The Second Ring of Power (20 page)

"What happened to them?"

"Nothing. They never felt a thing. They went home and are now like
two grown-up persons.
Empty like most people around them.
They don't like the company of children because they have
no
use for them. I would say that they are better off. I took the craziness out of
them. They didn't
need it, while I did. I didn't know what I was
doing when I gave it to them. Besides, they still retain the edge they stole
from their father. The Nagual was right: no one noticed the loss, but I did
notice my gain. As I looked out of this cave I saw all my illusions lined up
like a row of
soldiers. The world was bright and new. The heaviness of
my body and my spirit had been lifted
off and I was truly a new
being."

"Do you know how you took your edge from your children?"

"They are not my children! I have never had any. Look at me."

She crawled out of the cave, lifted her skirt and showed me her naked
body. The first thing I
noticed was how slender and muscular
she was.

She urged me to come closer and examine her. Her body was so lean and
firm that I had to
conclude she could not possibly have had children.
She put her right leg on a high rock and
showed me her
vagina. Her drive to prove her change was so intense that I had to laugh to
bridge
my nervousness. I said that I was not a doctor and therefore
I could not tell, but that I was sure
she must be right.

"Of course I'm right," she said as she crawled back into the
cave. "Nothing has ever come out
of this womb."

After a moment's pause she answered my question, which I had already
forgotten under the
onslaught of her display.

"My left side took my edge back," she said. "All I did
was to go and visit the girls. I went
there four or five times to
allow them time to feel at ease with me. They were big girls and were
going
to school. I thought I would have to fight not to like them, but the Nagual
said that it didn't
matter, that I should like them if I wanted to. So
I liked them. But my liking them was just like
liking a
stranger. My mind was made up, my purpose was unbending. I want to enter into the
other world while I'm still alive, as the Nagual told me. In order to do that I
need all the edge of
my spirit. I need my completeness.
Nothing can turn me away from that world! Nothing!"

She stared at me defiantly.

"You have to refuse both, the woman who emptied you and the little
boy who has your love, if you are seeking your completeness. The woman you can
easily refuse. The little boy is something
else. Do you
think that your useless affection for that child is so worthy as to keep you
from
entering into that realm?"

I had no answer. It was not that I wanted to think it over. It was
rather that I had become
utterly confused.

"Soledad has to take her edge out of Pablito if she wants to enter
into the nagual," she went on.
"How in the hell is she
going to do that? Pablito, no matter how weak he is, is a sorcerer. But the
Nagual
gave Soledad a unique chance. He said to her that her only moment would come
when you walked into the house, and for that moment he not only made us move
out into the other house, but he made us help her widen the path to the house,
so you could drive your car to the
very door. He told her that if
she lived an impeccable life she would bag you, and suck away all
your
luminosity, which is all the power the Nagual left inside your body. That would
not be
difficult for her to do. Since she's going in the
opposite direction, she could drain you to nothing. Her great feat was to lead
you to a moment of helplessness.

"Once she had killed you, your luminosity would have increased her
power and she would
then have come after us. I was the only one who
knew that. Lidia, Josefina and Rosa love her. I
don't. I knew
what her designs were. She would have taken us one by one, in her own time,
since
she had nothing to lose and everything to gain. The
Nagual said to me that there was no other
way for her.
He entrusted me with the girls and told me what to do in case Soledad killed
you and
came after our luminosity. He figured that I had a
chance to save myself and to save perhaps one
of the three.
You see, Soledad is not a bad woman at all; she's simply doing what an
impeccable
warrior would do. The little sisters like her more than
they like their own mothers. She's a real mother to them. That was, the Nagual
said, the point of her advantage. I haven't been able to pull
the
little sisters away from her, no matter what I do. So if she had killed you,
she would then have
taken at least two of those three trusting souls.
Then without you in the picture Pablito is nothing.
Soledad
would have squashed him like a bug. And then with all her completeness and
power she
would have entered into that world out there. If I had
been in her place I would've tried to do
exactly as she
did.

"So you see, it was all or nothing for her. When you first arrived
everyone was gone. It looked
as if it was the end for you and for
some of us. But then at the end it was nothing for her and a
chance
for the sisters. The moment I knew that you had succeeded I told the three
girls that now it
was their turn. The Nagual had said that they
should wait until the morning to catch you
unawares. He
said that the morning was not a good time for you. He commanded me to stay away
and not interfere with the sisters and to come in only if you would try
to injure their luminosity."

"Were they supposed to kill me too?"

"Well, yes. You are the male side of their luminosity. Their
completeness is at times their
disadvantage. The Nagual ruled them
with an iron hand and balanced them, but now that he's
gone they have
no way of leveling off. Your luminosity could do that for them."

"How about you, Gorda? Are you supposed to finish me off
too?"

"I've told you already that I'm different. I am balanced. My
emptiness, which was my
disadvantage, is now my advantage. Once
a sorcerer regains his completeness he's balanced,
while a
sorcerer who was always complete is a bit off. Like Genaro was a bit off. But
the Nagual
was balanced because he had been incomplete, like you and
me, even more so than you and me.
He had three sons and one
daughter.

