The Second Ring of Power (24 page)

"Tell me then, Gorda, how do you let the lines pull you?"

"We're back again in the same spot. I don't know. The Nagual warned
me about you. You
want to know things that cannot be known."

I struggled to make clear to her that what I was after were the
procedures. I had really given up looking for an explanation from all of them
because their explanations explained nothing to
me. To describe
to me the steps that were followed was something altogether different.

"How did you learn to let your body hold onto the lines of the
world?" I asked.

"I learned that in
dreaming
," she said, "but I
really don't know how. Everything for a woman
warrior starts
in
dreaming
. The Nagual told me, just as he told you, first to look for
my hands in
my dreams. I couldn't find them at all. In my dreams I
had no hands. I tried and tried for years to find them. Every night I used to
give myself the command to find my hands but it was to no avail.
I
never found anything in my dreams. The Nagual was merciless with me. He said
that I had to
find them or perish. So I lied to him that I had found
my hands in my dreams. The Nagual didn't
say a word but
Genaro threw his hat on the floor and danced on it. He patted my head and said
that
I was really a great warrior. The more he praised me the worse I felt. I was
about to tell the
Nagual the truth when crazy Genaro aimed his behind
at me and let out the loudest and longest
fart I had
ever heard. He actually pushed me backward with it. It was like a hot, foul
wind,
disgusting and smelly, just like me. The Nagual was
choking with laughter.

"I ran to the house and hid there. I was very fat then. I used to eat
a great deal and I had a lot
of gas. So I decided not to eat for a
while. Lidia and Josefina helped me. I didn't eat anything for
twenty-three
days, and then one night I found my hands in my dreams. They were old and ugly
and green, but they were mine. So that was the beginning. The rest was
easy."

"And what was the rest, Gorda?"

"The next thing the Nagual wanted me to do was to try to find
houses or buildings in my
dreams and look at them, trying not to
dissolve the images. He said that the art of the dreamer is to hold the image
of his dream. Because that's what we do anyway during all our lives."

"What did he mean by that?"

"Our art as ordinary people is that we know how to hold the image
of what we are looking at.
The Nagual said that we do that but we
don't know how. We just do it; that is, our bodies do it. In
dreaming
we have to do the same thing, except that in
dreaming
we have to learn
how to do it.
We have to struggle not to look but merely to glance and
yet hold the image.

"The Nagual told me to find in my dreams a brace for my belly
button. It took a long time
because I didn't understand what he
meant. He said that in dreaming we pay attention with the
belly
button; therefore it has to be protected. We need a little warmth or a feeling
that something is pressing the belly button in order to hold the images in our
dreams.

"I found a pebble in my dreams that fit my belly button, and the
Nagual made me look for it
day after day in water holes and
canyons, until I found it. I made a belt for it and I still wear it day
and
night. Wearing it made it easier for me to hold images in my dreams.

"Then the Nagual gave me the task of going to specific places in
my
dreaming
. I was doing
really well with my task but at that
time I lost my form and I began to see the eye in front of me.
The
Nagual said that the eye had changed everything, and he gave me orders to begin
using the
eye to pull myself away. He said that I didn't have time
to get to my
double
in
dreaming
, but that the eye was even
better. I felt cheated. Now I don't care. I've used that eye the best way I
could. I
let it pull me in my
dreaming
. I close my eyes
and fall asleep like nothing, even in the daytime or
anywhere. The
eye pulls me and I enter into another world. Most of the time I just wander around
in it. The
Nagual told me and the little sisters that during our menstrual periods
dreaming
becomes
power
. I get a little
crazy for one thing. I become more daring. And like the Nagual showed us, a
crack opens in front of us during those days. You're not a woman so it can't
make
any sense to you, but two days
before her period a woman can open that crack and step through it
into another world."

With her left hand she followed the contour of an invisible line that
seemed to run vertically in front of her at arm's length.

"During that time a woman, if she wants to, can let go of the
images of the world," la Gorda
went on. "That's the crack
between the worlds, and as the Nagual said, it is right in front of all of
us women.

"The reason the Nagual believes women are better sorcerers than men
is because they always
have the crack in front of them, while
a man has to make it.

"Well, it was during my periods that I learned in
dreaming
to fly with the lines of the world. I
learned to make sparks with my
body to entice the lines and then I learned to grab them. And
that's
all I have learned in
dreaming
so far."

I laughed and told her that I had nothing to show for my years of
"dreaming."

"You've learned how to call the allies in
dreaming
,"
she said with great assurance.

I told her that don Juan had taught me to make those sounds. She did not
seem to believe me.
"The allies must come to you, then, because
they're seeking his luminosity," she said, "the luminosity he left
with you. He told me that every sorcerer has only so much luminosity to give away.
So he parcels it out to all his children in accordance with an order that comes
to him from
somewhere out there in that vastness. In your case he
even gave you his own call."
She clicked her tongue and
winked at me.

"If you don't believe me," she went on, "why don't you
make the sound the Nagual taught you
and see if the allies come to
you?"

I felt reluctant to do it. Not because I believed that my sound would
bring anything, but
because I did not want to humor her.

She waited for a moment, and when she was sure I was not going to try,
she put her hand to
her mouth and imitated my tapping sound to
perfection. She played it for five or six minutes,
stopping only
to breathe.

"See what I mean?" she asked smiling. "The allies don't
give a fig about my calling, no matter
how close it is
to yours. Now try it yourself."

I tried. After a few seconds I heard the call being answered. La Gorda
jumped to her feet. I
had the clear impression that she was
more surprised than I was. She hurriedly made me stop,
turned off the
lantern and gathered up my notes.

