Felipe continued to talk excitedly about puñales and weapons with Rosalinda as we walked at a steady pace. But the farther we moved up la montaña, the more noise we made. Our feet, tired and weary, scraping against the dirt. Panting. The rustling of our clothing, rubbing and chafing. The conversation died, and la montaña surrounded us with silence, leaned in, waited for us … for what? For us to become a part of it? To perish as Raymundo had?
Exhaustion folded over my body. I was still in the rear, and my legs were heavy, as though weighted down with stones. It was the stories. It had to be. The closer I got to You, the greater my guilt and shame. I kept moving, though, because I knew that as soon as I stopped, I wouldn’t be able to start again.
I looked toward the summit. Had it gotten farther? I pushed forward and pounded my fists into my thighs, willing them to keep moving.
Delirium was close.
I could sense my mind slipping away from me—with the next step forward, I was going to lose it all. I was never going to be the same again. I was changing. My body was becoming something else, gnarled and shriveled, violent and evil. I was drying out. I was desiccated. I was empty.
I was becoming a desert. Alone, unsheltered, the product of disappointment, hatred, and spite.
I was You.
I was exactly what You wanted me to be, what You believed I was. Vacant and isolated. Nothingness.
And as quickly as this raging panic had gripped me, so did the top of la montaña arrive beneath my feet. The sun was well past halfway to the west when the trail very suddenly flattened out. But if I had not seen the others crumpled on the ground before me, I might have kept walking to maintain my momentum.
But there was Felipe, sprawled out on his back between Rosalinda and Eliazar, his pack tossed beside them.
“I’m never walking another step,” he said.
I put my pack down next to his, ready to allow my body to fall to the ground as well, but the sight beyond the edge of la montaña, in the desolate valle to the north, pulled me forward. A light breeze blew over me, the first of the entire journey, and it raised bumps over my skin.
“Solís help us,” I said, “what is that?”
The flatland below us shimmered in the air, like some of the blown glass I had seen in Obregán. There were structures jutting out of that brightness, sprinkled like pimienta y sal over maíz, like las estrellas in the night sky.
It looked like a city, but broken. Forgotten.
El olvidado.
I covered my eyes, trying to block the brightness, but it was unending.
“I have no idea,” said Emilia. “We didn’t come across this on our journey south.”
There was a pounding in my chest.
“Emilia, where are we?”
“I … I thought we were going the right way,” she said, and it was the first time I had heard it in her voice: uncertainty.
“But how do you know?” I demanded. “Is Solís in your mind? Your heart? Telling you where to go?”
“No! It’s not like that!”
“But we’re supposed to believe that without a map, you just know?”
“Niña,” said Rosalinda, and she tried comforting me, her hands on my shoulders. “Cálmate. She’s gotten us here, hasn’t she?”
“You’re not the one with a destination,” I snapped, and I immediately regretted my tone.
I put my face in my hands. The only reason I had agreed to this journey was so that Emilia could guide me to Simone. What would happen if she couldn’t even do that? What would become of me? Of all these stories?
They buried themselves deeper.
“Let’s head down,” I said. “Get as far as we can, and then find somewhere to set up for the night.”
“Then what?” Rosalinda demanded, pulling Felipe close. “What if we don’t find somewhere to sleep?”
“Xochitl is good at this,” Emilia offered.
“At this?” I gestured to the strange ciudad below. “I don’t know what that is! I don’t know what I’m doing!”
Emilia pursed her lips. “That’s not what I meant,” she said. “Just that you are good at being out in the desert.”
My exasperation bloomed. “Let’s go,” I said. “I’d like there to be some light left.”
Our descent was quiet, unnerving. We did not speak to one another, and we should have been overjoyed to finally be walking downhill. Instead, we let the numbness swallow us, tear us apart. No glances at one another, no conversation, nothing but the steady sound of our feet against the ground.
La ciudad gleamed.
It seemed impossible.
Rosalinda got a cramp in her lower back after an hour, and it was only then that we took a break. She stopped to drink, and I caught up to her, helping her to rub out the spasming muscle. “You’re losing water,” I told her. “Sweating it out too quickly. Drink more.”
“Wait until they start to get cramps,” she said, laughing softly. “They’re not used to them like we are.”
I chuckled. It was funny, and I welcomed anything other than pain or exhaustion. I had to, because another thought was racing around my head:
What if I turned back? What if I went back to the life I had been given? I could be a dutiful cuentista, exactly as my parents and Empalme wanted me to be. I could take the stories, and I could return them to the desert, and I could forget them, and I could live my entire life as it had been intended.
No.
I looked back at what we had climbed.
No.
I had seen too much. Los sabuesos, Obregán, las cuentistas …
How could I go back without knowing if this was possible? How could I return to that life, now that I knew so much?
The resolution spread through me:
I would rather make another terrible decision than live knowing that I hadn’t tried.
So I kept going. We all did.
In