"The little sisters are like Genaro, a bit off. And most of the
times so taut that they have no
measure."

"How about me, Gorda? Do I also have to go after them?"

"No. Only they could have profited by sucking away your luminosity.
You can't profit at all by
anyone's death. The Nagual left a
special power with you, a balance of some kind, which none of
us has."

"Can't they learn to have that balance?"

"Sure they can. But that has nothing to do with the task the
little sisters had to perform. Their
task was to steal your power.
For that, they became so united that they are now one single being.
They trained themselves
to sip you up like a glass of soda. The Nagual set them up to be deceivers of
the highest order, especially Josefina. She put on a show that was peerless.
Compared to their art, Soledad's attempt was
child's play. She's a crude woman. The little sisters
are true sorceresses. Two of them gained your
confidence, while the third shocked you and rendered you helpless. They played
their cards to perfection. You fell for it all and nearly
succumbed. The only flaw was that you injured and
cured Rosa's luminosity the night before and
that made her jumpy. Had it not been for her nervousness and her biting
your side so hard,
chances are you
wouldn't be here now. I saw everything from the door. I came in at the precise
moment you were about to annihilate them."

"But what could I do to annihilate them?"

"How could I know that? I'm not you."

"I mean what did you see me doing?"

"I saw your double coming out of you."

"What did it look like?"

"It looked like you, what else? But it was very big and menacing.
Your double would have killed them. So I came in and interfered with it. It
took the best of my power to calm you down.
The sisters
were no help. They were lost. And you were furious and violent. You changed
colors
right in front of us twice. One color was so violent that
I feared you would kill me too."

"What color was it, Gorda?"

"White, what else? The double is white, yellowish white, like the
sun."

I stared at her. The smile was very new to me.

"Yes," she continued, "we are pieces of the sun. That is
why we are luminous beings. But our
eyes can't see that luminosity
because it is very faint. Only the eyes of a sorcerer can see it, and that
happens after a lifetime struggle."

Her revelation had taken me by total surprise. I tried to reorganize my
thoughts in order to ask the most appropriate question.

"Did the Nagual ever tell you anything about the sun?" I
asked.

"Yes. We are all like the sun but very, very faint. Our light is
too weak, but it is light anyway."
"But, did
he say that the sun was perhaps the nagual?" I insisted desperately.

La Gorda did not answer. She made a series of involuntary noises with
her lips. She was
apparently thinking how to answer my probe. I
waited, ready to write it down. After a long pause
she crawled out
of the cave.

"I'll show you my faint light," she said matter-of-factly.

She walked to the center of the narrow gully in front of the cave and
squatted. From where I
was I could not see what she was doing
so I had to get out of the cave myself. I stood ten or twelve feet away from
her. She put her hands under her skirt, while she was still squatting.
Suddenly,
she stood up. Her hands were loosely clasped into fists; she raised them over
her head and snapped her fingers open. I heard a quick, bursting sound and I
saw sparks flying from her
fingers. She again clasped her hands
and then snapped them open and another volley of much larger sparks flew out of
them. She squatted once more and reached under her skirt. She seemed
to
be pulling something from her pubis. She repeated the snapping movement of her
fingers as
she threw her hands over her head, and I saw a spray of
long, luminous fibers flying away from
her fingers. I
had to tilt my head up to see them against the already dark sky. They appeared
to be
long, fine filaments of a reddish light. After a while
they faded and disappeared.

She squatted once again, and when she let her fingers open a most
astonishing display of lights
emanated from them. The sky was filled
with thick rays of light. It was a spellbinding sight. I
became
engrossed in it; my eyes were fixed. I was not paying attention to la Gorda. I
was looking at the lights. I heard a sudden outcry that forced me to look at
her, just in time to see her grab one
of the lines she was creating
and spin to the very top of the canyon. She hovered there for an
instant
like a dark, huge shadow against the sky, and then descended to the bottom of
the gully in
spurts or small leaps or as if she were coming down a
stairway on her belly.

I suddenly saw her standing over me. I had not realized that I had
fallen on my seat. I stood up. She was soaked in perspiration and was panting,
trying to catch her breath. She could not
speak for a
long time. She began to jog in place. I did not dare to touch her. Finally she
seemed to
have calmed down enough to crawl back into the cave. She
rested for a few minutes.

Her actions had been so fast that I had hardly had any time to evaluate
what had happened. At
the moment of her display I had felt
an unbearable, ticklish pain in the area just below my navel. I
had
not physically exerted myself and yet I was also panting.

"I think it's time to go to our appointment," she said, out of
breath. "My flying opened us both.
You felt my flying
in your belly; that means you are open and ready to meet the four forces."
"What four forces are you talking about?"

"The Nagual's and Genaro's
allies
. You've seen them. They
are horrendous. Now they are free from the Nagual's and Genaro's gourds. You
heard one of them around Soledad's house the other
night. They
are waiting for you. The moment the darkness of the day sets in, they'll be
uncontainable.
One of them even came after you in the daytime at Soledad's place. Those
allies
now belong to you and me. We will take two each. I don't
know which ones. And I don't know
how, either. All the Nagual told
me was that you and I would have to tackle them by ourselves."