She was about to open the front door, but she stopped short; a most
frightening sound came from just outside the door. It sounded to me like a
growl. It was so horrendous and ominous that it made us both jump back, away
from the door. My physical alarm was so intense that I would have fled if I had
had a place to go.

Something heavy was leaning against the door; it made the door creak. I
looked at la Gorda.

She seemed to be even more alarmed. She was still standing with her arm
outstretched as if to
open the door. Her mouth was open. She
seemed to have been frozen in midaction.

The door was about to be sprung open any moment. There were no bangs on
it, just a
terrifying pressure, not only on the door but all around
the house.

La Gorda stood up and told me to embrace her quickly from behind,
locking my hands around
her waist over her belly button. She
performed then a strange movement with her hands. It was as
though
she were flipping a towel while holding it at the level of her eyes. She did it
four times. Then she made another strange movement. She placed her hands at the
middle of her chest with
the palms up, one above the other
without touching. Her elbows were straight out to her sides.
She
clasped her hands as if she had suddenly grabbed two unseen bars. She slowly
turned her hands over until the palms were facing down and then she made a most
beautiful, exertive movement, a movement that seemed to engage every muscle in
her body. It was as though she
were opening a heavy sliding door that
offered a great resistance. Her body shivered with the exertion. Her arms moved
slowly, as if opening a very, very heavy door, until they were fully extended
laterally.

I had the clear impression that as soon as she opened that door a wind
rushed through. That wind pulled us and we actually went through the wall. Or
rather, the walls of the house went
through us, or perhaps all
three, la Gorda, the house and myself, went through the door she had
opened.
All of a sudden I was out in an open field. I could see the dark shapes of the
surrounding
mountains and trees. I was no longer holding onto la
Gorda's waist. A noise above me made me
look up, and I
saw her hovering perhaps ten feet above me like the black shape of a giant
kite. I felt a terrible itch in my belly button and then la Gorda plummeted
down to the ground at top
speed, but instead of crashing she came
to a soft, total halt.

At the moment that la Gorda landed, the itch in my umbilical region turned
into a horribly
exhausting nervous pain. It was as if her landing
were pulling my insides out. I screamed in pain at the top of my voice.

Then la Gorda was standing next to me, desperately out of breath. I was
sitting down. We
were again in the room of don Genaro's house where
we had been.

La Gorda seemed unable to catch her breath. She was drenched in
perspiration.
"We've got to get out of here," she muttered.

It was a short drive to the little sisters' house. None of them was
around. La Gorda lit a lantern and led me directly to the open-air kitchen in
back. There she undressed herself and asked me to
bathe her like
a horse, by throwing water on her body. I took a small tub full of water and
proceeded
to pour it gently on her, but she wanted me to drench her.

She explained that a contact with the allies, like the one we had,
produced a most injurious
perspiration that had to be washed off
immediately. She made me take off my clothes and then drenched me in ice-cold
water. Then she handed me a clean piece of cloth and we dried ourselves
as
we walked back into the house. She sat on the big bed in the front room after
hanging the lantern on the wall above it. Her knees were up and I could see
every part of her body. I hugged
her naked body, and it was then that I
realized what dona Soledad had meant when she said that la
Gorda
was the Nagual's woman. She was formless like don Juan. I could not possibly
think of her
as a woman.

I started to put on my clothes. She took them away from me. She said
that before I could wear
them again I had to sun them. She gave
me a blanket to put over my shoulders and got another
one for
herself.

"That attack of the allies was truly scary," she said as we
sat down on the bed. "We were really
lucky that we
could get out of their grip. I had no idea why the Nagual told me to go to
Genaro's
with you. Now I know. That house is where the allies are
the strongest. They missed us by the
skin of our teeth. We were lucky
that I knew how to get out."

"How did you do it, Gorda?"

"I really don't know," she said. "I simply did it. My
body knew how, I suppose, but when I
want to think how I did it, I
can't.

"This was a great test for both of us. Until tonight I didn't know
that I could open the eye, but
look what I did. I actually opened the
eye, just as the Nagual said I could. I've never been able to
do
it until you came along. I've tried but it never worked. This time the fear of
those allies made
me just grab the eye the way the Nagual told me to,
by shaking it four times in its four directions.
He said that I should shake it as I
shake a bed sheet, and then I should open it as a door, by
holding it right at the middle. The rest was very
easy. Once the door was opened I felt a strong
wind pulling me instead of blowing me away. The trouble, the Nagual
said, is to return. You have
to be
very strong to do that. The Nagual and Genaro and Eligio could go in and out of
that eye
like nothing. For them the
eye was not even an eye; they said it was an orange light, like the sun.
And so were the Nagual and Genaro an orange light
when they flew. I'm still very low on the scale; the Nagual said that when I do
my flying I spread out and look like a pile of cow dung in
the sky. I have no light. That's why the return is
so dreadful for me. Tonight you helped me and
pulled me back twice. The reason I showed you my flying tonight was
because the Nagual gave
me orders to
let you
see
it no matter how difficult or crummy it is. With my flying I
was supposed
to be helping you, the
same way you were supposed to be helping me when you showed me your
double
.
I saw your whole maneuver from the door. You were so busy feeling sorry for
Josefina
that your body didn't
notice my presence. I saw how your
double
came out from the top of your
head. It wriggled out like a worm. I saw a shiver that began in your feet and
went through your
body and then your
double
came out. It was like you, but very shiny. It was like the Nagual
himself. That's why the sisters were
petrified. I knew they thought that it was the Nagual himself. But I couldn't
see
all of it. I missed the sound because I have no attention for it."