as to preserve as much of it as I could. “I know you’ve been doing it,” I said to Emilia, “but make sure that you’re taking regular sips, even if you don’t think you need it.”
“Why?”
I drank down deep; half my water was already gone. “Because it can sneak up on you. It’s better to keep a regular schedule than not to drink for an hour and start to suffer the ill effects of too little water.”
She grimaced then. “I don’t really know what those are,” she said.
“The big one to pay attention to is your temperature. You’ll feel extremely hot, you’ll sweat more than you ever have in your life, and your skin will feel like it is burning.”
Emilia sighed. “So … what I’m feeling now?”
“Probably,” I said, smiling. “It’s awful out, I know. But when your head starts pounding, or there is a dull pain behind your eyes, let me know. That’s the start of something worse.”
She drank more water as I gazed behind us, first down at the trail we had ascended, and then up to el valle before me.
Most of the hillside was bare save for a tall ironwood. It was far off the main trail, and as I stared at the lone living thing on the side of la montaña, I spotted another trail, this one jutting off toward the west. How many of them were there in the desert? How many crisscrossed with one another? Where did they lead? How many others had stood atop this same montaña and realized how very tiny they were in Your world?
I crossed over to the other side of la montaña where Emilia stood, and I suddenly understood why we were heading to la granja.
The land to the north was fertile.
The next valle stretched before us east to west, and it reminded me that we were a resilient people. After La Quema, we still rebuilt our lives. I had heard of las granjas grandísimas in the north that supplied most of the south with the food that kept us alive. I never dreamed that I would see them. But there they were, so immense and huge, rows of greens, browns, and yellows tucked up against one another, lined with the irrigation ditches that caught rainwater from las montañas and delivered it down to the fields. There seemed to be no end to them in either direction.
This was where our food came from?
It felt holy. Hallowed.
In spite of the punishment You gave us, we survived.
“I remember seeing this for the first time,” said Emilia, breaking my concentration. She pointed to the north. “Only I saw it from those hills.”
“But your people grew your food,” I said. “There are few crops in Empalme. So we rely on las granjas.”
She nodded. “It must be a lot to take in.”
I excused myself then and headed for an ironwood on the western edge of the clearing, hoping to relieve myself. I had squatted down over a hole I dug in the dirt when I felt it.
The tug.
The twine around my heart.
The pull.
I ignored it at first. I had to be imagining it. But the sensation flared again. I stood up and yanked my breeches back into place, then swayed there, trying to breathe through it.
It was happening. The same feeling I had experienced that day hunting water. I carefully stepped to the west, beyond the ironwood. Another step, another tug. I gingerly moved closer, and then something brought me to my knees. I dug in the dirt immediately, without removing my pack, and my fingers plunged into the soil, dry and tough, and I could feel it caking underneath my nails, but I couldn’t stop. The edge of something hard, like leather, poked out of the hole, and I pulled on it, then dug it out further.
Another little pouch.
Another poema!
I did not immediately tear open the pouch, despite that I wanted to. No. I needed to. But this was too good to be true. How had I found one of these so very far from home? Was this a trick of the mind? Had I failed to drink enough water?
“Xochitl!”
I spun at the sound of Emilia’s voice. She crunched through the underbrush, moving toward me much
