Because Beatriz’s mind was a busy and practical thing, she had played over the possibility of her family discovering the radio many dozens of times. She had considered all sorts of possible outcomes, both positive and negative. She had prepared herself for Joaquin’s unbearable smugness if he received a compliment from any of the family. She had developed persuasive arguments for why the radio was probably not truly a bait to the FCC here in the wilds of southern Colorado, where the radio waves were not worth enough to send city folk out to take them back from young pirates. She had decided how she would describe the building of the radio to her father so that he would be delighted by the process. She had considered how to defend the use of the otherwise pointless box truck in this way.
But she had not ever, before that night, thought about how she might defend herself after breaking the most serious rule the family had. She had not thought about it because before Marisita, Joaquin and Beatriz had not ever used the truck in such a way, and before Jennie, they hadn’t realized they were going to do it again. Beatriz was not particularly a rule breaker, as she didn’t mind following a rule as long as it didn’t get in her way, and she didn’t get into arguments, as she never raised her voice, and she didn’t interfere with other people’s lives, as she herself didn’t like to be interfered with, so she was not used to being in trouble. The last time she had gotten in serious trouble had been when she’d been born because she was supposed to have been a boy. (Alexandro Luis Soria was the name both Francisco and Antonia had chosen for her, and Antonia had imagined her to be a garrulous and dashing man like Antonia’s father had been before he’d died early in a freak airship accident. Francisco had imagined her as a clever and intelligent scientist, assuming thoughtlessly at the time that only a man could be so rational.) Everything else since the shock of her femaleness at birth had been minor dispute in comparison, so it was not a consequence that readily occurred to her when predicting the future.
But now she was in trouble.
As soon as the truck pulled back into Bicho Raro and parked, its lights turned off for secrecy, figures appeared in front of the truck like spirits. All of the Sorias had turned out to confront Beatriz and Joaquin and Pete. Beatriz had never seen their faces the way they looked tonight, not even when they were looking at Daniel’s message to Marisita. She understood now that this was not going to be about the disobedience of a pirate radio station. There was a taboo, and it came with real consequences, and Joaquin and Beatriz were experimenting on the ragged edge of it.
“Do you hate us?” Rosa said. She had believed that Joaquin had broken the taboo the moment he read the letters out loud from the sisters, and now was crying from fear and relief on seeing that he was unchanged. Merely disobedient, not lost to darkness. “Why would you play with this, Joaquin, like it is nothing, when Daniel has lost everything for the same price?”
Joaquin stood frozen. He had been suspended in the high of the show. He had thought it was good while he was writing it, and he had thought it was even better with Tony’s notes, and he had thought it was very good when he recorded it, but when he heard it broadcasting from the radio, he had thought that it was great, and he was not wrong. He was still suffused with the powerful sensation of doing exactly what he had been designed to do. This was his miracle and he was drunk with this electric holiness. For the entire drive back to Bicho Raro, the thrill and correctness of it had left him unable to contemplate anything else.
So when he found himself confronted, he could not think of what to say. It was too opposite to how he had just been feeling.
“And you!” Antonia said to Pete. “I trusted you and thought that you respected my family. Instead, you’re throwing us into danger like we are nothing.”
This struck Pete hard, as everything she said was true, both the good and the bad. He had passed messages between Tony and Joaquin all day. He had coordinated the pilgrims’ letter writing. He had come along and pounded ground stakes into the ground and helped Beatriz to erect the ever taller antenna and then hurriedly packed it all back up again when they were done. He had known from the beginning of his time here that the Sorias were not to interfere with the pilgrims, and yet he had let himself be used—joyfully, gladly!—as a conduit between them. He was as guilty as the cousins.
“I want you gone at first light,” Antonia said. “This is unacceptable. How could I trust you again?”
Beatriz could bear neither Joaquin’s expression nor Pete’s expulsion. She said, “It was my idea.”
“But why, Beatriz?” Judith asked.
“It was a calculated risk,” Beatriz went on, already knowing how these words would sound to her family before she said them. Daniel’s decision had been a calculated risk as well, and now he was gone. “We thought there had to be a better way.”
“And what if it had come for you, Beatriz?” said Francisco, and she knew he was angry because he spoke this instead of whistled it. “What if the darkness had come upon you while you were out in the desert performing this secret experiment, this calculated risk? What if Judith came to look for you and also fell prey to it, and then your mother came to look for you and fell prey to it, and so on and so forth? Did you calculate that?”
Beatriz did not say anything. She had thought about the possible consequences, but not in that way. That first night with Marisita, she had offered to send Joaquin away if he was afraid, because she knew the risks. If she had brought darkness on herself, she would have done exactly the same thing as Daniel and exiled herself in the desert and made sure she was not found. She was very good at puzzles, and she had been certain she could make one out of her location if it had come to it; Judith would never have found her. Beatriz weighed the benefit of saying all of this out loud and did not see any value to it, so she said nothing.
“How can you not believe in the taboo after what happened to Daniel?” Antonia asked.
The true answer was that Beatriz believed in the danger, but she didn’t believe in the taboo. She weighed the value of saying this and found this also useless to say out loud. She thought that by so doing she was improving the situation, but anyone who has held an argument with a silent participant will realize that silence sometimes can be more frustrating than a defense.
