The Second Ring of Power (11 page)

The two young girls came toward me. I had to admit to myself that I had
never really noticed
them before. They were beautiful, dark
and extremely lean, but without being skinny. Their long
black
hair was braided. They wore plain skirts, blue denim jackets and low-heeled,
soft-soled
brown shoes. They were barelegged and their legs were
shapely and muscular. They must have
been about five feet three or
five feet four inches. They seemed to be very physical; they moved
with
great prowess. One of them was Lidia, the other was Rosa.

I greeted them, and then in unison they initiated a hand-shake. They
flanked me. They looked
healthy and vigorous. I asked them to
help me get the packages out of the trunk. As we were carrying them into the
house, I heard a deep growl, so deep and near that it seemed more like a
lion's
roar.

"What was that?" I asked Lidia.

"Don't you know?" she asked with a tone of disbelief.

"It must be the dog," Rosa said as they ran into the house,
practically dragging me with them.

We placed the packages on the table and sat on two benches. Both girls
were facing me. I told
them that dona Soledad was very ill and
that I was about to take her to the hospital in the city,
since
I did not know what else to do to help her.

As I spoke I realized that I was treading on dangerous ground. I had no
way of assessing how
much information I should divulge to
them about the true nature of my bout with dona Soledad. I
began
to look for clues. I thought that if I watched carefully, their voices or the
expression on
their faces would betray how much they knew. But they
remained silent and let me do all the
talking. I began to doubt that
I should volunteer any information at all. In my effort to figure out
what
to do and not blunder, I ended up talking nonsense. Lidia cut me off. In a dry
tone she said that I should not concern myself with dona Soledad's health
because they had already taken steps to help her. That statement forced me to
ask her if she knew what dona Soledad's trouble was.

"You've taken her soul," she said accusingly.

My first reaction was to defend myself. I began to talk vehemently but
ended up contradicting
myself. They stared at me. I was
making no sense at all. I tried again to say the same thing in a
different
way. My fatigue was so intense that I could hardly organize my thoughts.
Finally I gave
up.

"Where are Pablito and Nestor?" I asked after a long pause.

"They'll be here shortly," Lidia said briskly.

"Were you with them?" I asked.

"No! " she exclaimed, and stared at me.

"We never go together," Rosa explained. "Those bums are
different from us."

Lidia made an imperative gesture with her foot to shut her up. She
seemed to be the one who
gave the orders. Catching the movement
of her feet brought to my awareness a most peculiar
facet of my
relationship with don Juan. In the countless times that we had roamed together,
he
had succeeded in teaching me, without really trying, a
system of covert communication through
some coded
movements of the feet. I watched Lidia give Rosa the sign for horrible, a sign
given
when anything that happens to be in sight of the signers
is unpleasant or dangerous. In this case me. I laughed. I remembered that don
Juan had given me that sign when I first met don Genaro.

I pretended not to be aware of what was going on in order to find out if
I could decode all their
signs.

Rosa
made the sign that she wanted to step on me. Lidia
answered with an imperative sign for
no.

According to don Juan, Lidia was very talented. As far as he was
concerned she was more
sensitive and alert than Pablito and
Nestor and myself. I had always been incapable of making
friends
with her. She was aloof, and very cutting. She had enormous, black, shifty eyes
that never
looked straight at anyone, high cheekbones and a
chiseled nose, which was a bit flat and broad at
the bridge. I
remembered her having red, sore eyelids and everyone taunting her on account of
that. The redness of her eyelids had disappeared but she continued to rub her
eyes and blink a great deal. During my years of association with don Juan and
don Genaro I had seen Lidia the
most, and yet we had probably never exchanged more than a
dozen words with each other.
Pablito
regarded her as a most dangerous being. I always thought she was just extremely
shy.

Rosa
, on the other hand, was very boisterous. I thought she
was the youngest. Her eyes were very frank and shiny. She was never shifty, but
very bad-tempered. I had talked with Rosa more
than anyone
else. She was friendly, very bold and very funny.

"Where are the others?" I asked Rosa. "Aren't they going
to come out?"

"They will be out shortly," Lidia answered.

I could tell from their expressions that friendliness was not what they
had in mind. Judging
from their foot messages they were as
dangerous as dona Soledad, and yet as I sat there looking at
them
it occurred to me that they were gorgeously beautiful. I had the warmest
feelings for them.
In fact, the more they stared into my eyes the
more intense that feeling became. At one moment it
was sheer
passion that I felt for them. They were so alluring that I could have sat there
for hours just looking at them, but a sobering thought made me stand up. I was
not going to repeat my
bungling of the night before. I
decided that the best defense was to put my cards on the table. In a
firm
tone I told them that don Juan had set up some sort of trial for me using dona
Soledad, or
vice versa. Chances were that he had also set them up in
the same fashion, and we were going to be pitted against one another in some
sort of battle that could result in injury to some of us. I
appealed
to their sense of warriorship. If they were the truthful heirs of don Juan,
they had to be
impeccable with me, reveal their designs and not
behave like ordinary, greedy human beings.

I turned to Rosa and asked her the reason for wishing to step on me.
She was taken aback for
an instant and then she became angry.
Her eyes flared with rage; her small mouth contracted.

