We crossed the expanse of ash, and when we reached La Montaña de Solís, I attacked it with a ferocity: I had pushed my body so hard. My legs were still sore, my head still throbbed.
But I didn’t care.
When we approached the line of ash, there was a rustling to my left, and two creatures—their eyes orange, their coats thin and pale, many short horns on their head—shuffled onto the trail, then scurried to the other side.
I breathed in.
Smelled the mesquite.
Let the cool air wash over.
The stories still hurt me, but I was alive.
I would deal with what was coming when it arrived. But for now? I had made it to Solado, I had found la poeta, and I was heading back.
We pressed on, Emilia and the guardians behind me, and we climbed up.
And up.
And up.
It was not long before the excitement began to wane, like your light at the end of the day, slowly at first, and then it was gone in an instant. The pounding in my head reappeared, a fierce, sharp thing behind my eyes, and I kept stopping to catch my breath.
Do you need to rest? Amato came up alongside me, pawed at my leg.
“At the top,” I said. “Let’s just make it there.”
Emilia gave me the last of her water. I tried to refuse it, but she said she could find more. “Where?” I asked. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“You already taught me how,” she replied. “Leave it up to me.”
And then she kept talking. Emilia told me stories of Solado, of life below the earth—the sounds and the tastes and the feel of the walls and the people. It was her way of dealing with the loss. She asked me more about Empalme. About Tía Inez. I realized that she was trying to distract me, to get me focused on something other than the climb.
It worked.
The hours went by quickly, or perhaps they blurred together because of how tired I was. The summit arrived, and I stumbled over to a patch of paloverdes to relieve myself, and as I squatted there over the hole I had dug, I nearly fell asleep.
The others did not have to coax me into rest. Emilia spread out my sleeping roll. She made me eat some dried nopales. And when I was flat on the ground, las estrellas dimming as my eyes closed, she kissed me on the forehead.
“Descansa, mi cuentista,” she said.
I did as I was told.
I dreamed of Raúl.
He emerged from beneath the wall at La Reina Nueva, somehow older. I knew he had lived there for many years, that his time there had aged him. There were lines at the corners of his eyes, stress wrinkles over his forehead, and he had a light patch of facial hair, dotted with white, growing below his mouth.
The sun lit him from above.
No.
It was not you.
It was las estrellas. They burned so brightly that I had to shield my eyes with my hand, but Raúl did not blink, did not turn away, and the starlight grew, brighter and brighter, until I was screaming at him, begging him to close his eyes.
He would not.
He smiled, and there was a darkness in his mouth, and his lips stretched wider, wider, until they took up the entire lower half of his face, and his eyes began to smoke, to smolder, and then the starlight burned them out of his sockets, leaving behind two chasms of shadow.
I could see forever in them.
They pulled me forward.
They pulled me in.
I fell into that endless blackness, unable to scream, and slept without another sueño.
Emilia woke me long before dawn.
Las estrellas had not disappeared, so I was focusing on them when she loomed over me. “When you’re ready and awake, I have something for you,” she said. “Take your time, Xo.”
She walked off, and I could make out the shapes of the guardians, who slumbered all around me. Amato was splayed out to the left of me, and they yawned.
We will make it today, they said.
I wasn’t so sure about that, but I was too groggy to argue. I brought my hands above my head, stretched my whole body, ignored the searing pain of my poor muscles. I took my pala with me to relieve myself, then returned to my sleeping roll to find gifts upon it.
A full goatskin bag of water.
A small cloth covered in fresh prickly pear fruit.
A leather pouch.
My body told me to take the first two objects, to replenish myself, but my heart was drawn to the third, that tether gripping me, tugging me down and forward, and I braced myself as the surge hit me when I touched it.
Another poema.
I tore the pouch open, careful not to damage what was inside, and in the dim light of dawn, I inhaled the words.
Por encima de la tierra
No puedo ver la belleza de
lo pequeño
Pero soy igual para Solís
Te elevaste sobre nosotros
Mientras sangro detras de mí
Dejé una pieza con cada paso
¿Quién seré en el otro lado?
Above the land
I can’t see the beauty of
the small
But I am the same to Solís
You rose over us
While I bleed behind me
I left a piece with every step
Who will I be on the other side?
She stood so silently that I did not notice her there.
“You never found this one,” she said. “I thought you should have it.”
I read it again.
I said it aloud the third time.
Who will I be on the other side?
It was like you were teasing me, reminding me of what I had not shared. I almost told her, Solís. I almost admitted the final truth that I had clung to for so long.
But I smiled instead. I thanked her for the gift, pulled her close with a hug. I wanted so much more, but … no. It was not the right time.
We packed up our meager belongings, and we left.
The walk was an endless descent. The muscles at the bottom of my thighs screamed at me with each step. Stop, stop!