Catalina left her childhood behind her as she would leave a battered hut that offered no protection from the elements: without nostalgia. She entered into her life as a woman sustained by Pedro’s love. And then came the years of tunneling into rock without being rewarded by a single drop of water. Everything everywhere was desert and thirst. Suffering instructed her in a dark knowledge. Others feared her. She herself, at times, was afraid to be the instrument of supernatural powers. The bolt of lightning could strike the beings Catalina loved. Pedro, always the first; then Lorenzo. And then Domingo, little Domingo. Marcela was not the one who carried him inside her. The jealousy of brujos gave things a deceptive appearance. Catalina was the mother. The father was not a nameless Ladino from Jobel. The father was Catalina’s husband. The boy had been born of the love between the two of them and grew up under their joint care.

“Lies! Do you not see that you have lied, for years and years, Catalina? If what you say were true, if you were the boy’s mother, would you be treated as you are treated? The man’s indifference, his aloofness, are the punishment for your sterility. And now Domingo is being taken from you, carried away from you, taught to forget you. Where is your power? That was a lie, too. Your frown is a cloud without lightning, your left hand is a catastrophe that has been successfully warded off. What good are your invocations? The ears of the gods are deaf, their promises were in vain. They abandoned you, too, without hope; ay, you worshiped them. Punishment, everything is punishment. Did you ever reveal what you knew about them? No, you let them rot away in the damp, dark oblivion of their cave. Green with moss they must be now, cracked by time. No one takes them offerings or candles. You cheated them of the adoration that is their due by not telling anyone what you found or demanding that their images be revered.”

She had to go back to the cave, display the idols to the community. Catalina’s absences, her searches, went unnoticed by her family. Pedro was too absorbed in his conversations with the Caxláns. And Domingo always went where Pedro went. The others . . . the others did not count: Lorenzo the idiot and Marcela, who lived in a fog.

Catalina remembered the direction but not the precise place. She climbed rocks, heedless of the flock; she got entangled in brambles. Unafraid of hurting herself, she brushed aside the undergrowth to find the cave’s hidden mouth. And the more lost she became, the more fruitless her efforts were, the more the fever would grip the ilol. She had to find that place! She had to. She attributed all her misfortunes to this single cause, and all her hopes were fixed on this single point: the cave, the cave, the cave.