Lidia, in a very coherent manner, said that I had nothing to fear from
them, and that Rosa was
angry with me because I had hurt dona Soledad. Her feelings were purely a personal reaction.

I said then that it was time I left. I stood up. Lidia made a gesture to
stop me. She seemed
scared or deeply concerned. She began to protest,
when a noise coming from outside the door distracted me. The two girls jumped
to my side. Something heavy was leaning or pushing against
the
door. I noticed then that the girls had secured it with the heavy iron bar. I
had a feeling of
disgust. The whole affair was going to be repeated
again and I was sick and tired of it all.

The girls glanced at each other, then looked at me and then looked at
each other again.

I heard the whining and heavy breathing of a large animal outside the
house. It might have been the dog. Exhaustion blinded me at that point. I
rushed to the door, removed the heavy iron bar and started to open it. Lidia
threw herself against the door and shut it again.

"The Nagual was right," she said, out of breath. "You
think and think. You're dumber than I
thought."

She pulled me back to the table. I rehearsed, in my mind, the best way
to tell them, once and
for all, that I had had enough. Rosa sat next to me, touching me; I could feel her leg nervously
rubbing against
mine. Lidia was standing facing me, looking at me fixedly. Her burning black
eyes seemed to be saying something I could not understand.

I began to speak but I did not finish. I had a sudden and most profound
awareness. My body was aware of a greenish light, a fluorescence outside the
house. I did not see or hear anything. I was simply aware of the light as if I
were suddenly falling asleep and my thoughts were turning
into
images that were superimposed on the world of everyday life. The light was
moving at a great speed. I could sense it with my stomach. I followed it, or
rather I focused my attention on it
for an instant as it moved
around. A great clarity of mind ensued from focusing my attention on
the
light. I knew then that in that house, in the presence of those people, it was
wrong and
dangerous to behave as an innocent bystander.

"Aren't you afraid?" Rosa asked, pointing to the door.

Her voice disrupted my concentration.

I admitted that whatever was there was scaring me at a very deep level,
enough to make me
die of fright. I wanted to say more, but right
then I had a surge of wrath and I wanted to see and
talk with dona Soledad. I did not trust her. I went directly to her room. She was not there. I began
to
call her, bellowing her name. The house had one more room. I pushed the door
open and
rushed inside. There was no one in there. My anger
increased in the same proportion as my fear.

I went out the back door and walked around to the front. Not even the
dog was in sight. I
banged on the front door furiously. Lidia opened
it. I entered. I yelled at her to tell me where
everybody was.
She lowered her eyes and did not answer. She wanted to close the door but I
would
not let her. She quickly walked away and went into the other room.

I sat down again at the table. Rosa had not moved. She seemed to be frozen
on the spot.
"We are the same," she said suddenly. "The
Nagual told us that."

"Tell me, then, what was prowling around the house?" I asked.

"The
ally
," she said.

"Where is it now?"

"It is still here. It won't go. The moment you're weak it'll squash
you. But we're not the ones
who can tell you anything."

"Who can tell me, then?"

"La Gorda!" Rosa exclaimed, opening her eyes as wide as she
could. "She's the one. She
knows everything."

Rosa
asked me if she could close the door, just to be on the
safe side. Without waiting for an
answer she inched her way to the
door and slammed it shut.

"There is nothing we can do except wait until everyone is
here," she said.

Lidia came back into the room with a package, an object wrapped up in a
piece of dark yellow
cloth. She seemed very relaxed. I
noticed that she had a most commandeering touch. Somehow
she
imparted her mood to Rosa and myself.

"Do you know what I have here?" she asked me.

I did not have the vaguest idea. She began to unwrap it in a very
deliberate manner, taking her
time. Then she stopped and looked at
me. She seemed to vacillate. She grinned as if she were too shy to show what
was in the bundle.

"This package was left by the Nagual for you," she muttered,
"but I think we'd better wait for
la Gorda."

I insisted that she unwrap it. She gave me a ferocious look and took
the package out of the room without saying another word.

I enjoyed Lidia's game. She had performed something quite in line with
don Juan's teachings.
She had given me a demonstration of
how to get the best use out of an average situation. By
bringing
the package to me and pretending that she was going to open it, after
disclosing that don
Juan had left it for me, she had indeed created a
mystery that was almost unbearable. She knew
that I had to
stay if I wanted to find out the contents of that package. I could think of a
number of
things that might be in that bundle. Perhaps it was the
pipe don Juan used when handling
psychotropic mushrooms. He had
intimated that the pipe would be given to me for safekeeping. Or it might have
been his knife, or his leather pouch, or even his sorcery
power objects
.
On the
other hand, it might have been merely a ploy on Lidia's
part; don Juan was too sophisticated, too
abstract to
leave me an heirloom.

I told Rosa that I was dead on my feet and weak from hunger. My idea was
to drive to the city, rest for a couple of days and then come back to see
Pablito and Nestor. I said that by then I might
even get to
meet the other two girls.

Lidia returned then and Rosa told her of my intention to leave.

"The Nagual gave us orders to attend to you as if you were
himself," Lidia said. "We are all
the Nagual
himself, but you are even more so, for some reason that no one
understands."