“Xochitl!”
My eyes burst open and light poured in. There was a pressure at the back of my skull, and it throbbed, pushing into the back of my eyes. I coughed again, and each outburst sent flashes of light into my vision.
You must not fall asleep, not now, Amato said.
Emilia was there, her hand behind my head, cradling it.
“Where are we?” I blurted out.
“We’ve pushed so hard,” said Emilia. “All of us. And it’s catching up to you. You closed your eyes, and then you were just … asleep.”
My head was a hazy mess; it was as if I’d been under for days. I gazed at the guardians who rested around me, most panting in the unbearable heat.
So it wasn’t just me.
We were all suffering.
Each of us a desert.
I drank more water, then asked Emilia to help me up. My head did not spin when I did so, and it was enough to get me moving. I ate a piece of dried manzana at the urging of Amato. You need more energy, they said. It is not much longer.
I craned my head. That didn’t seem true.
When we began to walk again, Las Montañas taunted me. At first, the distance seemed impossible. After making a few switchback turns on the trail, the summit was closer, closer than before. Hope blossomed like the flowers that bloomed during the night, under las estrellas. Then it seemed to stretch away from me.
You sank in the sky.
My shadow reached toward the horizon where night would fall first.
Amato stuck close behind me as Emilia led me up. She slowly undid her braids, let her hair fall back. The other guardians padded along in a procession, Emilia and I the head of a strange serpent.
Look, they said.
I glanced up the trail.
It widened.
It ended.
It crested the top of la montaña.
I tried to take it as a good sign. We were almost there. Our future was on the other side.
My future was there.
Would I find what I was looking for?
Nos estiramos por siempre
We stretch forever
I pushed harder and harder, ignoring all the signs that my body was ready to stop. The pain. The cramps. The needles in my stomach. The dread. The higher I ascended, the worse it got; the more that I wanted to get on all fours, push those stories out of me, expel that bitter refuse into the earth.
But I couldn’t give them back. Not yet. I was too close.
Emilia reached it first. She stood at the trailhead, hunched over, then she was suddenly upright. I propelled my body forward at the sight, my huaraches digging into the dirt, and I rounded the last switchback, and I stopped dead in that spot. It was too much. Terror. Panic. Rage. Elation. Grief. I no longer managed to differentiate between what was mine, what was theirs.
Solado was so close.
This would be over.
The guardians rushed past me; their paws pounded in the dirt of the trail.
I pushed myself over the last rise. A burst of wind hit Emilia, and that long hair of hers flowed toward me, as if she floated in water, and I reached forward, closed the distance, and our palms were sweaty, filthy, but we did not care. We were both breathing hard, my head light and airy, and my vision swam with dizziness.
We had made it.
We had made it.
“Come,” said Emilia. “Just a bit more. Let me show you my home, Xo.”
I let her guide me.
The guardians fanned out on either side, and they all remained silent as we pressed forward.
I saw the shadow first. At least, I thought it was a shadow, cast in the wake of something I couldn’t see. The darkness spread, and then the flatness of the top of La Montaña de Solís gave way, and my heart was in my throat, racing, throbbing, and I could not speak.
The earth yawned before us.
The landscape was blackened, torched, an endless vacancy of ash and destruction and decay. There was nothing in either direction: No árboles. No saguaros. No ironwoods or mesquites or paloverdes. No pájaros. No living creatures of any sort.
It was all death, everywhere I could see.
The stories of La Quema that I had grown up with were always that: stories. We were told of how fiercely you scorched the earth, but now I was seeing it for myself. I was seeing what you had really done to us.
And it terrified me.
“We have to go,” said Emilia. “Rest a moment, have some agua, but … we have to go.”
“I know,” I said. “I just … need to take it in.”
Emilia stood next to me as I tried to accept what my eyes were seeing. Everything within view was … gone.
Everything.
“This is actually the first time I’ve seen it in daylight,” she said. “I guess we both share that.”
She made the sign.
I did not.
I couldn’t.
Because standing there, looking at your judgment, I had one realization:
There was nothing we could have possibly done to deserve this.
We rested, and then continued.
I cannot say that it was easier. As we descended into el valle de las cenizas, it began.
All the stories woke up.
All of them.
I still wonder if you did that, Solís. Was it out of spite? Had you been silent this whole journey, only to finally speak up? Was this your means of communicating with me?
It was like a war in my torso. I grimaced viciously as we descended on the trail, and thankfully, Emilia did not look back. I kept up a good pace, but those stories tore at me. Begged for attention. Begged for release. I couldn’t tell what they wanted. Companionship? Did they require other stories to latch on to? Or were they imploring me to drop to the earth and return them all to you?
I thought I did not understand what was happening to me, but … I knew. I knew exactly what it was. How long had I known? Must have been a while.
