The ride brings Adelita and Xoc through the vast and varied landscape of the state of Yucatan. Lush forests pass as quickly as narrow hilled gorges, open plains, small towns, even a city, though none stop the pair. They ride quickly and by nightfall the coast comes into sight. They stop to rest the mounts and catch a few hours of sleep under the stars.
The morning’s ride is slower, leaving Xoc to daydream of knights and princesses once more. Between himself and his companion, though, he can’t tell which is the knight. Adelita is similarly lost in her thoughts, though her fixation remains on the coastline. She breathes the salty air with relish, freeing her face to take it in once more. She takes off her sombrero to feel the sea brush it’s fingers through her hair once again. She almost smiles. Almost.
They stop atop a high cliff overlooking a small fishing village. Adelita’s eyes remain transfixed to the town, tracing familiar roads to familial houses. Xoc waits by the path, his eyes searching her face as eagerly as hers searches the town.
“You… said your folks live there?” Xoc ventures. Adelita nods awkwardly as she surveys the town, her dark eyes hungrily tracing the roads.
“I grew up here.” Adelita muttered, a finger drifting up to sift through the streets as though stroking the spine of an old cat. “I took classes in the chapel there, swam in that inlet there all the time…”
“I used to get into fights over there.” She adds, a smirk fluttering across her face as she draws Xoc’s eyes to a patch of tall grass. “Kids from the farms over the hills there, they liked to play in town and we always ended with punches.”
“I grew up on the dock, in that house there and…” Adelita’s voice drifts off and her hand sets to worrying the raised scars on her cheek. She tips her chin towards a larger dock to the south of the town. Her brow knits together, “That’s new.”
“Do you want to go?” Xoc asks, checking the sun. Adelita goes silent, eyes focusing almost as though she was glaring down the town itself. The wind picks up and she brings the bandana up over her face. Xoc adds, “It’s not far.”
“And what? Show up looking like this, stay for dinner, and then just… leave again? I’m not done.” She turns her glare on Xoc, who winces against the ferocity of her gaze. She softens slightly, her jaw under the cloth working slowly as she thought, “If I go back I won’t leave and… I just…”
She takes a deep breath and straightens herself in her saddle, her eyes locked on the mane of her horse. “I’m going to finish this. Then… then I’ll think about facing them.”
There’s a confused pause as Xoc considers Adelita. The vulnerability was unexpected, but he understood the hesitation, if only a little. He takes the lead, calling back with a shrug, “I get it, I wouldn’t know how to explain this all either… but… next time I see my folks? I’m never letting them go for anything!”
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Xoc guides them the half-day’s ride to a rickety wooden cabin resting right atop the crystal-blue waters of the gulf. They dismount a good distance away, weapons drawn, and creep closer on foot.
Adelita makes her way to the front door with utmost care, Xoc taking a door on the side. She signals and they both enter, the doors built without so much as a latch. Adelita finds herself in a stuffy kitchen, all manner of knicknacks hoarded amongst cans of food that are open, empty, or piled on counters. The food seems to be military rations, the mess similarly keepsakes of a life before service.
A crash from the next room gets Adelita’s heart rushing and she sneaks to the swinging door. Carefully, she pushes through, then sighs and steps out. In the cramped living room, Xoc struggles to disentangle his boots from a wild tangle of fishing line. Rather than help, Adelita continues past him into the bedroom.
The room is surprisingly bare, featuring only a bed, a nightstand, and a wardrobe left ajar and nearly empty. On the nightstand, a picture of a middle aged couple glare stoically down the lens of the camera, as though asking why she, of all people, had picked them up. After an immense struggle, Xoc appears behind her in the doorway.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.” Adelita confirms and follows him back into the living room.
“Think he saw us coming?”
“Not sure he’s even here.” Adelita snips at Xoc, who moves to the window opposite where he came in. Adelita pokes at a small metal bucket, then reaches in to pull out a handful of worms. “This is the right place… right?”
A grin flits across the Mayan man’s face and he gestures out of the window. “Yeah, this is the right place alright.”
