Authors: Ekaterina Sedia
It was hardest for the women with small children. Mindful of El Rojo’s warning, Inés held out her hands wordlessly; after a moment’s hesitation, the mother she’d been sitting next to handed over her daughter, then climbed the ladder. When she was at the top, Inés stretched up to give the sleepy infant back. Then she did the same for the other two, quickly soothing the one baby who looked likely to fuss. Pipo glared, but said nothing.
She was the last one over, except for the coyotes. Not letting herself hesitate, Inés balanced on the swaying rope ladder and scrambled up to the top. With her hands braced on the fence’s edge, she swung one leg over—and there she paused.
One foot in each world. It felt like it should mean something, like this fence, this barrier dividing one nation from its neighbor, should mark some profound transition. It didn’t. The desert on the far side looked no different. It was all borderland, and its inhabitants, regardless of nation, had more in common with each other than with those who lived inside. She had always stood with one foot in each world; only now it was literally true.
Inés swung her other leg over and dropped to the ground below. Now she was just another illegal immigrant, risking her life to enter the United States.
As soon as she landed, El Rojo began to run.
Across the hard-packed stripe of the border road, through the scrubby bushes beyond, not waiting for the coyotes to pack up the ladder and climb down after them. They, Inés supposed, would catch up soon. The pace El Rojo set was steady, but not too fast; they would be at this for a while. She settled her backpack on her shoulders and relaxed into her stride.
The ones with children had it worst. Inés hung back, trying with her presence to give them support; it was easier to run in company than alone. The baby girl she’d played with in the truck, jolted into unhappy wakefulness, started to wail, and the mother clapped a desperate hand over her daughter’s mouth. Inés tensed, looking at El Rojo, but it seemed the order against noise had only applied at the fence.
Or perhaps the paying would come later.
She worried about the older man, too. This would be a hard enough journey for her, and she was young, fit, and used to the trials of the desert. How much worse would it be for him? But the man had energy enough to spare her a rueful smile as he ran. Inés wondered what his story was. Everyone who crossed the border had one.
Running, running through the night, El Rojo in the lead, and Inés fixed her gaze on his back, as if he were prey she would wear down and finally catch.
By the time they slowed to a walk, many of the migrants were gasping. Everyone reached for water; the less cautious gulped theirs, thinking only of immediate thirst, and not the miles of desert that still lay ahead. Inés sipped cautiously, trying to estimate how far they’d come. Two miles from the border? To the left, the ground rose in a thin, jagged line. The Sierra Pinta, if she was reading their location right. El Rojo would take them through the San Cristobel wash and south of Ajo Peak, to the Tohono O’odham reservation. The people there had rescued more than a few migrants from death in the desert. Not all of those they rescued were reported to the Border Patrol, either; the Tohono O’odham knew what it was like be split apart by a fence. Some of their kin lived on the other side.
They got a short break at sunrise, among a scattering of saguaro that would hide them from distant eyes. Inés took a hat from her bag, then slipped her hand back in, hunting by touch, until she found the rubber-banded tin tucked inside her one clean shirt. She waited until the coyotes were looking elsewhere, then shifted the tin into her pocket, where she could reach it more quickly.
A scuff of foot against stone made her jump. The older man held up calming hands, then crouched at her side and murmured, “Miguel.”
“Inés,” she murmured back, keeping a wary eye on the coyotes.
“You seem well prepared.”
The practiced lie rose easily to her lips. “My brother crossed a few years ago. Gave me some advice.”
He smiled. “Brothers are like that.”
Eduardo
had
given her advice, when she showed up on his doorstep in Cuauhtémoc. Much of it had involved swearing. Not that he doubted what Inés had to say; Mother had once sent him out into the desert, too, as she had later done with Inés. But he thought she should let it go. Or let someone else take care of it—as if that had done any good yet.
And she owed Javier too much to let it go.
“If an old man can give you advice, too,” Miguel said, even quieter than before, “watch out for that one.” He made a tiny gesture toward El Rojo. “He’s got his eye on you. But not in the usual way.”
Inés’ fingers tightened on her backpack. “What do you mean?”
