“How do you feel?” she asked as she crouched before the fire and began to stoke it. It crackled and spat, filling the jacal with the comforting smell of mesquite.
“Honestly?” he said. He leaned his head back against the wall. The pressure of the wall on the cuts on his back made them throb. His shoulder throbbed. His whole body ached from having been flung on the patio. He knew from having been thrown to the dirt by half-broken mustangs that the latter would mend with a good night’s sleep, but what was the likelihood of that? When all that lay between them and the night was a thin line of salt?
He let loose a deep sigh. Let that serve as his answer.
“I know,” she said. Firelight flickered over her face, illuminating the weariness that weighed on its lines and angles.
She put two more branches on the fire, waited until they caught flame, then moved to where he sat against the wall. She sat with a heavy thump to his right.
The jacal had once seemed like a refuge. Now its walls felt flimsy against the night. It was so small. So easily surrounded. So poorly defended. Both he and Nena were beaten and bloodied and utterly spent.
“You should sleep,” she said quietly, her eyes on the fire. “As much as you can.”
God only knew how he was going to be able to sleep with the throbbing in his left shoulder. With the knowledge that beyond the thin walls of the jacal, the figures that haunted his dreams were real and living. Nothing protecting him from them but a thin line of salt and fragile belief in a folktale.
But Nena was safe on his right, her machete close by. A loaded pistol to his left. The fire was warm, but not uncomfortably so. If he imagined its glow as a ring of safety, if he tricked himself into believing it, perhaps he could shut his eyes. Let exhaustion lead him into oblivion.
“You too,” he said.
“Fine,” she said, reaching up to tug one of her plaits forward onto her chest. She fidgeted with its end. “But first watch is mine.”
With that he could not argue. “Fair,” he said, voice roughened by fatigue.
But her shoulder was pressed against his. He leaned his head to the side and touched it gently to hers. For a moment, she did not move; then, with a light sigh, she leaned her head against him. They sat in silence. Her hair smelled of the rain that now drummed rhythmically on the roof. The fire gave contented pops and crackles, oblivious to the dangers of the night beyond. If Néstor closed his eyes, if he listened to the rain and Nena’s breathing, perhaps he, too, could trick himself into forgetting what lay beyond the jacal.
“I said horrible things earlier,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. “I didn’t mean them. I’m . . . I’m sorry. Please don’t leave.”
If the vampire returned and wrenched his arm back out of its socket, it would hurt less than hearing the break in her voice.
“I won’t,” he said.
He lifted his right hand, his fingers brushing Nena’s as he took the end of her plait from her and ran his thumb over it. Its weight and silkiness against his calluses were just as he remembered. Toying with it was as natural as it had always been. Back when their world was still close and sacred, before they were burdened by the tyranny of adulthood and all of its expectations. When they watched the sheep together, the heavy heat of the siesta softening Tío Macario’s shepherd songs to whistling snores. When he played with her hair as they lay shoulder to shoulder on an old rebozo, watching the branches of the huisaches lift on a breeze.
“You know, I dream about you,” he said. If he spoke softly enough, the reverie would never break. The memory would wrap around them like a rebozo and keep them safe from the night. “Ever since I left.” The only sound was the crackle of the fire, the softness of their breathing. “I dream of us watching the sheep. Falling asleep beneath the trees.”
“That sounds so peaceful,” she whispered.
“It is.” He ran his thumb over her plait again, memorizing the braid’s ridges and the tickle of loose hairs. “Until I wake, and I’m alone.” How many mornings had he woken cold in the chaparral to the knowledge that Nena was dead? How many mornings had she opened her eyes and wanted him near? Did she dream of him too? Did she feel the absence of him in her life as much as he felt her lack? Perhaps it was exhaustion loosening his tongue, or pain, or the sensation of her shoulder against his, her smell, the weight of her plait between his fingers. It found the truth hidden behind his heart and drew it to the surface. Gave it words to be spoken, wings to fly.
“Your mother said you were dead, that night,” he said. “Félix knew it. Your father knew it. They said you were dead.”
A bead of sweat, then two, rolled down his face. Dripped from his jaw. He dropped her plait to wipe it away. He paused mid-gesture—his cheeks were wet, but it was not sweat.
It was tears.
Shame washed over him in a hot, nauseous wave. “I couldn’t face it,” he said. “A world without you. I am not brave enough.”
His breath came in shards, but he could not stop it. He could not catch it, no more than he could slow a bolting horse, no more than he could stop rain when it had begun to pour. He squeezed his eyes shut. A pitiful attempt to hide.
A touch on his thigh. Her hand rested there gingerly, light as a bird. He knew that if he moved, she would shy away. He was as still as he could be. As still as his shuddering chest permitted.
If he didn’t open his eyes, nothing had ever gone wrong. Nothing had ever been taken from him. He had never run.
Her voice was soft. “You don’t have to cry.”
How long had it been since he wept for her? Years? He kept his feelings close to his chest, where they were safe from the harsh light of day. Not anymore. There was no rebuilding his walls, not now.
“No, I do,” he said. “I think I really do.”
He wept. Her hand stayed on his leg until he caught his breath.
“The way the breathing slows . . .” She let the thought trail off softly. “It looks like death. You are not the only one to think so.”
She reached up and took his hand.
Nine years divided them, but time meant nothing to hands: her fingers interlaced with his as naturally as if they were eight years old, or ten, or thirteen. Palm to palm, thumb over thumb. A bridge between them. She drew their clasped hands down to rest on his thigh.
This journey felt as if they were crawling through a nightmare together, a dream that tricked the helpless dreamer into thinking it had ended, only to twist in a new direction and gallop away. His purpose, now, was to survive it. To ensure that Nena emerged from its clutches unharmed.
He had never felt more powerfully that there was something worth living and fighting for. If they made it back to Los Ojuelos in one piece, if they survived this next twist of the nightmare together, new challenges would rise. They glimmered with threatening promise on the horizon, oily as a mirage.
But whatever they were, he would not face them alone. She was here. And when he woke, she would still be here.
“Sleep,” she murmured.
He did.
21
NENA
THEY TRADED WATCHES through the night. When Nena slept, it was fitfully. Dreams felt like waking: she was running across a battlefield, tripping across bodies that wore the grotesque faces of people she knew. Vaqueros she had healed back at Los Ojuelos. Papá. Félix. Each vision tumbled into the next without respite, and when she woke to Néstor’s hand on her shoulder sometime before dawn, she knew she would not be sleeping again.
She positioned herself between Néstor and the door and listened to his breathing settle and slow. She wondered where Papá and Félix were now, if they were alive, if they were unharmed. She let the fire burn low. She did not wake Néstor for the next watch.
It was not until the night beyond the jacal’s doorway grayed that she noticed something different on the patio.
Her breath caught in her throat.