Adelita follows his finger to an old man in a striped one-piece bathing suit standing in the water. She turns on her heel to rush back out of the door, Xoc scrambling to follow.
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The beach is small, mostly rocks with a stretch of sand mostly under the tide. An old log, festooned with all manner of fishing supplies, divides the two mediums like a wall. The old man stands a few meters out from shore, the water only to his knees. Xoc and Adelita approach with guns drawn, boots crunching loudly on the rough rocks.
“So, you found me.” The old man calls over his shoulder, “I was wondering when you’d show up.”
“You... knew I was coming?” Adelita asks cautiously. She exchanges looks with Xoc.
The old man glances back at them in surprise, his gnarled eyebrows bouncing into his thinning white hair. “Oh! Oh, no, not you, girl.” He gestures towards Xoc, “Him.”
“Me?” Xoc asks, tapping one of his pistols to his chest to confirm. Adelita reaches over and re-trains his guns on their target.
“Si.” The man shouts over the crash of a wave, casting his line with confident carelessness in a long arc overhead . After a few long seconds, he continues almost to himself, “I’m not going back. I’m not doing it. If he wants me, well… the little snitch found me, so I’m sure he’ll know where I am soon enough.”
“I quit too!” Xoc shouts, stopping short of the sandy section of the beach. “I don’t serve that Spanish bastard anymore!”
“And what got your nose out of his ass? Your little girlfriend here?” The old man sneers at Adelita, then adds, “If you’re not here to bring me back… then why ARE you here? Hard to fish with a gun in your hand.”
Xoc opens his mouth to retort, but is stunned into silence as Adelita holsters her gun and takes a seat on the log. In moments, she has her boots off and trousers rolled to the knee. She moves her holster from her hip to under her arm, then grabs a spare fishing pole. The old man reels in an empty line with a disappointed sucking of teeth, then glances back, also surprised to see the girl wading out towards him.
“And who are you, bandita?”
Adelita takes her time positioning herself near enough to talk, but far enough from her target so that she could draw her weapon if he made a rush at her. She baits the hook with a thin black worm, taken from the bucket in the cabin, which wriggles and writhes in the glittering sun. She casts in a long, elegant arc of line and hook, first out over the water, then back towards shore, then out into the deep blue beyond. After a few minutes of intense concentration, the men to La Fusilada and her in turn to the ocean, the elder scoffs and turns to glare at Xoc.
“You know how to pick em, kid.”
Xoc moves to seat himself on the log, both guns still pointed. “She’s a whole lot nicer than any of you all were, Aldo.”
“Aldo? No more ‘Mister Millan-Sosa’?” He laughs, then throws his line towards the ocean, “No respect! Those brothers rubbed off on you since I left.”
“Jose and Pablo? Never. Never liked them!” Xoc calls back, though his words are mostly lost in the crash of waves. “But we ARE looking for them, do you know where they’re at?”
Aldo puts a hand to his ear and Xoc repeats himself, then again. Finally, Adelita pulls the bandana down from her nose. Shimmering light reflecting from the waves surf over the rough hills of her face.
“Oh sweet Mother Mary!” the elder shouted, then sighed, “Where?”
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“Campeche,” Adelita responds bluntly, her voice cracking slightly and Aldo tucks his head to his chest for a moment. Adelita leans back as something bites and she begins to reel it in. A silence hangs over the three, Aldo watching with the other eyebrow slowly rising higher and higher. Adelita pulls in a sizable pink fish and begins to walk it back to shore.
“Why don’t you tell me where they’re at, delivery boy?” Aldo demands, reeling in his line. He eyes them both with new understanding in his dark eyes. Aldo barks, a finger pointing accusingly at the former soldier, “I’ve seen you open orders, you sneak! Bet that’s how you found me here, huh?”
He turns back to his line, adding, “besides, those boys can smell blood, right? If you don’t find them, they’ll find you.”
Adelita marches back to her spot, then spears a worm on her hook before performing her intricate cast. Adelita glances at the bickering boys, then firmly announces “I’m here to kill you.”