This was the case with the Sorias and Beatriz. They grew more upset and said more things to both cousins while Beatriz merely listened. The more she listened, the more distressed they became, and the more distressed they became, the more she was certain she could not truly make them feel at ease with her decisions. She did not know how to apologize for a rule that she had broken after considering the risks, because although she understood why they were angry, she still was not sorry that she had done it. She understood only that she could not tell them this truth or they would be even more upset.
“Don’t you want things to be different?” Joaquin said finally. He was only sixteen, but in this moment, he was the Joaquin he would become instead of the Joaquin he was. He was the man who would be Diablo Diablo in a bigger city, a voice to pilgrims in the night. “We spend all of our time hiding in our houses when we see a pilgrim walking by! We see them suffering and we say nothing! We smell Marisita’s cooking and we are too afraid to even tell her that it smells delicious! We starve! We starve of—of everything because we are too afraid to eat! Look at us, all standing here, because we’re afraid of them. That’s why you’re here, right? Fear!”
“And where is your cousin Daniel, Joaquin?” Rosa demanded. She had not called him anything but Quino since he was a child and now he recoiled from his true name, although any other time he would have welcomed it. “We are not afraid because we are cowards.”
Antonia said, “Do you think we love him less than you? He is our son. He is our Saint.”
The grief in her voice was no greater than the grief any of them were feeling.
“We thought,” Joaquin said, and stopped. He could not be logical and even-tempered. “Beatriz, you tell them.”
Beatriz said, “We think the radio is making a difference. Jennie made progress yesterday after listening to the radio; she can speak in lyrics. Tonight’s program was for the twins. If they are changed by the radio, and we are still safe after broadcasting, then we’ve found a way to help heal them without causing danger to ourselves. We could help pilgrims move on so that they would not fill Bicho Raro for so long.”
“We’re building a lodge,” Michael said.
“We would rather have a lodge than our children turned to darkness from stupid risks,” Antonia added.
Beatriz persisted with the most important part. “We thought if we found a way to help pilgrims, we could find a way to help Daniel.”
Now everyone was as silent as Beatriz ordinarily was.
“Beatriz,” Francisco whistled, sadly, finally—but she didn’t want his pity; she had merely been stating the truth.
“Daniel wanted us to think harder about this,” she said. “He wanted us to think about why we do the things we do.
“Hand me the keys,” Michael said. “To the truck.”
“But Daniel!” Joaquin protested. “He’s listening. Remember the message?”
They all remembered the message. Now it was agonizing to all of them.
“Please,” Joaquin went on. “We can’t stop or he won’t have us to listen to. He’ll be alone.”
Judith began to cry softly, over the impossibility of it.
Michael held out his hand. “I’m thinking about my family who are not yet lost and that includes you, my son. Now give me those keys and do not make me take them.”
“Please,” Joaquin said again, and he, too, was near to tears.
The sound of his voice and indeed all of their conversation was nearly drowned out, however, by the commotion of owls. Every Soria there knew what the birds’ carrying on meant: They were whipped to wildness by a miracle. The family searched the sky and the ground for the source of the owls’ enthusiasm, but they saw nothing but darkness.
“Joaquin,” said Michael. He did not want to carry out his threat of taking the keys by force, but Joaquin had not moved to give them, so he started toward him. At the last moment, Beatriz stepped in front of Joaquin and relinquished the keys.
No one felt particularly victorious. There is no joy to be had in defending inaction and fear.
The owls soared over the family into the night and Bicho Raro fell into an unusual quiet. A feather floated past Beatriz. She could have caught this one, but she did not stretch out her hand.
Out of the quiet darkness, two figures approached. They were silhouetted by the bold light of the truck headlights. Every Soria ceased what they were doing to watch them approach, because a process of elimination proved that they must be pilgrims, and they were.
“Stay back,” Antonia warned them. “You know better.”
But the pilgrims kept approaching. It was the twins, Robbie and Betsy. All of the adult Sorias recoiled. The night felt dangerous and unusual, and it seemed like anything could happen, even pilgrims attacking them with their very presence, intentionally violating the taboo.
“Don’t worry,” Robbie said.
“We’re just going,” Betsy said.
“Going where?” demanded Antonia.
“Home,” Betsy replied.
Because they were no longer pilgrims.
Days before, when Pete had arrived, the girls had been tangled together by a snake that wouldn’t allow them to live separate lives. Now the snake was gone. Instead, they were merely girls standing side by side, close, but not close.
“You killed the snake,” Joaquin said.
“No,” Robbie replied. “Well, kinda. We decided to, together, but as soon as we decided to, it just …”
“Disappeared,” Betsy said. “While the owls went crazy.”
Their decision to work together to be apart had set them free.
“It worked,” Joaquin said. “Beatriz, it worked.”
And this was yet another miracle the Sorias had not witnessed for a very long time: hope. All of the Sorias, Beatriz and Joaquin included, immediately found their eyes drawn to the Shrine where Daniel used to be. Where Daniel should have been.
Michael handed the keys back to Beatriz.