When I woke up the next morning, the guilt was gone. I lay on my roll, the sounds of the others sleeping all around me, and the warmth of the morning sun inching into the doorway.
I was still alive. Unpunished. The world had not fallen apart, had not been razed by fire.
Maybe I hadn’t made a terrible mistake.
The day oozed by, slow like the sap of the aloe vera, and nothing happened.
No fire from up above.
No damnation from You.
Nothing happened.
But as Your heat swept over the earth, the threat loomed.
Something is coming.
I couldn’t talk to Manolito about it. If I went to el mercadito, he would know the truth about his story. He had trusted me.
But would he have told me a terrible secret if I weren’t our cuentista? Even if it had lessened his own burden?
Did anyone actually trust me, or did they trust the role that You gave me? It was more clear than it had ever been: Empalme sought me out because of what I offered them. Were any of these people friendly to me? Eager for my company when a pesadilla was not following them around?
I just started walking. My body seemed to drag me toward el mercadito, as if Lito were calling it home. Sweat left a sticky film over my skin. I had made a mistake. I had to give up these stories, or You would destroy us all.
But what if Julio is going to do the same?
I stumbled into the main square where the well was, adrift. Lost. Pulled by guilt and fright and the terrible dread that, somehow, I was the one who had set this monstrous event into motion. I was the catalyst, the spark of fire that would consume us all.
What have I done?
But she was there.
Emilia.
Next to the stone well, heaving up a bucket of water, and she turned her head to me, locked eyes.
My heart jumped.
Her long hair flowed behind her, and her cold gaze was much like that of her father.
Julio …
The idea was tantalizing, como un sueño, como una flor. It unfolded before me.
There was one person in Empalme who did not know that I was a cuentista, but who knew that Julio was.
I approached Emilia, and she stilled. Her face—that angular nose, her high cheekbones, her dark brown skin—twisted in anticipation. What was she expecting of me? I thought of the other night, of how we treated her. Maybe she thought I would serve up more of the same.
I walked up to the well. Made to say something.
“The guard will be back in a second.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“The guard will be back,” she repeated, and her voice was plain, uninterested. “I can’t let you take any water.”
I shook my head, both at her and at the assumption she had made. Irritation flared; who was she to say something like that?
“I’m not here for water,” I said, low and angry.
“Then what are you here for?”
The fear bloomed again, and I felt Lito’s story, pressing up against my heart.
“Where did you come from?”
She tilted her head, as she had done the last time I saw her. “From far away. To the north.”
“But where? Obregán?”
She set the bucket on the ground, and an urge flashed in my mind: Take the bucket and run.
I ignored it. Emilia was still staring at me, her brows furrowed, her nostrils flaring. Was she angry with me? For what?
“No,” she said. “Farther.”
How far? I wondered. What else was beyond Obregán?
“What do you want?” She spat it at me.
“Your father,” I said, and I said it like a curse. “What is—?”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” she shot back. “Is that all you people discuss?”
I gasped.
And the words spilled out.
“Well, it’s not as if you give us much else to talk about.”
She scowled again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Do you do this all the time? Play innocent and pretend you don’t know what Julio is doing?”
Now it was her turn to look wounded. “I didn’t say—”
“I came to talk to you.” Rage simmered under my skin. “I thought you might have something interesting to say. Guess I thought wrong.”
And then I began to walk home.
I did not look back.
But I was no closer to discovering what horror Julio was about to bring down upon us.
As I walked, I felt certain that she was somehow still staring at me, that those piercing eyes of hers watched me disappear into Empalme.
Papá was home when I returned, my skin warm from Your heat. He was fiddling with something near la mesa, where we gathered and ate our meals during the day, when it was too hot to stay outdoors.
“¿Estás bien, Xochitl?”
I had my hand up against the wall. I lifted my head and smiled. “Just having one of those days, Papá,” I said.
He crossed the room, his long hair flowing. “Mija,” he said, and I nearly broke. The softness in his voice rounded off the jagged edges of my pain. He put his hand to my chin, gently raising it to look at me. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”
He knows he knows he knows.
I almost told him, Solís.
I almost let it all spill forth.
I almost gave him my story.
He looked upon me with love, with an attempt at understanding, with a desire to know what ailed me. Mi Papá, so certain, so dependable. I could tell him, couldn’t I? Wouldn’t he understand me?
I didn’t try.
Instead, I gave him the lie: I was tired. I had more stories to take. I needed to rest.
I lay on my bedroll as he went back to whatever he was doing. My fingers traced the edge of the stone in the floor, beneath which sat las poemas.
Soy libre.
I wasn’t. Not even close. I was trapped here, trapped in Empalme, trapped in the decision I had made.
I wasn’t ever going to get out.
This was how my days passed.
I hunted water.
Drop. Soak. Squeeze.
Raúl came with me a couple of times, but he suspected nothing. He was his usual boisterous self. It was easier and easier for me to hide the truth. The stories were nothing more than a dull pain, a distant reminder of what I had done. I kept to myself, too. The fewer people I was around, the less possible it was that I would be discovered.
In the evenings, they still came for me. The first time, I was convinced that You knew somehow. That You had sent me more stories to test me, to see how full I could become before I burst.
But for days afterwards … nothing happened.
The stories crowded up inside me, each of them still alive, still yearning to be free. Manolito’s cuento burrowed behind one of my ribs, in a place so deep that I couldn’t reach it without tearing myself open. I tried to muster up the courage to go see him, to talk to him. Maybe he would understand if I told him the truth. But it was too terrifying, and I couldn’t lose the only friend I had left.
He wouldn’t be for much longer, had he known. I convinced myself of that. And as I did so often with Papá, I accepted the lie rather than face the truth.
Empalme changed so quickly in those days. I doubted what I had done every time someone looked at me, their gaze resting on my face for too long. They stared at me differently. Was I imagining that? I couldn’t be sure, but the paranoia—mine or Manolito’s, maybe both—won out every time.