“I know.” Aldo says, his expression darkening. He makes a few clumsy attempts to replicate her cast as he picks his words carefully, “I figured that much out, at least. I was just hoping for a bit back and forth first. Taking us all one by one? Saving him for last, I hope?”
“Mm. Something like that.” She responds, “but don’t expect the same.”
“It’s a race, you and this damn heart of mine. Doesn’t matter to me which gets me first.” He laughs darkly, then stoops down to skate his hand along the surface of the water. “For a life of failures, these months out here have been better than I deserve.”
“It matters to me.”
“Why?”
“Something I’d like to know too,” She mumbles, gesturing to her scarred face.
“Why what? Why did I shoot you?” he asks, incredulous, “It’s war, child! What did you expect? This... all this is the decision of people above me, above even my captain.”
He recoils as she glares daggers into him, though her attention is stolen by her line growing taught once more. He touches three fingers to his head, heart, and then across his chest, adding, “It’s not my concern, I just followed my orders like any good soldier. Did you ask your little friend why?”
“You could have,” She grunts through gritted teeth, “you could have said no. He’s… you know. But you’re an adult. You’re supposed to... protect us, not shoot us... like animals.”
A fat grey fish skitters just under the surface, roiling left and right and inching closer and closer to the shore. Aldo watches, transfixed, his own line still slack and drifting in the tide. When she manages to lift the fish out of the water, he calls after, “If I didn’t, someone else does and I get put on the line next, right?”
“If you did,” She retorts, stepping heavily through the water towards a Xoc growing steadily less comfortable with the conversation, “at least someone would have said no. If you don’t care about how you go, then why not go standing up for us? What do you have to lose? No one even tried until some hanaquin baron noticed his fool son was missing!”
She throws the fish on the beach as Xoc avoids her eyes, then turns back to the old man. “Just following orders? That’s how evil stays alive. Men of the devil like you.”
“What, and your little war isn’t the same?” He demands, fishing forgotten for the moment. He jabs a finger like a knife in her direction, then swings his arm through the air like an axe. “Like you aren’t out here to murder?”
“I am!” She agrees bitterly, her cast jerkier than before, “But it’s not the same.”
“Not the same?” he laughs, incredulous, “How!?”
“Because I do evil for me and ONLY ME!” She shouts at the cloudless sky, “I’m not hiding behind some bastard’s skirt, my murders… My murders means something! You? You’re a factory, taking in students and... and merchants... and making easy little towns, neh? I… I stand by what I’m doing, DO YOU?!”
“What I did.” He corrected, slightly cowed.
Adelita’s line grows taught once more and she gestures dismissively at him with her free hand, “Doesn’t matter, does it? Now or later, if no one says no, if no one stands up to evil, then it never stops. Only a matter of time till it rolls back to you.”
“Murder is still murder, little girl!” He shouts, slapping the top of the water. She doesn’t react, focused on her catch. “It’s no less evil if it’s ‘just’ revenge! Think, child!”
With a tug and snarl, a third fish flips into the air, ever closer to the fisherwoman. She takes a step back, then lunges forward as it pulls the line. Her breath catches in her chest and flecks of blood mix liberally into the wash as she coughs wetly.
“Murder is still murder, old man.” She agrees grimly, wiping her mouth on her sleeve and reeling the fish the last few feet, both fish and fisher suddenly tired. She adds with an exhausted sigh, “It’s no less evil if someone asks you to do it.”
Once more, she turns towards the beach, prize catch in hand. Aldo reels his own line, once again empty, with a sour sneer on his tired face.
“How the hell are you doing that?” Aldo asks, bitter curiosity cutting through the rage.
“Experience,” Adelita responds, spitting another worm into her palm even before she’d deposited her last catch, her tone turning almost jovial “and a lot of practice.”
Aldo’s face falls at her derisive tone and he quickly turns his back on his assassin, a bilious expression boils up to his face. He calls back to the splashing steps behind him, nearly spitting his next words.
“It doesn’t matter, in the end. All the murder we done, it’s never going to bring back my wife. It’s never going to make your face any less scary.” Adelita starts to reply, her tone cocky, but before she finishes a word, he continues, eyes locked on the horizon, “In the end, all it does is lock that door on what was, right? No death’s going to unwind the clock. The world’s changed... and us with it.”
