Noah’s swollen eyelids did not part easily, and when they finally did he wished they hadn’t. The fluorescent lights were harsh and they stung, and he turned his head from them to see where he was. Somehow he had made it back to the doctor’s house, though he had no clear recollection of how or why. His half-memories were of manic and leering faces, all laughing at him. He tried to lift a hand, but it felt weighted down, and it wasn’t until he gathered enough strength to move his head that he realised why. His arm, from elbow down, was wrapped with thick plaster and bandages.
The air was sour with sweat and ash, and his entire body felt overrun by a dull aching pain. He called for help, but his shrivelled tongue prevented anything more than a choked grunt and cough. His chest exploded in pain.
Noah slowly pulled himself up to sit, resting every few inches to rediscover his equilibrium and slow the shards of pain that sank deeper with each jarring movement. He began to remember what happened and everything that had come before. He only felt sicker.
It took work, but he managed to get his legs over the side of the bed, and after a few minutes more to get to his feet. Every inch ached from his ordeal, but beyond the broken arm and his taped-up chest he seemed to be intact. His bloodied clothes were draped over an empty chair, and as slowly as he could he slipped into them. In the far corner of the room, hidden from sight until he was able to stand, was a crudely made piñata, left there by some previous patient. It looked up at him with its mismatched eyes, as though it judged him for all that had transpired. He had to find Rachel. He had lost Eli, probably forever, and couldn’t face losing her as well.
His shuffling echoed in the short corridor. The nurse was nowhere to be found, but he dimly remembered which was Rachel’s room and stumbled down the empty hall toward it, tears blurring his vision, heavy breathing making his ribs ache. He had nothing left without her, and as he found her room he starting apologising before he even entered.
There was no trace of her, nor of their unborn child, just as she promised. The bed was made and room straightened, and the odour of disinfectant still hung strong. Noah sat on the visitor’s chair, exhausted, dumbfounded, staring at the empty bed. Beneath it he saw something the cleaners had missed, something small and colourful that had rolled under the bed after Rachel had ricocheted it off Noah’s temple. He raised his good hand to his brow and could still feel the bruise. The pain felt good because it felt different, because it wasn’t the pain that was going to tear him in two.
Astilla de la Cruz met Noah with creeping daylight and an unbearable heat that glued his clothes to his flesh. He felt vile and dizzy, and wondered if he had suffered a concussion in the assault. The broken church loomed like a vengeful spirit, and those few houses he saw along the street he hoped would lead him back to the hotel. Each window was dim, haloed by the wavering burning air, and as he slowly passed curtains were quickly drawn closed. Yet the rest of the houses seemed vacant, large paper creatures hanging from windows or sitting in the dirt outside the doors, dead eyes watching as no one walked by. The odour of something burning wafted through the air, a greasy smell not unlike grilled pork; it could have been coming from anywhere.
The bleeding had stopped, at least. He coughed, choking on the mucus that had flowed back from his nose before spitting it onto the dirt road. He felt so alone without Rachel beside him. Perhaps she was right: maybe he should never have gone after Eli. It had only made things worse. He’d waited so long to be with his son, sacrificed so much of himself, of his life, dreaming of the day they’d be reunited, that the realisation he might never see the boy again was devastating. His body revolted at the thought, releasing in a flood all the unbearable emotion he’d pent-up or plastered over. He dropped to his knees in the middle of the street and wept for the years of loss and hopelessness he could see laid out before him. Each hitch of his body brought a new throb of pain from his taped ribcage, but it barely registered through his grief. He’d lost everything he’d built of his new life, sacrificed on the altar of his old, and those arms he’d held wide for so long would never be filled, but neither would they ever close.
When he reached the hotel, he was a mess. Covered head to toe in dirty bandages, his clothes ripped and bloodied—had Señora Alvarez still been there, she would likely have called the police. But she wasn’t there. No one was. No one but another gaudy piñata, silently watching him hobble.
With some awkwardness, he was able to retrieve his key and open the door to his hotel room. When he saw the empty hangers and missing suitcase he understood the futility of the hope he’d been harbouring—Rachel had gone to Sarnia without him. What little remained of his strength dwindled, and he dropped onto the bed where springs stuck him as penance. From his pocket he removed the article he had been carrying with him so long and unfolded it. He stared at the blurry photograph of Sonia, of the heath, of everything he had tried and failed to rescue. Noah had come so far to find the piece of himself that was missing, and instead the rest of him fell apart, scattering those pieces far and wide with no hope of gluing them back together. He stared at the worn article and wondered why it should be any different, why it should be spared the same fate. He had done everything he could, and there was only one thing left unfinished. Noah took the article in both hands and tore it to shreds. He let the fragments rain down around him.
He hadn’t noticed the sound at first, his head still ringing from despair, but as it cleared the scraping of burning wind against brick faded, uncovering the hush of a mumbling crowd moving through the blistering heat. Noah squinted out the window into the distance and saw flickering light dotting the gentle slope toward the blasted heath. That was where the entire town had gone, or at least those not cowering in their ramshackle homes. They went to celebrate with Sonia and her cult of kidnappers. As if on cue, a streamer of yellow tissue paper drifted across the street, and he heard a woman’s distant careless laughter.
The ground was not easy to cover by foot, even in the growing daylight, but Noah had no car, nor was Manillo’s truck at the church when he passed. Dirt was hardened to rock, cracked with fissures that gaped like a series of ever-widening mouths, each hungry for him to step inside. Thirst came upon him slyly, and it wasn’t until he had travelled far beyond the village’s outskirts that he realised how dangerous a trek he had embarked upon. The sound of rattlesnakes thundered in Noah’s ears so close he tensed for a strike. But his eyes did not deviate from where the ruins should be. He trailed the lights ahead of him as best he could, but they moved quicker than his injured legs could manage, and the ground radiated heat like burning coal. It did not take long before he was left behind, alone under a baking sun that bore down on his unprotected body.
Had he not known where they were headed, Noah might have lost them forever, but he never questioned that the heath was their destination. Manillo had spoken so lovingly of the site that it could only have come from someone who knew it well. As well as any of the Tletliztlii, if not better. Noah wondered how long Manillo had been leading the movement, if he had always been one of them or had been turned from God once he arrived. The church had been desecrated by their cult worship, yet no one from the archdiocese had intervened. Or, at least, Noah hoped. The alternative—that the agents had been murdered to keep the Tletliztlii’s secret—was one revelation too many for him. He knew he would have to tread carefully, far more so than he had previously.