Villafuente de Calcamar

Villafuente de Calcamar is a remote village in the abrupt mountain country of León, framed by woodland where children gather medicinal plants and, years later, visitors hire a local guide for a hunt. The surrounding forest links these episodes across two decades: first as the setting for a discovery wrapped in local lore, then as a landscape whose weather abruptly defeats an expedition.

Setting and Local Knowledge

The village is described as lying deep in the mountains, with thick woodland extending around it. Its residents’ knowledge of the terrain and its plants is practical: parents send children to collect aromatic and medicinal herbs, and one boy is considered the expedition’s expert because he can identify the plants and explain their properties. The place is therefore introduced through work and inherited familiarity with the landscape, not as an isolated backdrop alone.

The Cursed Root

During one herb-gathering trip, four children wander among the trees with sacks for their harvest. They are known by the nicknames El Currinche, El Pecas, El Adobe, and El Mustafá; El Adobe and El Mustafá are brothers, aged nine and twelve respectively. When El Currinche digs beside a plant, he identifies it as the so-called cursed root and warns that chewing it makes a person see the devil. The episode sets local plant lore beside the children’s ordinary errand, making the forest a place where useful botanical knowledge and frightening belief occupy the same ground.

The Hunting Expedition

Twenty years later, while Alice Gould has been in the Recovery Ward for two weeks, hunters arrive in Villafuente de Calcamar seeking someone to guide them through the woodland in pursuit of capercaillie. They hire El Adobe, now a twenty-nine-year-old man. The hunting party waits through the night for the first light of dawn, when the bird’s call would reveal its presence. A powerful storm breaks over the forest, however, and the hunters have to abandon their position because the bird will not sing in such conditions. Their Land Rover is far away, and there is no shelter for several leagues. The contrast with the children’s earlier outing is sharp: the forest first appears as a place to gather and interpret, but later its scale and weather leave even experienced visitors exposed.