The Cactus That Sang

About this story

In a desert village the color of warm sand, a girl named Lupita runs everywhere and never wonders why. One evening she hears a thread of sound at the bend in the road, and it stops when she stops. A thin gray coyote is sitting in the shadow of the tall cactus, and it tells her the cactus was singing, and that the song is shy. Her feet want to run. She sits down in the cool sand anyway, and learns to hear the wind over the spines, the tick of cooling stone, the water moving slow beneath it all. Then they walk out into the blue evening, farther than the lights of home, and something out there has a voice that is sweet and wrong.

Read the beginning

In the desert village of Tepoztlán, where the houses were the color of warm sand and the heat lay over the rooftops like a blanket, there lived a girl named Lupita. She was always in a hurry, and she never wondered why.

High above the dust road, on the very top of the tallest saguaro, a raven sat black and glossy as a spill of ink. It tilted its head and watched her, the way you watch someone you have been waiting for.

Lupita ran everywhere. She ran to the well and back. She ran past the old women selling tamales, past the goats, past the green arms of the cactus at the bend in the road. "Slow down, Lupita," the old women called. But there was nothing in the desert worth stopping for.

One evening, when the sun went down red as a chili, Lupita heard a small thing at the bend in the road. A thread of sound. It came from the tall cactus, the one with arms like a person reaching up. She stopped. And the sound stopped too.

A coyote was sitting in the cactus's shadow, thin and grey, with eyes the color of warm honey. "You almost heard it," said the coyote. "Heard what?" said Lupita. "The song. The cactus was singing. But you walked too fast, and the song is shy."

Lupita laughed. "Cactus do not sing." The coyote only tilted its head. "Everything sings," it said, "but only for the one who stops. Sit. Listen the way I listen." And though her feet wanted to run, Lupita sat down in the cool sand.

At first she heard nothing at all. Then she heard the wind move soft over the spines, like someone breathing. Then a thin high note rose and fell where the wind caught them. It was a song. The cactus was truly singing. "Oh," whispered Lupita.

"Now you hear," said the coyote, and its honey eyes were bright. "Come. The whole desert is full of voices." So they walked together into the blue evening, and Lupita listened to a flat warm stone ticking as it cooled, and to water moving slow and patient deep beneath the sand.

The further they walked, the wider the desert grew, until Lupita could not see the lights of her village behind her. The sky turned the color of plums. And out of the dark came a wind that smelled of nothing, carrying a voice that was sweet and soft and wrong.

"Little one," said the voice, low and shining. "Why walk so slow with that ragged coyote? I know a quick way home. One step, and you are at your mother's door." Where it spoke, the sand glittered like a smooth and easy path through the night.

Lupita wanted to believe it. She was tired, and home was far. But the coyote stepped in front of her, very still, ears turned to the dark. "Listen," it said softly. "Truly listen. What do you hear under those pretty words?"

So Lupita made herself be still, and she listened past the sweetness, the way she had listened for the song. Under the voice there was no breath. No heartbeat. No water, no wind, no living thing at all. Only a hollow, hungry quiet that wanted to swallow her up.

"No," said Lupita, and her voice did not shake. "You are not the desert. The desert is alive, and you are empty." The glittering path went dim. The wind smelled of nothing, then of nothing, and then it was gone, and the false voice with it.

The story goes on in the video.