“Once I kept a story, I saw what it did to the others,” I explained. “How it gave them the freedom to make the same mistakes all over again. How I was nothing to them but a means to an end. And when I found out there was another cuentista in the world—one who had actually left their aldea—I had to know more. I had to know how he left his home and had survived.”
But …
I chose this. It had not merely happened to me.
And I did not regret it.
So I said that aloud, too.
“And I need to end this,” I added. “I know our world values las cuentistas, but … this life is so exhausting. I have no choice about what I am to do for the rest of my life. This is what was forced upon me, and I kept the stories for … for…”
I sighed.
“I kept them for myself. So I could find my own story. So I could rid myself of this power. That’s why we’re going to Solado. For a curandera named Simone.”
The sun was gone, and the soft glow from the stars began to illuminate the earth. I stood there at first, dirt all over my clothing, stuck to my skin where I had been sweating, and I swayed. I wanted to give up, to collapse back down to the earth, to let it consume me.
I looked up.
Dos estrellas, right above me, fat and bright.
They twinkled, as if they knew they were being observed. This had always been a time of celebration for mi gente, for mi aldea, but since Your eyes were absent, theirs were now on me, examining me.
Judging me.
There was a shuffling behind me.
The dead were leaving. I watched them as they climbed back the way they had come, as they left us alone.
Each of us a desert.
“Vámonos,” I said, unsure where I was heading, unsure if I was worthy.
But I had chosen to do this, and I would do anything to see it through.
Night arrived.
And the others did not abandon me, as I expected them to.
Did they hate me? Despise me? Were they silent as a punishment? I considered every possibility, and in that act, I assumed the worst of myself. How could I not?
But as we walked away from my secret, now spilled forth for all of them to consume, Rosalinda gripped me by the arm, a gesture of tenderness.
“You have been through a lot, chica,” she said. “I cannot imagine what it was like to take so many stories for that length of time.” She offered me a smile. “I cannot judge you for what you want to do. I would probably feel the same.”
“I had no idea,” Eliazar added. “I thought you were like Téa. That you took a story only every now and then.”
“Are you sad, Xochitl?” Felipe looked up at me with that round face of his.
“Sometimes,” I answered. I shook my head. “More than I like to admit.”
“Will this Simone you are seeking make you happy?”
I gazed at Emilia; she nodded.
“I think so,” I answered.
“Then you should do it,” he said. “Sometimes I am sad about Papi, but I’m much happier with Mami, even out here in the desert.”
I like to think that Rosalinda felt comforted by that. That Felipe was thankful that Your gaze was gone. That we were together under las estrellas.
We passed out of la ciudad, left its bones behind.
And as soon as we were beyond it, Eliazar crumpled into a heap on the ground.
He dropped so quick that none of us could have stopped it, both his fall and what followed after it.
He gasped for air, and Rosalinda was at his side, and it wasn’t enough. “Breathe, Eliazar!” she cried out. “You’re okay. Just breathe.”
He laughed. His elation cut through the quiet night, and he didn’t even try to get up.
“Leave me here,” he said. “I am not taking another step.”
“Eliazar, don’t say that!” Rosalinda pulled her canteen out and tried to hand it to him.
He pushed it back. “She loved me, you know? She always loved me.”
I knelt at his side. “And you loved her,” I said. “Get up. Finish the journey. For her.”
“I already did.”
He gazed at each of us, peace and acceptance soothing his features.
His eyes were glass.
He went still, then he fell to the side, slowly, inevitably, as if he knew the earth was waiting for him to return.
And Eliazar died with a smile on his face.
Rosalinda broke out in sobs, hit his chest, asked him to stop joking, screamed that this wasn’t funny, and Felipe was crying, too, and I fell back on my hands.
A shadow.
Above.
I looked up.
Dark shapes blurred out las estrellas. They swooped around and around, and I could hear the air in their wings. We scrambled to our feet, and Emilia yelped in alarm as one of them nearly landed on her head.
They descended in droves, their wingspans enormous. Their necks were wreathed in white feathers, the rest a terrible shade of black, as if they could devour any light that shone around them. And those beaks, so awful and sharp, snapped open and shut, the creatures anticipating the meal that awaited them.
I had seen them only once in my life, when someone had died hunting outside of Empalme.
Zopilotes.
They swarmed around him until we could no longer see his body.
Could no longer see the smile on his face.
“We have to go,” I said. “We need to find somewhere to camp.”
The feathers ruffled, and I tried to ignore the ripping, tried not to think what that was.
We were weak and frightened and so very tired.
We left Eliazar behind.
And once again—we suffered.
You were silent. You answered no prayers, sent us no signs of any sort, did not comfort us once.
We walked away from Eliazar’s body, and doubt consumed me—permeated our whole group. One of us had died. Was any of this worth it if one of us didn’t make it? My journey, las poemas, my decisions,