Aldo glances back, finding Adelita’s face vacant, frozen and eyes locked on him. She tilts her head slowly, trying to calculate what exactly he was implying. He smirks, whipping his hook back, then forth, then finally out to the deep blue waters. His voice purrs with vitriolic satisfaction, adding “I think the phrase is ‘You can never go home again!’”
“Fusilada?” A tentative voice ventures from shore, soft and lost in the winds.
“I know it, time you did too.” Aldo shouts over his shoulder. In his voice, the thousands of failures of his life grab and claw, glad to drag her down to his level. His voice rasps bitterly over the crashing of waves as the tide starts to come in. “There’s nothing to go back to now. Maybe that’s the cost of all the evil in the end, right? My wife died while I was out playing soldier - at my age! Nothing I can do now. Besides the lives lost, besides all the excuses, you never get that life back, right? No one… NO ONE knows it better than this old man here.”
“Adelita?”
“How many have you killed so far? More than the average student, ri-oh!” Aldo grunts, surprised as his line tightens, his rod bowing to the sea… before exploding into splinters. The old man cries out as a bullet passes through the rod, then the air between… then through his chest. He sinks into the waves with barely a gurgle. A stain of red spreads through the crystal blue waters and grows pink as waves buffet the body.
La Fusilada approaches, drawing her revolver from under her arm, and takes a wide stance. She leans forward on her front leg, flicking her arm out to train the gun on the body. The water explodes as she unloads into the waves, soaking the shore in blood. After a few minutes of stunned silence, she holsters her gun and returns to shore. She breathes heavily and presses her salt-soaked sleeves to her eyes as she stalks towards the shore. A beautiful mix of reds and blues dance in her wake.
“What… the water, I couldn’t… what happened?” Xoc asked, trying to search her face, though she keeps the brim of her hat between them. Instead of answering, she picks up the fish and shoves them towards her companion. She starts to head up the beach, then calls back over her shoulder. “Cook those inside. I’ll get the horses ready. Let's finish this.”
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That night, they stop atop a high cliff overlooking the small fishing village. Adelita’s eyes remain transfixed to the town, tracing familiar roads to familial houses. Xoc waits by the path, his eyes searching her face as anxiously as hers searched the town. She dismounts and steps to the edge, the very corner between her worlds.
“I know you said but… We can stop by, we-”
“I was going to let him go.”
“What? ”
She finally turns to meet his eyes, her own brimming with tears. “He was right. This… none of this is right. Nothing’s gone the way I wanted, no one's been as… as evil as I.. you…” She gestures towards him and the tears begin to fall.
“Then what happened?” Xoc whispered, stepping closer. She leans away, teetering at the edge of the cliff and he leaps back again. “Careful!”
“Why am I doing this? To stop them, you, doing it again? Other soldiers will step in.” She rocks back onto her heels and steps back from the edge. “Going forwards with this means no going back but… I can’t leave this undone. I’ve still got so much…”
Adelita gestures to her gut, drawing her clawed hands into a ball of molten rage at her core. After a moment of tensing her entire body, she sighs and lets her arms drop to her side.
Xoc tries to respond, tries to argue, but his voice catches in his throat. He couldn’t say he didn’t feel the same. It was an exciting adventure at first, but already the brave knight was turning out to be some kind of deranged murderer. How soon until she turns on him? How long until that fire burns out of control and just...
Silence falls over the cliff, washing down the steep walls and over the tiny village below.
“What’s wrong with me?”
Adelita turns to her traveling companion and locks her cold black eyes on him. The spark of determination normally resting in them seems to have flickered out, leaving only empty, voracious, infinite dark. He steps back involuntarily and a heavy shuddering sigh racks her body.
La Fusilada turns to face the life she once knew. She rips off her bandana and throws it to the skies, the wind catching it and carrying it out of sight. The echo of her throat-tearing scream follows it into the sunset. Adelita jumps back onto her mount and wheels it back to the path.
“Let’s finish this.”