Emilia and I found Carlito not much later.
We came upon his body, splayed between two tall saguaros. Amato sat near Carlito, and I can’t explain how, but I felt their sadness, and that’s how I knew this was the missing leader of La Reina Nueva.
I don’t need to tell you what I saw, Solís. Would you suddenly care? Would the details of a dead child suddenly spark your interest? You must have seen him. You must have known. And yet, you still did nothing.
No explanation of that violence would make Carlito more human for you.
I looked away quickly. I didn’t want this to be my only memory of this poor young man. The horizon blurred, the ground swayed, and nausea tugged at what little water and food I’d had in my stomach. There was a hand on my arm, another pulling my hair back as I gagged. Emilia’s fingers, cool and certain.
Lito. It was Lito all over again. A body torn, potential lost.
Her affection buzzed over my skin. I didn’t understand it, how her nearness had grown to be such a comfort.
As a cuentista, I knew that we formed connections with everyone whose story we took. Is this what happened when a cuentista kept a story? Were we more raw with each other, closer together because she had shared her secrets with me?
I had been a cuentista for half my life, and I still did not feel as though I knew anything about it.
I opened my eyes, blinked away tears. Amato gave Carlito one last bow of reverence, and when they finished, they flashed bloodshot eyes in my direction.
This is what’s waiting for us.
More violence. More tragedy. More death. That’s what Amato meant, right?
We have to keep moving.
I had not stopped since I had made that fateful decision in Empalme. And now I felt so hollow, so empty, so vast.
You have a long climb today. Up Las Montañas de Solís. It will be hard. But you will be almost done after that.
Each of us becomes the desert.
It is important that you make it, cuentista. You must be there.
Each of us so terribly alone.
Amato moved up close, their eyes yellow again. They rubbed their massive head against my own and purred.
Follow me, cuentista. This is the last thing before the end.
I followed because I believed there was no other choice.
Did that count as a lie, Solís? I did not know whether the guardians could lie to others. Were they trying to quiet the panic and terror in me? Were they trying to give me hope?
Did you even care?
I started lying when I was very young. I knew years ago that I had been trapped into a life I did not choose. I couldn’t recall the first time that I dreamed of an existence beyond the gates of Empalme. But I still knew to keep those thoughts to myself, to bury them like the stories in my gut, because to speak the truth was to speak the truth of you.
I don’t know how many lies I was told either. And did those count if the people who said them did not know that what they told me was untrue? The stories of las cuentistas and las pesadillas were core to our beliefs. So were las estrellas that came out at night, that surrounded us, that granted us freedom from you. Maybe our belief is what gave it all power, what shaped our reality for us.
But where did that leave the others?
Julio, who chose to have this power, and then corrupted it.
Soledad, who yearned for the power and ruined lives because of it.
Téa, who was the sole cuentista for so very many people and could not help Eliazar when he needed it.
All our myths were different.
Did that make them lies?
Or were we simply trying to understand the horrors that you had given us?
I had spent most of my life within a lie, and now, when I was so horribly far from home, the truth was revealing itself.
You sat up there, and you did nothing.
Said nothing.
Fixed nothing.
You gave some of us a power meant to cleanse humanity, and then you sat back, and watched it all unfold.
The lies.
The chaos.
The suffering.
I had to keep going, Solís. Do you understand that? I was unattached. How had Mamá put it? Estás inquieta, she had told me. And she was right.
And now I was in your desert, which you created when you burned the world, and I was desperate to be free.
It was all worth it.
I had never been so tired, so desiring of rest. We walked as you continued your path through the sky, and your heat smothered us. I tried to drink more water, knowing that the last part of the journey was here, hopeful that I could stave off another pounding headache caused by the heat. I tore at the sleeves of my camisa to make two strips, and I tied them together at either end, making a loop, and I fitted the loop around my head to keep the sweat from my eyes.
It reminded me of what Eliazar had done for Felipe.
It felt as if he had died a lifetime ago.
My feet were stones, and my legs were on fire, both beneath the skin and over the surface of it. I had never been so scorched, so crisp, not since I was una jovencita, when I had wandered outside at mediodía while Mamá was making la masa in the house. She did not notice that I was gone until too late. By the end of the day, my skin was red and warm to the touch, and she had to spread the inside of an aloe vera leaf over my skin to cool me down, to make it stop screaming at me.
I missed her touch. Her laughter. Her temper. Those sharp, dark eyes. Her braids.
I wish I could tell you more, Solís. You always ask for it all, but that day blurred into
