his story first entered my subconscious when I was four months into my fourth year of life. At the time I was walking through an English-style garden with tall juniper walls that reminded me of the Lenox-Craven estate from the story “The Secret Garden.” Consumed in my reverie, I lost my way. I was frightened by my sudden disorientation and the heat of the sun on my skin began to make me hallucinate. The images I saw were not a memory, but the exact opposite.”
It was a dark January before the name of the month was invented or even its association with all things cold was recognized. A blizzard was born in the northern desert of the Americas in a place once called the Promised Land by the Mexica long before greed and taxes thrived. The reflecting whiteness of this storm erased yesterday’s spring and burned the eyeballs of early crows who got lost in a labyrinth of light. The heroine of this scene belongs to the Cosmic-Race that came into being a near one thousand years in the future yet still remembers this natural anomaly.
Her great-grandmother named her EhÉcatl after the calming scent made in the desert by the wind at dusk. It was known that EhÉcatl was a descendant of a clandestine congress, within the Cosmic Race, of women born with special talents. These inherited traits were identified through a code etched into the fluid curves of their cerebella. From the first moment that EhÉcatl saw the light of day emerge from her mother’s womb, her destiny could easily be read on the surface of her beautiful cerebellum. This daughter of women was destined to find the lost secrets of magical healing that had belonged to her powerful family for centuries. The secrets had been lost over one hundred years ago during a strong rainstorm that altered the position of the moon as viewed from earth for four seconds. This was long enough for the cosmic recipes that explained how to cure the people chosen by destiny, to be lost forever.
EhÉcatl found herself guided by the light of a candle made from asteroid dust and saw an ancient recipe, hand-written by her great-grandmother Zyanya the Eternal. The script was etched into the lid of a jar holding cocoa beans harvested during an undeterminable equinox. The light lettering gave directions how to perform the most coveted ritual of the congress. However, it became clear to her that she would not be able to successfully complete the ritual for fourteen years, which was the length of preparation. This meant that EhÉcatl would not be able to enter the trance until her twenty-eighth year. As a young girl this seemed long, but her destiny had already been written by the sands of time and all that was left for her to do was to patiently prepare while she waited for the eternal battles between the sun and moon gods to mark the passage of time.
Ten years later, during the final month of her apprenticeship with Zyanya, EhÉcatl faced her first challenge. Her great-grandmother called to her from outside their house where she was tending to her flowering crop of medicinal herbs blooming in the light morning warmth. “My child, I have learned that I am dying, and with me I will take the final ingredient of the sacred formula. In order to continue, you must first understand death, and through this understanding you will learn the location of the final detail you lack.” In the succeeding seconds EhÉcatl witnessed her great-grandmother transform before her eyes into a fruitful blue maize plant.
She must continue completely alone on her journey, mirroring the cruel definition of destiny itself. It was dusk, and EhÉcatl heard her sister the Wind whisper into her ear, “Your time is now.” To solve the riddle the woman fasted for the length of a butterfly’s gestation and sacrificed an ancient tortoise, heavy with a century and a half of earthly memories. On the charred shell she read that Zyanya had died in the same manner as the women before her had, to give way for the birth of future generations.
She suddenly knew that it was impossible for even a magical family to have more than four living generations. At that moment the number four was manifested as a powerful key to unlock the secrets of time, life, and rebirth. Upon this discovery, Ehecatl leveraged her power and knowledge to bend the trajectory of time, and entered the future. At this time she would find the lost secrets that had taken her on this journey.
The ground was painted and scattered with crimson spots. EhÉcatl followed them like arrows divulging her hidden treasure. She heard a voice scream in agony in her great-grandmother’s garden behind the house, and realized it was her own. Ignoring the twinge of fear she felt, EhÉcatl determinedly ran towards her own tortured voice.
EhÉcatl came upon her future self, strewn upon Zyanya’s plants bleeding from a wound on her face. She had a gash on her forehead that trickled deep purple down her face and drenched her long brown hair. Her second wound was one familiar to many women. EhÉcatl had fallen in the garden while looking for herbs to stop her head from bleeding but had been overtaken. Panicking she lay down in the garden deciding to deliver her child alone.
At this moment Ehecatl turned the corner entering the garden and saw herself. Springing into action with all the calm and experience of her foremothers, she bent over herself, and like the wind calmed the pregnant woman that she would be.
EhÉcatl raised her eyes to the sky and channeled the ancient power of the Wind with the powers that Zyanya had collected over centuries. She worked quicker than time could record, first stopping the forehead lesion with nopal leaves then igniting the live plants to create an encompassing haze. The leaves she lit calmed her pain and cleared her mind, as the garden became a protective cloud. EhÉcatl relaxed with the ceremony and her future slid forth with ease. After exiting the placenta and clearing her lungs of fluid, the destined child gave a silencing cry clearing the garden, healing her mother’s wounds and blinded the day with her power.
