“You can never tell anyone what the cost is,” Danilo had said when the last of the men in white were gone. “They will not come if they know what price they have to pay.”
“Where did they go?” Eduardo asked. “What is this place?”
“Solado,” Danilo told him. “Es mejor en el otro lado.”
“What’s on the other side?”
Danilo grinned. “You don’t need to know.”
Then he handed over a cut of the money.
It was more than Eduardo had ever seen in his whole life.
He promised himself he would guide people to Solado only until he had enough money to escape, to pay off the debt his papá owed, and then he would go south, far away from Obregán and los coyotes. To be himself, alone, instead of something forced on him. He met a woman in El Mercado de Obregán, a cuentista, who told him of a place in the south that she had come to love, and he made it his mission. He would work as a coyote until he did not have to.
Then he would be free.
So he took people north, over las montañas, through los valles, and he kept them alive as best as he could. He lost someone on his second trip; a man made the mistake of believing the illusion of water that you, Solís, so often gave those who crossed your deserts. They were near the end when one of the travelers became convinced that he had found El Mar, and he ran off the trail, deeper into the desert to the east, and by the time Eduardo chased him down, he was shoveling handfuls of dirt into his mouth, swallowing it, and then he pitched forward, and he was dead.
Four people turned back at that point.
Then, when he reached La Reina, he tried to go around the western side of la ciudad. He did not want to torment those who had seen one of their compañeros die. Danilo had explained that cutting through La Reina saved nearly half a day, but Eduardo was positive he could make up that time and spare everyone from what La Reina showed them.
But there, at the western boundary of La Reina, Eduardo met a line of the dead.
They forced the group of travelers into la ciudad.
And once again, his entire party gave up.
Eduardo’s contact at Solado was so disappointed, so enraged when Eduardo arrived alone that he threatened to kill him on the spot. Eduardo wanted him to do it, but then he broke down, begged the man to let him keep working and pay off his debt.
He was given a warning: if he did not bring at least five healthy adults or teenagers every time he made the journey north, he would be slain. Simple as that.
Eduardo then believed he had no choice.
But he wanted to try something different. On his third trip, in the shadows of el maíz that belonged to Jorge, he offered the travelers the truth. He told everyone what was beyond Las Montañas de Solís, he told them the price they had to pay, and he said that he’d rather they know then so that they could make a better decision. He believed that his honesty would keep them trusting and believing in him, willing to follow his lead.
They did not see it that way. Eduardo tried to chase after the people who had decided to head back. He got lost in those fields that night, and returned to Obregán the next morning, dejected.
But determined.
He found seven people by himself for his next trip, and he handed them over to the men in white at Solado two and a half days later.
Seven bodies.
All the more closer to paying off his debt.
So Eduardo got better. Quicker. He found it easy to portray himself as tender, as being deeply interested in the reasons why so many people were leaving their homes and aldeas and heading north. He began to tell more and more people in Obregán of the promises of Solado. “No one ever comes back,” he would say. “That’s how wealthy they are becoming.”
Then he would take more of them across the desert, through La Reina, and those who survived—and nearly all of them did—paid their price. They vanished before Eduardo’s eyes. He was given his cut of the fee.
And he went back home to do it all over again.
The money kept growing. The people kept coming, too, and within a year, coyotes were in higher demand in Obregán. Most went to las aldeas to the east and west, but the news of Solado—its jobs, its promise of a bright future, its appeal that seemed to keep anyone from returning—spread far within Obregán.
And no one distrusted Eduardo. The deeper he fell into this role, the more he felt as though he had discovered what he was always meant to do. He convinced himself that en el otro lado, life was better. He had never seen Solado, had never made the crossing himself, but he believed the price was worth it.
Two years in, the families started coming, asking for passage to the land of opportunity. Eduardo finally delivered a family of eight to the men in white, but they accepted only seven of them. Solado had started restricting who could enter, and a boy named Carlito was denied passage.
“Find us only those who can work,” the man said, his voice muffled by his horrible mask, his accent sloppy and rough. “No familias. No niños.”
Carlito had screamed as his parents were taken away, and Eduardo did not know what to do with a child. Could he take Carlito back to Obregán? Eduardo only had enough food for himself. He knew the old wall that protected La Reina still stood, knew that there was a stream underground that he had used for water on his journeys. So he convinced Carlito to hide there until he could bring him more supplies, and then he would do his best to reunite him with his family.
But Eduardo learned