Miguel shook his head. “I don’t know. The big one, he wants what you’d expect, but the leader . . . he’s watching you for something.”
For what
, Inés wanted to ask—but El Rojo rose smoothly to his feet, and they had to follow. It wasn’t a question Miguel could likely answer, anyway.
With the sun now up, the desert rapidly heated from pleasantly cool to sweltering. Inés and Miguel both took turns carrying the small children, to give their mothers a rest. Why were they crossing now, in the brutal conditions of summer? Couldn’t they wait for milder weather? She bit back the desire to yell at the mothers for stupidity. She didn’t know their reasons. And it would upset the kids, who out of all those here were completely blameless. Not that innocence would save them, if immigration agents caught their families; they would be deported back to Mexico, with or without their parents.
Inés gritted her teeth and kept walking.
When the noon halt came, people sank down wherever they stood, trembling and drenched with sweat. El Rojo wandered among them, cursing and kicking, until everyone was as hidden as they could get. Even in this desolation, they couldn’t assume they would remain unnoticed; the so-called Minutemen rode through here on their self-appointed patrols, and some of them were far too ready to shoot.
Miguel joined Inés in her clump of creosote. The bushes didn’t offer much in the way of shelter, not with the sun directly overhead, but it was all they had. The older man offered her beef jerky; Inés gave him chips in exchange, wishing she had brought more. They made her thirsty, but it was necessary to replace the salt lost through sweat, and she could tell that few of the migrants had known to bring their own. She hoped they found a cache of water left by one of the humanitarian groups; some people hadn’t brought enough.
Murmurs rose here and there as people made brief conversation, then gave it up out of exhaustion. One curt order, though, made Inés stiffen: El Rojo, speaking to the mother whose daughter had fussed the most. “Come with me.”
Miguel’s hand clamped down on Inés’ arm before she could move. “Don’t.”
“I can’t let him—” Inés growled, trying to rise. El Rojo was leading the young woman to the far side of a cluster of ocotillo.
“Yes, you can,” Miguel hissed. “Look.” He jerked his chin; Inés, following, saw Pipo watching her.
He wants what you’d expect
, Miguel had said—what El Rojo was about to take from that woman.
Something else to offer
, the coyote in the cantina had said. For all she knew, this was part of the woman’s bargain with El Rojo. Which didn’t make it right, didn’t make it okay—
You aren’t here to rescue them, Inés. Not like that. Don’t forget your purpose.
She sagged back down, defeated, and tried to sleep. It wasn’t the heat and relentless sun that kept her awake, though, but the muffled sounds from nearby.
They rested through the hottest part of the day, then rose to walk some more. Now it was clear that, however hard the night and morning had been, that was only the beginning of their trials; stiff muscles protested, and weariness made everyone clumsy. One of the young men stumbled on his way down a slope, nearly falling, putting Inés’ heart in her mouth; if he twisted an ankle, he was dead. Nowould carry him, not all the way to the reservation. He regained his balance, unharmed, and they went on.
Until the sun set and the desert air cooled, and Inés, stupid with exhaustion, began to wonder if all this risk and effort was going to come to nothing whatsoever, except an embarrassed trek back to Phoenix, and a passport in her mailbox with no stamp marking her return to the United States.
It isn’t nothing,
she thought,
you know about El Rojo now, and can tell—
“Hide,”
the coyote snarled.
The migrants didn’t move fast enough. They’d been stumbling along, one foot in front of the other, like zombies, and now they stared at him; Pipo and the others began shoving people to the ground as distant headlights sliced through the thickening dusk.
Inés remained standing, staring, until Pipo knocked her down, almost into the spines of an ocotillo. Two lights, moving independently: all-terrain motorcycles, not a Jeep. Border Patrol, not vigilantes, and following their trail from the fence.
A low, quiet laugh from El Rojo raised all the hairs along her arms and neck. “Come on, boys.”
Making only a little more noise than the desert wind, he and his three fellows loped off toward the approaching motorcycles.
