“Where are you, Luz?” Emilia cried. “Just tell me that.”
Luz hesitated. Pulled back. Sat down.
I do not understand the magic, she said. But I have been gone for a while now.
And then she looked directly at me.
I knew.
Oh, no.
I knew.
“Obregán,” I said. “Emilia, she was in Obregán.”
It took a moment for the truth to blossom, and then Emilia tucked into herself, brought her face to the ground, and she screamed, wailed, pounded her fists so hard against the earth that clouds of dust wafted into the air.
Luz had been el sabueso that Julio used.
They changed me after you left. One of Julio’s men stayed behind to do it, so that Julio could have a force on his side. But it took longer than he thought. He could not find someone to feed to me, and he was not willing to sacrifice himself.
Luz let out a low howl, a mournful, pitiful thing. They fed me the one you called Simone.
My world spun.
My world ended.
I had come so far.
For nothing.
“Lo siento, Luz,” said Emilia once she was able to speak. “That this happened to you.”
It is done, Luz said.
“Then how are you here? How can I even see you?”
I do not know, she said. We guardians are as in the dark as you are. The light of Solís has not spoken to us since La Quema, since we were created.
“How is that possible?” I asked. “Aren’t all guardians in contact with Solís?”
Do not let the others tell you any different—we may have been expected to be between you and Them. But Solís has been silent.
She howled, a mournful sound that echoed throughout Solado.
And it is time for me to go, too.
She trotted up to Emilia.
You will do great things, mi amor. Please keep revealing your heart to others. It is beautiful.
And then she came up to me.
Thank you for taking care of her, cuentista.
I nodded at her.
It is your turn now, she added. To tell the truth.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Tell her the truth.
Luz bowed her head to the earth.
And as she did, her body turned to ash.
Emilia broke down, and her sob pitched sharply, escaped into the place that had once been her home.
At the same moment, I felt a sharpness in my stomach.
My cry must have been lost in Emilia’s, for she did not look to me as I doubled over in pain. As I pressed my hand against my belly. As I felt them move.
The truth was impossible to ignore any longer.
These stories were killing me.
I watched Emilia, unsure what to say next.
Luz’s last words were said only to me.
She touched the small wooden bed in the corner, then sat on it, running her hands over the edge of the frame. She stayed there, silent, contemplative for a while, and finally I lay back, my eyes on that stone ceiling, and I thought about how we were underneath the earth, so very far from you. I felt far from you, Solís, more than I ever had before.
“La poeta was right by me the whole time,” I said, breaking the silence. “The only person who made me feel … seen.”
Emilia sighed—a wave of emotion rushing past—the sound of someone letting loose years of relief in one breath. “I suspected you had them because I could feel their power,” she said. “It confused me. I thought I was drawn to you at first, that morning in Empalme, and I couldn’t figure out why it felt so strong. I guess I believed that Solís was guiding me in the right direction the whole time.”
She laughed, and I gazed over at her.
“What is it?”
“That’s why I thought I was lost the other evening,” she said. “Because you had the poems with you, I knew one was to the west, but I could sense the one en las montañas. It confused me.”
“I thought Solís was talking to you or something,” I said, and I resumed studying the cracks and fissures in the walls. “That you had something that I did not.”
“Do you not communicate with Solís during the ritual?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. If I do, They do not let me remember it.” I paused. “No, I’m pretty sure They’ve never spoken to me.”
“It’s weird to talk of Solís,” she said. “I had heard Their name so much when I was younger, especially here in Solado. But we did not visit cuentistas as much as your people. And we had so many of them. Not like how it was for you.”
“I hope I wasn’t disappointing,” I said.
She squeezed my hand tighter. “No,” she said. “Intimidating.”
“Me? Intimidating?”
“I didn’t know whether to trust you!” she exclaimed. “You seemed so distant all the time, and after you took my story, you at least understood me. But then … well, everything happened so fast.”
It felt like years ago. Soledad, the chase through Obregán, the journey …
And now we were here.
Together.
“I have so much I want to say to you,” I said, and then the tears came, pouring down my face. “So many things I want to talk to you about. About your words. Your life. Emilia, I barely know you.”
She laughed. “Well, we have time,” she said. “We have to go somewhere.”
But where would that even be?
There was no Simone. No more Luz. I had come this far to have this power taken from my body, but now … well, what now, Solís? What was I supposed to do?
“Should we go back to La Reina?” I asked.
She nodded. “At least that far. We have to tell them the truth about this place.”
I sighed. “I can’t even imagine how difficult that’s going to be.”
“Well, at least we can do that next.”
There was a next.
And it was with her.
I pushed myself up, my heart thumping fiercely.
I was here.
Because she was la poeta.
Because she had traveled so far from her home.
Because she used to feel
