The Second Ring of Power (10 page)

"You were about to leave then so I had to stop you. The Nagual had
shown me how to use my hand to grab you. I tried to do that, but my power was
low. My floor was scared. Your eyes had
numbed its
lines. No one else has ever laid eyes on them. So I failed in my attempt to
grab your
neck.
You got out of my grip before I had time to squeeze you. I knew then that you
were
slipping away and I tried one final
attack. I used the key the Nagual said would affect you the
most, fright. I frightened you with my shrieks
and that gave me enough power to subdue you. I
thought I had you, but my stupid dog got excited. He's stupid and
knocked me off of you when I
had you
almost under my spell. As I see it now, perhaps my dog was not so stupid after
all.
Maybe he noticed your double and
charged against it but knocked me over instead."

"You said he wasn't your dog."

"I lied. He was my trump card. The Nagual taught me that I should
always have a trump card, an unsuspected trick. Somehow, I knew that I might
need my dog. When I took you to see my
friend, it was
really him; the coyote is my girls' friend. I wanted my dog to sniff you. When
you
ran into the house I had to be rough with him. I pushed
him inside your car, making him yell with
pain. He's too
big and could hardly fit over the seat. I told him right then to maul you to
shreds. I
knew that if you had been badly bitten by my dog you
would have been helpless and I could have
finished you
off without any trouble. You escaped again, but you couldn't leave the house. I
knew then that I had to be patient and wait for the darkness. Then the wind
changed direction and I was
sure of my success.

"The Nagual had told me that he knew without a doubt that you
would like me as a woman. It
was a matter of waiting for the right
moment. The Nagual said that you would kill yourself once
you
realized I had stolen your power. But in case I failed to steal it, or in case
you didn't kill
yourself, or in case I didn't want to keep you
alive as my prisoner, I should then use my headband
to choke you
to death. He even showed me the place where I had to throw your carcass: a
bottomless
pit, a crack in the mountains, not too far from here, where goats always
disappear. The
Nagual never mentioned your awesome side, though.
I've told you that one of us was supposed to
die tonight. I
didn't know it was going to be me. The Nagual gave me the feeling that I would
win.
How cruel of him not to tell me everything about you."

"Think of me, dona Soledad. I knew even less than you did."

"It's not the same. The Nagual prepared me for years for this. I
knew every detail. You were in
my bag. The Nagual even showed me the
leaves I should always keep fresh and handy to make
you numb. I put them in the tub as
if they were for fragrance. You didn't notice that I used
another kind of leaf for my tub. You fell for
everything I had prepared for you. And yet your
awesome side won in the end."

"What do you mean my awesome side?"

"The one that hit me and will kill me tonight. Your horrendous
double
that came out to finish
me. I will never forget it and if I
live, which I doubt, I will never be the same."

"Did it look like me?"

"It was you, of course, but not as you look now. I can't really
say what it looked like. When I
want to think about it I get dizzy."

I told her about my fleeting perception that she had left her body with
the impact of my blow.
I intended to prod her with the
account. It seemed to me that the reason behind the whole event had been to
force us to draw from sources that are ordinarily barred to us. I had
positively given
her a dreadful blow; I had caused profound damage
to her body, and yet I could not have done it myself. I did feel I had hit her
with my left fist, the enormous red lump on her forehead attested to
that,
yet I had no swelling in my knuckles or the slightest pain or discomfort in
them. A blow of
that magnitude could even have broken my hand.

Upon hearing my description of how I had seen her huddling against the
wall, she became
thoroughly desperate. I asked her if she had had
any inkling of what I had seen, such as a sensation of leaving her body, or a
fleeting perception of the room.

"I know now that I am doomed," she said. "Very few
survive a touch of the
double
. If my soul has left already I won't
survive. I'll get weaker and weaker until I die."

Her eyes had a wild glare. She raised herself and seemed to be on the
verge of striking me, but
she slumped back.

"You've taken my soul," she said. "You must have it in
your pouch now. Why did you have to tell me, though?"

I swore to her that I had had no intentions of hurting her, that I had
acted in whatever form
only in self-defense and therefore I
bore no malice toward her.

"If you don't have my soul in your pouch, it's even worse,"
she said. "It must be roaming
aimlessly around. I will never
get it back, then."

Dona Soledad seemed to be void of energy. Her voice became weaker. I
wanted her to go and lie down. She refused to leave the table.

"The Nagual said that if I failed completely I should then give
you his message," she said. "He
told me to tell
you that he had replaced your body a long time ago. You are himself now."

"What did he mean by that?"

"He's a sorcerer. He entered into your old body and replaced its
luminosity. Now you shine
like the Nagual himself. You're not your
father's son anymore. You are the Nagual himself."

