I See Fire | Wattys 2021/22 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Three

Miguel and Rosa had disappeared after Miguel returned Graciela to my sister, but Rosa's squeal indicated they wouldn't be gone long. They burst from their parents' tent, clutching fistfuls of sticks. Either Angelita had gone overboard, or else adults were being coerced into the fun of the colibríes this time. Tied about the end of each stick was a bundle of feathers. Miguel and his sister spread out and began distributing these feather wands to anyone who would take one, and to some who would not. Elías accepted a stick and tapped Rodolfo with its feathered end. People burst out laughing. Not to be outdone, ancient abuelo Godofredo tapped his wife Margarita, who pretended to look scandalized. "Diez madres, the twins were enough! If we're having another child at this age, you can carry it yourself."

Colibríes were meant to bestow health, luck, or fertility on the recipient—and preferably all three—though just what imitation hummingbirds had to do with pregnancy was beyond me. I got my food and navigated back to Lupe and my other cousins. Something whacked my leg. I looked down to find Graciela sitting on the ground with a colibrí clenched in her fat little fist. She beamed up at me, then flailed her arms and whacked me again. A pair of hands swept her up.

"Looks like she wants cousins." My sister Liliana had a twinkle in her eye. "So, how are things with you and Jem?"

I forced a pained smile. "Lili."

"If you say so." She laughed. "Let's go find you some food, hm?" she said to Graciela, and sallied away, bouncing her daughter on her hip. I rejoined my cousins.

"So, you've been marked?" said Lupe with a grin.

I stuffed a bite of tamale in my mouth. "Shut up."

"He still likes you, you know. And I know you still like him back."

"Lupe, we've been over this."

She gave an exaggerated sigh. We had been over this. And I wasn't in the mood. "Fine."

We ate in a silence that somehow dampened the music, the crackle of the fires, and the laughter of the villagers. Couples whirled on the dance floor, their feet tracing rhythms that were part passed down but mostly invented. Even our songs came from after the day the world burned. Most of them, anyway. Colibríes bopped heads, chests and stomachs. I cringed a little each time.

Lupe didn't seem to notice. She bounced her feet to the music, a smile of nothing but contentment on her face. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

I swallowed my last bite and tasted ash as I spotted Jem making his way towards me. He stopped in front of us, and I was aware of every cousin's gaze on me.

Jem's eyes made a break for the ground. He dragged them up again. "Um... will you dance with me?"

He held out his hand. He must have been practicing.

"Maybe later," I said. I'd been practicing, too. "I'm kind of tired."

He swallowed hard and nodded. There was a pause that dragged on for too long.

"Okay. I'll ask later," he said, and turned and left like something had bitten him. Rosa caught him near the fires and offered him a colibrí. He took it carefully and thanked her. It might have been a trick of the light, but I could have sworn he looked my way before the crowd swallowed him.

In the mayhem, I tipped by head back to the clouded sky. Adriana Atenco Mendoza. They said Atenco wasn't Spanish, but just what it was remained a mystery. It was half the reason I wanted to find people in this desert. Other people might have clung to what Fuego had robbed us of the day the world burned. We were the human equivalent of a tortilla marron, stitched together by happenstance, celebrating in ways we'd entirely made up, telling stories and tracking lineages that only went back a hundred years. If the founders had known we would wander the desert for four generations without sight of another human being, maybe they would have passed on more of their culture.

Jem and I weren't related, but I had made up my mind when the village lost its fifth baby in two years, three years ago. The other half of my reason was simple: beneath all the pomp and the playacting, the flavours, the parties, and the inventions, Grillo Negro was a shell draining out from the inside. It was a ramshackle assembly of people forced together by disaster, with no choice in the matter and nowhere to go. As much as I envied my sister for her kids, I wasn't about to throw my heart into our fragile attempt at constructing a heritage.

Grillo Negro was dying, and I wasn't going to prolong its pain.

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