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Sometimes, the visions came uncoaxed – abrupt, irrepressible, and violent.
Years and years ago, he learned to keep a small supply of sand on his person after a few too many whirlwinds of dust and debris in the cocina. Julieta never once complained when her hand-painted cups and plates cracked, and while Pepa’s mouth would tighten at the scene, she usually looked oddly relieved.
Still, Mamá.
Bruno learned a long time ago that a perimeter was a necessary and lonely thing.
1910
Bruno should have felt lighter walking back to Casita in the late afternoon sun. His mochila was empty, the woven fibres no longer glowing with acid green light. He’d delivered his visions and interpreted them as best he could.
It had gone about as well as it usually did.
He grimaced as his sandal strap rubbed at the tiny cut on his foot. He’d ask Julieta for something to eat once she got home from healing her own line-up. It really would be something to be helpful for once, like Julieta, or Pepa, when she could manage her own internal climate. He wondered why the village kept asking him to look to the future when they didn’t really want to hear what it held.
If only he had some good news to share for once.
If only he could make the future behave. Even if that was in his power, though, as some suspected, he’d probably mess it up anyway, because he was Bruno.
If only, he thought, someone saw him.
Bruno was halfway to his tower when his gut clenched.
Oh no.
The hallway went out of focus and began to dissolve into black and white spots. His ears were ringing as he grappled desperately for the extra pocket he’d sewn in, but it was too late by then.
He was surrounded, the future ravaging the house, unbound by a sand circle.
His hair whipped in the wind as a grainy image began to form in the tempest around him.
It was a hand. Just a hand. He blinked.
The hand was small and empty, and then it wasn’t. It lost its childish squareness, becoming elegant and long fingered. And then this lovely, warm-looking hand held another, a large and calloused hand.
Something in the swirling mess glinted, once, twice. Unconsciously, he tilted his head.
And then the vision cut off in a searing flare of white light. Bruno gripped the sheet of green glass that had formed in his hands and winced against the sudden influx of sunlight. And then he exhaled shakily. The hallway was covered in potting soil and jagged pieces of terra cotta. A few paintings had been ripped from their hinges. It wasn’t as bad as it could be, all things considered, but-
“What is going on?! Ay, Bruno, our Casita…"
Mamá wasn’t happy, but her lecture quickly softened as Casita bounced the paintings back up onto the walls and slid the debris down to the trash bin on the first floor.
His lip trembled. The floor tiles swelled gently under him.
Swallowing back a lump in his throat, he mumbled, “I’m sorry, Mamá. I tried not to! I promise, I tried.”
“I know, mijo. I know,” she sighed, running her hand through his hair. “Just—try to clean up whatever’s left before dinner, please. Now then, what did you see, Brunito?”
Bruno hesitated, and looked down at the vision. “It’s not – I don’t know what it means, Mamá.”
Alma waited, then shrugged and headed back down the stairs. Bruno set to work rehousing the viable plants Casita had left in place.
After dinner, Bruno laid back in his hammock with the vision resting against his knees. With the gentle susurration of the sand curtain behind him and a belly full of ajiaco, he felt calmer and more clear-headed than before.
The vision shifted as he rotated it, the one hand becoming two and back again.
He couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but at least it wasn’t a dead goldfish. It didn’t strike him with cold dread, either.
In fact, it made him feel warm.
It felt like friendship, like-like being seen.
Being loved.
He traced the small hand with his own.
Bruno wished he knew who the vision was about. He wished he could give them some good news.