Inés shoved a hand into her pocket, pulling out the rubber-banded tin. When she rose to a crouch, Miguel whispered, “What are you doing?” He wasn’t close enough to grab her.
Keeping those agents alive.
“Stay here,” she hissed back, and ran before he could protest.
She kept low, taking advantage of the scant cover. Already she’d lost sight of El Rojo and the others, but that wouldn’t matter for long. She just needed to get far enough away from the migrants. . . .
Good enough. Inés dropped to one knee, stripped out of her clothes, and pulled the rubber band off the tin.
The pungent smell of the
teopatli
inside rose into the dry air. Its scent brought memories swarming around her like ghosts: her first visit to Cuauhtémoc, at the age of fifteen, re-united after seven years with the family she had lost. Her mother sending her out into the desert, with
teopatli
for her skin and
pulque
to drink and a maguey thorn to pierce her tongue, as her ancestors had done for generations before.
Careful despite her haste, Inés dipped her fingers in the paste, and began to dab it onto her body. Legs, back, arm, face, rings and clusters of spots, and even before she was done she could feel the
ololiuqui
seeds ground into the paste taking effect. Her vision swam, going both blurry and sharp, and smells assaulted her nose. Then everything came together with a bone-wrenching snap, and leaving tin and clothes behind, Inés ran once more.
The coyotes weren’t hard to follow now. They feared no predators, out here in the desert; Border Patrol, vigilantes, ranchers, all were just different kinds of prey. They ran together for a time, then fanned out, and Inés went after the nearest, knowing she would have to be fast.
He was on his way up a steep rise, aiming for a cliff from which he could leap. Inés caught him halfway, slamming his wiry to the ground, her jaws seeking and then finding his skull, teeth punching through into his brain. The coyote died without a sound, as in the distance, the barking calls of his brothers pierced the night air.
The motorcycles growled lower at the sound, but they were still approaching much too fast. Inés ran again, the
teopatli
giving her strength she’d lacked before. She was made for the stalking ambush, not the chase, but the lives of those two agents depended on her speed. The second coyote died with his throat crushed. The noise dropped sharply; one of the engines had stopped. She caught the third coyote on his way toward the motorcycles, and this one saw her coming; he twisted away from her leap, yipping in surprise, before going down beneath her much greater weight.
Even as the hot blood burst into her mouth, she heard a scream from the direction of the engines—a human scream.
Cold blue light flooded the narrow valley where the migrants had walked. One of the motorcycles had fallen on its side; the rider lay moaning and bleeding. His partner had a shotgun out, and was pointing it in every direction, unsure where the next attack would come from. If Inés wasn’t careful, he would shoot her instead.
Now it was time for the stalk. She circled the area slowly, paws touching down with silent care, nose alive to every scent on the wind. She thought the third coyote had been Pipo—couldn’t be sure—but the last was El Rojo. He was the smart one, the subtle one, the sorcerer who had given them all coyote shape, the better to hunt the humans who came to hunt them.
He knew she was out here. Inés realized that when she found his trail looping upon itself, confusing his scent. He’d heard Pipo die, of course—but maybe he’d known since before then.
He’s watching you for something
, Miguel had said. Maybe El Rojo recognized a fellow sorcerer when he saw one.
On an ordinary night, she wouldn’t have been stupid enough to approach the overhang. But the strength the
teopatli
gave her was no substitute for sleep; Inés’ human mind was sluggish, ceding too much control to the beast.
A weight crashed into her back. Pain bloomed hot along her nerves as the coyote’s jaws closed on her neck. Acting on instinct, Inés collapsed and rolled, dislodging El Rojo. When she regained her feet, she saw at last the creature she had come all this way to hunt.
His coat was different than the others’, more uniform in color along the head and back. In sunlight, it would be reddish brown. El Rojo, the red one, whose jaws now dripped red with her blood. Who had murdered Javier, and Consuela, and David, ranchers and vigilantes, and probably some migrants, too. Coyote attacks, the official reports said; they were suddenly more common than before. But agents of the Border Patrol died more often in the line of duty than any other federal law enforcement division, and the people in charge were more concerned with human killers than animal attacks.