History

He slid from her body in a mudslide while she slept.

✥ 29 septiembre 1854: A child appearing approximately 3 years of age emerges from a mudslide in the dry forests at the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental. He is collected by a Jaguar, who licks him clean: immaculate. The Cat looks after him for several seasons. She teaches him of the Five Suns, the thirteen heavens, nine levels of Mictlan, and the cycle of life and death between. The child learns the names of every plant and animal in the forest. He knows his parents will not come for him. He does not seem to grow older or dirty, in the slightest way.

✥ junio 1856: A Nagual in the form of a white horse discovers the boy while both are foraging. She recognizes something in him, an ancient power, and abducts him from the forest on her back. Having learned to trust animals, he does not realize his situation until she gallops into a town with tall spires. He leaves mud in her mane as she takes him away from where he belongs. He is never clean again, and always hungry.

For years, he wondered if she had been a dream. There were many dreams, strange, terrifying, beautiful, but it was not his place to ask.

✥ 1856 - 1866: He is named Rafael. The Nagual, Blanca, raises him as a Witch, sends him to school at the church for a proper education. She tests his magic around the house: he falls short. She bathes him: he is covered in mud. By the time Rafael appears five years of age, he speaks at the level of a young man a decade older. In the schoolroom, he gets in trouble for tracking dirt in and leaving dark fingerprints in his books. He blames it on his inattentiveness from difficulty sleeping, and is sent by a cane on the back of his legs to wash his hands until they are clean. He prays to La Virgen to be better, and struggles with everything but his education. He prays to La Virgen that he would not feel worse, and he always does.

The church garden in which he takes solace has never been more abundant. She whispers from the soil that his hands are a gift. The priests only praise him when they bleed.

The old Witch taught him the uses of herbs for the body and the mind. She taught him with flowers the weight of the soul, and warned him he must never speak of dreams.

✥ 29 septiembre 1861: On the day of Rafael's first communion, he forgets his mother's name. He is now in synchrony, at 7 years old. He begins eating mint from the garden, to remedy the pain in his stomach.

✥ 18 febrero 1866: At twelve years old, on the last of the year's Nameless Days, the local Witches determine that the boy, increasingly tending toward distress and daydreams in normal life, should be trained as a curandero. He already knows so much about herbs and mysticism, and performs small feats of "magic" they do not quite understand; they do not know what else to do with him. He is sent to Guadalajara for training by Blanca's sister, Alma. He cannot tell them apart.

He knows he is meant for something more.

Neither of these women are his mother.

✥ 1866 - 1875: During his training in the city, Rafael experiences visions of a man. A man as far as one could be from the flora and fauna at the foothills of the Sierra Madre. He sees him with eyes open and closed, in crowds, clouds, reflections, and in a smell upon the wind. Rafael tells no one, convinced of its sin— and of his own, for the way it makes him feel. He looks for him sometimes, out, in the night. He prays for the wrong guilt. Palms pressed together fill until overflowing, and he swallows handfuls of the earth until he is satisfied. He is never satisfied. It tastes of the forests.

And still, no one soothes souls like Rafael.

What is so wrong with his own?

A great Cat stalks him now in silence.

✥ avril 1875: Rafael chases spectres. He leans into the fecundity of power in his hands, learns to grow healing herbs, pull skin, set bones, weave blessings. The more closely he listens, the more deeply he feels— the more profoundly he suffers— the greater his gifts seem to become. Flowers grow toward him, bloom bright, and bloom fast. The elderly seek him to deliver last rites. He is the favored huesero in Jalisco state at age 20, and has never failed to cure even the most stubborn cases of susto.

Alma approves his learned skills, declaring she has no more to teach him. Rafael thanks her, and leaves in the night to follow his visions north— to Never, New Mexico.

When he arrives in the small town, he begins to believe that has gotten himself lost. No one is here for him. No one was waiting. And he knows in his bones, he will never see the Vision again. He knows, far deeper, that he should go home.

He no longer knows the way.

There is a purr in his throat since then, roughened by difficult soil. It is easier to swallow when he’s done Good.

—the Vision did say never.