Dona Soledad stood up. She was groggy. She appeared to want to say
something else but had
trouble vocalizing. She walked to her
room. I helped her to the door; she did not want me to
enter. She
dropped the blanket that covered her and lay down on her bed. She asked in a
very soft
voice if I would go to a hill a short distance away and
watch from there to see if the wind was coming. She added in a most casual
manner that I should take her dog with me. Somehow her
request did not
sound right. I said that I would climb up on the roof and look from there. She
turned her back to me and said that the least I could do for her was to take
her dog to the hill so
that he could lure the wind. I became
very irritated with her. Her room in the darkness gave out a
most
eerie feeling. I went into the kitchen and got two lanterns and brought them
back with me.
At
the sight of the light she screamed hysterically. I let out a yell myself but
for a different
reason. When the light hit
the room I saw the floor curled up, like a cocoon, around her bed. My
perception was so fleeting that the next instant I
could have sworn that the shadow of the wire
protective masks of the lanterns had created that ghastly scene. My
phantom perception made me
furious. I
shook her by the shoulders. She wept like a child and promised not to try any
more of
her tricks. I placed the
lanterns on the chest of drawers and she fell asleep instantly.

By midmorning the wind had changed. I felt a strong gust coming through
the north window.
Around noon dona Soledad came out again. She
seemed a bit wobbly. The redness in her eyes
had disappeared
and the swelling of her forehead had diminished; there was hardly any visible
lump.

I felt that it was time for me to leave. I told her that although I had
written down the message
that she had given me from don Juan, it
did not clarify anything.

"You're not your father's son anymore. You are now the Nagual
himself," she said.

There was something truly incongruous about me. A few hours before I had
been helpless and
dona Soledad had actually tried to kill me; but at
that moment, when she was speaking to me, I
had forgotten
the horror of that event. And yet, there was another part of me that could
spend days mulling over meaningless confrontations with people concerning my
personality or my
work. That part seemed to be the real me, the me
that I had known all my life. The me, however,
who had gone
through a bout with death that night, and then forgotten about it, was not
real. It
was me and yet it was not. In the light of such
incongruities don Juan's claims seemed to be less
farfetched, but
still unacceptable.

Dona Soledad seemed absentminded. She smiled peacefully.

"Oh, they are here!" she said suddenly. "How fortunate for
me. My girls are here. Now they'll
take care of me."

She seemed to have had a turn for the worse. She looked as strong as
ever, but her behavior
was more disassociated. My fears
mounted. I did not know whether to leave her there or take her to a hospital in
the city, several hundred miles away.

All of a sudden she jumped up like a little child and ran out the front
door and down the
driveway toward the main road. Her dog ran after
her. I hurriedly got in my car in order to catch
up with her. I
had to drive down the path in reverse since there was no space to turn around.
As I
approached the road I saw through the back window that
dona Soledad was surrounded by four
young women.

Dona Soledad seemed to be explaining something to the four women who
surrounded her. She
moved her arms in dramatic gestures and held her
head in her hands. It was obvious she was
telling them
about me. I drove up the driveway to where I had been parked before. I intended
to wait for them there. I deliberated whether to remain in the car or to sit
casually on the left fender.
I opted to stand by the car door, ready
to jump in and drive away if something like the events of
the
previous day were going to be repeated.

I was very tired. I had not slept a wink for over twenty-four hours. My
plan was to disclose to
the young women as much as I could
about the incident with dona Soledad, so they could take the
necessary
steps to aid her, and then I would leave. Their presence had brought about a
definite
change. Everything seemed to be charged with new vigor
and energy. I felt the change when I
saw dona Soledad surrounded by
them.

Dona Soledad's revelation that they were don Juan's apprentices had
given them such a
tantalizing appeal that I could hardly wait to
meet them. I wondered if they were like dona
Soledad
.
She had said that they were like myself and that we were going in the same
direction. That could be easily interpreted in a positive sense. I wanted to
believe that more than anything
else.

Don Juan used to call them "las hermanitas," the little
sisters, a most befitting name at least for the two I had met, Lidia and Rosa,
two wispy, pixie-like, charming young women. I figured that
they
must have been in their early twenties when I had first met them, although
Pablito and
Nestor always refused to talk about their ages. The
other two, Josefina and Elena, were a total
mystery to me.
I used to hear their names being mentioned from time to time, always in some
unfavorable
context. I had deduced from passing remarks made by don Juan that they were
somehow
freakish, one was crazy and the other obese; thus they were kept in isolation.
Once I
bumped into Josefina as I walked into the house with don
Juan. He introduced me to her, but she
covered her face and ran away before
I had time to greet her. Another time I caught Elena
washing clothes. She was enormous. I thought that she must be suffering
from a glandular
disorder. I said
hello to her but she did not turn around. I never saw her face.

After the buildup that dona Soledad had given them with her disclosure,
I felt driven to talk
with the mysterious
"hermanitas," and at the same time I was almost afraid of them.

I casually looked down the driveway, bracing myself to meet all of them
at once. The
driveway was deserted. There was no one approaching, and
only a minute before they had been no more than thirty yards from the house. I
climbed up on the roof of the car to look. There was no one coming, not even
the dog. I panicked. I slid down and was about to jump in the car and drive
away when I heard someone say, "Hey, look who's here."

I quickly turned around to face two girls who had just stepped out of
the house. I deduced that
all of them must have run ahead of me
and entered the house through the back door. I sighed with
relief.