“She’d had an affair?”
“No, that’s the thing. It wasn’t a black baby. Instead, its skin had been turned black and gangrenous, the same thing that had probably killed it. The son Hernando had waited so long for was dead, and his wife soon afterward once the unsettled toxic flesh flooded her body.”
Rachel gasped. Noah felt ill. The heat from the sun was starting to twist what he was seeing, and he wondered if Father Manillo was losing his cohesion.
“The story goes that Hernando wailed so loudly on their passing that it drove all life from the area, leaving only death on this hill. They buried the child here too. Underneath that slab. Some people wonder if that also had something to do with the curse here. Not me, of course. But some people. That’s why most of the villagers avoid this place. Everyone but the Tletliztlii followers. It’s the perfect spot to hide a child you don’t want found.”
The priest looked guiltily at Noah. His face was slick with sweat, and he was trying to blink it from his eyes.
“I’m sorry. I let my mouth get away from me, my friend. Maybe it’s best we all leave, I think. It’s a bad place.” He crossed himself. “Come, let me take you both back to the village. You don’t belong here. Not under this horrible sun.”
“But what about Eli?”
“Have faith, Noah. I will pray for you both.”
That answer did nothing to ease Noah’s worries.
Father Manillo left Noah and Rachel at their hotel. Noah had been silent during the trip back, weighed down by despair. What made it worse was Rachel’s demeanour. She had never spoken a word aloud, but it was clear her presence in Mexico was for his sake alone. She was not as committed to finding Eli as he was. But how could she be?
Eli. The boy had been so much a part of Noah. He filled a hole that could not otherwise be filled. Rachel did her best, and he knew that he should be happier about the new child she carried, but somehow that feeling was trapped inside of him, trapped within solid amber, visible but unreachable. Rachel, the baby—they were not his beautiful Eli. But he went through the motions. It was all he could do. It would change when they finally found Eli; there was no doubt in his mind. With the boy back in his arms, that amber would crack, would crumble beneath Eli’s beauty. Eli was Noah’s true heart. There was no way he could go much longer without the boy.
But he tried. Only a few steps away from the hotel was a small cantina, pressed into the side of a degraded brick hovel. There was no door, only a large opening and awning from which a child’s papier-mâché animal hung, its odd-numbered legs erupting from its twisted body without reason. Inside the cantina the lights were low, the air smelled of sweat and spices, and the unshaven men who sat there turned to stare eyes wide and silent at the couple as they entered. None were any younger than fifty, Noah suspected, though their faces made them look impossibly older. Noah wondered if he had ever before felt so out of place.
“Do you want to leave?” he asked Rachel under his breath.
“I think it’s fine. Look, there’s a table over there.”
She strode where Noah hesitated, deep into the heart of the place. Noah meekly followed, doing what he could to avoid eye contact. There were few women in the place, all lingering at the back of the room or behind curtains, and those he saw looked incredibly sad. He wanted to say something to help them, but couldn’t think of a single thing that might make a difference, so he did his best to put them out of mind. It was easier than having to deal with problems that had no clear solutions.
“Do you think they have menus?” Rachel asked, moving her sunglasses to the top of her head, but before Noah could respond a small man in an apron and pencil moustache approached and put a dirty paper menu in front of them. He seemed nervous and hovered over Noah and Rachel as they looked over the menu, spending most of the time looking at the other patrons behind him.
“Nopalitos con chile, por favor,” Rachel said.
“Para mí también,” Noah added. “And a beer.”
The small man nodded profusely and hurried away. Noah watched him disappear into the back. The other patrons turned partially away as well. Rachel did not blink. Instead, she put her hand on his.
“You still look upset,” she said. “Don’t worry. Today was just a minor setback.”
“It was the only lead we had, Rachel. I have no idea where we’re going to look now. We’ve come all this way, we’ve come so close. I can’t believe it was all for nothing.”
“It wasn’t for nothing,” she said. “We’ll find him. You have to believe it.”
“I don’t know what I believe anymore.”
“Believe this: we’ll find him. We’ll find him and we’ll take him away from this place, from Sonia and whatever crazy thing she’s mixed up in. We’ll take him away to a new life back home with us, and soon he’ll have a new brother or sister and all this will be like some horrible nightmare for us all, a nightmare that happened so long ago it will soon fade to nothing. We can have that, Noah. You just have to believe.”
Maybe it was the heat, or the exhaustion, or the pain of missing Eli for so long, but Noah could not keep himself from crying. It was horrible, and he felt the eyes of so many in the room staring at him once more, staring as Rachel squeezed and rubbed his hand. Like a summer storm, it passed over him as quickly as it arrived, but he was left drenched, wiping his face with the cheap paper napkin that had been laid for them on the table.
“I’m sorry, Rachel. I really am. I’ve just felt so lost for so long.”
“I know, babe. I know. Dry off, here comes our food.”
The little man was still hurrying as he delivered their plates, less setting them down than throwing them. He then retreated and brought back a warm bottle of cerveza. Noah reached out for it, but the man did not let go. Instead he leaned closer.
“Tú y la madre necesitan irse ahora mismo.“
“I’m sorry. I—”
“Es peligroso,” he said, his voice a seething whisper, and it only took a mumbled cough from behind for him to let go of the beer instantly. It kicked back, some of it spilling onto Noah’s hand, but the small man seemed to take on a completely different stance, looking at the rest of the room out of the corner of his eye.
“Cuarenta y nueve pesos,” he grunted, and left them alone as quickly as he could. They did not see him again.
Back at the hotel, Rachel insisted on standing outside their room in the warm night.
“It’s amazing; I’ve never seen anything like it,” Rachel said, staring up at the colours of ebbing dusk as her hands idled on her pregnancy. Noah followed her eyes skyward. In the dark that followed close the stars lit the sky like a thousand pricks of light. “The world is a lot different in these places. You forget what it’s like when you spend your life a few feet away from electricity at the flick of a switch. Out here, you really get an idea of what it must have been like to be alive hundreds of years ago. The Spaniards came here and conquered, brought Christianity, but you can almost feel what it was like before that, back when the sky was filled with gods of fire. I can understand why people would come here to worship Ometéotlitztl and the rest. It’s like a whole different way of being. I’m almost jealous.”
Noah bristled, but tried to hide it. He had no interest in repeating their experience on the heath. “You have a way of looking at things, you know.”
She took his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. “What do you mean?”