Another room to my left. It arced upward. There was a small hole at the top, and what little sunlight was left was pouring through it, illuminating the rows and rows of something that had once grown but was now wilting, dying.
A passage veered off to my right. I could see more entries to homes, recognized them from the stories that Marisol and Emilia had given me.
Another home. Furniture strewn about.
“Emilia…”
She rushed forward, let go of my hand, ignored me.
My eyes continued to adjust to the limited light belowground. Where was it coming from? I saw no torches, no fires, nothing.
A room opened to my left.
A trunk, upturned, contents spilled everywhere.
“Emilia!”
A stain.
Dark, spreading from the debris and over the ground.
The stench hit me next: bitter and sharp.
I had smelled it before.
Outside Chavela’s.
At home, when it fell from the sky.
When el sabueso brought part of Manolito back.
I looked up and Emilia was gone. Panic tore into me, but there was a guardian—their coat a dull brown, their eyes a piercing yellow—who stood at the end of the passageway. They sped around a corner, and I ran after them.
I heard her yelling first. She called out, her voice high, echoing throughout the various chambers and passages. I rounded another corner, right behind one of the guardians.
“¿Hay alguien aquí?” she screamed.
I was closer.
More rooms.
More destruction.
More stains.
Another turn in the passage.
She stood at the edge of a large cavern, and beams of light fell from above her, poured over the ground, revealed the columns of maíz, their leaves browned and dry and dying. To our right, stalks pressed against the ground, as if something enormous had landed on top of them.
The stains were everywhere, and in the light of the setting sun, they had a color I could not see before.
A terrible dark red.
“Emilia?” I approached her carefully, avoiding sudden movements, unsure if I should touch her. “What’s going on?”
“Gone.” Her arms hung at her sides, limp.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Gone?”
“They’re all gone,” she said, a whisper to the dying fields, to me, to herself. “Everyone is gone.”
“How is that—?” I began.
She spun to me, and there were lines of tears dripping down her face. “Xochitl, they’re all gone. And we came here for nothing.”
She collapsed on the spot, and I stood there, numb and useless, staring at the remains of Solado.
We wandered from room to room, our eyes dancing from every terrible stain to the next, from every bit of proof that those who had lived here were now gone. There was clothing piled about the floor, seemingly at random, the red blotches a stark glimpse of some horror that had transpired. We came across more areas where small crops grew in limited sunlight, and everything was limp and dying. How long since they had last been watered? How long ago were they abandoned?
Emilia ran her hands over the walls.
She knelt to touch the bloody camisa left behind in one hallway.
She sobbed the entire time.
I stuck close to her, my own body numb, unsure how I could help.
We had so much to grieve.
Emilia brought me to a large cavern, the ceiling stretching high above us, and here was a gathering place of sorts. Long mesas of stone stood in front of us, and food rotted on ceramic plates. A swarm of flies flew off as Emilia picked up one of the dishes, then she let it crash to the floor.
The sound echoed around us.
No one responded.
We were truly alone down here in Solado.
Come, Amato said, and they came into the cavern and strode right up to Emilia, rubbed their head against her leg. Your answers are close.
“Did you know?” I said, fury boiling to the surface. “Did you know that this had happened?”
They ignored me, and instead sauntered off down the passageway.
“I thought I knew what I was doing,” Emilia said, still gaping at the death before her. “I thought Solís was guiding me here.”
“Maybe They still are,” I said. “Maybe there’s a reason the guardians brought us here.”
She wouldn’t look at me, though. I couldn’t blame her. My reasoning was pathetic and useless. Why would you give her so much suffering? What possible explanation could comfort someone in so much pain? So I understood why she headed after the guardians, leaving me there in that cavern, alone, afraid.
What did this place once look like? I had seen it in Emilia’s stories, and even less of it in Marisol’s. But it didn’t feel real anymore. Those images were distant, blurry.
I gave the hall one last look, then followed after the others, followed after the sound of Emilia crying.
The passage twisted and turned, and if it weren’t for Emilia, I would have gotten lost. Solado felt endless, a labyrinth with no sense or organization.
I had never been in a place so empty. What of the original inhabitants? Or los pálidos? Could all of them truly be gone?
I should have been distraught, but I was too exhausted to be anything but numb.
I slammed into the back of Emilia; she was rooted to the floor, unmoving, stone still. It nearly knocked the wind out of me, so I huffed in air as best as I could while I tried to—
I recognized this passage.
I saw it again as it awoke within me:
Emilia, held by the arms and legs, stolen from the darkness. Luz, behind her, fighting Julio’s men.
The guardians had brought us back to Emilia’s home.
“Emilia, maybe she’s still alive!” I said, wheezing. “Emilia, we have to go in there.”
“No, I can’t,” she said, and her hands trembled. “I can’t have come this whole way just to—”
Emilia.
I heard the voice in my head, like Amato’s. But this was a new one.
“Luz?”
Emilia staggered there, her sobs breaking out anew as she called out her guardian’s name.
“Is that you?”
There was a pause.
In a manner of speaking, she said.
Emilia rushed forward, down
