He thanked her with a nod of his head, then brought the canteen up to his mouth. Some of the water trickled out and down his chin, running along his neck and beard and then soaking into his already drenched camisa.
“Más,” Rosalinda ordered.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” he asked.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Please, señor.”
Emilia and Felipe had backtracked to us. Both of them looked tired, too.
“¿Qué pasó?” Emilia asked. “We’re still making excellent time, so we can stop here.”
Eliazar held a hand up, and Rosalinda and I helped him rise. He swayed in place, then gave us a goofy smile. Such a warm expression on his face, but when it faded, there was a sadness there, a soft edge to his brief joy. He looked to me, and his mouth curled up. “Could I have a moment alone with you? Before we continue?”
No, I thought. No, I know what this is! I can’t do this!
Emilia must have seen the panic on my face. “Eliazar, are you sure this is the time for that? We’re all very tired, and I’m sure Xochitl can’t … can’t deal with the ritual right now.”
Relief filled me. She had given me an out.
“Lo siento, Xochitl,” he said, and his eyes were deep wells of sadness now, so dark that I thought I could pitch myself into them and never come out. “I would not ask you if it wasn’t important.”
Emilia gazed in my direction. What was that look on her face? Concern? Fear?
“You don’t have to do this, Xochitl,” she said.
“Please, cuentista,” Eliazar begged.
Emilia left his side, came to me, and pulled me from him, far enough so that no one could hear us. My heart raced a terrible rhythm.
“I get it now,” she said.
“Get what?”
“Why you’re doing this. Why you want to go to Simone.”
My eyesight blurred. And it was such a silly thought, but I couldn’t help it: Don’t cry, Xochitl. You need every drop of water to survive.
I wasn’t sure I wanted her to see my face, to see how much her empathy affected me. “Why now?” I asked.
“They all want something from you. This is how it’s been, hasn’t it?”
“All the time,” I choked out.
“And you have to lie to everyone just to get through the day.”
I did.
“Especially to yourself.”
I breathed in the hot air of the desert. I breathed in that truth.
“If you don’t want to do this, I’ll support you, Xochitl.”
I faced her.
“Whatever your decision,” she said, and her lips turned up in a smile, “I’ll support you.”
I breathed that in, too.
I had taken so many stories. In a couple of days, this power would be taken from me. It would be over, sooner than I could possibly dream of.
Something was wrong with Eliazar, and I could help him.
This is it, I told myself. The last story I will take.
“I think I have to do this,” I said. “Just this once.”
“Estás segura?”
“Sí,” I said without hesitation. “Keep the others busy, can you?”
She nodded, then walked off. She spoke briefly to Rosalinda, and the two of them looked at me. Emilia guided them from me, and I was left with el viejo.
I walked toward him.
He cast a tender gaze upon me. “Cuentista,” he said, “may I?” Eliazar dropped to the ground, his knees scraping against the earth. He held both his hands out in front of him, his palms facing down, waiting for me.
A pain stabbed me in the gut again, but it was not a cramp from anything usual. It was the surge of fear: Lito’s. Marisol’s. Mine. I saw them in my mind: Lito reading the letter to Julio, Marisol holding her breath as los sabuesos hunted in Solado.
What did he have to tell me?
“Everything is as it should be,” he said, still holding his hands out, still gazing at me with hope and longing.
A part of me resisted. Told me to deny him again. Told me to preserve my energy, to think about myself first, to remember all the stories within me that I still had not given back. They woke again and fought for space, and I clutched my stomach. I breathed through the pain and … and …
It was instinct. I knelt down beside him, then crossed my legs under me. I raised my hands, palms up, and I slid them underneath Eliazar’s, and I smiled back to him.
“Breathe, señor,” I told him, and he did so, and I pushed those stories down, forced them deeper into me.
The spark hit me, and his sadness rushed down my arms, straight to my heart, surrounding it and squeezing it, and all I managed to get out in time was a choked request:
“Tell me your story, Eliazar.”
Let me tell You a story, Solís.
Eliazar never wanted children. He never desired anything more than Gracia, his love. They had met many years before, back when Eliazar’s aldea was tiny, insignificant. They lived far, far to the east of Obregán, out where the deserts gradually gave way to las dunas, then to the endless expanse of El Mar. Eliazar was so much younger then, his hands not yet haunted by the ghosts of pain and tension that gripped his joints, that slowed his legs. He made a living as a pescador, and his life was simple and focused before he met Gracia. He used to make the daylong trip to and from the shoreline of El Mar, where he used his handmade nets of intricately tied twine to catch seafood to sell en las aldeas he passed on his trek home. Then, with just enough pescado for himself and his aldea still in his cart, he would guide his horse and his catch back home.
Gracia and Eliazar met for the first time on the road to El Mar. She was walking toward him, a woven basket balanced on her head. When he passed her, she gave him only a glance. He would later swear
